Snooker 2021
Lifetime: 2459 bets, 16.75% ROI
2021: 922 bets, 15.15% ROI
Please forgive me for completing the snooker review before next week’s finish but I don’t expect figures to be markedly worse.
The snooker model has delighted and frustrated me in equal measure during 2021.
Let’s get the frustration out of the way and that’s simply how poorly we’ve run variance/results wise in the outright markets. In truth the previous 18 months was fantastic in snooker outrights while the previous 18 months to that was as frustrating as this current spell, though I’m hoping Xintong hitting in the UK Championship is the start of better form. There’s no way of building up a big sample of bets quickly like at golf in snooker outright so all we can do is be patient. When you look at near misses with Bingtao and Lisowski recently it’s variance and also a fact that the top of the market has dominated. If recent events and younger winners have a changing of the guard effect, I’m hoping we have good days ahead and we already have a unique and unusual high volume of ante-post bets.
As mentioned in last year’s review, one aim was to increase volume in 2021 and we did by 80%. Now I’ve proved what, I thought I learnt at the end of 2020, I will endeavour to increase stakes slightly also. It’s encouraging to know that betting without outrights would have yielded 20%+ and as such as I’ve mentioned before, it’s okay to bet more on snooker than golf. The main thing to do, if you choose to, is to be consistent and disciplined with staking perhaps reviewing yearly only. What I also need to mention, is that if you increase stakes on side markets particularly by too much you allow bookmakers to mark and close accounts so make sure you have new ones ready to use. Snooker is different to golf in fact that we have only the bookmakers to use as exchanges aren’t liquid apart from Money lines.
Overall, I feel more content with my snooker for the first time than any of my previous four years reviews. Famous last words but I feel confident 2022 could be our best year yet.
Golf Outright 2021
Lifetime: 2297 bets, 48.67% ROI
2021: 708 bets, 38.44% ROI
After only breaking even in 2020, I was delighted to see the Golf Outright model back on track. Golf is a great betting sport and there’s more than one way to skin the cat and my style has always been the highest variance route in the attempt to maximise profits long term. This is a built-in ethos for my service as the lower variance of golf place and snooker manage our bankroll against those long losing streaks that hit the outright model. That downside to high variance has hurt us since September with no outright winners despite many close shaves as the model was above 50% at the end of August. That’s to be expected long term but the top of the market-dominating the PGA Tour events in the fall wasn’t helpful or the usual occurrence. Noticeable that my volume is high at 708 bets and one aim is to reduce that by 10 or 15% in 2022. The other aim is to improve my staking, as on occasion when we went 0.2ew or bigger our selections run poorly. That was something I did well in the opening two years of service but has been a leak the last two years. That’s likely variance but the short-term impact in 2021 hasn’t been ideal but the upside is we’ve had some serious CLV (closing line value) and unwittingly the bookies have dodged many good bullets in late 2021.
I need to mention, that like the golf place model, it’s entirely feasible someone betting exchanges at 30 to 40% higher win prices has a better ROI than our 38%.
Overall, I’m content we hit what we should on Golf outright in 2022 in the knowledge it would have been a little better in the second half of the year with kinder variance.
Golf Place
Lifetime: 1937 bets, 25.81% ROI
2021: 512 bets, -0.64% ROI
January to June: 281 bets, 79.45 staked, -11.75, -14.82% ROI
July to December: 231 bets, 41 staked, 11.13 profit, 27.12% ROI
It’s been the most difficult year of four on my place model and I’ve broken the year into two halves to illustrate the poor opening six months. I adjusted in the second half of the year decreasing volume by approximately 20% and stakes by 50%.
Over the three previous years, the place model was my mainstay balancing variance perfectly and particularly in year 3 when golf outright only broke even. The results are the results and all that matters but it’s plausible we had a ridiculously high number of blowups from positions trading at sub1.25+ on the exchanges, and it’s prudent to point out that taking exchange prices were at least 20% bigger on Wednesdays across the board. That said, post-Covid-19, the strengths of the fields changed particularly at the top end so it’s not surprising that the profit was made in the second half of the year when the players’ schedules finally settled back into the previous status quo.
The success in the early years of the model brought me directly into conflict with the major bookmaker we all use and the compiler the golf industry relies on to formulate the initial model. There was a period in 2020 when they had gained access to my tips and were cutting prices in moments post email. Interestingly after 12 months of holding back the place markets until the last few months of 2021, they’ve been going up first again which cynically will be because they had stopped the leak. That may have been to our advantage in recent months and can be going forward.
Variance is a cruel mistress and there’s little doubt we had the worst of it in 2021 but I also made mistakes with volume and staking during the opening six months.
Overall review
Lifetime: 6842 bets, ROI 28.87%
2021: 2187 bets, ROI 18.71%
January to June: Bets 1158, staked 224, ROI 15.18
July to December: Bets 1029, staked 144, ROI 24.19
I hope you will forgive me for doing my yearly review a little early but after this week our figures won’t change markedly for the worse and I want some time away from betting. This will allow me to digest this review and enjoy time with my family over the festive season to recharge my batteries for 2022.
It feels like an average year at bookmaker prices making 18.71% for members and like always in life, betting is a constant learning curve. There’s no doubt, it’s the Golf Place model that brought our ROI down below 20% for the first time in a yearly review.
To help, I broke the year down into two halves which proves my point that Golf Place dragged the profit down given we know that it was profitable in the second half of the year from our earlier review.
That leads to the conclusion that the opening six months results on the Golf Place model dragged the overall ROI down.
That said, I’m immensely proud of my service and anyone using exchanges will have gone above 20%. I have been lucky enough to build up a core of some great long-term members whose trust and support is much appreciated.
Betting is meant to be fun! I believe my service offers that opportunity while making some nice profits with the occasional big hits to enjoy. If you ever feel betting isn’t fun, then take a break as there’s more to life than the next winner.
It leaves me to say, I hope you and yours have come through this troubling period in the World unscathed as there’s nothing more important than family and loved ones.
Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Craig
