Goals Galore

Trading wise, this week has been an absolute disaster. Due to a huge and well-timed stroke of luck, however, I have more than scraped through. I'll talk about that in a bit but first we shall start with the trading:

The ASP system
This week has been the worst I have ever had when using the system. The total loss from this week is £86.20, leaving me with only £34.20 profit after using it on 59 games - an average of £0.58 per match. As I said last time, I made a huge mistake in the week which led to a 70-odd pound loss, and under normal circumstances the loss would only have been around £20, so this should be taken into account. But even so, the week has seen 13 losses and 13 profits, certainly the worst ratio since I started, and a lot of the losses have been big ones too. My match selection could be queried, I think maybe I got too cocky with the system and looked to take on tougher games and it has come around to bite me in the ass. I think what must be realised here is that it isn't really possible to try and achieve big profits in individual games, and that making an average of £3 or £4 per game is the best you can hope for. Because of this, I am beginning to question whether it is worth the large amount of time and care it consumes for each game.

Total Football Trading
Not a lot to say about the Paper Chaser this week, it was a bit of a non-event. Several games were chosen and they went different ways to accumulate a loss of -£0.87. Nothing else really to talk about on this one.

My own trading
This is a bit of a vague category (it is listed as 'other' on my P+L), but it mainly means things like laying the draw, trading goal markets and trying other different things which I think of along the way. It also includes the odd punt every now and then, but that is quite rare these days (and I will mention punting below). Due to the decline in the fortunes of the ASP and the very consistent nature of my own trading over the weeks, I think I might choose for this category to take more of a leading role in my trading. This week, this category (partially) helped to save the day as it accumulated profits of £60.33 which would have achieved my weekly target on its own.

Punting 
I said last time that I had won a £50 free bet from Betfred for 'guessing' the attendance at Wembley on Tuesday. I thought about attempting to do matched betting with it, and I would have but for the fact that it had to be used on a Goals Galore coupon, which allows for a minimum of three selections. I'm sure there is a way which I could have done it to secure profit from every angle, but I couldn't think of one (not that I put too much thought into it) and decided to have a big punt for a change. I picked three games, 2 of which were 12.45 kick offs on Saturday, so that if they came in I could lay the third game. It has to be said that I picked a good weekend to be using Goals Galore as there were so many games in which both teams scored. In keeping with the flukiness of how the bet was acquired, the bet came in and I took a total of £160. Before the third game, I chose to lay both teams to score for £40, meaning a loss of £33.60 but a total profit of £126.40. Not bad.

Overall
This week hasn't been great for trading, nor has it been a great week in general, and my mood has been rather sour. Throughout, I haven't really felt like trading and this could well have effected how it went. I'm not one for believing in good luck or bad luck, or that the universe evens itself out over time, but I do believe you make your own luck, so perhaps with my mind not entirely focussed on trading I have made some mistakes that I normally wouldn't have. As well as this, the internationals didn't help me (or anyone really, who even likes them!?), neither did the flurry of goals in yesterday's matches. Today I felt much better and recorded a profit of £20. Maybe something for me to consider in the future. Had I not had the free bet, my total for this week would have been -£25.87, which is really not too bad considering how bad it seemed at times. As it went, my total for this week was a profit of £107.19, strange old life ey?

I hope you all had a good and profitable weekend.

Results for week 5: Total - £107.19 (TFT - -£0.87  ASP - -86.20, Other - +£194.26)

0-0s, Mistakes and Goal Fests

What an odd couple of days I have had. Seeing as this week is painfully slow football-wise, I thought I would take advantage of Tuesday as it was the one day this midweek which had a good number of matches. I now kind of wish I hadn't. I say kind of, because although it turned out pretty crap, I have learnt a few things along the way which will help me in the future.

