Mike's Football Bets 15th October

My phone has been buzzing this week with enough Liverpool FC jokes to give Ken Dodd a coronary and the bookies predict there will be little relief for the reds this weekend with Everton clear favourites at a best 2.52 to win the Merseyside derby. I never like betting in these derby games and it’s hard to see a confident edge with even the under 2.5 goals line a very short best priced 1.68 with Expekt. Perhaps a better bet is the 11/5 with Betfair on there to be a red card as some of the challenges regularly seen in this fixture are enough to make even Jackie Chan wince (or Nigel De Jong nod approvingly).

It’s just a short drive down from Goodison to find my first main bet this weekend as Bolton host Stoke at the Reebok where I fancy Owen Coyle’s outfit to take all 3 points. The home team are a much changed outfit no longer hoofing the ball up field at every opportunity (unlike their opponents) wit Continue reading

Mike’s Football Bets 15th October

My phone has been buzzing this week with enough Liverpool FC jokes to give Ken Dodd a coronary and the bookies predict there will be little relief for the reds this weekend with Everton clear favourites at a best 2.52 to win the Merseyside derby. I never like betting in these derby games and it’s hard to see a confident edge with even the under 2.5 goals line a very short best priced 1.68 with Expekt. Perhaps a better bet is the 11/5 with Betfair on there to be a red card as some of the challenges regularly seen in this fixture are enough to make even Jackie Chan wince (or Nigel De Jong nod approvingly).

It’s just a short drive down from Goodison to find my first main bet this weekend as Bolton host Stoke at the Reebok where I fancy Owen Coyle’s outfit to take all 3 points. The home team are a much changed outfit no longer hoofing the ball up field at every opportunity (unlike their opponents) wit Continue reading

Pigeons love a flutter too

A recent scientific study found that (surprise surprise), pigeons are not the world’s most sophisticated gamblers. When given the choice of going for small regular rewards vs infrequent jackpots, the pigeons chose to go for the jackpot, even though this mean they received less grain overall.

While pigeons may have a brain only slightly smaller than John Terry’s, their behaviour is actually not too dissimilar to the way human beings like to gamble.

The odds of anyone winning the lottery are astronomical and even when it comes to the small prizes you’re effectively getting a 10/1 on what is a 57/1 shot! But of course most people don’t care about odds, they play the lottery for the dream, the chance of hitting it big no matter how small that chance is.

If pigeon behaviour is anything to go by, it may be that us human beings are hardwired to go for the jackpot.

Certain tipster marketers know this only too well and play up to it in their marketing; often listing just the big 50/1 winners while failing to mention the thousands of losers they had on the way. More like a vulture than a pigeon.

Avoiding Betting Scams

I’m sure there are many advantages of being a pigeon – relieving yourself on unsuspecting members of the public from a great height must bring a certain pleasure. However, us humans have a few things going for us; namely higher reasoning and analysis. We may be hard wired to do it, but we don’t have to chase long shots or caught out by the scams.

To help us make better decisions, we do need accurate information and when it comes to tipsters, this is an area that the Smart Betting Club specialise in.

We delve deep into each service we review and weigh up just how realistic making a profit is in reality for you. This can all be found through the reviews, stats, information and analysis that we publish each month.

All of which designed to do all the hard work for you…leaving you time to get on making money betting and feathering your own nest!

A Great Start To The Football Tipster Season

With the international football weekend, it’s a good chance to have a good long look at the performance so far this season from some of the best football tipsters that we monitor here at SBC.

We currently recommend 5 different football tipster services in our Hall of Fame, with a further 2 services that are bubbling under this level. A Hall of Fame ranking effectively means we give that service a full recommendation as one to join and follow with your own money.

Our ratings are all judged over the long-term so you can be assured that this is no flash in the pan performance! We also take into account the ease of following any service and other aspects such as cost, odds availability and customer service.

So with all that in mind….the big question is how have our best rated football tipsters performed so far this season?

The answer is …very well!

Our 5 Hall of Fame tipsters combined (Services 1 through to 5) have been going great guns with 4 of them steaming ahead with ROI figures of over 17%. Only Service 5 has had a slow start although with only 14 bets so far this season, it’s very early days for them!

The other services (6 and 7) have also been performing well, with each making a very decent profit.

Check out the table below for the performance for 7 of our best football tipsters since July this year.  At Just £50 stakes per service, you would already be £5109 up!

(Please note – the actual names of each tipster have been protected and are available to full SBC members only).

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How Does This Compare To Previous Seasons?

Now if you are like me and take a lot of convincing when it comes to stats, you are probably asking….Sure that looks great, but how did they do before this season? What do the long-term stats say?

