Week 40 : The Stake

[thetitan]

has to be an absolute minimum £100 here...before staking any more than that, ask yourselves...will you be putting a large chunk of your own bank on this bet?

we will be incredibly lucky if this comes in (assuming the 2-0 bet wins)...5/1 is relatively poor odds on a correct score and it seems there's a bit of desperation creeping in here. over-staking on poor bets has been a huge problem and this is one of the reasons why we have lost an incredible amount of cash so far. chasing will never win you money in the long term, even if there might be the odd highlight.

personally i'm pretty disappointed in this choice, it might be relatively likely to happen, but by the same token it is also poor value at these odds.

all the same, i hope it wins!
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[man o bong]

I have to say there si some evidence as to why this thread and experiment has not ended up profitable. I know it is easy to comment with hindisght, but i feel, the calls for "ALL IN" are exactly the polar opposite of what this thread is all about, and to my mind it was about disciplined semsible betting witha view to coming out the end with some of the bookies money. Now bearing in mind when the £100 was added this week OLBG have thrown £4000 at this project i find it amazing that even with £1000+ left in the bankroll, the mentality of oh well if we cant win, lets just risk losing it all, is so abundant. This attittude was apparent at an early stage in this project and was one of the reasons i pulled out of adding my contribution a third of the way through. It may not have been obvious but it was there all the same. And as the bankroll took some hits the immediate reaction was to go for an even shorter priced opportunity and throw larger andlarger sums of money at it. I know that every week the BOTW was democratically decided, but what does this actually show us. 1 that we were unlucky or 2. we failed in the attempt at finding value bets or even 3. that most of the contributors cant find a value bet. (i will add here the emphasis on contrbutors being VOTERS as opposed to posters as we know a lot of votes were anonymous). All in all the overall strike rate was not so bad as to mean inevitable losses, and with a littleluck we may have done much better, ut luck is the icing on the cake, we needed really to rely on the expertise of everyone involved of finding bets that really could give us a return by finding the edge provided by value. The project is not a failure at all, in as much as 25% of the original stake is still intact, but to echo others sentiment already expresses, to just throw everything that we have left at the final bet of the week, which would still have to be of sufficient odds if we truely are to beat the bookies, would be totally against evrything thatthis site stands for,which is not letting the bookies open access to every last penny in our pockets.

Please think long and hard. I know some people have said "if this was your money would you do the same" and to a certain extent, i would guess that half of those who have suggested we should would still agree that they would, and this shows a lack of discipline and reminds me of certain characters i see sat in my local laddies all day finishing off the day with an 18p straight tricast and walking home rather than getting the bus. "well they have almost all of it, they may as well have my last 18pence!" If the final amount was to be held over to next season as part of the starting bank would you throw it all at the final bet? I think less people would choose this option in this circumstance.
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[Whoosh]

I agree with the idea of keeping a grand in hand, as looking forward we would still have a platform to build from (I know this isn't the plan though) - I would only go all in on a bet I was massively confident in. I voted Chelsea 2-0 but I can't be massively confident in it, although a good choice.

I see where tipstonga is coming from and thought he put forward a couple of really good suggestions to try and get us ahead, but unfortunately they didn't make the final 4 - "that's democracy".

So I've gone for £300 as the stake as it's closest to the £261 we have on top of the 1000.

[Whoosh]

PS. great post Man o bong

[tipstonga]

I really like this experience, man o bong, and so I think we must be objective with data in order to evaluate it

[Betfairalfie]

300 is enough for me

[hootie]

with it looking more like the chelsea game will decide our fate i would suggest a middle stake still give a good return at the price so £500 for me

[tipstonga]

About averages and beating the Bookies

by this moment the bet is for sure Chelsea and with 19 votes the average stake is 431 so rounding the stake would be 450. Then, winning the bank will be

1261+450*5= 3511 so even if Chelsea win 2-0 we would have put 450 in risk to be 489 below beating the Bookies. This would be actually to cry .

The situation will be qualitatively different if we just bet one hundred more.
A bet of 550 and many tons of luck of course would put us 11 above and we will be happy .

