Banker Bets Review

Hello again, David here with the conclusion of my trial of Banker Bets.

It’s not been the easiest of trials, with my initial optimism gradually being eroded by a series of setbacks.

The latest one was documented in my report on October’s performance, which saw me finish in the red to the tune of £70 after 261 bets.

So… with just 39 bets left to go before I reached my 300 bet finishing line, was there to be one last twist to the tale?

Read on to find out…

Not really, I’m afraid.

Moving into the final month of the trial the mood was more one of hope than optimism that we could get back into profit overall.

Sadly the service couldn’t make it; indeed we saw a further reverse.

We chalked up the final result on the 20th November, with the bank sitting on £633.85: an overall loss of £116.15 and minus £46.73 from October.

The strike rate finished at 75.67% and growth was a minus figure of 15.49%, which is very disappointing:

We were never able to get a decent stretch of wins before hitting another loss.

Indeed, once a couple of back to back football doubles went against us in the final few days, it was clear any hope of getting back to where we started was now gone.

You can download the complete results log for the trial by clicking here.

More Changes

The biggest news during the final few weeks was that the Banker Bets service has changed once again.

After previously dropping tennis selections early in September, the tipster, John, has now dropped American Football and all other sports and decided to make the service soccer only.

He explained: “Though for the first 2+years I believed Banker Bets could function effectively as a mixed sports service, offering selections from a variety of sports, football has always been our main staple and provided the greatest volume of our bets and almost all of our profit.

“Based on that, it’s abundantly clear to me that Banker Bets will function best as a football-only betting service moving forward, and that’s what it will be starting today”.

A Roller-Coaster Ride

In my research this year, I’d heard lots of excellent things about Banker Bets.

So when I got in touch with Lucy about whether a trial might be in the pipeline, I was very pleased when she got back to me and asked if I’d like to take it on. So, first of all, I’d like to give my thanks to Lucy for that opportunity.

The BB service had apparently done consistently well since its launch in 2014 and I was particularly interested in this form of slow and steady ‘investment’ betting, to see if it viably pans outs as an addition to one’s betting portfolio.

Furthermore, because all selections were short priced favourites (1.50 and under), it meant that having a bunch of gubbed and banned accounts wasn’t the barrier it often can be with those high price tipping services. As a result, I decided to eschew the exchanges and use bookies, and throughout the trial just stuck with the well known UK facing bookmaking firms.

We set out at the beginning of June with a 15 point bank. The recommendation by John was in fact “10-15 points” but, after discussing this with Lucy, I plumped for the ‘safer’ option.

I also decided on £50 a point, which gave us a £750 starting bank. The initial target was Lucy’s standard 200 bets but this was extended to 300 to give the service a real chance to shine following a difficult spell.

The first month looked promising. The quality of detail and research in John’s daily email could not be faulted. I was never in doubt about the reasoning behind the selections and emails were always prompt and clear. Throughout the trial there was the occasional switch around from late evening to early morning arrival. If selections were sent the night before, I usually got on them ASAP which meant beating any potential negative price moves.

However, the majority of bets were placed mid-morning on the day of the event. I found bookies such as Betstars, William Hill, 188 and Marathon to be among the most used.

So: June finished up £44.64 and July added some slow but steady progress with the bank ending at £821.94.

While this was looking fine, the strike rate wasn’t quite where I’d hoped it would be. Perhaps over-optimistically, I was aiming for 80% and by the end of July it was just below 77%: decent but not stellar. But it was still early days.

Then it all turned distinctly ugly, to say the least, as August saw the worst month in Banker Bets history and plunged the bank deep into the red, down £274.80 overall at the end of the period.

Multiple back to back losses hit the trial hard and much of that initial enthusiasm dissipated. From then on, it all looked a bit like an uphill struggle.

Thankfully, September recovered most of the previous month’s damage and provided some renewed hope. However, from that point onwards, the results didn’t really go anywhere positive. Although the trial was briefly back in profit at one point during October, it also saw the service’s worst ever day, racking up 4 losses to add to the 2 from the day before!

It was a very up and down month, the bank could have even ended up in profit despite that disastrous run, but alas, it was down £69.42 overall.

Expectations had now drastically altered from our starting point and the best outcome was to get back to parity or with a minimal loss.

