When should we change or stop following a betting strategy?

When to change strategies is a really important question and my answer to that has changed over the years.

The short answer is, choose strategies where you believe the core logic behind them and then follow them for a very long term, for at least 6 months (or at least over 100 bets for each individual strategy), to have a chance of getting the profits we saw in the historical data. We have to stick with them for at least 6 months/100 bets to get through the natural positive and negative variance periods of normal strategies. When you reach 100 bets of a strategy that you choose, then review it and decide if you want to follow it for another 100 bets. I then decide to keep or stop using a strategy if it looks like it is continuing its long term trend or if its results have significantly changed, which suggests a change in the market model. The strategy exceeding its Maximum Drawdown is one statistic I might use to consider stopping a strategy, another is if its positive/negative variance swings have changed to being even to a more consistent negative direction. A betting strategy that does not work is one that is just a constant -4% yield, which is the bookmaker margin working perfectly at Pinnacle. If you make a strategy that just bets on all home wins, you will see this -4% yield. That is how correctly working betting markets should work for bookmakers, so markets that have flat or slightly positive trends are ones that are not working and we can get value bets from.

(Data taken from www.betaminic.com )

The above image is how bookmaker markets should work. They get perfect long term profit (-3.45% for bettors) with some positive and negative variance (good and bad runs).

(One of the publicly shared strategies on www.betaminic.com’s Betamin Builder Tool)

This image is how we can find a trend that beats the bookmaker, but it is long term and it also has flat and bad runs that we must not give up on, and we also need a staking plan and betting bank management to keep going through the bad runs to make the most of the good runs. I think that is either Whitaker staking or Percentage staking, depending on your system. But another way to look at this strategy is that it identifies a value market, the over x.5 goals markets for this fixture. It does not just give us one value bet. It points us to a market where all the goal related markets will be value and the bookmaker and the general public usually get it wrong. So we can spread risk and get more value out of related goal markets.

A big mistake I made in the past was giving up on strategies after a big losing run or after 2 losing months and then missing their profitable runs and months.

For example, I would look at the top rated strategies in the Betamin Builder and follow the top 10. But those top 10 strategies are at the top of the rankings because they have just had a big positive run. It is like joining a rollercoaster near the top, or buying shares when they are a high price. My strategies would then make profit for a few weeks, but then go negative as they returned to their natural trend line with a period of negative variance. After 2 months of bad results, I would stop using those strategies and pick the new top 10 strategies in the Betamin builder and the same pattern repeated. Then the strategies I gave up on changed from their negative run to a positive run and I missed their good run as those strategies returned to the top of the Betaminic rankings! A good example of this is the Colossus 06 and the Not home on. strategies. Colossus 06 had a flat run in the middle of 2021, it lasted nearly 6 months, but a few months ago it had a big positive run again. It is now on a negative run again now, but it will return to positive results again. Not Home on got to the 100 rating on Betaminic for a while last year, I followed it, and it turned negative, but I did not give up and now it is in a winning run again. This balances with Colossus 06’s losing run now.

Here is my history of using Betaminic:

2017-12 The Colossus 21 set – I picked the top performing strategies based on all their data, only AP (All Period results) and no LP (Live Period/Since created results) because they were all new strategies. The set performed well for 4 months but then most stopped making profit. A few of them are still in profit today. When I refresh those strategies with the latest data, they often show profits again for a while before some of them go flat or negative. A few them keep making profit long term with or without refreshing , but seem to have better results after refreshing with the latest data. This suggests that researching with the freshest data might find a working set that lasts for 1-2 months before needing refreshing again. But some strategies work very long term if you stick with them through bad runs. (7 of the 21 Colossus21 strategies from 2017 are still in profit long term with no data updates: Yield 3%+ Colossus 01, 06, 14; Yield 0-3% Colossus 03, 10, 12, 19)

2018-9 The Proven 8 set – I tried splitting the data to create a Research Period (RP) and a Test Period (TP) with the data. It performed well for 2 months but then slowed and went negative after 11 months. (Only Pro7 is still in profit.)

2019-1 The Best of 2018 set – I tried following the top performing strategies from 2018. Again it worked for 2 months, but then slowed and went negative after 6 months.

