This blog provides a blow-by-blow account of how I made £8,000 of tax-free income in less than 100 hours of sharp betting. (If you are totally new to sports betting, we recommend reading our beginner's guide here. Otherwise, read on!)
Introduction
The table and graph shown here show my real-world, real-money profit journey from three months of following the SharpOdds.live feed. Between September and December, I spent a total of 100 hours placing these bets.
The seven thousand words that follow will describe my experiences, in real-time as they occurred, while using the feed and learning how to win money from sports betting.
There was volatility and a little nervousness at the outset. There were pointless conversations with the sportsbooks and other ups and downs along the way.
But when I take a step back and look at the big picture, I started betting with an average stake of £12 and I finished with £8,000 profit in a matter of a few months of betting in my spare time.
Some would call it a side-hustle. We call it sharp betting.
The diary starts at the end of August and I am writing this conclusion just a few months later in early December.
We hope some of the learnings explained in this diary help you on your own sports betting journey, in order that you too can get busy winning with SharpOdds.live.
Oh, and by the way... I don’t know very much about football.
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DAY 1 (13:49)
OK. Let’s do this.
I am on my way to the gym when Chris, my business partner from BetSharp.com, calls me and tells me to turn around. The site is ready. Ahead of schedule. We start betting for real. Today.
Well, I say “today”. First things first. I get home and set up 5-10 new betting accounts. The process is straightforward. A few ask for photo ID and utility bills and this feels intrusive so I leave those ones for now. (We can come back to them later when they start bombarding me with needy emails and texts.)
I concentrate on the simple accounts and within a few minutes I have set up accounts with bet365, betVictor, 10bet, betway, william hill, bwin and the betfair sportsbook.
Seven sportsbooks. That will do.
I deposit £50 into each of them, so an initial outlay of £350. I am prepared to top these up should that be required. I spent a little time “priming” these accounts. That means I visit the casino, attempt to break-even with a few goes on roulette and blackjack. Then I go and place a few bets that I know are NOT best price and that feel “muggy”:
- Some short-price accas? For sure.
- In-play bets and a few cashouts at terrible value? Sounds good to me.
- Anthony Joshua to win by early knockout in his next fight? Yes please.
- Djokovic at odds-on to win the US Open? Absolute banker.
- Ronaldo to score a brace in his next game? Why not!
You get the picture. It is important to ensure that I continue with purely recreational activity on all of my accounts. It is very easy. I look for close to even-money types of two-horse-race events and take both sides (at bad prices) with two different books. Or just take one side across all the books and take the other side on an exchange.
Now I am ready to start following the SharpOdds feed and it feels exciting to get started. But instead I go out for a couple of beers. Tomorrow is Saturday - so I will start then.
Video entry - "it's started"
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DAY 9 (15:07)
First week on the platform and I have placed just over 100 bets based on the SharpOdds feed. I have set my maximum stake to be £20.
It feels modest and like the type of activity that can stay under the radar. Most of my bets are £10 or £15 stakes. I simply follow what the SharpOdds feed tells me to do. It is liberating not having to think about what to bet on! Note that I am following the Sharp Stakes methodology for managing risk which is explained here.
These first 114 bets have made a profit of £95 at a Return On Investment of 11.8%. That feels like a great start. It is a small number of bets but the graph I have created for this journal shows my activity is tightly hugging the expected profit line. As expected, there are periods of good winning runs and losing runs, but overall the winning periods outweigh the losing ones. In fact, the graph shows that 6 of my first 7 bets lost, but in the scheme of things that didn’t even matter.
From my first week of SharpOdds, I have found it very easy to add to my daily routine and to get the bets on. In terms of effort, it has been minimal - just a few minutes per day. As it is my first week on the platform, I have deliberately kept it light.
Using the platform and taking the sharp bets feels like a skilled pursuit. My girlfriend might still take some convincing, but I will discuss that more with her tonight when we go out for dinner; paid for by my first week’s profits.
