Wow, two posts in one day 
I was surfing around for some good Betfair betting/trading systems, and have found some good ones, which I will cover in some future posts, but wanted to share my thoughts on a Football system that I came across at the Four The Win Football site. It’s a free system (well, it’s not really a system, as you will see), though they have a couple other systems, notably horse racing, that they sell (and which have had really good reviews, but are beyond the scope of this post)
Anyway, since it is free, I will share the “system” here with you.
It involves betting on the top-tier teams in European Football who had the best home records (no more than three, maybe four, non-winning results the previous season; so in other words, no more than 3 or 4 draws or losses) You then bet on those teams the following season when they play at home.
Note: The results posted on the website report in “Great British Pounds”, but since I do not have the symbol for “GBP”, I am going to use exactly the same numbers, but use “$” instead, as I do not believe that changing the monetary symbol actually changes anything.
They posted their results for the previous season, which results in about $21,160 over the course of the 10-month season (Aug-May), betting $1,000 each game. They recommend the following “staking” pan: 1-2-3-1, meaning that you bet one unit, if you lose, your next bet is two units, then three if that one loses, and if there’s a 3rd loss, you just cut your losses and go back to one unit.
I put their results into a spreadsheet and played around with things a little bit (trying different betting strategies and the like). Here are some interesting things I found:
- I played around with the best size of bet to bankroll ratio, and while I found that making your “one unit” bet 20% of your bankroll worked, until further data is available, I would probably be more comfortable with using 10% of your bankroll as your “one unit”. I will probably do a “risk of Ruin” calculation and see what the best bet size/bankroll is based on that, and post an update to this in the very near future.
- Their results are missing four final games for the teams they bet on. I do not know if the omissions were on purpose, accidental, or if they just simply did not bet on those games. Adding in those “missing” results changes their overall profit from $21,160 to $19,880, which is still quite a hefty profit, although adding in those “missing” results actually resulted in an overall loss on one of the teams. Note that since I did not have the odds for those four “missing” results, I averaged out the odds from all the others games which I used in my calculations for those “missing” games (the average odds worked out to 1.36)
- The results they post list how much money was made on each team, so they seem to treat the 1-2-3-1 staking plan on a per-team basis. Betting per-team, out of the 95 bets, it was necessary to go to the “2″ bet 11 times and the “3″ bet once.
- Playing with things a bit, I had a look to see what would happen if, instead, you mixed everything up and just bet on each team as their games came up on the schedule, and did the 1-2-3-1 staking plan that way. The results were quite a bit different:a.) $17,560 profit (a difference of -$2,320, using the “adjusted” figure of $19,880 above). While a bit less, it’s still a pretty healthy profit considering the “blue chip” teams your are “investing” in
b.) Out of the 95 bets, it was necessary to go to the “2″ bet 12 times and the “3″ bet twice. Actually, one of the “3-bets” were the last three games of the season, and the last game “won”, though even if it had lost, the profit on the season would still would have been a respectable $13,480 - I played around with one other betting strategy which involved having your base bet as 10% of your overall bank but staying at that level until your bank reached certain “milestones”. For example, starting with a $150 bank, you would bet $15 (using the 1-2-3-1 staking plan) until your bank reached $200, then you would start betting $20 until you reach $250, then you would bet $25 and so on. The “milestone” amounts were set at $150, $200, $250, $500, $750, $1000, $1250, $1500, 1750, $2000, $2500, $5000, and ending at $10000. Using the above results, starting with a $150 bank and $15 base bet, and betting on each team as their games came up in the schedule would have resulted in a profit of $446.80 with the base bet increasing to $50.
- Finally, as a true test of the system, I tested to see how it would have done by flat-betting, which of course tells us truly whether or not a system is profitable. I tested flat-betting using a $10,000 bank and $1,000 as the “base” bet (i.e., treating each team as it’s own “series”, and mixing them all together) so the results are easy to compare to theirs. This resulted in the following:
a.) Each team as its own “series”: +$15,050
b.) All teams mixed: +$14,150
All in all, it would appear that if you were not planning on increasing your “base” bet size as your bank increases in size during the season, then betting each team as it’s own “series” would likely yield the best result, but no matter what method of betting you decide on, you would have been looking at similar results.
I will post an update in the very near future with the results of a “Risk of Ruin” calculation, including how I derived at the answer in case anyone has any further insights. In addition, I plan on using this system on the upcoming season, then the increasing stakes through the season as my bank increases. I will post the results (good and bad) as it progresses.