As we have seen, the trial’s last month wasn’t able to manage that and ended going further backwards.

Comparing my performance with the service’s published results..

My statistics show that it was possible to scrape a small profit if you were always able to consistently hit the absolute top price on each day of the trial.

Of course, realistically that would have been impossible. I think, using my selection of bookies, we did pretty well to get the prices we achieved.

Following some reader feedback from last month, in addition to the top daily advised price that I used throughout the trial, I went back and checked the ‘official’ published results and found that, on the vast majority of occasions, I was able to beat or at least match the average price that’s used in calculating official service performance.

On examination, the trial’s loss of £116.15 was pretty mild, when compared to the official results which showed a rather nasty loss of £383.00 during the period.

The strike rate never got close to that magic 80% either, ending at 75.67%.

In short, it’s been a pretty bad period for the service, no matter what figures you choose to interpret its performance.

Summary

When we started out in June, Banker Bets was a multi-sport service covering football, tennis and American sports.

Six months on and it’s now football only.

Tennis was dumped in September after some disappointing results over the summer and the rest were ditched in November when John decided to focus on the apparent strengths of football bets alone.

In my October update I did question whether the service had lost its ‘mojo’, so perhaps by concentrating solely on one sport it may get it back.

While I clearly can’t recommend the service as it stands, I think it will be interesting to see if, over the longer term, the change to a single sport proves to be a success. If it is, then perhaps the service could be revisited for another trial in future.

Even if it is a success, this type of low price favourite betting won’t be for everyone. You can easily have 4 wins out of 5 in a day and still barely make a profit.

You need good, long runs of wins to outweigh those odd days of back to back losses or mini losing runs.

I think we have been rather unfortunate to experience both the worst day and worst month in the service’s history during the trial.

Nevertheless we have to consider the service purely on the results we’ve seen and, sadly, that means currently it has to sit in the Fail column.

If however, you’d still like to take a closer look at Banker Bets, you can do so here.

David

Update: 2nd November 2016

Hello again, David here once again, with my fifth update on our epic trial of Banker Bets.

As we entered October – very much the heart of the autumn sporting season – Banker Bets was almost back to parity after recovering the bulk of the losses made during what was the ugliest of all Augusts.

The question now was whether the service could push on and drive the trial back into the black once again.

Read on to find out…

Sadly, the upturn didn’t last.

October started with a bit of a shocker with multiple losses over the first weekend, sending the bank back deep into the red.

A slight upturn followed, punctuated by another couple of losses at the start of the second week.

The service then had a pretty decent run of fifteen straight victories across both football and gridiron, which, towards the back end of the third week, saw the trial pop back into profit.

Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last.

The 20^th saw two losses in the Europa League, a couple of bets which did concern me, because I thought, based on what I’d read previously, that John, the tipster, avoided such competitions whilst they were in their early stages owing to the possibility of weakened teams being fielded.

Perhaps that only applied to the first couple of match days, however my own feeling would always be to approach such fixtures with caution.

Thursday’s losses were just the starter though; the main course on Saturday saw the service’s worst day on record with four out of five bets losing. What a mess!

Thankfully, matters didn’t get any worse and, across the closing week, we racked up 19 wins with only a single loss. But when it looked like a profit was back on the cards, the last handful of matches scuppered it with two losses.

The summary statistics for October tell a nearly-but-not-quite story:

Adding these numbers  to the figures for the four preceding months reveals a small net overall loss:

You can get hold of the full results log here.

Summary

So what are we to make of all this?

Well, it feels like playing a game of snake and ladders. You slowly make your way up, occasionally getting a good ladder day but then, when things go bad they really go bad, and off you go down the snake.

That’s not much fun even when your mindset is firmly tuned into making slow, unflashy gains, i.e. a form of investment betting.

Things just haven’t worked out for us during the trial. We’ve seen both the worst ever month and the worst ever run (6 losses) in the trial period. One could argue we’ve been very unfortunate, but on the flipside has the service lost its mojo?

With just under forty bets to go in what will be the trial’s final month, let’s hope it can find it again.

I’ll be back in December with my final report and conclusion.

In the meantime, you can read more about Banker Bets here.

David

Update: 3rd October 2016

Hello, it’s David here again, with my month #4 report on our long-running trial of Banker Bets.