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DAY 11 (08:31)
First full week using SharpOdds is done. I have placed 188 bets for a profit of exactly £200 at a 12.4% Return On Investment, which is well ahead of schedule at this early stage.
This does feel too good to be true. I am £100 ahead of expected profit so I must be prepared for this to trend back towards the expected profit. It is interesting to see how the previous week’s results from the first 100 bets look irrelevant compared to the longer term picture. This is a lesson that will prove valuable in the long run.
An ROI of 12% is very high, but it is still only 200 bets. The SharpOdds algorithm delivers an expected ROI of around 5% to 10% in the long-run, so I am preparing myself for some rough waters ahead!
Let’s see how we get on. Right now, I've got to walk the dog.
Video entry - "this is Arnold"
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DAY 14 (08:03)
Here we go, an inevitable downward trend towards expected profit. This is totally normal and the actual profit and expected profit line have now met.
While the last 24 hours was a losing period, it is encouraging to see that the SharpOdds algorithm’s predicted results have been validated with the actual results.
However, this is still a very small sample size. Let's judge the system after a month or two. In the meantime, I will keep recording regular updates on progress.
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DAY 15 (19:09)
A quick update following yesterday’s trending towards expectations. Another good 24 hours of results bringing in £145 profit in one day.
My SharpOdds performance graph now shows that after being ahead and then behind expectation, the actual profit is now EXACTLY where it should be.
Again, this is a very important lesson. Short term swings are irrelevant. As sharp bettors, we are only interested in long-term performance. If a casino saw 10 Reds in a row on a roulette wheel, they would not panic and shut down that wheel.
That is the same as our approach. We trust the process. In the first 10 days of SharpOdds activity, we have experienced periods of rapid growth and periods of losses. But overall we win. It is our ability to wade through the variance, to get to the other side, and to see those profits come in, that sets us aside.
Video entry - "hundred quid in one day"
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DAY 18 (09:27)
Buckle up.
This was my second weekend following the SharpOdds feed. And it was the stuff of nightmares!
It is times like this that we cannot forget to TRUST THE PROCESS. The algorithm has been proven over tens of thousands of bets. The short-term has no bearing on the long-term. It is not about what you win or lose over a few bets, it is about how you can accept that short-term variance is not a downside, but a feature of a profitable long term strategy.
This is a good time for a quick revisit to some school maths lessons: “The Law Of Large Numbers”
In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value and will tend to become closer to the expected value as more trials are performed.
This weekend sees our previous profits wiped out and we are now £150 down. It does feel a little bleak, but tomorrow is another day.
At this point, it is a good idea to decide if the SharpOdds platform is for you. Perhaps you take the free trial and smash it for one week. Take your money and run. Maybe you’ll pay for a month of membership and take it more seriously. It is up to you.
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DAY 19 (08:49)
I have just logged in to £70 profits from last night’s results. Still £110 down from the first 440 bets after that bad run over the weekend.
This morning I logged in to bwin and was greeted with a message about “suspicious activity”. Interesting development. I am losing with that sportsbook so what is it they don’t like in my bets? I am still able to place bets so I’ve added 10 bets to that account as well as some decoy bets - accas and casino stuff. Time will tell how they deal with this action. Crazy thing is bwin is currently £350 down from 86 bets (-33% ROI).
I logged in a few hours later and that message has been removed. Another lesson about the importance of decoy betting.
So that’s good news. I will aim for another 60 or so bets across the other accounts at lunchtime today. I am going to increase my betting activity now. I am confident in placing one or two bets every minute across my various accounts so I can place 60 bets in around 45 minutes.
In order to get back to profit, I am going to increase my activity.
Video entry - "ramping up"
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DAY 20 (09:06)
I made about £170 in the last 24 hours from the 60 bets I placed yesterday. An average of almost £3 per bet is very high at this staking level. Current position is £55 in profit at 1.0% ROI. Expected profit is still more than £200 ahead of the actual profit. I might remove that blue line from future updates! We can come back to revisit it after a few months of betting.
