Portfolio Betting

Portfolio betting is a very important tool in a bettors arsenal. Almost all pro bettors will be using it, even if they have a different name for it. As a bettor using a portfolio,  you have two main tasks…

1. Maintain, monitor and manage your portfolio
2. Look for new profitable strategies to enter into the portfolio

Which of these do you think is the most important?

If you said number 2, then you are not alone. That is the most common answer. Unfortunately it is the wrong one.

You already have potentially profitable strategies under step number 1, and your main focus should always be on maintaining, monitoring and managing them. These are the ones that are going to be making you money, so focus on them.

Number 2, in your betting business, is considered as development. Development is always there and on-going, but it costs money and time rather than creating money. Therefore we focus on number 1, which is making us money, but always have number 2 going on in the background.

So, what are we doing when we maintain, monitor and manage our portfolio? These three steps are crucial to the smooth running of your betting.

Maintain

The maintenance of your betting portfolio is the placing of bets, updating records and stats, and keeping everything in good order. These records are key to being able to monitor and manage your portfolio. Think of your betting portfolio as a business, everything must be recorded down to the last detail.

You should be including, date and time, selection, event, odds taken, where bet was placed, bet type, reasons for bet, selection process bet was from and profit/loss amongst others.

Depending on how many selection processes you have, this can take anywhere from 30 minutes a day to a couple of hours. Do not skip this step!

Monitor

Monitoring can take a couple of hours to setup, but, once everything is ready, as long as you are maintaining the portfolio correctly, it only needs to be checked once per week.

It is here that we monitor the current performance to the past performances. We want to make sure that the selection processes are still performing within the limits we would expect.

Our first step is to check the portfolio as a whole and make sure that the performance is still progressing. This means that…

1. If the portfolio profit has increased we are good
2. If it has stayed break-even we are good
3. If it has shown a small decline over a week, we are good
4. If it has shown a big decline over a week or extended period of 1 month or longer, then we need to cross-check that the performance is still within expected limits. We can use Archie scores, probability of a negative yield, expected downswings and similar information to re-assure ourselves that everything is still working correctly. 99% of the time, if you have setup your portfolio correctly, then this will just be a natural downswing

Although we are monitoring weekly, declines should only be checked over the past month or more of selections.

If you look at the above 4 steps, you will notice that in fact there is only one which gives us cause for concern, step 4. Over-analysis of results is very common, you must accept that there will be downswings and every selection process will go through it. Learning when selections are in a downswing and have stopped performing takes experience, but it is most common to think they have stopped performing when in fact it is a downswing.

We then repeat the same checks for each individual selection process in our portfolio. If you have a cause for concern, and investigate step 4 to find that the system has shown an unwarranted decline. We then remove the selection process from live betting. However, continue to monitor it for at least another 4 weeks to confirm that the selection process is no longer working, as sometimes it can just be an unprecedented downswing.

Manage

Managing your portfolio only takes a small amount of time. Imagine your portfolio has having three stages. You have…

1. The live portfolio
2. The selection processes being monitored
3. Selection processes not being monitored

For selection processes being bet live, if there are any that are going to be removed and monitored for 4 weeks we move them from the live portfolio to number 2, the monitoring area.

If there are any that have been monitored and proven to be no longer working, we then move them to number 3 as selections that are no longer working.

If there are any that have been monitored and proven to have continued to be effective, we move them back into number 1, the live portfolio.

Finally we have selection processes in number 3 that are no longer working, but also new ones that are being developed. A new selection process sits in number 3 until it is ready to be monitored. When it is ready, we move it to number 2 and monitor it for at least 1 month, when we are comfortable we put it into the live portfolio at number 1.

Following this process will make your betting portfolio much more efficient and effective. It will minimise your time spent and maximise your profits.

Don’t be afraid to be varied with the selection processes you use in your portfolio. It should contain selections from betting systems,  strategies, form reading and tipsters. Make the places you get the selections from as broad as possible in order to spread the risk across as many possible methods as you can.