After a rather poor start to the football
season, it was great to have not just a good weekend, but a fantastic one. The
Football Analyst and Football Investor led the way with both services gaining
over £1000 each. FI’s profit makes it the third service now into profit,
joining Summer of Football and Narrow Victories. SoF and Skeeve lost a little
ground, and Skeeve is now at the lowest ROI rate of all, at -34%.
Clashes
Football Elite and Narrow Victories edged
forwards this week, but I am getting slightly alarmed at the number of clashes
between the two. FE had Norwich (+0.5) and I, as NV, had Chelsea to win by 1 or
2 goals. Matt also went for Everton against Manchester City as a Vulnerable
Home Favourite, whereas I again preferred a narrow victory for City.
On Friday, I also had a clash with TFA
choosing Accrington Stanley and FI went for Dagenham & Redbridge on a DNB
basis. Having already placed the TFA bet, no bet was not an option, so I stuck
to the directive and backed both. Obviously it was a relief that it was not a
draw, the only losing option.
With regards to the clashes with FE and NV, I
have to say I backed my judgement and, for the time being, this is working out
well. Matt and I have played the same matches on 4 occasions (although this is
the first time it has been a main selection), and so far the count is NV 3, FE
0 and both lose 1. Now I don’t think it will carry on this way, and imagine it
will even out over time. I certainly would back my selections over VHFs but,
each time, it will be a hard decision to keep taking on main selections.
Risk Aversion
Having given Graeme from TFA a 4 in my
Confidence ratings, mainly for the work that he puts into his service, and
particularly in creating my portfolio, I was rather surprised to find myself
making adjustments. Now before anyone takes this as a criticism of TFA, it was
mainly instigated from a piece of analysis that Graeme shared in his monthly
review. He included a statistical analysis by a subscriber called Tage, which
suggested lowering stakes to minimise risk.
One of the strengths of TFA is the large
number of successful systems, I currently back 11 win only systems and 2 draw
ones. Now this can result in stakes of 11 points on 1 bet. Out of a bank of
100, this is over 9% of the bankroll on one selection. Now I know the system
was created with an incredibly large sample and is unlikely to bust the bank,
but certainly the chance is much higher, especially if the bets have odds that are
regularly over evens.
Tage suggested just selecting as bets those
with 4 or less systems and ignoring those of 5 and over. While his research
backed this up, it was with different systems to what I play, but I got me
straight onto Excel. So I have decided to limit my stakes to a maximum of just
four. Rather than ignoring those with 5 or more, I will just limit myself to 4
points (or 4 ½ points on aways) per bet.
I have already tested the effects on last
year’s equivalent portfolio and it does bring down the ROC from 247% to 143%,
but ROI is up to 20.4% from 16.3%. It brings the max draw down, although not
significantly enough to change bank size but I think I will be more comfortable
with the bet sizes.
In a way it answers all the slight concerns I
had in my review. Not only does it reduce risk in the TFA portfolio, I feel it
will also address the balance of the whole portfolio. In fact I turned over
almost identical amounts on FI as TFA last week.
So how did it work out? Well to be honest
when I placed the bets I imagined I was giving all those systems a great boost
as they would all win handsomely and I would be regretting the additional £1000
that I could have won if I had more balls! In the end only one of the three
won, costing me just £32 – (£280 saved on Plymouth and Blackburn and £312 ‘lost’
on Southend).
I imagine the next 11 point home bet could be
nail biting, but I do feel this is an improvement, certainly for my psyche. Dani
at Sportyy.com stated in one of his Tipster School articles that:
“Financial
market investors are willing to win less if their portfolios risk is lower.
That is, they pay (opportunity cost) for taking a lower risk.”
I would like to think this is what I am
doing, but I am open to constructive criticism!
The Week Ahead
The Interlull is on us again and while TFA, FI and Skeeve will continue playing in the lower leagues and SoF could have some
angles in Brazil, it will certainly be a quiet time for me at Narrow Victories.
I have considered looking into the International matches as I can see quite a
few slim margins, but will probably use the time to add a few more top leagues
to the blog. I have also come up with a better way of playing the bet through a
form of a Venn-style Asian combination. More of that over on the sister site in
the next couple of weeks.
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