Yesterday’s betting activity was pretty straightforward and no issues getting the bets on. The bwin message was removed at some stage and I can bet with them no problem. I placed a few decoy bets to prime the account a little further; some casino activity, a few short price accumulators, and some price boosts.
I placed a few bets in the morning, had a decent session during my “lunch break” and then another session “after work”. The process is simple and it doesn’t take much time to get the bets on. The SharpOdds.live experience makes you want to get the bets placed to increase the turnover and exploit the positive EV (Expected Value).
However, discipline is key. I am making sure my activity appears like that of a regular bettor with a day job, and so I cannot be placing bets throughout the day. This is NOT my full-time job, just half an hour or so a day is all it takes to make some healthy returns.
It is 9am on a Wednesday and I currently have 30 open bets. I will aim to get at least 50 new bets placed today. All in, when using the SharpOdds feeds and finding the best bets to place on the bookmakers' websites, it is taking me less than one minute per bet. So in a 30-minute sharp betting session with a coffee, I can place about 30-60 bets. While I am tempted to do more, that is plenty for any given day.
Today will mark the first *500 bets* landmark. To be precise I have 497 settled bets currently, for a £54 profit. This first 500 has certainly been volatile in terms of the variance, yet I am still in profit. Let’s see what the next few days of activity does.
Also, if you are reading this, and you think you may be at risk of developing a gambling problem, please check out the resources here: https://www.gamcare.org.uk/ Betting should always be regarded as a recreational activity - only ever bet with what you can afford to lose.
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DAY 20 (12:03)
Midweek now, Wednesday lunch-time and about to get started with today’s bets. Just had a look at a test account which has been following the SharpOdds feed for 1,400 bets This account, never staking more than £20 on a single bet, has reached more than £1,100 profit at an ROI of 6.6%.
The actual versus expected profit graph shows exactly what we have experienced in our first few weeks. There will be turbulence along the way, but the actual results will ultimately attach themselves to the expected results.
The SharpOdds methodology works even if the first 100 bets do not return a profit as was the case here:
Note that this is a high activity test account registering more sharp bets than I am doing in my real-world trial.
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DAY 20 (16:01)
500 bets are now placed and settled during my real-world, real-money trial of SharpOdds.
The average stake for these first 500 bets has been just over £10. Profit sits at £69, an ROI of 1.3%. Clearly not a great start but the experience has given me faith that the process works.
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DAY 22 (09:17)
I set up my accounts exactly three weeks ago today. This weekend will be a huge one and I am going to look to get at least one hundred bets placed over the coming few days.
After three weeks of betting, I am receiving plenty of free bets and promotions from my new accounts. They seem to really like me. So far so good.
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DAY 22 (18:33)
A brief follow-up to this morning’s update.
My graph shows the situation after 650 bets from our various sportsbooks. It is worth repeating that after 400 bets the Actual Profit was about £500 behind the Expected Profit line. This is highlighted in red below. Since then, the Actual Profit has gone ahead of expectation and so the deficit is now £200. This is highlighted in green below.
The grey best-fit line highlights how since that low, we have now increased at a rate noticeably steeper than expectation. Also note again that within that period highlighted with the grey line, there are still micro periods of volatility.
This is what we mean when we say… trust the process. The short-term results will be outweighed by the bigger picture long-term.
*** SPOILER ALERT (Update: 11 October) ***
Little did I know when I wrote this blog entry (17 September) that over the next three weeks I would average £50 profit per day and win more than £1,000 from the next 2,000 bets. This graph is a snapshot taken on 10 October and the red-square highlighted shows the period of activity described so far in this blog.
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DAY 26 (10:30)
We continue to thrive. The last week has seen us return a profit in excess of £400.
With over 900 bets placed so far in the trial, it is increasingly clear that a long-term view needs to be taken. Once your mindset is comfortable with this, the results will take care of themselves.
