The EPL season starts this weekend and the lower leagues have already begun. I love Soccer, it’s my favorite sport to play and watch. This will be the first season I won’t be following any soccer tipsters. Over the last 6 years I have placed 16,666 bets, that averages out to 7.6 bets every single day for 6 years straight.
This isn’t to say there are no good soccer tipsters out there. It is that there are no good tipsters to work around my particular situation. There are more than results to look at when figuring out if a tipster is going to be right for you.
To this day there is only one tipster I would feel comfortable following, but sadly the timing of release means I can’t. Football Investor is that service. A well run service with fair odds recording and good long term results.
Let’s have a quick look at my overall results since day 1.
I have bet a total of $9,624,302.00 and made a loss of $46,343.04. A negative 0.48% return on investment.
Looking at the graph, it is not the worst one I have ever seen, I spent more time in profit than in a loss. There were two stages where it looked like I had figured it out and things were going great. But there is no smooth line, it looks like pure chance to me.
Those are just the betting numbers, but there are many other factors that go into following tipsters. I have to take into account the time invested in placing and recording bets and the stress generated when losing runs happen.
Soccer betting was easily my most time consuming sport. As mentioned earlier, with 16,666 bets, that means months worth of data entry, months worth of finding and/or waiting for the best odds, months worth of placing bets and months worth of recording results. Not to mention the fact I would sit up and watch all the games.
Each week I would spend at least 4-5 hours on soccer betting (just placing and recording bets). Let’s say the season runs for 8 months. That means I would spend 160 hours a year or a total of 960 hours over the past 6 years. We can double that number to 1920 hours when we include all the watching and other activities. That works out to waking up at 6 am and working non stop till 10 pm every day for 4 months straight. But to make matters worse, all these games usually started around midnight my time.
Why overseas tipsters don’t work for me
Each person has their own particular circumstances. We all live in a certain location, we have a certain bank size and have certain commitments. All of these factors will determine if you will be able to follow a tipster service.
Let’s look at location. I’m based in Australia and all these services are UK or European based. This means they release their plays when I am asleep. I remember the first few years, I would get up at 3 am in the morning to make sure I was able to get on. I’m too old for that now and value my sleep more than anything (anyone with a kid would know what I mean).
As we know, by betting early when less knowledge is in the market, we give ourselves a better chance to beat the closing line. But the trade off is that the limits available are a lot lower and prices will move very quickly. As my profits and banks grew over the years, it was impossible to get my bets on at a fair price early and prices would be slashed in seconds as others beat me to odds (and not because I was getting slower in my old age, but my location added to my disadvantage as I would receive emails a few seconds after most, as they had an ocean to travel across).
Last year I took all these factors into consideration and followed my own combo system. It used 4 separate tipsters (two of which have stopped now). When at least 2 agreed on a bet, I would bet on it. It made a tiny profit at a 0.6% ROI. The system had some merit to it and those results were achieved betting late into the market. The majority of bets were placed in the last half an hour before game time and the only places that would take a decent bet were Pinnacle, the exchanges and the asian books.
Even if I was in profit with soccer betting and could follow the combo system again this season I wouldn’t. While it was fun staying up until 4 am every Wednesday and Sunday morning and chatting to a mate doing the same thing, it’s effects on me are evident. My Wednesdays and Sundays were complete messes. I’d get up well after midday and not do much. This may be a coincidence, but I have also put on close to 15 kilos in the last few years and boy do I suck in the big ones when playing indoor these days :).
As life happens, priorities change and some things have to be removed to leave room for the more important things. For me that is family time. So while I will miss the highs and lows of following soccer tipsters, right now they just don’t fit into my life.
What this also means is that I am now only following Sportpunter models. Year 7 will be the first time ever I have only followed one service (something I should have done a long time ago). This means a lot fewer bets and higher variance. But the extra time I’ve made back means I can spend more time on family, fitness, articles for this blog and my startup.
Sadly I feel like I failed with my soccer portfolio. But I know there will be a stage in the future where I’ll attack it again and eventually figure a way for it to work. Best of luck to all those betting this season.