The long running Gowi battle

Many thanks to Franck who commented on my blogpiece about Gowi. I did bash out a response to his points yesterday but when I went to publish it, Blogger said it was too long. Rather than edit it in a little box at the bottom of the page, I thought I would turn it into a blogpost as I feel it shows the battle lines between the different camps of Gowi subscribers.

(Franck's comments in italics)

Good blog but I feel compelled to give some balance

Opening paragraph: you say ‘I feel I am ready to pass judgement’…surely you can’t pass judgement on any service with just 6 months’ worth of data. It’s simply not long enough and I believe you need of minimum two seasons.

Hi Franck, thanks for your post. These 8 points aren't just for judging Gowi, it is for all tipsters I have in my portfolio. I mention passing judgement, because the previous month I was about to stop subscribing as I was making a loss after 6 months. Passing judgement, in hindsight, is a tad strong but it was in the context of me lining up my portfolio for the season. I already had the definites, the next post was about the probables. In the previous post I noted that Gowi and Tennisrating were in that camp, the judgement is more that I had decided on Gowi, not quite yet on how to proceed with Tennisratings.

You are right that should not be a defining reason to stop and more info is required, but taking one man's word for an amazing record is a route to the poor house in the sports betting world!

Point 2: why do you only have two bookies – how come you don’t have more Asian bookies, do you not use a bet brokerage service such as Sportmarket or Asian Connect.

In terms of the outright selections, I know full well how difficult it is to get on with traditional UK books but surely you could have some sort of plan in place ahead of the release of the bets…something like using a friend’s account or being near a bunch of different betting shops in a town. I think most people would be able to put some sort of plan in place whereby they get some of the prices. I know I got on all the bets by having access to a number of different books and having oddschecker open.



Point 2 in terms of bookies, I do have more than 2 bookies, it is just I find the majority of my business goes through these. SBO and Dafa do me well as does Betfair, but still finding I use the other two much more.

I personally do not feel comfortable using other people for pseudo accounts, I do not like asking them to pass betting money through their accounts etc or having the use of their paypal/skrill setups. I also live quite rurally and spend a lot of time in France and Spain, so can not rely on shops.


With regard to bet brokers, I am still waiting to be paid by BetButler, so forgive me if I am a little reticent of joing another yet.

To be quite honest, I have never been a big fan of ante post bets, due to the amount of the bank it ties up over a period of time. Certainly the ones I have seen so far have not convinced me otherwise. I would rather play with a smaller bank and turn it over more regularly.


Point 3: Not sure what you’re getting at with this point ‘reasoning is clear even if result of algorithms/rules’.

With reference to some bets being rushed….your example was the Athlone v Limerick. Was this bet really rushed? He gave two paragraphs where he mentioned head-to-head and recent form. Also, the double inverted commas around “always”….come on man, are you seriously using this as a credible example?


Point 3 covers all tipsters, I have no doubt Keith does his research and his write-ups are very detailed. Some tipsters do not and unless I have a fairly good understanding of why or how they are making their choices, I do not want to play.

The Athlone comment was a little tongue in cheek, but it came on the end of a series of poor tips on the Irish league. This may be part of the problem of not publishing your results, but to me, these tips came out of nowhere. I could find no mention of the Irish Premier league being part of the leagues he follows, plenty on MLS, Serie A and J-League, but no Ireland.

Maybe those that have been with the service for 6 years know this, but I didn't, so found it a tad flippant.

Point 4: I don’t see how you can feel that bigger priced golf and outright selections are over staked…are they out of line with his daily football? This also brings me to a topic about people feeling the need to bet everything that Keith’s suggests. Surely you should be able to work out what’s best for you in his service – Golf, Tennis, NFL etc. It seems to me that you may be struggling to deal with the variance of his outright golf selections.

Yes, the staking is in line with his daily football bets, but the risk and reward is not. Risking over 2% at big prices does not need that long a losing run to get a bit hairy. Again a list of past bets could show that this is not the case.

Again this point is not just about Gowi, I felt the same about some of the doubles that Skeeve picked at 5% of my bank at prices over 3.00. I aslo struggled and adjusted mid-season when I felt TFA churned out an 11 system bet that was working out as 11% of my bank.

I am not struggling with the variance of his golf bets,  just have no reference for his likely variance.

Point 5: Ok, so this point has been discussed in great detail and here’s my take on it.

Keith has stated on a number of occasions this his service is not a tipping sheet and I feel many are struggling to accept this as they automatically assume he has to be categorised as a tipster and therefore has to publish his results, has to get his results verified, has to do this, has to that etc etc.

