harry_rag

And so to the conclusion of another Premier League season. Surely 1/11 Man City won't fall short at the last? Here's my quick take final day upsets (for a bit of fun)! Everton double chance at 9/2, Sheffield U at 7/1 and Wolves >1.5 goals at 7/2. It's not going to be pretty trying to do the goalscorer bets for 10 games at once! Let us know what you think. Are final day fixtures best left alone or is it a good opportunity to spot some potential value?

Hi Harry, I will get round to responding to your reply at some point but I’m looking at tonight’s matches and I can’t find any ‘value’. But what is your opinion on the following bet if you have one please? Brighton v Chelsea: Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer, Mudryk and Nicolas Jackson all to score. William Hill give 75/1 for it to happen? 

My mistake, still on holiday. 😁

After all the discussion elsewhere in this section and me pontificating about value, let's have a limited run of posting system selections and see if I can justify my view. All of these bets will be pure system bets with no subjective overlay and all will be best priced with 365 (so I'll either be backing with another bookie, on the exchange or not at all depending on whether I can get a good enough price). For anyone inclined to follow the fact it's based on their prices should be a positive. They're probably the easiest to beat bookie (right up to the point where they close your account).
Bet 1 is Onugkha (Vejle v Lyngby in Denmark) at 2/1

I think that's the key - being selective. It's difficult to know who is able to do that and who isn't, which makes a collaborative approach problematic.

After all the discussion elsewhere in this section and me pontificating about value, let's have a limited run of posting system selections and see if I can justify my view. All of these bets will be pure system bets with no subjective overlay and all will be best priced with 365 (so I'll either be backing with another bookie, on the exchange or not at all depending on whether I can get a good enough price). For anyone inclined to follow the fact it's based on their prices should be a positive. They're probably the easiest to beat bookie (right up to the point where they close your account).
Bet 1 is Onugkha (Vejle v Lyngby in Denmark) at 2/1

Scamacca out, Lookman a bit short for my liking, though is Atalanta's most likely scorer, followed by Koopermeiners then De Ketelaere.
I've taken De Ketelaere at 5/1 with Uni as just too big (and void if he doesn't start). Did manage to miss backing him last time out when he scored a brace after following him during a blank spell but worth playing at the price. For me, it's not far short of being worth backing all 3 of those players given the chances of at least one of them scoring.
We're talking 5th v 6th here with 6th placed Atalanta the slight favourites. It took them 13 games to score their last 25 goals with only 2 blanks and 7 where btts landed. It took Juve 20 games to score 27 with 6 blanks and 9 btts. Some evidence in there of why the recent form has made the lower placed team the favourite. Vlahovic easily the main man for Juve scoring in 12 of his 28 starts but only 2 of the last 10. Still, every chance he comes good in a big game if the price is palatable.
I've played a couple of bet builders for an interest, one using a 50% boost and one earning a matched freebie.
Atlanta to win the tie/Vlahovic to score and 2nd half most goals at 18/1
Atlanta to win in 90 minutes and Vlahovic to score at 12/1

I like the idea in principle @harry_rag but for me you've got no chance if you're thinking in terms of fun - you end up putting something up that you wouldn't do if there was a lot of your own money behind it.
It's extremely hard to roll over short odds bets - something which this thread is ample proof of - and that's one of the reasons I've stuck with using this thread, warts and all, rather than washing away the sins of the losers with a new thread after each loser. Anybody that looks at this thread from the start can see just how hard it is and how often 'banker' bets lose.

Scheffler is clearly the best golfer but can't bring myself to touch him at under 5/1 within a week of him having his first child!
Each-way
Ludvig Aberg @ 15/1 (10 places) — 3pts e/w
Xander Schauffele @ 14/1 (10 places) — 3pts e/w
Wyndham Clark @ 50/1 (8 places) — 2pts e/w
Stephan Jaeger @ 110/1 (10 places) 1.5 pts e/w
Top X markets 
Tony Finau top 20 @ 7/2
Russell Henley top 20 @ 100/30
Stephan Jaeger top 20 @ 4/1
Aaron Rai top 30 @ 3/1
Chris Gotterup top 40 @ 3/1
Ben Griffin top 40 @ 100/30
Brice Garnett top 40 @ 6/1
Lucas Glover top 40 @ 2/1

Best of luck Tony
I have gone for five players all each way top eight places all with Hills
Brooks Koepka 14/1
Xander Schauffele 14/1
Ludvig Aberg 16/1
Justin Thomas 50/1
Sahith Theegala 60/1
 

