Welcome and picks for Friday 1st February

Hello and welcome to Sporting Value. This is a blog to document my third incarnation as a professional gambler. Horse racing was certainly the starting point. Going back to the mid nineties I had a small spell as a professional gambler in the early internet days, mainly as a devotee of Nick Mordin. I still have a wonderful collection of books including all the American texts he recommended. While I had no problem turning a profit, as a one man band I could never generate the turnover, especially as I couldn't bring myself to bet the type of sums I knew I needed to make a living.

In December 2010 I decided to give it another bash. Having come across the Secret Betting Club , I set about building a portfolio. The early highlight was definitely On the Nose, back in its free days. I remember being absolutely gutted when missing out on signing up for the paid service while out of town for a funeral. My favourite horse service I have followed is Steve Jones' CD Systems, in particular the Daily Bargain and ProBets arms. Other great racing tipsters that have done the business are Equine Investments and Narrowing the Field.
 
Horse racing was the turnover driving force of the portfolio, as well as probably the largest profits, but I have also tried most other sports. Football started off with Football Elite, and it was the only ever present in my portfolio, but the one I found Summer of Football the most profitable and rewarding to follow.

Profits flowed for the first 15 or so months, well into 5 figures but the last few did not live up to the the early days. This is by no means a criticism of said tipsters as, contrary to the opinions of most people that I talk to about it, a lot of them are excellent profit generators. The numbers that were first revealed to me through the Secret Betting Club do stack up and it is very possible to make good returns in this game. Where it went wrong was definitely with the bookies themselves.

I imagine anyone who reads this blog is going to be well versed in the problems of being successful with UK bookies, namely they don't want your business. I won't bore you too much with the number of closures, although 3 Ladbrokes accounts closed and 3 Bet365 accounts limited to pennies would be the pinnacle, I won't dane to list the BlueSq, Victor, Stan James closures as this seems to be very much the norm.

So what about now, you may ask? Well after cashing in my chips in October and riding the wave of relief as Skeeve, Summer of Football and Laurent Marty dropped some major sums that would have wiped off even more of the profits, I decided to go back to doing it myself. As an ex Maths teacher and a bit of a statistics addict I thought I would see what I could do. The majority of my subscriptions have been to services that provided a thorough write up as part of their service. I remember reading, I believe, in one of the SBC articles that the best tipsters can act as valuable tutors as well as profit engines. I have decided to start with football and I think I have learned from some of the best. I have particularly appreciated the analysis and thinking of Football Elite and Summer of Football and I like the leagues that they play in. As a big football (arsenal) fan myself I do like to watch quite a bit as well so Oddschecker's European Elite coupon has become something of a virtual home from home.

I thought initially that I would want to play in the 1.8 to 2.8 price range in the same way that FE and SoF, I felt more comfortable playing a bigger prices and more obscure markets. Probably the most successful being winning margin bets.

I have been analyzing and betting since start of December and so far with favourable returns. In total 116 bets have been made (although some of these have been dutching selections), with a strike rate of 39% and a return of investment of 23.55%. 97 out of the 116 bets have been with Betfair or Pinnacle so hopefully no account monitoring necessary.

With this good start in mind I thought I would share some selections with anyone who is interested. this blog is not intended to just be a tipping service, it is hopefully a tale of conversion from a follower of tips to a self selector, someone who can now decide when to place their bets rather than jumping into action whenever the text/email arrives irrespective of what is happening. Certainly the worst experiences were Saturday ice skating lessons for my two daughters when Summer of Football and Laurent Marty threw their multiple selections at me! An iphone is a great tool but fiddling around on oddsportal and oddschecker for obscure Brazilian Serie B and European Challenge Cup handicaps was never fun.

Anyway on to the selections for this Friday:

Bundesliga - Werder Bremen vs Hannover (19:30 kickoff)
A match between an average home team and a very poor away team would point towards a Bremen win but their form has dipped recently. The main trend I can detect is for lots of goals. WB's last 6 home games have had 22 goals and Hannover's last 6 away have had 30. The conservative play would be over 3.5 - ranging from 2.15 to 2.45, while over 4.5 goes up to 4.33. BAsed on a £1000 bank, I will be backing:

£25 on over 3.5 - 2.52 Betfair
£10 on over 4.5 - 4.33 William Hill

Serie A - Roma vs Cagliari (19:45)
Strong, high scoring home team on good run after managerial threats against a very poor away team, looks a good play for the handicaps. Roma have won 4 of last 5 home, all by 2 or more goals, while Cagliari have lost 4 of last 6 away, 3 of these by 2 goals or more. I will be backing Roma with a 1.5 goal handicap.

£50 on Roma -1.5 - 2.23 Pinnacle

Australian A-League

Thank you to Summer of Football for getting me into this league! These three bets are based on what I see as a very strong trend, namely the preponderance of home wins, but not just any home wins, those by a 1 goal margin. So far this season the home team has won 58% of the matches, but 38% of those have been by just 1 goal.
Tomorrows early matches have some strong pointers towards this as well.

Wellington vs Perth (04:00)

Wellington have had a mixed home record of W3 D3 L3 but 2 of those 3 wins were by 1 goal. More relevant is Perth Glory who have lost 6 of their 9 away games, all of them by a 1 goal margin (67% of their matches?)

£30 on Wellington to win by 1 goal - 3.75 Paddy Power, Betfair

Newcastle vs Sydney (06:30)

Again trends point to this bet. All 4 of Newcastle's home wins (out of 8) have been by 1 goal, although only 1 of Sydney's 6 losses have been by 1 goal, there has been an improvement in their form recently.

£30 on Newcastle to win by 1 goal - 3.85 Betfair

Melbourne Victory vs Melbourne Heart (08:45)

Victory have won 4 out of their 6 home games by 1 goal and Heart have lost 5 out of their 7 away losses by 1 goal.

£30 on Melbourne Victory to win by 1 goal - 3.75 Bet365

Obviously these are trends bets and will chose this weekend to go differently but I really believe there is value in this angle.

Time is really getting on now and it has taken a lot longer than I thought to write this so I will post now and hopefully be back tomorrow with more selections.

Good luck anyone who follows but I will expect you will want to see a longer track record than this!