Why is it not acceptable to say ‘I’m more than a tipster. I’m a newsletter service who provides detailed insight into football matches and sporting events all over the world. I give recommended bet suggestions on these sporting events’

How many of Keith’s ‘new’ subscribers just simply scroll down to the bottom of each newsletter to find the red type bet? I reckon about 90% of his new followers don’t even read the actual content and miss out on numerous other betting angles…but hey they don’t get this because they’re too busy chasing prices.

The fact that Keith has been providing a winning service since 2006 suggests that he’s slightly successful in this game!


Point 5 is always open for debate, but I would much rather have a full set of results to see where strengths and weaknesses are, especially when covering so many events. It is all very well taking a rough estimate of bank size from Keith, but again, I would like to look through the data to see if it stacks up.

As Steve at Daily 25 has stated, he can happily call himself a newsletter, but doubt it would attract the same level of fee. For all the "not worried about how many subscribers', there is still a lot of marketing on Twitter etc and for a while Keith did try to get his bets verified by SBC, but pulled out.

"The fact' that Keith has provided a winning service since 2006, is a great soundbite, but there are lots of bogus tipsters out there with fantastic long term records, according to them.

In terms of just cutting to the red type, I would certainly not include myself in that list. In fact I played the Marseille -1 bet this weekend as an o2.5 for better price, due to the expectation of wild times under Biesla. Did not think one extra defender would fix their deficiencies at the back like Keith, and when Montpellier went ahead, thought I was on to a winner, but alas OM couldn't get even one goal!

Have also made money on some HT/FT bets at big odds, but finding the right staking level without a record is tricky. If you are happy to dive in to all the extras confidently, well done, I am still finding my feet.

Point 6: Price collapses…there is always going to be a price collapse if everyone is trying to get the units down at 10am in the morning - two key alternatives is to wait near the off or go in-play. Keith has mentioned this numerous times.

‘If only we had the data’ – if you choose to follow the service you will eventually have data

Point 6 is really why I did the research. It is all very well having anecdotal evidence that waiting produces the results, it is another think having that in front of you. It would have been a lot less time consuming to have a spreadsheet of all the bets to cross check quickly than have to drag all the info from emails, which is quite tricky given structure of them.

My personal records were not much use as I sometimes played the advice rather than the selections, so not really fair.

The point of choosing to follow the service gives you the data seems a bit backwards to me.

Point 7: feel this is irrelevant as if you choose to follow a certain ‘tipster’ then you should do so, regardless of conflicting bets, and just do your analysis at the end of the season.

I do not feel point 7 is that irrelevant. If a large part of your profits come from backing big priced selections and another service keeps backing the perceived poor value favourite with a handicap, its not going to work well for me.

From my records the big priced Euro selections are returning 32% ROI and favourites in same league with Gowi are running at -1%, admittedly with a small sample size, but a much larger stake. Would you want to place them?

Point 8: I’d like to see Keith increase the price of his service and restrict the number of subscribers!

Point 8, maybe he should increase the price, he has a happy band of followers, and I can imagine being held to a different light by Johnny-come-latelys can be very annoying. But regardless of what he says, 220 subscribers at around a 1000 euros a year would be quite a cushion for a poor years betting! And he is definitely still marketing the product quite heavily, especially after a good burst of profit.

I can see how you can think it is a critical review, but I can not have expectations of success, just because the business owner says it is so. As I have said, doing the research has made me feel a lot better about continuing, even if the sample size is not yet large enough to be conclusive. I could have kept this to myself, but there is a lot of chatter on forums etc and think it could be quite useful to others.

What to do about Gowi

I concluded last month that the next post (this one) would be dominated by two services, Club Gowi and Tennisratings, but I feel I am ready to pass judgement on the former, but not quite the latter. Having now collected 6 months worth of bets from Gowi, it felt like the perfect time to delve deeper into the numbers.

First I thought I would run Gowi through my 8 point checklist. When I wrote this list I was anticipating Gowi falling at a few hurdles, but as I mentioned they are not the be-all-and-end-all, just starting points.

1.              Clear selections with relatively stable delivery times – most emails arrive at the designated time and Keith is very good at keeping the customer aware of the schedule ahead. ✔

2.              Bets and prices are achievable at my limited list of bookies – In terms of being available I would say 90% of the bets are at Asian style bookies, most of my bets are with Pinnacle or Matchbook. The ones that are not are the issue as they are usually the bigger priced outright bets, and I have really struggled to get any significant amount of money on these selections. Availabilty is also a big issue, but that will be addressed in the rest of this post.