Following a reasonably decent first couple of months, we were plunged into doom and considerable gloom in August.

I can’t bring myself to go over it all again, but let’s just say the final word of the title of my last article was “Meltdown” for a reason.

Clearly, Banker Bets desperately needed a big showing in September to recover the losses and edge back towards profit.

So did it deliver?

Read on to find out…

Yes, thankfully it did.

It wasn’t all plain sailing though and indeed things got worse before they got better.

A couple of losses in the US Open Tennis and a bad NCAA College Football result sent the bank hurtling down to almost £400 below its starting point in the first few days.

After that though, things finally picked up with some decent winning runs, including one of 9 bets and another of 17.

Finally we had some much-needed positive momentum.

So what had changed?

Well, there was an important announcement following those tennis losses.

A service email was sent out on the 4^th Sept, stating: “As of now I will no longer be recommending any tennis selections for Banker Bets”.

Tipster John continued, “I’ve been crunching the numbers and unfortunately our tennis results just haven’t been good enough, with only a tiny profit of 4.4% of starting bank from almost 300 bets over the past 2 years”.

He added, “Football will always be the heart of this service” and now describes his tennis bets as ‘anti-banker’, saying they will form part of another service that he is currently testing.

John concludes, “Though some might view this as an admission of defeat, in my view it’s actually a very positive change, leaving Banker Bets focused on what it does best while also using all I’ve learned over the past 2 years of analysing short-priced tennis favourites to adapt a completely different, profitable method of tennis betting”.

It’s true that tennis hasn’t shown much promise during the trial, with a strike rate of barely two thirds, so it won’t be a great miss as it was undoubtedly having a negative effect on the bank balance.

The renewed focus on football and US sports has really helped to get things heading in the right direction, as you can see from this month’s headline statistics:

Adding these figures to the brought forward numbers for the three three previous periods shows we have almost recovered back to parity overall:

You can download the complete results log for the trial to date by clicking here.

Summary

September was a blessed relief.

The bank even managed to move back into profit at the end of the month before slipping back on the final bet thanks to the thrilling draw at Parkhead between Celtic and Man City.

So even though the trial is still just in the red overall, a good month such as this shows what the service is capable of.

It’s just a case of whether this performance level can be replicated more often than not: as opposed to dreadful results like those in August. That’s the key as we move into the autumn.

I’ll be back in November with my next update.

Meanwhile, you can read more about Banker Bets here.

David

Update: 31st August 2016

Hello, David here, with my third monthly report on our trial of Banker Bets.

After a good start to the trial and a reasonable month #2, I entered this latest period with my bank balance around 9.5% up on its £750 starting point.

In short, we hadn’t set the world alight but things were definitely moving in the right direction.

So, with a new soccer season around the corner, would August be the month when the trial really took off?

Read on to find out…

I’ve spent the last few days thinking of the best way to sum up Banker Bets in August and I reckon the phrase ‘complete meltdown’ pretty much nails it.

It has been a disastrous month for the service, where the solid profit from the first couple of months has been turned into a significant loss.

The stats show that from the 53 bets placed, only 36 were winners: a strike rate of just under 68%:

This figure is way below where it needs to be for backing short price favourites. When I started the trial I was hoping for 80%+ and after 3 months the strike rate stands at 73%, which is simply not good enough.

The complete high-level statistics for the first quarter now look like this:

The month started badly with back to back football losses and was then peppered with further losers throughout.

The real damage was done on the 21st when the service had an anything but ‘Super Sunday’, suffering 3 losses from 4 bets.

Things then limped along in the latter part of the month with never more than 3 wins in a row before another loss.

We ended rather bruised with the bank standing at £475.20, down £274.80 overall (and minus £346.74 for the month).

You can download the complete results log for the trial to date by clicking here.

So where did it all go wrong?

Service provider John himself admits, “Obviously this has been our worst month ever and by some margin”.

Looking at the detail, there’s no doubt that the research and in-depth analysis John provides can’t be faulted. However has the service’s bet selection gone somewhat awry?

I decided to look at the results from August last year and found pretty similar statistics with 47 bets and only 32 winners. So perhaps there’s something about the month that turns the form book upside down.

