Dear member,
This is my yearly review and when looking at the figures it reminds you that you don’t have to stake big to win at sports betting and I’m an advocate of betting responsibly as it helps keep betting fun but also the enjoyment of the sport. For that reason, you will never see me on Twitter bleating about bad luck, bad beats or more importantly our player performing badly. Sportsman have bad days (I can still vaguely remember lol) and I always prefer to accentuate the positive. For those reasons, if you ever feel uncomfortable betting or in life, you can always reach out to me for a chat because I’m a believer in only betting if you can afford the downswings and you are happy in life.
The snooker model finished the year with 625 selections if I counted each way ones as 2 (counted as 1 on sheets). I did this to split up how many bets we had and could review them at level stakes in comparison to the staking plan. From late November I took a more gregarious approach with higher volume in the final weeks of 2020 while reducing individual bet stakes. Remarkably both ways came out with 21% ROI and that is counting Holt as each way winner at 67.00 in the shootout. Early 2020 we had fewer bets, but we had an excellent run on the Outrights with Holt winning (101.00 was available but counted as 67.00), we also had Yuelong and Dott as runner up for ½ two places at 67.00. After Ash Carty qualified for World Championship at 34.00 and McGill won his quarter at 23.00 (July) we then run dry until the UK Championship when Yuelong won his quarter at 19.00(December). During and after our volume increased on match selections and we run at over 20% on the match and break markets alone in this period that was dominated by favourites (11.00 sub) reaching all the finals. My main reason for building the volume was because players were in a monotonous situation and thus any upswings or dips in forms could be magnified and relied upon more by us as punters. 2020 was a year of two halves and in fairness, our snooker model was a microcosm. I plan to start 2021 slowly and feel my way in as always while intending to increase the volume of bets with higher staking than November and December if the Milton Keynes dynamic develops which looks likely. If my staking had increased with the volume of those two months, we would have made more profit but these new Covid 19 dynamics meant I was a little reluctant to believe a new dynamic without some plausible proof I was right. If I get this right in 2021 then I will increase snooker profits regardless of outright bets.
The Golf place model was as reliable as the previous two years though I did have a dip in form towards the end of the year bringing down the ROI from just under 40% to 30% which is the mean over three years. Remarkably we only had 60 winners from 456 bets which were slightly disappointing although logically most PGA Tour events were less exploitable with the average price I use. If we get a normal 2021, I expect this to change back to normal. If you had level staked my place model at the best price you would have returned 638 from the 456 bets bringing a slightly better ROI than our 28%. I realise how difficult it is to get the best price on all selections like Saddier 51.00, Potter 26.00 (settled at 17.00), Humphreys 26.00, Summerhays 29.00, Gordon 26.00 (settled at 17.00) and Papp 26.00 so I will ignore that but it must be said with a slightly higher strike rate which is achievable in normal year profits could go significantly higher to level staking. My aim for 2021 is to increase my strike rate slightly to nearer 1:7 from 1:8 but overall, it continues as the best and most solid form of sports betting I’ve found with the knowledge that any downswing is at a minimum. I think I can increase win rate and if the end 2020 was an inevitable downswing out of the way I would like to believe we should get above 30% for 2021.
After two huge years and an ROI over 50%, the Golf Outright model found bad variance post March after Perera won at 126.00 and post Covid-19, harder dynamics to deal with. We had more bets than previous years and our ROI was a disappointing 4%. Despite that, in three years the model is still functioning at 50% ROI due to a wider spread at smaller stakes in 2020 and that reflects the harder post-Covid-19 dynamics at least by staking less. That was to counteract the effect Covid had on the resumption on the PGA Tour where the percentage of 201.00 priced golfers in the top 20 was at an all-time low. There were however a few outsiders that won, Michael Thompson, Jim Herman, Robert Streb and Martin Laird that won and in harsh truth all made my lists for that week, but I chose to not tip. That goes to show that golf is the only sport where you can logically and skilfully back 201.00+ shots and expect that a certain percentage will win. In the previous years of course luckily, I chose a couple more of those priced winners that make a huge difference to a year. I intend to proceed cautiously particularly on the PGA Tour with less bets until field strengths return to normal, that said if we return to a normal schedule so will the elite player’s schedules and a normal equilibrium will be restored. Likewise, The Sony Open, the second week of the PGA season is often a big week and I’m hoping for a normal early season run of events in America. The European Tour not so much and with over 40 tournaments planned it could be the most profitable one of the two. Hopefully the Champions, Korn Ferry, LPGA and Challenge Tour will have strong schedules allowing us to dip in and out when the venues’ dictate, we should.
The service in three years has run at 30%+ ROI with Golf Place is 29%, Golf Outright at 50% and Snooker 18% which I am delighted and proud of but 2020 was the most difficult year to date with Golf place running at 28%, Golf Outright at 4% and Snooker at 21% which accounted overall for 16.8% ROI. That said the strength of the service as always is the models complement each other and allow members to steadily build their betting bankroll. There is another factor that affected our golf returns and that was a lack of champions tour events. In 2018 Tom Gillis smashed our profits sky high for a couple of events like Doug Barron in 2019. Lack of tournaments and the in-form rookies being Ernie Els and Jim Furyk hurt our profits undoubtedly. This brings me onto the subject of staking and how it potentially affects our profits long term; as mentioned above if you had level staked golf place and snooker model your profits would be close to our staking plan figures. How do I set stakes? When I started out as tipster and membership was small, we did exploit opportunities on Gillis in 2018 as mentioned above. The problem nowadays is that if I go 0.5 each way at 176.00 the firms will move that price so quickly the staking becomes untenable for us all to get our money down. Likewise on the golf place model if I suggest 0.8 at 26.00 because clinically I know it is nearer 6.00 in actual price we are mainly going to be matched at somewhere between 13.00 and 17.00 which means a lesser stake to 0.5 to fit perceived value therefore I will reduce my stake to fit the greater good.
If you choose to level stake all selections I suggest if you have £10 on snooker bet, then have £10 golf place and £5 each way (harder to get anymore on if selection is 151.00+) on all snooker and golf Outrights or the comparative level to your bankroll.
Personally, I will continue to set the staking plan despite 2020 being the first year my bigger stake selections on snooker and golf Outrights flopped. That said, the golf place models when we went in heavy did yield better than previous years. Therefore, one year is a small sample in the grand scheme of things and another year’s information will tell us more.
Hopefully you all have a good healthy Christmas and New Year with your loved ones because after all that’s what matters. It’s been nice to have a break and a chance to review and I’m looking forward to a healthy and wealthy 2021.