3.              Reasoning is clear even if result of algorithms/rules – there is no doubting Keith’s reasoning for the bets, if anything there is too much text, but he obviously works hard and there are very few bets that give the impression of being rushed. The only one that springs to mind was “Limerick "always" beat Athlone, regardless of the situation, they just do !”, before promptly losing 3-0!

4.              Service is stable in terms of psychology and staking (not on tilt) – I would say this is true although I do feel the bigger priced golf and outright selections are over staked, especially in relation to the bets I have received, but I suppose I have not seen any of them win! ✔

5.              Records are clear, verified and analysable – Afraid not, and anyone who follows SBC or Daily 25 will not be in the least surprised by this decision. Yes there are graphs and summary numbers but nothing that one can get one’s teeth into. I know from emails he has sent out that Keith does not think it is relevant, but I would consider my view to be very different to this. In fact I hope that my post helps other people to get a good feel of the service, for better or worse. ✖

6.              Profitable in the long and medium term – All the numbers point to this being so, but there is always the nagging doubt that price collapse make it a challenging task, like so many other successful tipsters, if only we had the data to show it …

7.              Minimal clashes with others in stable – This has been a bit of an issue for me. I have had great success with big priced selections in Europe, and a few times Keith has been on the other side giving away goals on the handicap. Also WTA tennis has seen a bit of a differing of opinion with Tennisrating, but it is certainly not at deal-breaker proportions.

8.              Price is justifiable – Now that Skeeve has taken a back-seat, this is by far the most expensive service I follow. I think it can be justified by the amount of hours that is put into the previews, but it might just be me, but I always hold the more expensive ones up to a much stronger light. In a way, they have to prove themselves over and over again, especially if I can’t analyse the numbers and create a picture for myself.

 

So: 8 checks, 2 ticks and 1 cross, 5 not sures. To be quite honest before I finished all the analysis I was fairly sure I wouldn’t have the ammo to beat those sort of marks, and Gowi would be going by the wayside, but lets give it a fair chance.

Before I give you the data, I would like to start by saying I have made a slight loss so far following Gowi. This, as you will soon see, is not of Keith’s making as I do not follow religiously and have struggled to get certain bets on. There have also been periods – such as holidays – that have made it very hard to place bets, so I have often taken a break.

To give a truer impression of the service I decided to go back and record all the tips, and where possible, collect the closing prices from Oddsportal. Now as you can imagine this was quite testing so I decided only to collect the football prices that were available at Pinnacle. That means BTTS and team Over/unders selections are just recorded as advised price. I could have done tennis as well but was losing the will to live at this point so, as football makes up by far the biggest proportion, this is what you get!

I also decided to leave out the few bets that are advised in-play, such as

I do expect Brazil to win and maybe everything will click today, but we have no real need to bet, as match odds do look a little skinny, however, should Brazil trade at 2.20 "in running" , whilst still 0-0 and as long as we are 11 v 11, I will take that for 1.25 units.

I do remember thinking when Keith decided to pull his proofing from SBC that these types of bets would be a controversial area. From a proofing point, it is not only hard to decide if the price was achieved, it is also open to manipulation as to whether it was achieved. If the price touched 2.1 and it won, would it be included and if it lost, not quite, that sort of thing! I am not accusing Gowi of any of this, it is just without the data and a list of bets, these thoughts do cross your mind.

The best place to start is an overall picture, so in the 6 months from the 22^nd January to 21^st July there have been:

                                               

                        Bets                             Stakes                         Adv profit                  ROI

659

848.23

24.8

3%

If we just look at the bets I have used closing prices for, ie football win, AH and O/U we get:

                        Bets                             Stakes                         Closing profit              ROI

449

618.83

12.87

2%

Interestingly the profit on those equivalent bets at advised price is 22.77 points or 4% ROI.

Before we get on to the bulk of the football bets, lets look at the two other sports that I have seen during my subscription (there has been a very successful American Football ante post success that I noted in this time period, but I was not part of as it was placed before my time). Firstly golf has seen 78 bets placed, for 81.5 points and a loss of 8.82 points.

Type	Bets	Stakes	Profit	ROI
Pre-start	24	26.25	-15.075	-57%
In-play	41	40.5	1.3375	3%
Match	13	14.75	4.9175	33%

As you can see from the table above, the most successful area has been matchbets (including 2- and 3-balls), while pre-tournament advice has yet to hit the mark. Saying that, at high odds it will only take one to put that area into profit. I do have a feeling that the staking is too heavy on these bets, with an average of over a point a bet, and average odds of over 14/1, including top 5s, 10s and 20s.

