I was delighted to discover last week that I had topped the voting charts from the Secret Betting club for 3 Tipster Awards! I was hopeful of 1 but to get 3 is simply amazing and I have to thank all the readers of the Secret Betting Club for voting. THANK YOU and long may I continue to help you profit on football. The 3 Awards were

This was certainly the most pleasing award because this is exactly what the service is all about - Tipping on Football! We also topped the charts by a clear margin which is very satisfying. However my big challenge is going to be maintaining our success and winning this again next year. That is certainly my goal and we have a made a great start to the year but we have to remember it is a marathon not a sprint!

This second award is arguably more prestigious as it carries the title Sports Tipster meaning tipping every sport apart from Horse Racing. This obviously starts the great pub debate of what constitutes a sport but I will leave that for another day. I don't tip anything other than Football so it was great to be recognised in this category which included so many other services (golf, tennis, NBA etc). This award was a much closer affair and I had the pleasure of sharing the title with Sportyy who received the same percentage of votes. I certainly don't mind plugging the competition either if they are good and Sportyy appears to be run by an excellent guy and delivering great results on Tennis and Football. Remember I'm here to help you make money                                                 betting so If I can recommend other services I will!

The final award was best newcomer and I guess I should cherish this because I doubt I can win it again! LOL . This feels a bit like Most improved which is the award you never wanted to win as a kid because it meant you were previously shit but I guess I am being a bit hard on myself. Seriously though, this award is an achievement in itself in what is such a tough service to succeed in. Believe me, it is not easy getting members (in fact it is bloody hard) and running a service 365 days a year...thinking of your next bet almost every day, so being recognised as arriving on the scene is pretty special and I look forward to seeing who picks this up next year. SBC do such a great job proofing the tipsters and I know they are busy                                      proofing quite a few right not who are making a lot of noise in the market place!                                               Good Luck to them.

Finally, every industry you can think of has awards nights or dinners or conferences etc so why don't we? I mentioned to SBC that this is something they should seriously consider and it may be something for the future. I can see something along the lines of a Sports personality to MC the event some major sponsorship from the bookmakers and then a charge of 150 quid per head to attend for some nice food and entertainment. I think it would be a great stage to reward the tipsters and the punters who are taking their betting/investing seriously. Perhaps there is already something out there that I'm not aware of so please let me know. Also let me know if you would be interested in such an event?

I apologise immediately for how this post unfolds but it is going to follow my thought process while I was away in Europe for the Christmas break. Hopefully you find it interesting.

As you know I love analysing our results to see where we are going wrong and where we are going right and an area I highlighted in our 2012 review was that I felt we were doing poorly in France due to the underdog always doing well and perhaps the bookmakers were pricing games wrong. This weekend there was a number of results where heaps of value could be found in France. For example Nice won away to Lille and PSG failed to win at home again. 

France aside I started to think about value. In short, value in betting is defined where the odds of something happening are greater than the odds on offer by the bookmaker. Obviously you are likely to find less value in the favourites when betting for the simple reason demand will drive the price down and bookmakers aren't going to risk losing their healthy margins. LIGHT BULB MOMENT FOR ME! OK this isn't rocket science and I'm sure everyone already knows this but if there is greater value in the underdog why aren't we betting on the underdog more?

My next thought process answered this quickly by arguing it would be hard to manage long losing runs, trying to pick out 10/1 winners (Eg Real Sociedad v Barcelona this weekend) and what the hell do I know about picking big priced winners? I've never done it before and have no history of doing so. MY NEXT LIGHT BULB MOMENT!....ASIAN HANDICAP...

Every week I scroll the Asian Handicap markets and laugh each week at some ridiculous handicaps being offered for the underdog. A prime example is the Championship where anyone can beat anyone but an away team can still be given a +1 or +1.5 start. This of course happens in all our leagues and particularly Liverpool's opponents. I started to notice that more often than not the games I mentally picked were coming through more often then not.

Now as a rule I don't pick these type of games for the Summer of Football service because they rarely qualify for selection using my strict criteria. The core of this service is built on home teams winning at average odds of evens where I see value. Its simple, it works and it won't change unless I blow the bank. ;o)

However we do occasionally bet on the underdog and I was staggered to discover our results. The SoF service has made 25 underdog bets (Ie we bet on a positive handicap) and 19 have been winners! 19! THAT IS A 76% STRIKE RATE

So where does that leave my thinking today. Firstly I have no intention of changing the core of SoF as we currently have a winning formulae but I have decided to religiously track my additional selections since January 1 and see if I can find another edge! 

Please let me know if you are interested in seeing the results and I will update again here soon

Happy New Year everyone. We had a cracking 2012 making over £3500 profit and a 143% Return on Capital. You can read all about it our review above.

As for my New Year it was spentwith close family in England where we watched the London fireworks and shared a bottle of champagne. A very quite time but thoroughly enjoyable and I must say the London fireworks certainly give Sydney a run for their money...maybe even better this year with the success of the Olympics and Jubilee thrown in with clever quotes and great music.

As I say in the attached Review....Bring on 2013