Aug 2024 £3000 - ? Bank Challenge

Simon Bates

Richard Latimer

Well if last year was sort of the year this was meant to be THE year...well it will be. The time for organic growth has gone and the time to put my money where my mouth is has arrived.

I have a number of things I'm working on, all look good so far......but this is the one I have the most faith in RIGHT NOW!

Laying home teams:

Max price 11, lowest price 1.9 (variable staking to make the long odds affordable.)

Now here's the fun part. The training wheels are off. My starting bank for this is £3,000.

This amount of money on it's own won't do a damed thing to make my life run smoothly whether I have it or I don't.

The challenge here is to make as much money as I possibly can in 6 months. There will be no knee jerk reactions. No sudden panic. I WILL NOT BE LOOKING AT GAMES INPLAY AS WHAT'S THE POINT IN STRESSING MYSELF OUT MORE THAN IS NECESSARY.

Stakes are increased daily according to precisely worked out percentages and max liabilities for my s/r against odds. The ratchet is 35%

Percentages are worked out to longest expected losing streak x5 which would bust the bank. That's not going to happen as stake would be reduced..

In any case while accounting for a worst case scenario this is not what I need to concentrate on now. Not sure I would recommend this to anyone else but I have a huge amount of confidence in what I'm doing now due to the fact I've finally simplified things and it's not perfect.

I'm also more confident as in time I will be starting another little pot (probably a small amout from this one) and going live with my next and then my next. Diversify, spread the risk, build total and utter security.

I'll be starting work on a 4th soon as well.

I have taken so much onboard over the last few years that all of a sudden creating a successful system seems somehow.....straight forward all of a sudden.

Richard Latimer

@Akiva-Anderson everything takes me longer than it should Akiva

Akiva Anderson

Halle-f*****g-lujah!

This is great news!! Taken you longer then expected.

You have woken up!

Now be a successful trader

Richard Latimer

@Nick-Segura Ishould also say that it now looks what I was doing is the perfect example of back fitting. I believe the filters can work. They do for everyone else but I was going way beyond the filters combining so many different stats.

? Offline

@Richard-Latimer Mate, I stopped filtering things out and looking at stats a good few months ago. I just keep track of prices for all the markets i am interested in (and more) and if it is value + 10%, I'll trade it. I only trade 23 leagues in total, summer and winter, just the best, most reliable leagues where there is a substantial enough amount of money in the market - I want an accurate picture of what the market anticipates - and that's it, If i beat it, I am in . I can't predict football ( i don't think anyone can) and I am not interested in becoming a goal whisperer. All about probabilities being on my side. I could be trading potatoes it would be the same thing for me, I just beat the price day in day out. I do have a selection process to reduce variance and focus on the best opportunities but it is supra simple - all about the current match up/fixture. It takes me less than a minute to decide whether it is a trade or not - I have put a lot of work in to develop the tools I needed for this to work though and while the premise is simple, it wasn't easy - excel pushed me to my limits . The key is to have a large enough data set (I know you have that) to make sure that what is perceive as value is actually value. That approach completely changed my trading and really improved my wellbeing. I do struggle every now and then, don't get me wrong and I still have a s**t ton of work to do but I have pretty much let go of control and perfection and I am just focused on extracting value from the market. How the probabilities will manifest themselves is beyond my control. I am not giving you advice here but I read a few of your most recent posts and it resonated with me as I went through a similar experience towards September last year. Whichever way you decide to go, I wish you the best man.

Richard Latimer

It's a bitter pill to swallow but I'm moving away from my ultra complicated system which was always nearly done but somehow so far away. All the combinations I played with and ruling out anything which seemed to be on it's own led me to the only place it could really. As soon as I could no longer excuse another dull 0-0 because it wasn't a stat all on it's own.....well I just kept hitting more and more of these dull games.

I tried looking at the data but even with all I had I could not see any way to hugely improve things.

Not going to say I've wasted my time, I've learnt what never to do again. The pursuit of perfection is a poison chalice. All we really need is very good.

Thankfully I've been playing around with the lay aways that's been on set and forget for ages and I've also had an idea around that too.

Not posting anything for now though. Working in the background.

Arran Shackell

@Richard-Latimer

Happy new year to you. Glad to hear things are going well.

Martin

@Richard-Latimer from where you were that's huge progress, well done!

Richard Latimer

I'm going to say goodbye to 2023 with a £110 profit on the year. First calendar year I've ever come out on top and despite many months of struggle I finally feel I'm on the up.

Dec has seen £134 of profit and I'm not risking any of it for one more hit so to speak. I'll try and do a full update tomorrow.

On a purely emotional level 2023 has been the best year I can remember in years.