Now I have placed nearly a thousand bets it is a good time to nerd-out with some analysis of what has occurred during these first four weeks:
The graph here shows that the most recent 500 bets are averaging around £1 profit per bet. The average stake is a little over £10 (a maximum of £20) so this is a 10% edge.
Similarly, the first 200 bets also made an average profit of £1 per bet. On these small stakes, that is a great return.
But you have to take the rough with the smooth. The period from 200 to 400 bets was a brutal period during which we lost £400.
However, what is clear is that the more you use the system, the more irrelevant those short term drawdowns become.
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DAY 27 (10:49)
Priming of accounts. There is a big Anthony Joshua fight coming up this weekend so I am going to place some casual bets. I am deliberately choosing what I think is bad value because I want these bets to look recreational. I want these bets to lose.
I will do the same thing across all of my active betting accounts and then I will aggregate the stake and lay it off with as little exposure as possible on the exchanges.
You don’t need to do this every day, but at least once a week it is sensible to find something here you can give some money back to the sportsbooks, while laying off to reduce risk.
In this case, I do not particularly mind if Joshua happens to win by stoppage, it is simply a bad value bet to take the 1.83 on offer here. This will be taken into account when my activity is profiled.
Priming of an account can increase its life-expectancy before it is ultimately stake-factored. In the video here, I drink a cherry Tango and talk about some approaches to help keep you accounts open for longer. Please note that occasionally I refer to our sister company, BetSharp.com, as this was the original intended platform, which ultimately became SharpOdds.live when it was launched…
Video entry - "cherry Tango"
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DAY 29 (07:35)
And 28 Days Later...
For this live trial, I have now been using the SharpOdds.live feed for exactly 4 weeks. In just under one month I have made £469 from my sharp bets.
This is a Return On Investment of 3.5% over the course of 1,126 bets. The average stake has been £12 and the maximum stake was never more than £20. Even though I am behind schedule, I am delighted to have made nearly 500 quid in my very first month as a SharpOdds member.
Throughout this first month I have talked about the difference between the short-term variance and long-term performance. With over a thousand bets placed, we can now take a step back and consider how these sharp bets have positive expected value.
The graph above shows the bet-by-bet progress to reach this first milestone. If that data is reduced down to a weekly summary the graph looks like this:
Of course, £500 a month is not guaranteed. Sometimes months will do better than this, and sometimes they will do worse. Depending on total bets placed, the variance will be a factor.
As the first month of sharp betting comes to a close, I can reflect on a great period of results:
- My most recent 300 bets have won £470 (£1.57 per bet).
- My most recent 200 bets have won £360 (£1.80 per bet).
- My most recent 100 bets have won £200 (£2.00 per bet).
Video entry - "one-month summary"
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DAY 30 (09:00)
This is an interesting development. I had set a deposit limit of only £100 a month to one of my new accounts. When I attempted to deposit more funds I was told I had reached my limit.
I then went to the chat box to see if they would increase my limit. They asked me a number of personal questions which seemed a little excessive. I decided I didn't feel like sharing my income and savings and how I spend my money with a complete stranger so I decided to leave it. I literally said “maybe i should wait” as a clear indicator that I had reached my monthly limit.
As soon as they saw me “heading for the door”, they changed their tune. They clearly have looked at my early betting activity and behaviours and decided that I am an account they want to keep.
When they saw I was suggesting I shouldn't bet any more, they no longer needed the personal information they had requested and instead simply increased my deposit limits from £100 to £1,000 a month.
Note that I always talk to these people like I am illiterate. It seems to help their decision making. Make of that what you will.
A short time after this conversation, they invited me to join their VIP club.
I declined.
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DAY 31 (13:04)
The 3.5% ROI continues throughout the weekend as we reach Sunday lunch-time after 4 weeks of sharp betting.
I started betting on 28 August (see the start of this blog) and my current Profit from following the SharpOdds feed is £635.
My average stake is still small; at just over £12 each bet.
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DAY 33 (10:10)
Brutal day of results yesterday sees my profit decimated. It is Day 31 of the trial and we have made £142 in that time.
