Systems That Profit

Hello, everyone. I have been assigned the task of reviewing a new football laying service that will be launched on 12 February and will be analysing it to see how it performs over the next three weeks or so. The service, offered by Psychic Soccer Profits, sends out tips whilst games are in play. I will update this review with a summary on the day after the games and will post a full review at the end of the review period.

Initial Impression – the system appears simple enough and should not be difficult to implement. All one does is attempt to win a lay bet that pays out 5% of the bank balance, e.g., for a bank balance of £1000, you lay £50. If you win the bet (the team loses or draws) then you win £50 less Betfair’s commission. If you lose the bet (the team wins) then you lose whatever liability you accepted (depends on the odds you got).  After each game ends, you update your P&L and use the new bank balance to calculate the next lay bet.

An Excel spreadsheet was provided to help subscribers track the lay bets but the formulas in the spreadsheet did not all work properly. When I tried to enter the winning bet, Excel complained about a circular reference, so this is something that the developer needs to fix. There was no documentation accompanying the spreadsheet so it is not immediately clear how one is supposed to use it. Casual scrutiny suggests that the liability is supposed to be entered into column D (Lay Value) and the odds into column E (Lay Price). I would say this area needs improvement. The day after I posted this introduction, Psychic Soccer Profits re-wrote the Excel spreadsheet to correct the circular reference problem. The new one is more intuitive to use and only requires the odds to be entered, it automatically calculates the rest for you. Thumbs up for rapid response. However, as is often the case, fixing one problem creates another and the new spreadsheet constrains the user to play only one game at a time because it automatically calculates the amount to lay in the next row. This should not be a problem unless Psychic Soccer Profits sends tips for two or more simultaneous games, which did happen on Day 1. How often this occurs remains to be seen but I expect that it will occur more often than one would like.

Psychic Soccer Profits Review – Daily Summary

Total Days 2
Starting Balance 1000
Total Tips received = 4
Tips Retracted = 1

Day 1 (18 January 2010)

Number of bets received = 3 + 1 retracted
Number of wins = 2
Number of losses = 1

Balance at end of day = 952.65   (-47.35)

Jon