I took the opportunity of the lull in sports events and betting due to COVID-19 to overhaul my personal tipster portfolio.
I’ve selected three tipsters as the basis of a new portfolio based on my preferred betting style and the investment principles of high profit, low cost, low risk, and low effort.
They are Sports Insider, Amigobet and MrJordan.
I’ll do a monthly progress update throughout the rest of 2020 .
Why these tipsters?
Apart from fitting the profile of high profit, low cost, low risk, and low effort they each do particularly well in three specific criteria.
- Low ELLR. I don’t like long losing runs and all three tipsters have ELLR figures below 10.
- Skill versus Chance: They all have very good to excellent p-values indicating the ROI they are producing is very unlikely to be due to chance.
- Low Betting Bank: The initial Betting Banks required to adequately follow each of the tipsters individually is relatively low – 90, 210 and 230 units
In combination, they provide a strong spread across two popular sports – football and basketball – with a little ice-hockey and tennis thrown in.
Tipster |
Sports |
ROI |
ELLR |
MrJordan |
Basketball (100%) | 20% | 7 |
Sports Insider |
Football (70%) Basketball (17%) Ice Hockey (6%) |
15% | 9 |
Amigobet
|
Football (71%) Basketball (14%) Tennis (6%) |
12% | 9 |
How did they perform over the past 12 months?
Starting with an initial Betting Bank of 620 units the graph below shows that this portfolio made 2,432 points profit in the 12 months from Jul’19 to June’20.
Combined bank growth in units/points
Amigobet contributed as much as MrJordan and Sports Insider combined.
Combined bank growth in £GBP – conservative approach
Translating the units profit into real money terms shows that it was very possible to turn £620 into almost £11,000.
At the end of each month you adjust the unit stake for the next month.
If your bank has grown then your unit stakes can increase. If your bank has fallen your unit stakes should decrease.
The approach adopted here is to use the following formula at the end of each month.
Next month’s unit stake = current betting bank divided by starting bank.
And only using whole numbers for the unit stake 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. This makes betting simpler and will raise less suspicion at the bookmakers rather than betting very strange amounts like £13.58.
Example:
Bank at the end of Jul has increased from 620 to 1121. 1121 divided by 620 = 1.8 – that’s less than 2 times the original bank so stakes for August stay at £1 per point.
Bank at the end of Aug was 1,530. 1,529 divided by 620 = 2.5 so stakes for Sep increase to £2 per point.
Adjusting the unit stakes in this way was a conservative approach that meant the maximum that stakes ever reached was £11 per unit/point.
Also, at no time was more than 10% of the betting bank staked on any average day. Daily stake totals ranged from £50 to £420.
Combined bank growth in £GBP – less conservative approach
A less conservative approach could have produced a bank of over £16,000 by rounding the stake value upwards to the next whole number rather than downwards as in the conservative approach.
The maximum stakes would have risen to £20 per unit/point by the end of the 12 months in Jun’20 and the daily stake totals would have ranged from £50 to £600.
| Month | £/pt | P/L | Bank | Avg. Daily Stakes |
as %of Bank
|
| Jun 2020 | 20 | £7,214 | £16,720 | 600 | 5% |
| May 2020 | 18 | £830 | £9,506 | 180 | 2% |
| Apr 2020 | 16 | £1,121 | £8,675 | 160 | 2% |
| Mar 2020 | 13 | £1,235 | £7,555 | 130 | 1% |
| Feb 2020 | 10 | £848 | £6,320 | 600 | 8% |
| Jan 2020 | 7 | £1,664 | £5,472 | 350 | 7% |
| Dec 2019 | 5 | £968 | £3,808 | 250 | 7% |
| Nov 2019 | 4 | £465 | £2,840 | 280 | 9% |
| Oct 2019 | 3 | £629 | £2,375 | 210 | 9% |
| Sep 2019 | 2 | £217 | £1,746 | 100 | 5% |
| Aug 2019 | 1 | £409 | £1,530 | 50 | 4% |
| Jul 2019 | 1 | £501 | £1,121 | 60 | 10% |
| Jun 2019 | £620 |
It’s important however to put this into perspective. Sports Insider tips are advised at 10 points. At £20 per point that would mean a £200 bet. This could only be sustained, especially if you’ve been taking money off the bookies constantly for the past 12 months, by splitting the bet across multiple bookmakers or using a Betting Exchange, or potentially using a Bet Broker.
Betting Bank calculations
Win rates and therefore ELLRs are roughly the same for all three tipsters. Combining them, therefore, keeps the Win Rate around 55% and an ELLR of 10. Combining them really only increases the number of tips/bets.
I calculate my Betting Bank to be 2.5 times ELLR (10) times the average stake (10 units) which is 250 units.
Starting at £1 per unit this suggests an initial Betting Bank of £250 and betting at £1/unit to start with, the average monthly profit should more than cover the combined £107/month subscription costs.