So we are well behind expectation at this point. This is a good time to consider if this platform is for you. It is a reminder of the highs and lows of a professional gambling methodology.
We know the system works. But it is results like yesterday that really test your resolve. For now, we take a deep breath, drink a lot of coffee, and keep getting the bets on.
At times like this never forget that "the existence of variance isn't proof against the existence of a fundamental pattern”.
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DAY 34 (08:55)
That’s more like it.
Yesterday was a £300 profit day to pull back on a lot of the damage from the previous 48 hours.
I have 9 active sportsbooks at this stage. I am currently winning a few hundred quid off four of these new accounts. I am breaking-even with 3 of them.
There are two books that are currently beating me, to a tune of £300 between them. It is these two that I will be giving plenty of stick to in order to win that all back.
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DAY 35 (13:08)
We have taken nearly £400 of one sportsbook and they have just asked this question on logging in. Interesting...
Meanwhile - more importantly - I’ve got back the losses from the start of the week.
When I strip out the variance and look at the first 33 days of betting broken down into week-by-week progress, I get a feel for what this sharp betting system is capable of.
I have spent roughly half an hour each day placing bets. My average stake is £12 and max stake is £20.
On average the SharpOdds platform has made me a profit of £20 per day. If you compare the 30-minute effort per day on average, with the £20 profit per day on average, it works out that I am making £40 per hour of sharp betting activity.
I have yet to be restricted.
But if this performance from my first 33 days was to continue for the rest of the year, I would make around £7,000 in tax-free income.
As a side-hustle, there is a lot to like about these results. Again, if you are still assessing the SharpOdds product, the question boils down to… can you take the variance?
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DAY 39 (08:47)
I have now completed 5 weeks of sharp betting. Over the weekend, the total Profit surpassed £800. With all weekend bets now settled, my Profit is sitting at £740 after 2,000 bets.
Looking back over the first 5 weeks, there is no question that if I had been offered £740 profit at the start, I would certainly have taken that.
When you look back at the betting history over these 5 weeks, it shows how those periods of variance can feel punishing when you are in them, but they soon become irrelevant when you are out of them.
There was actually a period when I had 15 losses in a row. Incredibly unlucky. In fact, overall, I would say that LUCK has not been on my side during this trial, and yet, still, I have made over 700 quid in my first 5 weeks.
Taking out the short-term variance and simply plotting a weekly progress of profit from following SharpOdds.live, the graph looks like this:
I have just looked back at a post from 6 days ago: “We know the system works. But it is results like yesterday that really test your resolve. For now, we take a deep breath, drink a lot of coffee, and keep getting the bets on. (28 September)”
In the 6 days since writing that, the system has won £600. We’ve gone from £142 to £740 in that time.
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DAY 39 (20:03)
Just received a nice £5 free bet offer from a company I’ve had 400 bets with and made over 200 quid profit.
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DAY 40 (13:24)
My first account restriction has been applied. After just 5 weeks betting with this company, I am limited to £0.86 on a 3.20 shot here…
I have won £303 from this sportsbook from 371 bets with a ROI of 5.8%.
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DAY 43 (10:06)
Moving my attention away from that company (leaving with my £300 profit) - I will concentrate on placing bets with other firms from now on.
Elsewhere, some of my bets are now being factored to around half of the stake that I am requesting. Not entirely restricted, but it might not be long. In this example here, I wanted £15 and they offer me £13.86 which seems like some pretty half-arsed logic. I mean, do it or don’t do it.
When I can get a few pounds off what I have requested, I accept the bet. When they restrict me to anything like half of my request I just cancel the bet and move to the next one.
This process is fine, but it is somewhat annoying in terms of bet numbers. On a good run, without these restricted stake factors, I can easily place one bet every 20 seconds. For now, I will keep going with this sportsbook, and if the restrictions start to increase, I will cull them and move on to the next one.
The beauty of this system is that we don’t need any single sportsbook account. We win what we can, we accept their restrictions, we expose their strict “winners aren’t welcome” policy, and we move on.
