Clean Sheet Machine

I work across a fair few markets these days, from horses to in-play football to the Asian lines. And Both Teams To Score is comfortably the highest returning of the lot, though the catch is that it asks a good deal more of you than the others do.

Those prices sit at books most punters never open, and they move quickly once somebody notices. Which means that if you are reading this you are already stood in the right place, and the rest of it is execution.

The year behind us

It has been a good year and I will not pretend it was a smooth one. There were weeks I would rather forget and weeks I will remember for a long time.

But we came out at 25% ROI, in a market where a number like that usually means somebody has been quietly editing a spreadsheet. Ours happened in front of you instead, bet by bet and dated, with the losers left in (the bad weeks are still up there, and they are staying up there). Warts and all.

That is the part I am proudest of by a distance.

What I want this year to be

Sending out good bets is not the same thing as people making money from them.

Plenty of you have watched a 3.80 go in while your account sat capped at a fiver. Others missed the price because they were at work, or never got on at all. So the selection was right and it did you no good whatsoever, which is a miss dressed up as a win (a fiver on a 3.80 is about fourteen quid you never saw).

So the goal this year is a plain one, which is that every person reading this gets on properly, at a decent price, with a plan behind it.

Captain and Machine

It should also return you a good deal more than the card ever did. Because a card written for everybody has to be cautious, since it cannot know which books will have you or whether you can queue on the exchange at four in the afternoon (it has to assume the worst about your accounts, and usually it is right to).

Once it is fitted to you specifically, none of that caution is needed, and the bets you were quietly missing start landing in your account instead of somebody else's.

So treat the next twelve months as an investment rather than a subscription. The goal I have set myself is that by this time next year you are drawing a realistic income from it, and the accounts you open in September are the ones paying you in March.

Why the edge holds

The bias in this market is structural, and the bookies are starting to notice.

But there is very little they can do beyond dropping the leagues where it hurts them. And when one drops a league a newer book picks it up to compete, since those divisions are exactly how smaller firms win customers (they cannot price what they will not take). The ground shifts and it never closes.

Where the mainstream books come back into play is Both Teams To Score Yes. That side is untouched, and it is the one I will be leaning into hardest this year.

How we will actually bet it

A few things worth understanding before we start.

The rhythm of a week

Two updates a day, timed to when the prices actually go live.

Weekends are the busy end, with 40 to 50 selections across a Saturday and Sunday. Which is why the filters matter, because taking all of them was never the idea. Setting your own floor is what keeps your card a size you can actually place (nobody is filling fifty bets, and nobody should be trying).

Midweek is quieter and some days will be thin, which is the job doing what it should rather than something going wrong. Thin days are the system working.

Your bank, and the bad month

Here is the part most services never put in writing.

There will be a bad month, and I would rather promise you that now than have it arrive as a surprise. We had one last June and it stung. But we are 300 points ahead all the same, so everyone who walked out at the time got that decision wrong at the worst possible moment.

Set the bank up so a run like that is boring rather than frightening. 20 points comfortably covers everything we do, including the deepest drawdown in the record, so take your bank and divide it by 20 to get your unit (yes, twenty, not ten). And if that number feels small, the honest answer is that the bank is too small rather than the unit being wrong.

The people who did well last season were the ones whose staking meant June was an inconvenience. The people who struggled had a unit that turned June into a decision.

Your first fortnight

Before the first card lands, get the plumbing in.

1. Fund Betfair Exchange with the bulk of itThe queued fills and the best prices live there, so it wants to be the biggest pot.
2. Fund your mainstream accountsFlutter, Unibet and the Kambi books, whatever you still hold among them.
3. Open at least ten niche booksThe Tote, 36 Vegas, Rightbet, Betarno, Betahoy and Octobet are a sensible start, and I will point you at plenty more on the dashboard. Because not every niche firm prices the divisions we want, so the ones I name are the ones that actually do.

Do that in the first fortnight and you will never be in the position of seeing a 3.80 you cannot get on (it is a dull fortnight, and it pays for itself inside a month).

What it costs

There is a real cost sitting behind all of this. Servers, the odds feed, the site itself and the hours that go into keeping them honest (the feed on its own is not cheap).

Full details land tomorrow morning.

You get guidance, clinical execution and far more precise targeting than a daily email could ever manage. You have made the right move here, and I intend to make sure it shows.