The day began pretty slowly, I was using the ASP on a few early afternoon games, mainly U21 qualifying and Asian World Cup, and the games were really struggling to find goals. It wasn't too much to worry about though, I made a few small losses but managed to win a bit back before the evening games. The main body blow though was the game between Slovenia and USA where I managed to lose myself a whopping £72.50. Now users of the system may be wondering how I managed to lose such a sum, but the answer is quite simple: I am an idiot. The actual loss was acquired when using the system, but wasn't it's fault at all really, had I acted normally the loss would have been about £20 maximum. What should be said here however, is prior to this game I thought I had pulled off a worldy of a steal, but all that happened was I ended up with a big loss. Basically I was looking at the 'To Score' market in the England Sweden match, and there was money on Welbeck to be layed (shortly after he was announced withdrawn from the squad). I quickly snapped it up and it would have meant a profit of around £50 (eating up around £300 of my bank in lays), only to later read the rules and find that should any player not play, the bets will be void. Too late. I thought I had a comfort blanket of £50 and with this is mind, I decided to play a risky game in the USA game and gamble my liability in the hope of coming off with a profit. It didn't come off and I lost it all.

Evening came and I began to claw back the money I was down. I acted slightly more aggressively than I would normally have done, so in hindsight I should probably have quit for the day after the big loss. Thankfully the evening went okay and I managed to make some big profits. The biggest coup came in the Portugal-Bosnia game where I took £35.19 using the ASP, my biggest ever by a long way. Before the game I expected the game to be a tight cagey affair, with hardly any goals. It finished 6-2 so I was spot on... Luckily I was watching the match and could see that Portugal were in a blistering mood and was able to turn around what could have been a large loss into a large win.

To finish my odd 24 hours, I awoke to find I had won a £50 free bet with Betfred for having the closest estimate to the England-Sweden attendance. I don't mean to brag but I knew I would win this after I spent hours and hours researching the average attendances for England in friendlies against second-rate teams, then cross-referenced it with attendances when England played an experimental side... Or maybe I just took a guess and got very lucky.

I had tried a bit of Paper Chaser during the day on Tuesday, but it came to nothing really and I think I just about broke even. I also trialled a new system I created, though I'm sure it has been thought of before as it is a version of laying the draw. You'll see in my P+L I used it in the Montenegro-Czech match, hence the large losses and wins. It worked quite well this time, but I think a bit more research is due before I go bigger. In total then, my current P+L is -£18.19 which is easily salvageable with a good weekend. Have a good weekend everyone.

Week 4 success

For the fourth week in a row my £50 weekly target has been reached. After my last post on Thursday night I had a loss of -£28.06, but a big Friday night coupled with a solid Saturday resulted in a win of £81.40, meaning my weekly total is £53.34. As this is the fourth week in a row that I have successfully achieved the target I set, I will stick to my initial plans and raise the weekly target to £60 per week, it will be interesting to see whether this makes it slightly harder or not.

So Friday kicked things off as I took on a few ASP games and tried out something new as well. The ASP games didn't affect much however, as I won £5.27, before losing £6.50 shortly after. I then tried something a bit new which worked as well as I could have hoped to be honest, due to the ridiculous amount of goals scored in the Dutch leagues. As there was a full bill of Dutch 2nd league games, I picked 6 of these out and laid the AUQ correct scoreline before the game, hoping for early goals. As it was an experiment I only laid for stakes of £5, but after twenty minutes I was already out of three matches with a good profit. The amount of goals scored were pretty ridiculous and even I was shocked at how well it worked. By the end of the half I was out of all the trades, taking two £1 losses but securing a £14.81 profit in total. Whilst it worked very well, I'm not sure if I will be doing it again however, as it surely can't happen every week.

Today I took on a number of games and I am now beginning to use slightly bigger stakes with the ASP system, in order to maximise profit. After six successful games I won a total of £38.04, not without a bit of worry though! In the two Championship games I used, both of the correct score markets collapsed, despite having more than the required liquidity, and I had quite a lot of liability left in the pot. If either of the games had finished with an AUQ scoreline I would have lost £40, so I had a very nervous ten minutes as the scorelines were 3-0 and 3-1! Luckily they stayed like that. In addition to these games I took a further £28.55 by laying the over 3.5 and 4.5 goals market in the United-Sunderland game, laying the draw in the Newcastle game and backing the overs in the QPR-City game. Over on Paddypower I tried a couple of trixies on the anytime goalscorer market (Van Persie, Ba, Van Der Vaart - Unsettled), and the over 3.5 goals market (Wimbledon/Barnet, Villa/Norwich, Newcastle/Everton) which lost a measly £2. To cover these two I also had a successful over 1.5 treble, which left me with a loss of 23p if Van Der Vaart doesn't score tomorrow.

