Best system to use for a newbie

[Buggs69]

Might be a stupid question, if so apologies, i am new to this. My question is, if you were just starting out but with the knowledge that you have built up over time, which system if any would you use?

[froment]

Re: Best system to use for a newbie Hello, Buggs, :welcome to the forum, have a nice stay here! :ok Don't worry, your question is not stupid, but I'd say exactly the opposite - we were all in that situation once, on a square one, and it's certainly more clever to learn on mistakes of other people than on your own. ;) Though, your question cannot be easily answered, everyone who tries to answer will have his own opinion; so I will add my two pences. I understood, from this and from your other thread, that you have just started with betting; you'll find - if not already - that betting consists of two parts: deciding which selection to bet on (bettors usually say "finding the value"), and deciding size of your stake (which is known as money management or staking system). Both these steps are equally important - if one is excellent and the other fails, your entire betting session will fail. First part, deciding which selection to bet on, is virtually impossible to answer. Everyone has his own method of deciding which selection is likely to happen, and are the odds sufficient to cover uncertainty of that "likely" factor. I for one rely mostly on statistics and recent form; not because it is reliable and accurate method (actually, if you ask me, it's not really reliable!), but because it is the easiest one, and I don't have/want much time to devote to betting. Other people rely on team news (motivation, missing players, style of play, new manager, etc...), or distance visitors have to travel, or software that predicts sport events, or whatever else they believe has a potential. Many a prediction software is based on so-called ELO ratings; that's rating system devised by hungarian chess player Arpad Elo and was originally intended to rate chess players; but it was adjusted for football matches, and here on the forum we have our own expert for ELO ratings; so far, he managed to pick up some 6% ROI, which is, if consistent, considered as a quite successfull result; you can see it here: http://forum.punterslounge.com/threads/143868-Grex-s-ELO-HOMES-back-lay-176-bets-6-5-yield On the other hand, Joseph Buchdachl, owner of site www.Football-Data.co.uk, that offers free football stats for some 20 European leagues, developed a rating system based on gola supremacy; you can check it here: www.football-data.co.uk/ratings.pdf In this very section of this forum you will find many other systems; some of them successfull, some of them not. I used to run a couple of systems here, and they fall into this later category, so I'd better not advise you what to bet. ;) In short, there is no definite and precise answer to that part of your question - you need to research and try various systems untill you find the one that works for you. One of the pitfalls that I'd advise you to avoid is commercial betting services, the ones that want to sell you picks. It seems to me they grow like mushrooms after the rain. Although some people may not agree with me, I believe all those paid betting services, without exception, are designed to make profit for their seller, not for you; if you also make the profit along the way, good; if not, they'll not bother much about your losses. I don't say they are all scammers - there are some of them who genuinelly put the efforts to provide you with valuable betting picks, but no punter can be continually successfull, everyone will have his ups and downs, so no-one can guarantee that you'll make profit when buying the picks. Selling the betting picks has actually grown so big that it can be called the industry now. I'm not too much surprised by a recent allegation of an organized scam; those who look to sell betting picks use so-called verification services - they submit their picks to independent supervisor, who guarantees that picks history is accurate, not counterfeit. Recently, in another forum, one of well known verification services, that has been in the job for almost a decade, was accused of actually being a scam - majority of those tipsters they verified during the years were actually their own products, and they advertised false records, just to lure people to buy them. Profit for the site owner (not for the bettor, but for the one who was selling the picks!) was roughly estimated to minimum 50.000 EUR a year, and in best case could be 350.000 EUR a year (obviously, best case for the seller, not bettor, lol). Presented proofs were pretty convincing, and I fully believe in that story, giving me another reason not to ever consider buying a pick - no seller will respect my money that I'm going to wager better than myself! So, do your own research, read other punters' opinions that are freely available here on this forum and elsewhere, and make your