If you’re anything like me, you make a whole load of New Year’s resolutions that sound good at the time, but you fail miserably within a few weeks. So, in this time honoured tradition, I’m going to share some of my own related to my betting and trading, and what I hope to achieve in the year ahead. Hopefully some of them might spark a few ideas for you too!
1) Take a less is more approach
I’ve dabbled with so many courses, markets and strategies that I have certainly overtraded and bet on too many things in the past. Now, I’m at a stage where I’ve seen what works for me, what I like and what takes me the least amount of time.
Instead of exploring new angles of attack, I want to focus on making marginal gains in the things that are working best for me: value betting, market movers and a select number of strategies on football and tennis.
2) Listen to the experts
There have been times where I haven’t got on selections by people in the know, such as our very own Adam Cheng and it’s cost me dearly!
It’s good to have an opinion backed up by research in this game, but ultimately there are times to accept when there are smart people out there who know their stuff and have an opinion that can be trusted. As they say, form can be temporary, but class is permanent.
3) Testing
I’ve invested in some bots for the Betfair exchange and am testing a number of strategies. Rather than using big stakes in this most unpredictable of seasons, I’ve decided to test out a number of ideas over the next six months to see what works and what doesn’t.
I’ve adjusted my mindset to see this testing phase as an experiment. It doesn’t matter if I make a loss on small stakes and the profit is nice if it happens, but the most important thing is seeing how these strategies perform over thousands of bets, tweaking if necessary and cherry picking the best ones for next season.
4) Analysis
I’m not the best at record keeping but I try. The problem is you can collect all this data but never do anything with it. So, this year I’m going to make a conscious effort to look back over my results (however painful that can be sometimes) and actually pick out trends or patterns and where I can make improvements going forward.
5) Read more
The list of books and podcasts I want to read and watch (which I hope to cover in future articles) is ever growing, so I want to invest more time into reading a little more each week and listening to a wider range of analysis to inform my own opinions. There is so much good, free information out there that it’s costing potential profit by not exploring it.
(Editor Note: While listening to the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast recently, I was alerted to the fact that Chelsea haven’t beaten a top 10 team in the league this season (top 10 at the time the match was played). This helped to point me towards a bet on Manchester City to beat them last Sunday at generous odds of 5/4).
6) Write more
I haven’t been nearly as active as I had hoped when it comes to writing articles. It’s something I enjoy and hopefully something of use to you. This year I’ll be writing up more content on a more regular basis that I hope will spark up interesting conversations, debates and more profit for all of us all round!
7) Study more
I’m currently studying a Masters’ degree in Computer Science to help boost my skills in making predictive models and coding. This might improve my betting and trading but at the very least it might help me get a different kind of job if this all goes down the pan!
In line with the less is more approach, I want to spend less time trading but with higher stakes so I can free my brain up for some more learning.
8) Not beat myself up
I probably won’t achieve some of these, but I’ll try my best to make an effort. In times like this, that’s all you can do. Lockdown has given us all the opportunity to free up some time for other pursuits but sometimes it’s ok to switch off and have a lazy day or do something relaxing that doesn’t take up too much energy.
I love what I do but I’ve only had one day off since July. I’m going to make sure I take some time to recover and, if I’m not feeling it that day, just take a break.
Over to you
So, those are my main resolutions for this year. What about you?
Is there anything in your betting you want to look at this year? Anything you were proud of last year that you want to continue?
You can email use your thoughts at clients@thebetchat.com