After all, we have all seen how politicians use and abuse statistics to prove a point, backed up by the classic quote “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”.

Well I can assure you that our best football tipsters are so chosen because they have kept up their form over many seasons. As we report back to all members on the latest stats each month in our monthly Smart Betting Club issue, you can be assured as well there is no Bernie Madoff style manipulation going on here!

To help prove the point that each of these tipsters also has performed well long-term, check out the table below listing their results from last season.

As you can see, over the course of the 2009/2010 full season, each of these tipsters made a large profit to a very good standard. The combined return was 360 pts, which at simple £50 stakes would have made you a £18,026.50 profit. The excellent start seen so far this season is definitely no flash in the pan!

How You Can Benefit

Many of the football tipsters listed here are followed by numerous SBC members who have benefitted from the reports and stats we provide to them each month.

We also know each of these tipsters are good as we place thousands of pounds ourselves each weekend following them too. We always put our money where our mouth is.

If you are keen to get started on your profitable betting walk, then these football tipsters provide a great place to start.

If you want to know more, including full reviews of each service and regular reports on their ongoing progress consider a full Smart Betting Club membership. By joining today you can get yourself set-up and following these experts in no time at all.

Mike’s Football Bets 8th October

It’s a blank weekend in the Premier League due to yet another International break, where we get to witness the somewhat dubious delights of Kevin Davies falling over in an England shirt. Surely he is destined to join the likes of Michael Ricketts in the one-cap wonder stakes!

With the break I have been delving into the Ante-post market, where all 5 of my current bets are winning. This is an area that can be very lucrative if you get it right and my goal here is to try and find a number of bets, which have been priced up more on a knee jerk reaction than stats. Take the head to head between Wigan and Wolves, where the former team where as big as 13/8 after just a couple of games. I made these two teams very similar and the odds have adjusted on Wigan down to 5/6. I will keep an eye on these odds as a further swing could see Wolves go out in price, meaning we can lock in definite profit here.

Speaking of Wolves they are now a best 5/1 to finish rock bottom this year, which may also be worth keeping an eye on. Last season they were the lowest scorers in the league and their goalie Hahnneman made the most saves of any keeper.

So what other teams are being judged on knee-jerk stats? Well the first team that jumps to mind is Liverpool who despite a dreadful few weeks are not as bad as some doom-mongers have them to be. Totesport have slashed them from 200/1 into 11/1 in the past week in the relegation market, which is frankly ridiculous! There is more chance of me winning Mr Universe than the reds going down this season.

One other market I am weighing up is the Top 6 finish and especially the 9/4 on Aston Villa to repeat their 6th spot from last year. Gerard Houllier is no mug and I think this is value compared to the best 11/8 on Liverpool and 2/1 on shot shy Everton to do the same.  One to watch for now.

One bet I am advising featuring Villa is for them to overcome a -12.5 pt handicap against rivals Birmingham at the end of the season, which you can get at 10/11 with VCBet. Last season Birmingham over-performed and still finished 14 pts behind the Villains. I expect Brum to hit around 45 pts this season, while Villa should get up to at least 60. A further 1 pt investment in this bet.

Latest Ante-Post Bet
1 pt Aston Villa -12.5 Handicap V Birmingham. 10/11 VCbet.

Existing Ante-Post Bets (already advised)
0.5 pt Stoke to finish in top half of table. 7/2 Ladbrokes
0.5 pt West Brom top newcomer 9/4 Ladbrokes
1 pt Sunderland to finish above Newcastle 3/4 Bwin
1 pt Blackpool to concede most goals this season 11/8 VCbet
1pt Wigan to finish above Wolves this season. 2.63 VCbet (Ante-post)

Whatever you bet on, good luck!

Mike

How To Bet – Understanding Randomness When Betting & Learning To Cope With It

This is the 2nd in a series of articles we are posting from guest contributor – Herbie Fogg on some of the key concepts to be aware of when betting.  This week’s article looks at understanding randomness when betting, how it works and what to do to cope with it.

These articles are originally produced in our free Friday Weekend Wager emails and form part of our goal to help readers understand better a number of key betting topics.

You can read more about Herbie and his free Key Racing News service here.

Coping with Randomness

If offered odds of 6/5 (2.20) about a coin toss you would instantly recognise a value bet. You know the true odds should be even money (2.00). 6/5 might not sound like a lot, but that’s a 20% margin on a 2 horse race.

If you tossed the coin a few times you might win or lose – but over the long term your edge would assert, and a profit of 20% would arise. It’s a question of staying in the game long enough for the maths to play out.