But if we do not have that luck, would it be such different a remaining bank of 811 from one of 711 ?

It is not easy to make an average of 19 votes to grow 20% (100), for example next 11 votes should be of 800 to do so.
I am sorry to be so boring with numbers but if they are not taken into account(sic) we would regret later.

good luck
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tipstonga
1st Premiership 6-months-profit blogger
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[thatsa donkey]

Hi Guys,

Although earlier I said that I was for keeping back at least £1k of the pot but Tipstonga makes a well presented and reasoned argument for the £550 bet.

If the bet is to be chelsea then I would suggest that £550 is a decent medium between the 'make sure we at least finish with £1k' and the 'all in' camps.

Just My thoughts Guys.

Donkey.

p.s. Great posts by both Tipstonga and Man o Bong.

[man o bong]

I agree with TipsTongas post. Extremely well reasoned, when basing a stake on the basis of the pre selected bet and available price.

If we have decided on the Chelsea correct score option, then the risk of a further £100 stake actually makes sense now we know what we are betting on. My argument was based around a call for "all in" when we didnt even know what we were betting on.

Good Luck OLBG, i should imagine every member including myself will have everything crossed that the get out and eventual profit is realised.

If not, then i think if the excercise is repeated for next season, there are a lot of things we can take out of this years experience to enhance our chances of getting into and remaining in profit, so that we do not find ourselves in the position of chasing towards the end.

GOOD LUCK ALL!
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[John Mac]

Apart from a couple of early posts on the match threads I have just been reading the posts this week rather than replying to any. From that I have seen how this weeks BOTW has slowly edged towards where we are now (Chelsea to win 2-0)

Now I feel I must post just to make sure I am not having a bad dream.

The fact of the matter is that we (and I really thought that the majority were sensible with their wagers) are edging towards a bet of around £450 - £500.

Please let us wake up - ARE WE REALLY GONNA PUT NEARLY £500 ON A CORRECT SCORE BET THAT, AFTER ALL, IS TERRIBLE VALUE @ 5/1.

If this bet had been suggested halfway through this experiment it would never have made the final choice list let alone been chosen as BOTW. Now I know that also shows that our selection policy hasn't found many value bets but it also shows that people are searching for a price that will make us all feel better IF it wins. This reminds me of the dad that sits in his local bookies every day just waiting for that big win before Xmas so he can buy his kids something nice - have we really sunk that low ?

The truth of the matter must be that, if we are going with Chelsea to win 2-0 and we don't have a staking plan (the biggest mistake we have made all season IMO) then £100 is as much as should be risked in view of the poor value of this bet.

While I am just as keen to beat the bookies I don't think one final fling of £500 is the way to go and would much have preferred the £200 - £250 at longer odds. Surely B'ham- Draw H/T F/T has just as much chance as a 2-0 correct score.

Of course, if we go with the larger stake I hope it is successful but that still doesn't make it good value. REMEMBER WE ARE CHASING AND THAT IS DEFINATE BAD PRACTICE.
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[spider2097]

There have been some excellent posts this week and some entertaining debate about the nature of this experiment.

So far this season, Chelsea have had 10 games (home & away, all competitions) that have resulted in a 2:0 win for Chelsea. Don't know whether this will have any bearing on the likelihood of it occuring again, the only time these victories have been back to back has been in a 2:0 victory in the Champions League after a 2:0 victory in the Premiership. Interestingly, only 4 of these 2:0 wins have come at the Bridge with a reduction down to once in the League - the other three being two Champions League matches & a Carling Cup match.

It all points to a low value bet and as such I can't recommend a huge amount. I do, however, quite like tipstonga's reasoning on the £550 stake amount and so my vote will take into account the votes already cast. I do have the feeling though that this will make my vote significantly larger than my target stake (from reading the posts - I haven't seen the vote yet) & discretion will be applied.

Edit - Seeing as how the vote has gone, to get the £550 target looks impossible without an awful lot more votes. Given, then, that it is looking like it's going to be £450ish - my vote is £500. Should the bet come in - we're not far off breaking even - if it doesn't there will still be enough in the bank for the OLBG staff to have a pint on each of us
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