I’m going to try to make these more of a regular thing, but for now, let’s look at how 2016 unfolded for me, betting wise.
This was the first full year of “proper” betting for me, having started this journey in the middle of 2015.
First, let’s look at some raw numbers:
2016
Total Bets: 2,160
Turnover: $87,409.37
Total Profit: $7,709.39
POT: 8.82%
All Time (2015 – 2016)
Total Bets: 3,208
Turnover: $148,245,15
Total Profit: $12,239.26
POT: 8.26%
Highlights
By a country mile the highlight of my betting year was Bet 365’s live betting promotion. This was the year when all the corporates thought that live betting was going to be the next big thing. The IGA review was underway and they felt it was only a matter of time before regulatory change would finally open up proper in play betting in the Australian market. Oh how wrong that turned out to be.
Still, back at the start of the year everyone wanted to be first to market so that they could dominate what they thought would be the hugely profitable brave new world of in play, so they all released and heavily spruiked their click-to-call apps. And no one spent more marketing dollars than Bet 365, with their in play betting bonanza. This offer ran on selected AFL and NRL games through the middle of the football season. You had to make a pre-game bet of $100 and then got a matched free hit $100 bet in play. That is, if your in play bet won you got to keep the winnings and if it lost you got your money back. The pre-game bet could easily be mixed in with all the other bookie offers that were out there in the early part of the footy seasons to make the in play one effectively free.
I have to confess that I’m no expert on either AFL or NRL, but this was such a generous offer that it was almost impossible not to make a huge profit. All up I made nearly $3,000 through this offer alone. I mostly played the total points line, guessing whether the total would be over or under a certain amount. I got pretty good in the end at reading the game and picking my moment to play (I’d generally watch the line move around for a bit and wait for a good moment before jumping in).
Even without the promo I would still have made a modest profit, but $2,000 dollars in refunded losing bets really helps the bottom line…
Aside from this, my other highlight was the TAB Euros promo. They paid out winning bets as if you had placed the bets in Euros, multiplying your total return (not just winnings) by 1.53. This meant they were effectively offering boosted odds of your choice across every match of the tournament. I played all outcomes on all 51 games of Euro 2016 for an easy risk free $1,000 profit.
Lowlights
Two low points for me, both of which came in November. First I had a shocker of a day on Stakes Day during the Spring Racking Carnival. It was a great day out but I made a series of silly mug punter bets towards the end of the day leaving me $300 down for the day (by far my biggest losing day since records began). I think there’s some lessons to be learnt there about not chasing your losses and not making silly bets at the track after a few drinks.
The second was a trial the Daily Profit service offered of a horse racing product — StatsBet — the service made some impressive claims of its previous returns that ultimately turned out to be some way from reality. I followed along for the first two weeks, and even betting for just $10 a go still managed to lose a couple of hundred dollars.
All of which added up to November being my biggest losing month (-$500). However, the StatsBet trial has given me an idea that I hope to put into practice in the coming months…
Bookie Bans
This year Ladbrokes, Luxbet and Madbookie all decided I had been taking advantage of their largesse and banned me from their promotional offerings. Ladbrokes wasn’t too much of a surprise: I’d already been banned by Betstar and Bookmaker for hammering their “lay of the week” offers a year ago so if anything it’s surprising they let me carry on for this long. Madbookie is a small Aussie book with average offers and generally terrible prices so no great loss. Luxbet was a surprise, though. I kind of felt Tabcorp don’t go in for bans in quite the same way as the rest of the corps, and this ban came just a few weeks after they targetted me directly with a deposit bonus: I took them up on that offer, played a few AFL finals promos and suddenly found myself banned around footy finals time. Why send me a targetted deposit offer if you don’t want me to actually take you up on it?
Looking Ahead to 2017
It feels like the glory days of promos may be coming to an end. Throughout 2016 there was pretty much always something in the pipeline — from the big bash, through the Open to the footy, in play betting, the TAB Euros promo, footy finals, spring racing — yet it feels like the offers are becoming fewer and less generous as the bookies wind back their marketing spend, switching cash refunds to bonus bets or making the conditions that bit harder to hit.
This year’s big bash promos are nowhere near as good as last year, and while William Hill have brought back Chase the Ace for the Aussie Open, it’s bonus bets not cash, and 50c an ace (in most cases) rather than $1. And as the bookies gradually ban me it feels like something different may be needed to match my previous results.
Still. Pretty happy with what my progress and what I have learnt so far.
Onwards and upwards…