Overall another superb week and I'm very happy with how things have gone since I began my challenge. I knew that I had the ability to do it consistently but I did think that my discipline would let me down at times, but so far I can only think of one occasion (when I bet on the X factor). Due to a build up of work at uni and the fact I am going away next weekend, I will be taking a week off before moving onto my new target of £60.  My betting bank is now on £440 and the rest of the weeks profits were withdrawn.

Good luck to you all this weekend and in this coming week.

Results for week 4: Total - £53.34 (TFT - -£4.75  ASP - +£16.73, Other - +£41.96)

P.S. I know that Mainz was Friday but I forgot to put it down so I have only just done so.

The ASP System

The ASP system is something which I have been covering for a while now, and as my review of it has been pretty patchy, I thought I would set the record straight. As it happens, during the midweek I have used it on a number of games and it has thrown up some completely new things to say about it, such is the nature of this system. I have read a lot of reviews on it and they have all been mixed, some people love it, others hate it and the rest don't really understand it. The best review which I have been following is this: http://laytheodds.com/tag/assured-soccer-profits/ where the reviewer Richard outlines how the system is more of a core strategy, and each individual should adapt it and change it how they please. This is probably the most accurate description of it I can find, as this is exactly what I have done, by adding in a few techniques of my own, whilst ignoring a couple of the instructions laid out in the manual. To begin with I did try to follow the manual word by word, but even the creator says that it is not necessary to do this, and it certainly didn't suit me to do so. Interestingly, despite finding a way of using the system which seems to provide a regular profit, the reviewer Richard does not really like the product personally, as it is a huge time drain for a very small return. This is something I can sympathise with as, not only does it usually take the full 90 minutes to complete the trade, but it also uses a huge proportion of your bank during this as you do not receive your liabilities back until the end of the game.
Up until this week, regular readers may have noticed the upsurge in ASP profits, particularly last weekend, as I went on a 19 game run with no losses. In this time I had been trying something different but it would leave me highly exposed if the game ended up with no goals, something which I experienced midweek, where things turned for the worst. With 2 games finishing 0-0 and one finishing 1-0 after a late goal I recorded some big losses, with the addition of another big loss from a game which threatened to see too many goals. The latter of these I could not do too much about, although I could have recorded a smaller loss had I remembered an extra thing I should have done (too many games without a loss was the cause of this memory slip), but the first few games gave me an idea which I think should help reduce deficits in the rare case of a goalless game.
I shall persevere with the system as I am determined it can work, particularly as it is perfect for someone like me who is just looking to make small but regular amounts. It can be frustrating at times, very frustrating, and I wouldn't be altogether surprised if I knocked it on the head one day, but that certainly wouldn't be without trying! It certainly has a good theory and the manual is very extensive so I would recommend it, but be warned it isn't for everyone!
As for this weeks trading, it has been another poor midweek but tonight's shift certainly helped matters slightly. I am currently sitting on -£28.06 and am slowly clawing it back as the weekend gets closer. The majority of this was caused by the ASP system, though the Paper chaser hasn't been bringing in great profits either. Tonight was a better night as my new strategy on the ASP took two large wins and a small loss. I will look towards the weekend as I did last week to recoup my losses and hopefully make a profit. Below is my P+L for this week's trading as well as my P+L sheet for the ASP results.

I hope everyone is well.