Certainly one could argue that the start of the new football season can throw up some unusual results; indeed some bettors avoid the first 5 to 10 league games altogether due to the lack of a true form guide.

The problem here though is that this theory doesn’t explain the poor results in other ongoing summer leagues.

Again, August 2015 was very similar to 2016 in this respect with some notable Irish league losses.

Summary

So… can we draw any conclusions?

Not yet as any service can have a bad month. There were some poor results with last minute losses and teams failing to convert total dominance into wins.

Since this month’s results were similar to August 2015, I’m willing to give the service the benefit of the doubt, although my bank balance might not agree!

However a similar performance in September will be fatal, so let’s hope things can turn around quickly.

I’ll be back in a month or so’s time.

In the meantime, you can find out more about Banker Bets here.

David

Update: 3rd August 2016

Hello, David here, with the second monthly report on my trial of Banker Bets.

After a good start to the trial I headed into July cautiously optimistic.

The first month had proved that John’s selections were well researched and thought out, and the results were proving encouraging.

What lay ahead in July was the remainder of Wimbledon, the start of the hard court ATP Tennis and more summer league football.

So… could we build on this steady foundation?

Read on to find out…

Month 2 started with my bank at £794.64, a profit of £44.64, or 5.95% net capital growth.

I continued as before with the 15 point bank, betting at £50 per point, with a 1 point stake.

As I mentioned in last month’s first update, I am using just my bookmaker accounts in order to prove that even if you are heavily limited this service is still via viable without using the exchanges.

My month #2 performance figures are as follows:

The advised prices I’ve listed here are the best prices that John provides in each email.

Some are obtainable, others are not but I’ll go into more detail shortly. John also includes the average price and this is what he uses in the results he publishes online and attaches to the daily emails.

The month started with a couple of successful Wimbledon bets that were then offset by a Norwegian football loss. Then the service got into a great run of 11 straight wins, although it was nearly scuppered at the start, thankfully Federer made a great 5 set comeback against Cilic.

A few mid-month losses didn’t knock things too off track but there wasn’t quite the momentum of the first fortnight.

Things did get a little bumpy as we headed into the last week or so as back to back losses on the 23rd and then again on the 27th took some of the wind out of our sails and money out of the bank.

Further single losses on the 29th and 31st meant the promise during the first part of the month didn’t really materialise.

However we did again end the month with a profit. The bank balance on the 31st stood at £821.94, showing a net profit of £71.94 and growth of 9.59% against my original £750 investment:

Now this outcome actually surprised me since in his end of month summary John reported a loss of 1.9%.

So after a bit of head scratching, I went back through all my figures and for comparison purposes doubled them so they would be the same stake as John’s.

What I found very interesting: I was consistently beating John’s average price and in doing so it meant the month ended in a profit as opposed to a loss.

Indeed, if I had been able to match his best advised price that would have been a larger profit.

Furthermore, although I didn’t regularly check exchange prices, I would, based on the above, fully expect they would have also produced a profit this month. Good news!

You can download the complete results log for the trial by clicking here.

Life with Banker Bets

The emails continued to arrive early in the morning (I was usually placing bets between 10 and 11am) and once again couldn’t be faulted for detail or quality of research.

As last month my rather dismal limit on Bet365 was a stumbling block on one occasion, otherwise it was pretty easy getting good prices using the same tools as before (Oddschecker and matched betting software).

Some of John’s best prices quoted bookmakers are still off limits to UK customers (unless using a broker), e.g. Pinnacle, SBOBET. While there are others I’ve never considered such as 1xbet, so I will have to look into them further.

Summary

The bottom line is that steady progress has been made despite a mediocre month.

With the major European leagues kicking into gear in August, let’s hope to see a bump in profits next time.

I’ll be back in September with my next report.

Meantime, you can read more about Banker Bets here.

David

Update: 3rd July 2016

Hello, David here, with the first monthly report on my trial of Banker Bets.

I was initially very excited about this product for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it has received generally positive reviews from credible sources over quite a period of time.

And secondly, it aims to make money at very short odds: which should help minimise the length of losing runs.

So… have I made any money with Banker Bets in month #1?

Read on to find out…

The first month of the trial has been pretty positive.

The recommended bank was 10 to 15 points and, after discussing this with Lucy, I decided on 15 points, £50 per point with a 1 point stake, making a total bank of £750.

