My Sports Betting Diary

So yesterday was Day 2 of the Each Way Value Betting experiment and we started with a little over £106. Matches on the Oddsmonkey Each Way Matcher tool were very slow to pick up yesterday with just 2 or 3 qualifiers in the first hour or so. Then around 12.00 to 12.30 there was a pick up in the action. In the end, we managed 15 bets which seems a bit light compared to some of the forums but then I may have my settings a bit more restrictive than others so it's probably about right. We had a couple of nice winners today and both of them were at prices higher than the SP. 14:05 Southwell - Cold Harbour @ 9.0 vs SP 8.0 16:50 Punchestown - Ballybroker Ridge @ 17.0 vs SP 13.00 We also managed 3 places today which were 16:00 Redcar - Andok @ 10.0 vs SP 6.0 16:10 Southwell - Sooqaan @ 12.0 vs SP 8.0 18:55 Chelmsford - Daring Guest @ 19.0 vs SP 9.0 What is interesting is the price when its highlighted on the matcher vs the price at SP. Of the 15 selections, today 13 were at a b...

To kick off this diary I will be road testing an Each Way Value proposition that is generating a lot of interest on matched betting forums online and on Facebook. So to start off with this is not a matched bet as there are no lays involved but it is about trying to find horses where the exchange odds are similar to those of the bookmakers. The best tool to use for this is available to premium members of the matched betting site Oddsmonkey and is their Each Way Matcher. So before I start I need to set myself up with an indicative bank to use solely for this and work out what my staking plan will be. So I have decided to start off this bank at £100 and for a baseline a stake of £5 would only be applied to any event where odds are 1/2 or 1.5. From there I can extrapolate a stake to any odds that may apply. The following graphic will show my initial staking plan round to the nearest 10p for each set of odds. I have set this up so that I can just update the bank each day and get r...

So I have been a small stakes punter for almost as long as I remember. I remember when I was about 16 going into the local Coral where a couple of my friends worked and having my first bet on the Grand National. A few years later when I had got myself employment I would spend my Saturdays in the same shop doing £1 bets and losing a few quid each time. So then in 1994, I started to buy books on the subject such as Clive Holt's Winners Back Winners book, Nick Mordins Betting for a Living, a couple of Raceform Handicap books by Patrick Kilgallon and another Nich Mordin book On Time. I spent a couple of years buying Raceform update each week and calculating speed ratings based on his methods and had some good results but it was a losing proposition really as I was still small stakes and spending time and money on Raceform Update each week. Still, it was an enjoyable hobby. I then moved on to producing my own Football Ratings and wrote myself a program in GBasic on the Amiga 600 to ...