Topsy Turvy week

This week certainly started abysmally as I was left with a whopping (for my budget) £41 loss going into the weekend, meaning I would have to clear almost £100 in a couple of days if I was to reach my weekly target. No chance, I thought. Midweek was pretty bad due to bad fortune and a few mistakes on my part which shall hopefully not be happening again. I am confident that from now on if the pre match trading routine takes a turn for the worst, I will be able to reduce my liabilities to a manageable amount. The £17 loss from the punt was a bit of a killer also, but with punting it tends to be swings and roundabouts, precisely why I'm not that keen on it. And also on reflection maybe it was a bit of a desperation bet, so maybe I should have just waited for the weekend instead.
As the weekend came I decided I needed to pull out all of the stops to reduce the deficit and hopefully make a little money. As I said last time, Saturday went very well and I experienced no losing trades. Sunday followed suit and was even more profitable, as I only lost one trade all day. After I had won a certain amount of money I was determined to reach the weekly £50 target and I am proud to say I did, after a mixture of general trading and ASP trading took us happily over the line. The ASP I used successfully on four games, particularly pleasing was the last game where I recorded my highest ever profit using the system, £10.07, albeit using higher stakes. For the Spurs game I traded the overs markets as well as laying the draw. The one loss came when I layed the 3-1 scoreline towards the end of the match, before trading out around the 86th minute for a small loss.
This means in total my weekly profit is £53.23, meaning I have secured my weekly target for a 3rd week in a row. In accordance with my new rules, 80% (rounded - £40) has been withdrawn, and 20% (£10) has been added to the bank, which now stands at £430. Also, this weeks results from the SBHQ are now up, you can find them here: http://laytheodds.com/tag/soccer-betting-hq/.

I hope you all enjoyed a profitable weekend and I wish you good luck for the coming week.

Results for week 3: Total - £53.23 (TFT - -£23.06 ASP - +£43.62 Other - +£27.87 )

Tough weekend to come

I have had a miserable week so far and have left myself with a mountain to climb this weekend. In my last post I reported a £17.74 loss and the week hasn't picked up since. The paper chaser has continued to disappoint after it's very successful first week, and I'm not really sure what has caused the change in fortunes. It recorded a £6.96 loss on Wednesday, as well as a small £3.28 profit, and today it recorded a further £2.86 loss. Although the losses are fairly small still, it is frustrating because we saw last week how profitable it can be per trade when it goes in the right direction. The £6.96 loss was another mistake on my behalf, as I thought the kick off time was later than it actually was, so that is another lesson learnt. I may email the creator of TFT over the weekend to see if there is any advice he can give me regarding the paper chaser. I want to see if I am doing anything wrong or if I am just simply not catching the right games.
The real killer of the week though was an over 1.5 goals double on a couple of games midweek. You know things are going wrong when not one but both games let you down. This was one to forget but it meant a £17.49 loss. This means the total for the week is now a miserable -£41.77, leaving me with a big job for the weekend. I'll be trying to make back the deficit with a number of ASP games, trading various goal markets and a couple of speculation bets. I'm not sure how well I will fair but it will certainly test out my trading abilities. I'll also be continuing my review of SBHQ.

Good luck with your weekend trading everyone, I hope it's greener than green.

Locked out

The inevitable downturn in luck has finally struck after my decent run of form, and I have started this week with a fairly large loss. It all started on Sunday night where a mix between poor decisions and bad luck contributed towards a £15 loss. Despite Sunday technically being last 'trading week', I have decided to take the loss onto this weeks total, in order to try and win it back. Basically, I was watching the odds during the X Factor results show (please don't judge me) and I was noticing a movement in the markets and I tried to jump on it before it was too late. Before I knew it, the market had been suspended as the votes were in and I wasn't fortunate enough that the person I had money on was voted out, so I lost the full £15. Bad start, but it has taught me to only stick to markets I am familiar with - football, football and FOOTBALL.
Monday didn't improve matters however, with the 'Paper Chaser' producing it's first significant loss of £12.80. It could have been significantly less, probably around £4 or £5, but for a big mistake on my part. I had carelessly forgotten at what odds I had entered the market and would have traded out earlier but for the mistaken odds in my mind. Like the previous example however, I shan't be making the same mistake twice.
So as Tuesday came I was harbouring a £27.80 loss, meaning I'd have to significantly step it up in order to reach my weekly target. During the day the Paper Chaser took another loss, this time a much smaller £1.32 on the Southampton game, as the odds didn't go the way I had wanted. For the evening, I prepared a couple of speculation bets and lined up three ASP games as well as a few goals market trades from the League One and Two fixtures, only for Murphy's Law to stick it's nose in... About half an hour before the kick offs my house mates at uni and I decided to nip to the shop to get some provisions for the coming evening, as you do, only to soon realise that we had all forgotten our keys, as you also do (if you are retarded). To cut a long story short we ended up smashing a back window to get in, and I missed all the opportunities I had laid out to trade. As annoying as it was, especially as it was a goal filled evening, it happens and I found it more funny than annoying to be honest. I did manage to place and land both of my speculation bets though, an over 1.5 goals treble and a single on Arsenal to go over 2.5, which brought in a £8.98 to slightly reduce the losses. Below are the results for the last few days. You will notice a few half time score wins/losses, these were from the ASP games which I had been intending on using but didn't get round to trading. My weekly total so far is -£17.74. Things definitely need to pick up so I can pay the broken window bill...