In February I finally sold my house and moved into my own flat. It was the first time i'd ever really lived on my own and it was an experience. In April I met a gorgeous woman who I just click with on so many levels. I managed to get an operation for a longstanding issue which I won't go into but it has hampered my life for too long.

It's not very often I can say farewell to the year with a smile and an almost thank you but this year I can.

Financially I'm dipping into my savings too much and if it were to continue at this rate I'd be broke in under 5 years.

Luckily I feel confident. I'm coming at the finances with a 2 pronged attack.

A new business endeavour and renewed confidence on the trading. I've enjoyed saying I had conquered my indiscipline for a while but, I think in all honesty, if we're making bad choices, no matter how far in advance, that's a lack of discipline. Leaving today and tomorrow shows that if I'm not quite there yet, I'm almost there in that sense.

Only hitting something when I am as sure as I can be because I have the data to back it up. That's the discipline. And it's what I will need to ensure things only go up from here.

So to everyone, Happy New Year, peace and prosperity to you all!!

Richard Latimer

There will be plenty of time to reflect on a weekend that saw me lose not only the £90 profit accumulated in the start to Nov but also a further £60.

It's not a lack of discipline. I make my plan and I stick to it.
It's not the data, which is solid and should allow me to make good decisions.

It's the fact I make poor decisions.

The data builds slowly which is hard in the first place but there is no way around that.

I try and find the fastest way to go through my selections that I can which doesn't allow for the in depth analysis I give to every single loser I have.

I also flick back and forth between being too cautious (my analysis far exceeds what most do anyway I rationalise) and too gung ho. When I go too cautious I'm leaving money on the table and still hitting losses.

When I go a bit too gung ho I get the inevitable profit jolt followed by the also inevitable carnage.

In theory it should become that much easier with every line of data but it's still slow and I find myself in a rinse/repeat situation time and again.

I know I need to pause the over lays. I knew that after Saturday. That's one thing. They are incomplete and on a weekend like the last one they only serve to add fuel to the fire.

I was so sure about limiting my liability by laying under 2.5 at a certain price point. However, that was another 2 losses I could have done without. In theory the more analysis I give to a game the less chance of losing and the the higher price I can take.

My streamlined data has still not had a loss @7.0 or higher from over 100 selections. But it is streamlined data which has been heavily combed.

When the interlull is over I need to take this and leave every single game where there is the slightest doubt. Limited data on anything where the selection could easily be excluded were it to go the wrong way. This must be left alone. If it means halving the selections so be it.

Richard Latimer

Other than the low level regional leagues I've avoided ruling anything out until now. I feel I have the first league though after tracking this long.

In a little over 7 months only 7 selections have even come up in what I am now using as my raw data. 6 of those have qualified to be lay under 1.5 and the other has qualified through the back door so to speak.

Slovakia

Of the 6 qualifiers 1 has been 0-0, tonights was 0-1 and the other 4 all had 2 goals.

As a league it probably makes way more sense to lay over 2.5 here.

Richard Latimer

@Richard-Latimer said in 2022 was a small loss in the end - Let's see if 2023 is the year!!!:

Trading gods are bastards and it's fair to say the raw data went back to the mean today.

Still a couple of trades to go but heavy heavy loss today.

Notice the 3rd goal in Freiburg was cancelled so got a little back. Still a crap day that I made a little crapper for myself.

Richard Latimer

Trading gods are bastards and it's fair to say the raw data went back to the mean today.

Still a couple of trades to go but heavy heavy loss today.

Richard Latimer

So much easier to motivate yourself posting updates when all has gone well:

Richard Latimer

That's it. September finished and while today was a small loss, overall I made £127 this month.

That's £30 more than last months loss and puts me back in profit for the year.

Richard Latimer

I didn't want to update after Aug as it was far too raw and I needed things to go right before I spent time putting the negatives down on the page. Thankfully Sept has blown Aug away and but for a very bad day the profit will almost certainly exceed the massive loss so all back and more.

Limiting my odds while the system is still in development has helped massively.

Richard Latimer

Despite it being a brilliant month with only 3 days left I am just going to address the downturn in my lay overs strategy which is having the worst month for ages even though it's around break even give or take a couple of points. Under 1.5's are hitting at 27%!!

This has a lot to do with how well the raw data is fairing and you have to go back to Sept last year to find a better s/r than the 88% coming in this Sept (last year it was 90% and over 2.5 lays were at 50% compared to 52% this).

Although I should caveat that by saying there were a lot less selections of the unders (over lays) back then.

When Oct hit the raw data went down massively to 76% and the over lays flourished.

Richard Latimer

Purple is over 2.5 lay, the other 2 potential under 1.5 lays providing no higher than 6.0 to lay when I take the trade.

Richard Latimer

Lay under 1.5 providing 6.0 or less when I hit the hay