Bet 53 won. Next stake £2806.30

It's not so much that there's an added difficulty as that, if you can't make a profit from singles, then you multiply that "negative edge" by combining your selections in bigger multiples. The more legs, the worse the expected return. If you do have an edge on singles then you multiply it by doing accas. But you have to be sensible as the bigger the odds the greater the variance. If you only punt 1000/1 shots then you're going to have to endure very long losing runs and would need a huge sample to know whether you're beating the odds or not. At the other extreme, there's more value in the 3/1 double than two even money singles that should be a shade of odds on so it is a viable approach.
Bet Builders are just multiple bets with the added restriction of having to be on a single event. It's harder to find multiple value selections on a single event and harder to work out fair odds where there are related contingencies at work. So they're like multis but even harder. I only tend to play them where I can get two value goalscorers in the same game and try to make use of any available boosts. I made a decent profit on them last year but am only just in front this year. I don't do too many and only build them around goalscorers where I believe I have a bit of an edge.
I managed 3.05% from 1645 anytime bets last year but it seems to be trending upwards. It's 8.67% this year and now 5.1% from 2524 bets in total. We'll see how it goes but it's reasonably encouraging, There's a tipster I'm aware of who just does that market and he was running at around 9% last year but fell of a cliff and is down to around 2% now. His ROI over the last 12 months has been so bad I could have beat it by betting blindly!
Your missing something here. £50k locked away for a year at 3% would earn £1500. I could have made that last year (when my ROI was around 3%) with a much smaller betting bank. Even without a progressive staking plan compounding the growth you're turning the same stake over repeatedly so you wouldn't need a £50k bank to have staked £50k over a year. 3% betting ROI generates a better return on capital than 3% simple interest.

Hi Harry, thanks for your posts, I like your posts and will reply later. 
I am trying to rush this as I am so confident on Madrid v Alaves over 3.5 goals at 2.32 on the exchanges. Do I fancy this bet? Yes very much. Do I think 2.32 is good value? Definitely. So I’ve put just £10 on. I do however feel after placing it that I wish I didn’t. I’ll explain in my next post. 

Tottenham 13/2 BETMGM
Man Utd 9/5 10BET

I'd be intrigued to know what your ROI is on that betting history.*
Looking at 3 markets for tonight's Prem game (12X, < /> 2.5 and btts) the best bookies price overround (on Oddschecker) ranges from 100.88% to 103.75%. If you consider the exchange (after 2% commission) no market has an overround bigger than 101.14%. It's hard to see how anyone betting in those sort of markets should have a significant negative ROI and, if they do, it suggest they'd be better off picking bets out at entirely at random than applying whatever logic they do.
No doubt the closer you get to kick off the more accurate those markets are so you'd probably need to bet early with a genuine edge to have any chance of showing a profit. But you're starting from a position of a very modest overround to try and overcome and you need to ask questions of your approach if your return is much worse than -4%.
I'd say the advantage of the anytime goalscorer market is that it's actually multiple markets (20 starting outfield players in every game) and there's a far greater chance of finding prices that offer a degree of value.
* Obviously if you are making a loss backing singles then your ROI will end up worse as a result of combining said singles into multis, reinforcing the point made by @Data about sticking to singles at the moment.

Forgot the postcards but I'm back ......................

YTD -£14.95
I'm doing 5 this week. All to win.
T.Hatton 55/1 B365
T.Fleetwood 45/1 BV
J.Day 60/1 BV
J.Rahm 20/1 BV
C.Morikawa 28/1 BV

The five fancies combined for a 4 point loss, most of the damage being done by Clark falling so far short. 3 of the players beat their quote. In terms of this market I'd say there's some merit in the notion of "buy low and sell high". I wouldn't choose to play more favoured players like Clark in this market because there's more downside than up. It's probably a better market for siding with less fancied players.

The five fancies combined for a 4 point loss, most of the damage being done by Clark falling so far short. 3 of the players beat their quote. In terms of this market I'd say there's some merit in the notion of "buy low and sell high". I wouldn't choose to play more favoured players like Clark in this market because there's more downside than up. It's probably a better market for siding with less fancied players.

So-so or not, he's in after surviving a VAR review. Think all my winners this weekend have been in the Premier League, I make it 7 posted in here. 
Plenty of losers elsewhere but it breaks the recent trend for me to somehow manage to post all my losing bets on here!