On a slightly more cheerful note, I have been running this blog for around 4 months now and on Sunday, for the first time ever, I hit over 100 page views for the day. This may not sound like too many but the amount of viewers have been rapidly increasing over the last few weeks and I am very thankful to everyone who has read my blog. At the moment I thoroughly enjoy both trading and writing about it, and as long as people are willing to read it, I will continue to write, so please continue to spread the word! The amount of comments and emails I have received recently has also increased, and I am more than happy to reply to any queries or advice wanted, so please keep them coming. The next landmark is 2000 all time views and it is quickly approaching, so I will keep you posted! Happy trading everyone, enjoy your week.

Strange times

A rather bitter-sweet weekend overall after today's disaster at Old Trafford, but maybe the less said about that the better. On a trading front the week was sealed before the 3 o'clock kick offs, as I was able to take advantage of the Wolves-Swansea game which I was sure would produce goals. I placed a big bet friday night on the goals markets hoping that people would wake up and I could lay it off for a profit. It didn't happen and it actually went the other way, leaving me with a couple of losses adding up to around £10. I debated not trading out before the game, but leaving a bet of over £200 on would have broken my rules severely, so I took the loss and traded with smaller stakes. Whilst this may not seem like a big deal to a professional, I was pretty pleased with myself for resisting the huge temptation of continuing with the large stakes, as I could have potentially blown my bank. After taking the losses I started again with smaller stakes and managed to make a good profit from the goals market and from laying Swansea at low odds. I also traded it with the ASP system and it once again proved profitable, though it would have been a much bigger win had I not made a big mistake whilst trying to get used to the Geek's Toy software... my bad. I'm sure whoever took my 0-0 correct score bet when it was 1-0 Swansea was feeling very pleased indeed.

As I had already well exceeded my target of £50 by accumulating a total of £64.52 for the week, I took the rest of Saturday afternoon to watch the football and continue my trial of Soccer Betting HQ, results of which can be seen here: http://laytheodds.com/latest-review-posts/2011/10/22/soccer-betting-hq-day-5/. Today I also took part in no trading. I look forward to the coming week as I will look to continue the good run shown by the Total Football Trading package, and with my increased bank size guaranteed to help big in bigger profits, I believe it is feasible to reach my weekly target before the weekend.

Results for week 2: Total - £64.52 (TFT - £41.09, ASP - £3.53, Other £19.91) 

Situation facing the weekend

I have had an excellent week in the pre-match markets. The 'Paper Chaser' method from the Total Football Trading package has continued to bring in the goods, with three successful trades during midweek. The total accumulated from wednesday, thursday and today is £29.04 taking the weekly total to £47.44 already. If it continues to do so well in midweek I may be tempted to raise my weekly total more than the proposed £10 after 4 weeks, but I'll wait a couple more weeks before deciding this. Whilst I'm on the subject of changing my rules I have also decided to increase my bank to £420 and I will be withdrawing 80% of my weekly profits, not 90%, in order to get my bank up a bit.
Due to having almost reached my target, I will be using the ASP system on a couple of three o'clock kick offs tomorrow as well as trading the goals market in the Wolves-Swansea game at 12.45. I think that the market has slightly underestimated the goals potential in this match and I should be able to make a few quid off of it. Should I make a loss tomorrow I will think of a contingency plan for sunday but at the moment I am in a very comfortable position.
I will do a weekly round-up on sunday evening. Good luck with any weekend trading.