Bookmakers used in year 4
I’m looking at making an infographic of my results from year 4 and have started working on creating some graphs and piecharts to put into it. I thought I’d share with you the breakdown of bookmakers I used in my 4th year. It’s clear to see where the majority of my bets were placed. Even though almost 50% of my bets were placed at Pinnacle, I actually lost close to $50,000 there.
Let me know if you found these graphs useful and would like me to produce more of them. Are there any bookmakers you think I might be missing?
what’s your experience of 5dimes? They restrict?
yes, very quickly. But like Pinnacle, you can bet again after prices move (or a certain time limit). Can bet a max of $250 per bet.
Steve, have you run into withdraw issues with 5 dimes? They limited my account ($50 on some events) the first time I made an withdraw request and it took more than one week and support contact to receive my money. I don’t know if it’s safe to continue to bet there…
I know try and keep my money in the books for as long as possible, as I know as soon as I withdraw they will look over the account and limit it. I have made a few withdrawals before and was limited. If it hits a certain threshold then I will need to withdraw and will let people know how it goes. Thanks
Hi Steve,
Would it be possible for you to do a more in depth breakdown of your Pinnacle account. For example I would be interested to see what your lifetime P/L breakdown per sport is like for them. I am often tempted to take Pinnacle closing lines and see my lifetime P/L if I had only access to them and had to take the last minute price always. A bit of worst case scenario analysis if you will. Would be too much work for me as I have never bothered recording the closing prices of any book and struggle to be bothered to trawl through Oddsportal or Football-Data for the historical odds.
Regards,
Matthew.
Hey Mat,
Sadly that’s the only filter I don’t have on my spreadsheet. It would take me hours to figure it out, time I don’t have. I also don’t record closing prices.
I have read that if Pinnacle has the best closing line on a selection then it’s profitable to bet the opposite side at wherever the best odds are.
If I only had an extra 24 hours in a day, I would love to look into this.
Sorry I couldn’t help.
Nice charts. Profit or loss for bets at each bookie would be very interesting to go alongside the number of bets chart you produced.
sadly I can’t reveal all that information as I don’t want the bookies to know which accounts are mine.
Ok, fair enough. I’ll just ask then. Were you a winner or loser at betfair?
I have no probs sharing betfair data as it’s just my account.
Betfair $209,708.34 $(9,406.81) -4.5%.
Wish I could break it down into sports and bet types but I can’t.
As you can imagine, more then 100% of the profits were split over the Australian books thanks to an amazing AFL and NBL year. Soccer lost $30,000 so the likes of Pinnacle, sbobet, and Betfair has no chance of recording a profit.
did you profit at those places in other years? (reason i ask is because they’re generally perceived to have sharper lines)
Yes & no (up till end of year 4)
Pinnacle profit is 1% ROI
Betfair loss is -1.5%
it’s still a large gain as I bet 8-10 times more with Pinnacle.
So both are below your general return on turnover of 2.4%. That’s interesting, I’d suspect a couple of the other venues you use are relatively sharp (sbobet and matchbook).
The real problem is that the sharper venues are the ones where you can get on more easily, so as long as your return on turnover is acceptable (>0%), then they’re fine.
Could you bet more when betting at the likes of Ladbrokes, 5dimes, 365? Perhaps a silly question.
Yep, agreed. Much harder to make profit from these sharper books. Sadly that isn’t possible. I’ve structured my avg bet size in a way that allows me to continue to use these books, but if I wanted to go even harder then more bets would need to be shifted to Pinnacle for much less return.
Thanks for sharing all this. I only bet at betfair so it’s interesting to think about things from a different perspective.
No problem at all, It helps me also, One day hopefully I can look even deeper at pinnacle and break it down by sport and bet type. Good luck with your betting
How do you keep your accounts open with European bookies? Do you just create new accounts over and over again ?
There are no european books on there. Ladbrokes group is Bookmaker.com.au, Ladbrokes.com.au and Betstar.com.au . That amount is a few accounts worth.
Bet365 is the Australian version and that’s a lot of accounts worth.
I have read that someone checked thousands of tennis closing lines on pinnacle to see how dog vs fav was doing. The result was almost exactly the same fex 98% vs 98%. So to beat the closing line is crucial. Steve do you have stats on Gowi seperat for totals and asian ? I have not followed so many months but I only have profits on totals. Would be great to know how it looks in longer perspective. Great blog you have !
Perfect timing Rog, I’ve just been looking at how often SP Tennis beats closing lines and we are looking at close to 80% of the time. So even though it has had a horrendous start, it gives me hope.
My Gowi stats can be broken down that way, but I have not recorded closing lines, but someone did do analysis and found if betting closing lines, on average you would only get about 1% worse odds. What this says to me is that long term things don’t look great for GOWI.
I’ve been having a discussion with a friend about beating closing lines and every model I am in profit with beats closing lines and every one I have lost on does not…. sooooooo….
Yeah It makes you wonder. Can you see any difference in your Return on Turnover from Gowis totals to asian hcp ? You must have bets enough to make something out of it.
6 months of stats here. So we can see that the 1×2 and AH are negative, while his over/under bets show a nice return.
Winner
$
5,565.00
$
(280.00)
-5.0%
1X2
$
4,420.00
$
(2,684.00)
-60.7%
Under/Over
$
57,361.00
$
6,957.74
12.1%
AH
$
253,970.00
$
(435.41)
-0.2%
Antepost
$
550.00
$
(550.00)
-100.0%
Multi
$
400.00
$
1,650.00
412.5%
Other
$
21,654.00
$
1,854.50
8.6%
Thanks Steve ! I have also profit on totals and negative on AH , after almost 3 months. I skiped the WC so not included for me. If I am right the WC was a loss so your last 3 months must have been poorer than your 3 first months.
I have higher payback than you on totals 136%. And only 85% on AH+1×2. That must mean that yours 3 first month must have been the other way around , profit on AH an loss on totals.
World Cup was very ugly for me as I missed the odds on one of the big winners also. I don’t think we have enough data yet to make a strong conclusion.
Hi Steve, what is an acceptable size that would allow you not to be limited from books?
Hey Brad, sadly there is nothing you can do, the old adage was don’t bet over $80 as this didn’t trigger the automated system. But if you continually beat closing odds you will be limited very quickly.
The millions each company spends per year trying to limit their customers is nuts, but they profile everything about you. They will comb through all your social media accounts, they even track every mouse movement and click you make. All of this to weed out any potentially profitable customers. They will say it’s to enhance and make the punting experience better, but if you fall for that then you are exactly the sort of customer they want.
Steve, could I ask the reason that Pinnacle is such a stand out from a volume perspective? Is the odds they offer or just the fact they they don’t limit you. Also, is there any reason Betfair is so much lower?
Hey Tony, Pinnacle usually have the best odds, highest limits and are known not to limit players. Pretty much a perfect book.
I don’t use Betfair as much as I usually bet early when the markets have not fully formed (as by the time they have they are very hard to beat). Betfair has no liquidity early on in the week.
Do you have a tool that you use to compare the odds of the markets that you are thinking of entering or do you check each site manually?
I use betbrain, but there are a heap of odds comparison sites out there.
Steve, I did have one other question about this very helpful post. What was your average odds for the year?
Avg odds were 7.37 (but skewed by massive golf odds). Avg winning odds were 2.61 and avg losing odds 10.85
Decent valuebets are _really_ hard to find on Pinnacle.
wow..i dont have 5Dime..very shock to find out that they restrict too.
would love if you made a fortuna at Pinnacle, all other bookies are hard to follow most of the times, lines crushed to fast, limits coming too fast…