Tennis has produced 57 bets, 67.25 points staked and have turned a profit of 4.4 points at an ROI of 7%. I must add from my point of view that I am still in negative territory here as Petra Kvitova’s Wimbledon win provided an overall profit of 5 points but I could not place the bet at the recommended price with my bookies.

Type	Bets	Stakes	Profit	ROI
Result	15	18.75	7.41	40%
Correct score	18	13.75	-1.81	-13%
Handicap	17	24	-1.50	-6%
Outright	3	5.25	3.50	67%
O/U	4	5.5	-3.18	-58%

The strongest area has been outright winners (by ROI) and match winners by profit. So far, any attempt to improve the odds by predicting the correct score, game or set handicaps or over/unders have a negative ROI, but the sample is still very small. Outrights would have been boosted further as Na Li won the Australian Open but alas I was not a subscriber when the tip was issued.

So golf and tennis have staked about 150 points between them leaving just over 700 points for football, which at advised prices returned a profit of 29 points at 4% ROI.

To be honest, that is not a bad return at all, especially give the hard time he is having on forums and blogs recently but I suppose the question of whether it is achievable is key here. My record of comparing closing price to advised price has shown a near halving of profit level and ROI. There is also the issue of the price movement as soon as the bet is released, which I would claim demonstrates a bigger gap between advised price and the odds, say 1 minute later, than the previously mentioned one.

In defence if Keith, he has always maintained that if you do not get the price at issue, aim for nearer the off or play in-play, and that certainly seems to ring true with my findings.

Row Labels	Count of Movement	Sum of Stake	Advised profit	Closing price profit
-10--15%	33	43.3	8.5	3.4
-15% or worse	14	16.3	11.0	5.8
-5%--10%	93	131.8	-7.4	-15.0
>10%	31	43.3	0.1	5.9
0--5%	126	175.5	18.2	13.6
0-5%	107	148.8	-0.7	2.8
5-10%	45	60	-6.9	-3.5
Grand Total	449	618.8	22.8	12.9

Those prices that have jumped off a cliff have still been profitable (over 10% reduction) with over 9 points profit, although those few who got the price achieved nearly 20!

The area of concern is when the price fell by between 5% and 10%, although these bets were losing anyway. I must add these are pretty small samples so not to be taken as a rule.

Bets that go off just 5% worse or better (a price increase) are in the closing price bettors favour, namely 18 points of profit against 10 points at advised. Quite clearly this is an improvement on the total return at starting price (18.7 vs 12.9) and you will still be betting on nearly 70% of the advised selections.

This pretty much fits with what Rowan has said in his Practical Punter column – 5% max drop on negative handicaps and 10% on positive, and Steve at Daily 25, who plays a maximum drop of 7%.

The next angle I looked at was type of football bets, slightly inspired by Rowan’s positive/negative split. For sake of argument I included AH -0.25 and up as negative and level ball or DNB or better as positive.

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	221	307.5	6.9	303	0.5
AH+	145	196.3	4.6	195.5	1.4
BTTS	11	15	0.5	0
draw	5	4.1	-4.1	4.1	-4.1
goalscorer	9	9.5	17.0	0
HT	3	3.3	-3.3	3.3	-3.3
HT/FT	8	4	0.3	0
O/U	85	116.5	22.7	113	18.4
outright	24	30.9	-18.2	0
Teams O/U	13	12.5	2.7	0
Grand Total	524	699.48	29.19625	618.83	12.8725

Well from this I can see the biggest area of profit seem to come from goal betting, both overs (as most are overs) and goalscorer bets. The goalscorer bets include both anytime match bets and a series of top goalscorer bets in the World Cup. Asian handicap bets (including straight wins) are profitable at advised prices but less so at closing price.

Looking further at just the previously mentioned split of -5% or better we get:

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	155	218.3	-6.4	218.3	-2.5
AH+	97	131.3	7.6	131.3	10.8
draw	3	3	-3	3	-3
HT	2	2.5	-2.5	2.5	-2.5
O/U	52	72.5	14.9	72.5	15.9
Grand Total	309	427.5	10.6	427.5	18.7

We might as well see the counter example, where the price has fallen by over 5%:

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	62	84.8	12.6	84.8	2.9
AH+	47	64.3	-4.9	64.3	-9.4
draw	2	1.1	-1.1	1.1	-1.1
HT	1	0.8	-0.8	0.8	-0.8
O/U	28	40.5	6.3	40.5	2.5
Grand Total	140	191.3	12.1	191.3	-5.9

Looking at these tables, maybe Rowan is wrong in extending the price drop with positive handicaps to over 5% and should only do that with negative ones!