I’m restricted with a number of bookmakers so I took a little time thinking about whether to approach this using exchanges alone, a mixture of bookies and exchanges or just bookies.

In the end, I decided on bookies only, in part to show whether it was possible to use the service when you’re already pretty limited.

Since all of the tips are short odds-on favourites I thought limits would be much less of a problem than with other services and so far it’s proved so.

I wasn’t quite sure what we were going to get in terms of tips since the main European league seasons had just finished. So when the first tip was from the Kazakh Premier League I was a little worried about starting this trial in the summer.

Anyway, we got off to a good start until the first tennis bet lost but then picked up some momentum with seven straight wins from a mixture of tennis, international and summer league football.

The strike rate remained good (nominal target would be 80%+) with just the odd loss, however successive losses pegged the bank back on a couple of occasions, in particular right at the end of the month.

Despite this the bank was never below its starting point and looked healthy at the end of the period with 5.95% growth.

Initially the tips email arrived each evening around 9 or 10pm, which was ideal for me as I was able to get on them relatively quickly.

Later in the month this changed to early morning (6am) which meant it was usually a few hours before I was able to pick up on them.

Despite this, more often than not, I was able to get close to the quoted price, sometimes being able to better it.

Frequently the price at the quoted bookmaker had changed but by using Oddschecker and matched betting odds software, I was able to track down the best price possible when placing the bets.

Only on a couple of occasions could I not get on at the book I wanted to e.g. Bet365. Overall there were no major issues getting decent prices, although I’d prefer the emails in the evening in order to get the maximum value before they (usually) shorten.

On one tip the quoted price was latterly changed by the tipster, John, as it didn’t hold up overnight. I was lucky to get the early price and the selection won.

The complete results log for the trial to date looks like this.

Summary

Banker Bets is a professionally run service.

The emails themselves are extremely detailed: not just a couple of lines cobbled together and then some prices. John clearly takes a considerable amount of time in researching his selections and it shows.

The first part of each email discusses the results from the day before. He then looks forward to what’s upcoming. Each selection is well set out with details such as league, start time, selection, the best odds and the average odds. John then spends a few paragraphs going in depth about why he’s chosen the selection including various statistics. He also adds the year’s on-going results as a spreadsheet attachment.

All of this leads to an overall feeling of confidence that you are investing in an outcome together as opposed to just taking a punt on a likely outcome.

This is no low rent Twitter or Facebook tipster service. You feel fully informed at all times and because of that I look forward to see what July brings.

I’ll be back in August with my next report. Meanwhile, you can find out more about Banker Bets here.

David

Original Introduction: 31st May 2016

I’ve often talked about how much I like high strike rate systems.

They just make life so much easier.

However, the problem with such services is that value can be hard to find at the short end of the book.

Which, if you’re new to all this, is just a punter’s way of saying “there ain’t no money in favourites”.

Or is there?

Because today’s new trial is of a service which is all about favourites. And the people behind it claim to have been making steady profits for a very long time.

Welcome then to my new trial of …. Banker Bets!

Banker Bets has been around for the best part of two years.

And in that time they claim to have banked some serious cash.

Their website contains results logs that go back to 2014, and, if they’re to be believed, then Banker Bets are on to to something.

The service is primarily focussed on football, with a decent-sized chunk of tennis thrown in.

There are also occasional punts on American football and basketball. The idea being that, by having more than one sport to bet on, the customer still has bets to place in the close season.

The odds remain resolutely short no matter which sport the tipster selects. Judging from the claimed results log for the first four months of 2016, the average price was 1.27: which explains why the strike rate over the period was so high (reported as 82.6%).

At this price point you do have to make sure you’re getting the very best odds available, so we will try to shop around.

Summary

Following the success of my Over Goals Tips trial, I’m feeling positive about banker betting. Maybe it’s not such a profit-free zone as it is often cracked up to be.

Indeed, if it works, this could prove to be a very important trial. I have long felt that short-priced odds, high strike rates and (glory be) profit formed an irresistible combination.

New triallist David is going to lead the trial. I’m expecting it to take him around five months but in any event, he’ll be back around the end of June with his first progress update.

In the meantime, you can read more about Banker Bets here.

Lucy