The new tennis season is nearly upon us.
Good luck to all for the weeks to come!
12 hours ago
About me
I started off my punting on the horses many years ago. This was in the days before PC's and I used to spend hours manually doing my own handicaps using pencil and paper and a card file index, one card per horse, and postal updates from Raceform. How times have changed! I must've tried every system and method going, but only the tried and trusted methods of form reading really worked in the long run.
But I got bored of that and with the explosion of online sports betting during the early part of the century started looking elsewhere, trying to apply the hard lessons of form reading learned on the horses to other sports. (Tennis punters often whinge about the very occasional fixed match - they should try doing the horses for a month!)
Bizarrely I didn't apply the techniques of money management that I'd learned. Now why that was I really don't know, as in hindsight it was so obviously a must have. But I punted in a totally chaotic haphazard manner.
After one particularly insane run in Autumn 2006 it dawned on me that things were getting a tad out of hand. I stopped completely for a few weeks and had a think about things, finally adapting the methodology used on the horses and as outlined here. I've managed to follow that with the odd tweak ever since. (Ok ok, I've had the odd lapse, but show me a sports bettor who hasn't strayed from the straight and narrow and I'll show you a liar!).
I settled on WTA tennis as the main area of interest as it's so much more pleasant looking at the girls than a herd of horses or hairy sweaty men! And it's so much easier and more fun following the fortunes of a hundred or so tennis players than hundreds upon hundreds of nags!
But I got bored of that and with the explosion of online sports betting during the early part of the century started looking elsewhere, trying to apply the hard lessons of form reading learned on the horses to other sports. (Tennis punters often whinge about the very occasional fixed match - they should try doing the horses for a month!)
Bizarrely I didn't apply the techniques of money management that I'd learned. Now why that was I really don't know, as in hindsight it was so obviously a must have. But I punted in a totally chaotic haphazard manner.
After one particularly insane run in Autumn 2006 it dawned on me that things were getting a tad out of hand. I stopped completely for a few weeks and had a think about things, finally adapting the methodology used on the horses and as outlined here. I've managed to follow that with the odd tweak ever since. (Ok ok, I've had the odd lapse, but show me a sports bettor who hasn't strayed from the straight and narrow and I'll show you a liar!).
I settled on WTA tennis as the main area of interest as it's so much more pleasant looking at the girls than a herd of horses or hairy sweaty men! And it's so much easier and more fun following the fortunes of a hundred or so tennis players than hundreds upon hundreds of nags!
Modus Operandi
The vast majority of my bets are cover to win 5% of bank, with a max stake size of 10% of bank.
These percentages may sound high to many sports bettors, who often quote 2% of bank or less per bet. But in my view a percentage figure can't be applied universally to all sports as the percentage of winning favourites, prices on offer, and hit rates vary enormously from sport to sport and from punting style to punting style. It would be obviously ridiculous to apply the same staking plan for backing 10/1 outsiders on the horses, where favs win 30% of races, to backing tennis with only 2 runners and where favs win a whopping 70%+ of matches! I've arrived at those percentages by trial and error and they suit my punting style and hit rates.
Greening up remains a vexed question. Many posters on Betfair maintain that greening up should always be done, many say never, both usually trotting out the cliches after the result is known and went in favour of their opinion! In my view the acid test is to ask "if I had no position on the event would I place the greening up bet?". Many seem oblivious that greening up is actually a bet! It seems daft to me if you've backed a player expecting her to win, and she is winning, to then back the other unless you suspect a choke or turnaround. To do so specifically just to green up seems foolish. Having said that I do tend to green up, or at least cover the stake, once the odds approach 1.05'ish (depending on what odds I'm on at) as that to me represents the odds of an injury or some other silly upset.
As well as WTA I also follow other sports and will have a bet on them from time to time, which will appear in the screenshots. These will normally be just on the big televised events, and the bets are subject to their own staking plan which varies from sport to sport.
Having outlined the plan it must be said there's only one rule in sports betting, and that is there are no rules! An infinite number of possibilites and circumstances can arise and to try and fit all of these into some sort of rigid scheme is just not logical. So any system has to be flexible. Thus there's a "special situations" exemption of a max stake 20% of bank with no reference to any cover to win, but this can only be used rarely.
These percentages may sound high to many sports bettors, who often quote 2% of bank or less per bet. But in my view a percentage figure can't be applied universally to all sports as the percentage of winning favourites, prices on offer, and hit rates vary enormously from sport to sport and from punting style to punting style. It would be obviously ridiculous to apply the same staking plan for backing 10/1 outsiders on the horses, where favs win 30% of races, to backing tennis with only 2 runners and where favs win a whopping 70%+ of matches! I've arrived at those percentages by trial and error and they suit my punting style and hit rates.
Greening up remains a vexed question. Many posters on Betfair maintain that greening up should always be done, many say never, both usually trotting out the cliches after the result is known and went in favour of their opinion! In my view the acid test is to ask "if I had no position on the event would I place the greening up bet?". Many seem oblivious that greening up is actually a bet! It seems daft to me if you've backed a player expecting her to win, and she is winning, to then back the other unless you suspect a choke or turnaround. To do so specifically just to green up seems foolish. Having said that I do tend to green up, or at least cover the stake, once the odds approach 1.05'ish (depending on what odds I'm on at) as that to me represents the odds of an injury or some other silly upset.
As well as WTA I also follow other sports and will have a bet on them from time to time, which will appear in the screenshots. These will normally be just on the big televised events, and the bets are subject to their own staking plan which varies from sport to sport.
Having outlined the plan it must be said there's only one rule in sports betting, and that is there are no rules! An infinite number of possibilites and circumstances can arise and to try and fit all of these into some sort of rigid scheme is just not logical. So any system has to be flexible. Thus there's a "special situations" exemption of a max stake 20% of bank with no reference to any cover to win, but this can only be used rarely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