While you bet and wait for the fruits of any value-based approach to play out, it is worth knowing your break even strike rate (BESR):

1. average odds 6/4 (2.50), a SR of 40.00% is required to break even over time.

2. average odds 10/1 (11.00), a SR of 9.09% is required to break even over time.

Calculating and updating the average odds taken and your BESR, is very useful when compared to your actual strike rate. It gives an instant feel for the bigger picture and whether your current strike rate is good enough to stay alive – or, better still, perhaps indicating that you are well ahead of the game and on an inevitable path to profit.

Statistics like that help you to fight through the gloom of losing runs and stay in the game. And that is harder than you may think, because human beings are not programmed to react well to the harsh reality of randomness.

Coping with randomness

Imagine a large square on the floor divided into 4 columns and 4 rows, a total of 16 squares. If you dropped 16 darts blindly, one by one, the last thing you would expect to see would be one dart having landed smoothly in each of the 16 squares. Life, we know, isn’t that simple.

What you would expect would be darts spread about in a random pattern, perhaps with several in closely grouped clumps.

That is why disease and illnesses have ‘hotspots’ or clusters of cases around the country – and yet people instinctively label this news as sinister, even though that is what randomness actually looks like. It would, after all, be far stranger if the cases were evenly spread.

The important thing to realise, is just how badly people react in the face of randomness – and how the mental pressure of coping is apt to drive us to poor beliefs and decisions. With regard to horse racing, the short answer is we give up (that is what people mean when they talk about value betting being an ‘elusive’ concept).

Playing a value-based approach, usually at bigger odds, means there will be lots of losers and the winners will be randomly spread, not in convenient intervals – but in clumps (like the proverbial buses). In the short term, anything can happen.

But when it all comes together profits can accrue very quickly. Even casinos, with the maths calculated precisely in their favour, suffer losing periods of play but rarely as a result decide to leave the casino business. For them (and us) it is about the confidence of knowing it is worth staying in the game.

Betting bank

Short term results, even for a coin toss, can vary widely. Anyone who sits by a roulette wheel soon discovers that 5 red or 5 black spins is a common thing.

We adopt a value-based approach for a reason, but that turns up the mental pressure – especially when the randomness of good and bad months hits home. Coping with that is not easy without a plan.

As experienced players know, the best way to smooth out the journey is with a realistic betting bank and I strongly recommend this approach, revising stakes just once per year.

The greater the number of points in your bank the less pressure you feel. Personally I use a 200 point bank, but there’s no reason why that could not be more. A betting bank helps you stay in the game until profits are delivered – the name of the game in a professional environment. The difference between winning and losing.

Bon chance,

Herbie

Visit Key Racing News

How To Bet – Understanding Randomness When Betting & Learning To Cope With It

This is the 2nd in a series of articles we are posting from guest contributor – Herbie Fogg on some of the key concepts to be aware of when betting.  This week’s article looks at understanding randomness when betting, how it works and what to do to cope with it.

These articles are originally produced in our free Friday Weekend Wager emails and form part of our goal to help readers understand better a number of key betting topics.

You can read more about Herbie and his free Key Racing News service here.

Coping with Randomness

If offered odds of 6/5 (2.20) about a coin toss you would instantly recognise a value bet. You know the true odds should be even money (2.00). 6/5 might not sound like a lot, but that’s a 20% margin on a 2 horse race.

If you tossed the coin a few times you might win or lose – but over the long term your edge would assert, and a profit of 20% would arise. It’s a question of staying in the game long enough for the maths to play out.

While you bet and wait for the fruits of any value-based approach to play out, it is worth knowing your break even strike rate (BESR):

1. average odds 6/4 (2.50), a SR of 40.00% is required to break even over time.

2. average odds 10/1 (11.00), a SR of 9.09% is required to break even over time.

Calculating and updating the average odds taken and your BESR, is very useful when compared to your actual strike rate. It gives an instant feel for the bigger picture and whether your current strike rate is good enough to stay alive – or, better still, perhaps indicating that you are well ahead of the game and on an inevitable path to profit.

Statistics like that help you to fight through the gloom of losing runs and stay in the game. And that is harder than you may think, because human beings are not programmed to react well to the harsh reality of randomness.

Coping with randomness

Imagine a large square on the floor divided into 4 columns and 4 rows, a total of 16 squares. If you dropped 16 darts blindly, one by one, the last thing you would expect to see would be one dart having landed smoothly in each of the 16 squares. Life, we know, isn’t that simple.

What you would expect would be darts spread about in a random pattern, perhaps with several in closely grouped clumps.