Seriously though, at -5% or better most areas are positive, and negative handicaps and over unders still produce the goods at worse prices. There may even be an argument for taking a less favourable line in these cases, but I haven’t fully checked that!

After value, I looked at the different competitions that Gowi bets on. Out of all the tipsters, Keith has by far the biggest spread of leagues to cover so surely some might be better than others.

I mentioned in my checklist that there were a few clashes with other services, so my first comparison point was with those.

The bulk of the system bets come in the UK leagues, and methodologically the biggest clashes seem to be when rational argument meets data, so how does Gowi do in the UK.

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	58	76.3	-5.8	71.8	-6.7
AH+	35	47.0	4.6	47.0	4.3
BTTS	1	1.5	1.5	0.0
draw	1	1.0	-1.0	1.0	-1.0
goalscorer	1	0.5	-0.5	0.0
HT/FT	3	1.5	-1.5	0.0
O/U	13	17.5	3.4	17.5	3.0
outright	1	1.8	-1.8	0.0
Teams O/U	6	5.5	-1.0	0.0
Grand Total	119	152.5	-2.0	137.3	-0.3

Well is that worth the stress of placing the clashing bets? Especially as they always arrive at least the day after TFA and FI. It looks like the AH+ bets are solid, and these are less likely to oppose the systems, which on the whole favour the outsider, and overs are profitable, which don’t clash, so there are some angles to consider.

The next area of clashing is in the Top flight European leagues, in this case with FI’s Top Flight Euro selections and also Football Elite.

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	52	78.8	9.7	78.8	7.0
AH+	25	35.5	-3.4	35.5	-4.0
BTTS	3	4.3	-0.9	0
draw	1	0.3	-0.3	0.3	-0.3
HT/FT	2	0.5	-0.5	0
O/U	22	31.5	4.2	30.3	3.2
Teams O/U	2	1.8	3.3	0
Grand Total	107	152.6	12.0	144.8	5.9

That looks better, although all the profit is earned in France, an area of strength for Gowi as he tips in Ligue 2 as well.

Here is both French leagues:

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	46	66.3	16.1	66.3	14.3
AH+	16	23	-5.4	23	-5.9
BTTS	2	3	0.4	0
HT/FT	3	1	-1	0
O/U	30	43	12.6	41.8	9.3
outright	2	3.3	-3.3	0
Grand Total	99	139.5	19.4	131	17.6

Back in February’s monthly review I commented about the service:

“I have been particularly impressed with Keith’s tipping in domestic cup matches, which he seems to play with a very strong ‘motivation’ factor to the fore.”

So how does this manifest itself over 6 months. In domestic cup competitions from all over the world:

Row Labels	Bets	Ad Stake	Ad Profit	CP Stake	CP Profit
AH-	25	35.5	1.7	35.5	1.9
AH+	33	43.3	11.8	43.25	11.5
BTTS	3	4.3	-1.3	0
goalscorer	1	0.8	1.5	0
O/U	3	3.5	1.8	3.5	1.4
outright	3	4.9	0.7	0
Teams O/U	4	4	-1.4	0
Grand Total	72	96.2	14.9	82.3	14.8

Wow, I think I was onto something! Judging by the AH+ returns, Keith does very well in picking the best way of playing the underdog. As this is highly unlikely to clash with any other service, it seems an absolute no brainer to play these.

There are other angles that I have looked at but I am probably boring you all now. Since doing all the research, my subscription run out and I took the decision to rejoin and Keith kindly upgraded a 6 month to an 8 month subscription, so that should take me to the end of the domestic season, or as near as damn it.

I still think I will play as much as I can but will certainly look to get value and not dive in at posting time. I find it quite refreshing not to worry about posting time and no longer wait by the computer at 10am most mornings. Now that I believe that they will either rebound or not represent much value, I can wait for a later entry point.

My focus will be on all types of goal betting and cup competitions but until I have a much greater sample, nothing will be ignored unless I can not get a fair price.

What has been a struggle has been ante-post bets on this season’s football. My limited set of accounts do not cater for very big bets at fancy prices so I have been unable to get more than £10 or £20 out of £150/£175. Judging by the last 6 months this shouldn’t be a big issue, but I do get the feeling they work out well in the long run. Certainly subscribers that were around in the few weeks before I started are sitting on a windfall thanks to Rory McIlroy. In fact that makes three near jackpots missed with Seattle Seahawks and Na Li thrown in in January!

Next post

Finally getting a grip on Tennisrating, and a good job too as his tips service will stop later this week. I have found a few angles to follow and some not to, so nearly ready to discuss, although one angle is so good I am tempting to keep it to myself as it is so good!