I’m getting a huge sense of Deja vu around you posting along these lines! 
The first statement is untrue (at a wider level; it may be true for you). The answer to the question is “for entertainment”. The vast majority of people who bet will lose (out of necessity or bookmaking wouldn’t be a viable industry) but do it because they enjoy the challenge and it enhances their enjoyment in watching an event. If you can’t accept losing and end up not enjoying betting as a result then don’t bet.
It sounds like you know a lot more about football than me but are unable to profit from applying that knowledge to your bets. If I was going to blow my own trumpet slightly I’d say I know more about the way selected markets work and are priced, and that’s more useful when it comes to profitable betting. Don’t bet on what you think is going to happen, that’s what pretty much all losing punters do, bet on the prices you believe are wrong whether you fancy the outcome or not. You’re more likely to win if you can price the event up first than if you go to the market wanting to back a particular outcome as long as the price looks “ok”.
Either accept the losses as the price of your entertainment, stop if you’re no longer enjoying it or try different markets. There’s some guy on here who’s always banging on about spread betting and anytime goalscorer betting! The former is the closest thing to a “can’t lose” proposition you will ever find (plenty of what amount to even money shots willingly priced at 5/4 because “no one” bets them) and the latter benefits from only being priced one way by the bookies (they rarely price up not to score) so there’s more scope for inaccurate pricing. And there’s also a viable exchange market which often offers even more value.

So-so or not, he's in after surviving a VAR review. Think all my winners this weekend have been in the Premier League, I make it 7 posted in here. 
Plenty of losers elsewhere but it breaks the recent trend for me to somehow manage to post all my losing bets on here!

So-so or not, he's in after surviving a VAR review. Think all my winners this weekend have been in the Premier League, I make it 7 posted in here. 
Plenty of losers elsewhere but it breaks the recent trend for me to somehow manage to post all my losing bets on here!

I’m getting a huge sense of Deja vu around you posting along these lines! 
The first statement is untrue (at a wider level; it may be true for you). The answer to the question is “for entertainment”. The vast majority of people who bet will lose (out of necessity or bookmaking wouldn’t be a viable industry) but do it because they enjoy the challenge and it enhances their enjoyment in watching an event. If you can’t accept losing and end up not enjoying betting as a result then don’t bet.
It sounds like you know a lot more about football than me but are unable to profit from applying that knowledge to your bets. If I was going to blow my own trumpet slightly I’d say I know more about the way selected markets work and are priced, and that’s more useful when it comes to profitable betting. Don’t bet on what you think is going to happen, that’s what pretty much all losing punters do, bet on the prices you believe are wrong whether you fancy the outcome or not. You’re more likely to win if you can price the event up first than if you go to the market wanting to back a particular outcome as long as the price looks “ok”.
Either accept the losses as the price of your entertainment, stop if you’re no longer enjoying it or try different markets. There’s some guy on here who’s always banging on about spread betting and anytime goalscorer betting! The former is the closest thing to a “can’t lose” proposition you will ever find (plenty of what amount to even money shots willingly priced at 5/4 because “no one” bets them) and the latter benefits from only being priced one way by the bookies (they rarely price up not to score) so there’s more scope for inaccurate pricing. And there’s also a viable exchange market which often offers even more value.

I’m getting a huge sense of Deja vu around you posting along these lines! 
The first statement is untrue (at a wider level; it may be true for you). The answer to the question is “for entertainment”. The vast majority of people who bet will lose (out of necessity or bookmaking wouldn’t be a viable industry) but do it because they enjoy the challenge and it enhances their enjoyment in watching an event. If you can’t accept losing and end up not enjoying betting as a result then don’t bet.
It sounds like you know a lot more about football than me but are unable to profit from applying that knowledge to your bets. If I was going to blow my own trumpet slightly I’d say I know more about the way selected markets work and are priced, and that’s more useful when it comes to profitable betting. Don’t bet on what you think is going to happen, that’s what pretty much all losing punters do, bet on the prices you believe are wrong whether you fancy the outcome or not. You’re more likely to win if you can price the event up first than if you go to the market wanting to back a particular outcome as long as the price looks “ok”.
Either accept the losses as the price of your entertainment, stop if you’re no longer enjoying it or try different markets. There’s some guy on here who’s always banging on about spread betting and anytime goalscorer betting! The former is the closest thing to a “can’t lose” proposition you will ever find (plenty of what amount to even money shots willingly priced at 5/4 because “no one” bets them) and the latter benefits from only being priced one way by the bookies (they rarely price up not to score) so there’s more scope for inaccurate pricing. And there’s also a viable exchange market which often offers even more value.