2019-7 The Best Betaminic Ratings set – I tried to follow the top 12 strategies by Betaminic rating. This time it went negative immediately, but pulled back up to +54 points profit after 3 months, and then went very volatile between negatives and positives after that with swings of +/-50 points in a month which damaged my betting bank.

2019-10 The Mixed19 Set – I tried using a mix of the long term winners from the Colossus 21, Proven 8 and top Betaminic rated strategies. Again, it went well for 3 months, but went negative after that.

2020 I kept removing poor performers, adding in new winners and had inconsistent results. The time used placing large numbers of bets was getting difficult so I tried to find a way to semi-automate the betting and managed to do it with the Bf Bot Manager. I asked Betaminic if they could create a direct link which they did at the start of 2021.

2021-2 The BDS-54, BDS-44, BDS-36 sets – I tried running as many of the top strategies together with the new automated system. It made profit for 2 months (doubling the bank twice) and then went negative. This suggests that using the freshest data is useful.

2021-4 The BSG-18 customized set – I tried reducing pick costs by editing the strategies to fit together. The BSG-18 set went negative over the next 4 months.

2021-9 The BDS-15 – I used a fresh data snapshot to select the current best performing strategies. I also used staking software (TSM) to analyze historical results and made a customized staking plan. I also improved my bot set and add-on bots. This had great success, going up 90% in the first week, but finishing the month on +28%.

2021-10 The TW-16 – Betaminic increased the amount of leagues in their database from 57 to 111 leagues. I recreated the existing top strategies with the same settings, but using the expanded league selection. This meant that all the top strategies were refreshed with the latest data when filtering leagues. I also increased my bank size to 3,000 in order to cover pick costs but also as part of a plan to move to a monthly style of recording performance. The results were really positive. +60% with Betfair odds and +30% with Pinnacle odds.

2021-11 The TW-10 I reviewed my strategy choices, removed 7 strategies and added 1 new one. Then I re-ran the strategies through staking software and level stakes came up as one of the simplest ways to get good results from the strategies. Its results were -20 points after 18 days, but this was all within the historical variance levels, even though it was disappointing.

2021-11-19 The AT-7 I changed my strategy choice after getting in contact with an ex-bookmaker. The AT-7 focusses on going against the trend to bet on unpopular selections that the bookmaker models and public money push odds up into value levels.

2021-12 Added 2 strategies into my AT-7 Against the Trend set. The new AT-9 had a negative P/L in December but the add-on bots made it flat December.

2022-3 I ran the AT-9 for nearly 4 months and during that time I experimented with new bots that focused on derivative markets. These new bots had really good results. The AT-9 made a loss on level stakes of -29%, but my extra bets, bots and staking plan helped it make a profit of +8%.

2022-4 I started using the new bot set that bet on even more derivative markets with an updated AT-10 set. I removed 2 strategies and added in 3 more. But 2 of the new ones are very similar to the 2 that were removed, they were just slightly better versions in my opinion. So I have still been following the same basic system for over 6 months.

My conclusion from this experience is:

· There are inefficient trends in the bookmaker models that we can take advantage of, but we need good bank management to get through a 6 month period to give it a chance.

· I think there is something that works in the Betaminic system, but I am not consistent at making it work yet.

· I think placing extra bets pre-match on related markets and also in-play can get more value out of Betaminic strategies.

· My gut feeling is to spread risk by following larger numbers of strategies rather than a few strategies.

So you can see from my history that my error was following strategies at the top of the rankings and giving up too soon when they went on a losing run. So now I think it is better to choose strategies you believe in, for me the AT-10 Against the Trend strategies. I will follow them and review them after 6 months (or after 100 bets from a single strategy). I also think that placing extra pre-match bets on related markets can help a lot.

If you are betting manually, then I would recommend the 2 Overs and Unders systems because they are mainly pre-match bets. You can split your bets between the over 0.5 HT, 1.5 FT, 1.5 FT and 2.5 FT goal bets for over picks, and under 4.5 FT, 3.5 FT, 2.5 FT and 1.5 HT goal bets for under picks. I really recommend splitting your stake over the 4 markets to get more chance for value odds. The Home Win System and Draw system would be just normal home win and draw pre-match bets. The add-on bets are in-play bets depending on the in-play stats.

If you want to use my bot set for automated betting with the Bf Bot Manager, email me at bettingsystemsguide@gmail.com

Thanks for reading this far!