own decision, don't buy the ones of other people! I'd emphasize this point, as their target are primarily newbies - it's hard to resist when you see glossy letters "Make $17.500 each week with this unbeatable system!", "Click here to check how I turned my 100 EUR in 5.257 EUR in only one month!", and so on. If those systems indeed did what they say, they wouldn't sell it, they would use it themselves, wouldn't they - nobody sells the hen that lies the golden eggs! ;) As for the other part of the question, money management, it's more dangerous part, which requires strict discipline. Failing to find value in your bets will ruin your betting bank. But failing at money management will unleash your betting bank and let it eat the money you need for living, and that's road to poor house. Under no circumstances you should allow that, so the most important rule, that you must not forget, is: never bet what you can't afford to lose! That means, decide what money you can set aside for your betting bank (on weekly, monthly, quarterly level, or whatever other period is suitable for you), and in bitter case you lose the bank, don't ever refill it with the fresh money before the new period arrives! That way, you limit the danger to your betting bank only. And once you're within the betting bank, I'd say the next most important rule is: don't chase your losses! Don't bet on a match, that you otherwise would not bet, just because you unexpectedly lost money in previous match, and you want to recover it! Stick to your system, wait for the next suitable bet, and not for very next match, and only then place your bet! This might sound easy and logical, but in practice, it's not that easy to accomplish, believe me - I usually say that my favourite staking system is chasing the losses, and it took me many a lost bet to overcome that urge. ;) This is where discipline plays the main role, and you'll develop it over the time. You'll find many various staking systems; the most usual systems are level stakes (flat stake, fixed stake), point stakes, fixed profit and fixed percent of the bank. I think they are pretty self-explanatory; with level stakes, you always stake exactly the same amount on each bet. I'd recommend that stake to be 3 to 5% of your initial bank; here and there, as your bank grows or vanishes, you may reasses that stake, i.e, increase or decrease. Point stakes mean that you rate your confidence in the bet, usually from 1 to 10; rate 1 means that's just speculative bet, and rate 10 means you're very confident; then, you stake in accordance with rating and maximum stake you want to risk; let's say, if you want to risk maximum of 4% of your bank, you'd stake 0.4% on 1 unit bet, 1.6% on 4 units bet, etc..., 4% on 10 units bet. Fixed profit means you target the profit set in advance; so, lower the odds, higher the stake, and vice versa. And fixed percent of the bank means you adjust your stake after each bet, in accordance with its growth or decrease; that should be usually done on a daily level, due to overlapping matches. The ones to avoid are so-called progressive staking systems; that means, you increase your stake after the loss, trying to recover the loss and earn some more profit. The most known one is Martingale system, you might have heard of it, developed for roulette; Martingale asks you to double your stake after each loss, untill you win. They say, Martingale is actually quite simple and good staking system, and you can successfully apply it, just if you can meet two simple requirements: first, you have a betting bank similar to the one of Donald Trump, and second, you know bookmaker who will accept your stake of 134 million EUR on your 27th bet, if you happen to face such a long losing streak. ;) Not related to these two parts above, I'd say that I had an Eureka moment in my betting activities when I discovered (and finally managed to get rid of that subconscious impact!) that odds are only bookmakers' estimation of probability of an event, and not indication of the outcome of that event. I want to say, when I just started betting, back in 1999, I was only looking for "nailed-on" bets, at odds of 1.20 or so, likes of Malaga vs. Barca last night; but those bets fail, too, just less frequently than bets on evens, so if you don't do your homework, you'll hit such a mine sooner or later. What I want to say, if only reason to place your bet is because you see odds of 1.20, you better skip it; and if you see a good opportunity, but you hesitate just because odds are 4.00 or so, you should go for it! One of our mods here, Aidymac, has a signature that explains it better: Never let a big price cloud your judgement. Finally, depending on your spare time and affinity, you may want to read some betting related books, and there are many. For the very beginners, however, I'd recommend one written by aforementioned Joe Buchdachl, "Fixed Odds Sports Betting"; you can check the abstract here: www.fixed-odds-sports-betting.co.uk