That is why disease and illnesses have ‘hotspots’ or clusters of cases around the country – and yet people instinctively label this news as sinister, even though that is what randomness actually looks like. It would, after all, be far stranger if the cases were evenly spread.

The important thing to realise, is just how badly people react in the face of randomness – and how the mental pressure of coping is apt to drive us to poor beliefs and decisions. With regard to horse racing, the short answer is we give up (that is what people mean when they talk about value betting being an ‘elusive’ concept).

Playing a value-based approach, usually at bigger odds, means there will be lots of losers and the winners will be randomly spread, not in convenient intervals – but in clumps (like the proverbial buses). In the short term, anything can happen.

But when it all comes together profits can accrue very quickly. Even casinos, with the maths calculated precisely in their favour, suffer losing periods of play but rarely as a result decide to leave the casino business. For them (and us) it is about the confidence of knowing it is worth staying in the game.

Betting bank

Short term results, even for a coin toss, can vary widely. Anyone who sits by a roulette wheel soon discovers that 5 red or 5 black spins is a common thing.

We adopt a value-based approach for a reason, but that turns up the mental pressure – especially when the randomness of good and bad months hits home. Coping with that is not easy without a plan.

As experienced players know, the best way to smooth out the journey is with a realistic betting bank and I strongly recommend this approach, revising stakes just once per year.

The greater the number of points in your bank the less pressure you feel. Personally I use a 200 point bank, but there’s no reason why that could not be more. A betting bank helps you stay in the game until profits are delivered – the name of the game in a professional environment. The difference between winning and losing.

Bon chance,

Herbie

Visit Key Racing News

Fink Tank Test: Weekend of Oct 2nd

I’m testing the predictive and value betting ability with the Fink Tank ratings. Have a good read of the first post here to make sense of it.

Fink Tank hit the jackpot last week, by siding with West Brom against Arsenal @ 18.50.

This puts the season tally up to 25.49 points profit from 51 bets.

However, this is entirely down to two big winners

Here are this weekend’s selections:

Mike’s Football Bets 1st October

One of my 2 main bets this weekend is on Birmingham who look to be priced wrongly at 2.08 with 188bet to overcome a 0 Asian Handicap against Everton. This is an effective draw-no-bet on them to continue their excellent home form against their out of sorts opponents. Everton actually haven’t been playing too badly – they just are so powder-puff up front that they couldn’t finish their tea. I expect resurgence from them soon but I doubt this will start this weekend although a draw is a possibility.

My second main bet was touch and go as I must admit I ummed and aaahed on whether or not to back Bolton at 2.07 with a 0.25 Asian Handicap away at West Brom. The Baggies are much improved but then so are the Trotters under Owen Coyle and I make them closer than the odds or stats indicate. Going against the crowd here but for a 1pt risk I am happy enough to do so and take on West Brom once again. A draw gives us a 0.5 pt profit and I hope the Baggies don’t go boing boing this weekend!

At White Hart Lane, Spurs host Villa in a game where two of the biggest excuse-laden managers in Redknapp and Houiller face up. If Villa win, expect Harry to bemoan his huge squad is ‘down to the bare bones’ while Houiller will claim his side have ‘turned the corner’. Betting wise the under 2.5 goals line appealed as in recent seasons Villa have gone under in most away games while Spurs keep it tight against the top teams. You can get 2.09 on this with 188bet, which indicates a 47.8% chance and I make it more like 55% so this is my one shortlist bet of the weekend.

Elsewhere I also considered Sunderland with a +0.75 AH at home to Man Utd, although with Ferdinand, Scholes & Fletcher back for the away team, they should be improved upon last weekend at Bolton.

Chelsea V Arsenal is the big game this Sunday and while I expect a home win, the best priced 1.76 on this with 188bet is short enough for me. The only angle I considered is the over 2.5 goals line at 1.9 with 188bet, which suggests a 52.6% chance and I make it slightly higher than that at around 55% minimum. Considering Arsenal’s two goalkeeping impersonators in Almunia and Flappyhandski and Chelsea’s usual attacking thrust at home, it could be an option. Not strong enough for a bet for me though.

Keep an eye on the Blackpool – Liverpool game as well this weekend as if Ian Holloway has any sense he will get his team stuck into Roy Hodgsons wobbling side from the off. You can get 28/1 on both HT/FT results of Blackpool/Liverpool and Blackpool/Draw, which could be worth a very speculative interest.

Main Bets
1 pt Birmingham (0 AH) V Everton.  2.08 188bet
1 pt Bolton (+0.25 AH) V West Brom. 2.07 Pinnacle

Shortlist Bets
1 pt Spurs – Villa. Under 2.5 goals. 2.09 188bet

Whatever you bet on, good luck!

Mike