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DAY 44 (20:56)
It is now approaching the end of week number 6 on the platform. In that time I have reached a profit of £1,000 from 2,450 bets.
I have had one sportsbook restrict me to £0.86 maximum stake. A second sportsbook is sniffing around my activity and some bets are being restricted to 50% of my attempted stake, but most of them are getting through. This means that out of the 8 sportsbooks I was using at the start of this trial, I can still bet with 7 of them.
Throughout this trial my maximum stake has been £20. The average stake has been £13 per bet. If this rate of return was to continue beyond these first 6 weeks and for the rest of the year that would result in over £8,000 in tax-free betting profit.
Tomorrow is Sunday. If I am still over £1,000 in profit by Monday morning, I will be increasing my stakes by 50%.
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DAY 46 (08:30)
Monday morning’s picture after a great weekend of results for my SharpOdds.live betting.
In the 6 weeks of activity, I have won over £1,300 from 2,600 bets. That is a return on investment of 3.8%.
To mark breaking through the thousand pound profit barrier, I am going to increase my stake size from today.
Currently my maximum stake is £20. I am going to make that a £30 maximum stake. It will be interesting to see how the sportsbooks treat this increase in my staking.
Taking a step back to look at the results so far, this is what my first 6 weeks of betting looks like:
Please note that occasionally I refer to our sister company, BetSharp.com, as this was the original intended platform, which ultimately became SharpOdds.live when it was launched…
Video entry - "six-week update"
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DAY 50 (11:02)
A second book is limiting me to tiny stakes. Occasionally they let me get my full stake on. But it is probably time to consider moving on from this particular operator.
Meanwhile, I am up to £1,460 in profits with a 4.0% return on investment now.
My activity so far consists of 60 bets per day on average. My profit per bet is 55p. Breaking down the P/L so far works out at approximately £1,000 a month.
A few weeks after being invited to join their VIP programme, this company has limited me to 1p stakes.
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DAY 50 (19:21)
I have been following the sharp bets feed for nearly 7 weeks now. My total profit is up to £1,800 and a 4.5% Return On Investment.
I am going to Wimbledon vs Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow. SharpOdds has a bet on the Over 2.5 Goals so I’ll be cheering that on...
Video entry - "game day"
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DAY 52 (17:09)
Got the Over 2.5 Goals bet home in reasonably good time at yesterday’s game.
Video entry - "pitchside"
My 7th weekend using SharpOdds is coming to an end and my current P/L looks like this:
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DAY 53 (09:28)
It is now day 53 of using SharpOdds.live and I’ve made over two thousand quid.
It is worth repeating what this 7-week experience has meant in terms of the numbers:
- 60 bets per day on average;
- 40 minutes effort per day on average (sometimes zero, sometimes more);
- £40 profit per day on average;
- £280 profit per week on average;
- £50 per hour of effort;
- £13 average stake
The graph below shows my all-time, 7-week betting profit with the variance reduced to 10 data-points:
It is also good to report that I am still off the radar here:
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DAY 60 (10:28)
And again...
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DAY 64 (10:32)
As things stand, I have had stake restrictions applied (AKA account “clipped”) by four sportsbooks
Yesterday’s withdrawals from the four sportsbooks have come through now. A couple of grand shown here in my statement:
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DAY 65 (08:12)
It has been a period of flatlining, as is shown in the graph here, and I have now broken through the £2,100 mark in profit.
I have been betting for exactly 9 weeks. My total betting time is 42 hours of effort for these results:
The average daily profit for these first 63 days is £34 per day. The effort required to place these bets is 40 minutes on average each day. That works out that the time I have spent sharp betting for this trial has resulted in an equivalent hourly rate of £50.
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DAY 66 (08:34)
Exactly 24 hours on since my last post here, and I have made another £600. Current position on day 66, at the end of October, is £2,700 in profit:
When I break my sharp betting into daily progress bars, you can see the right graph below shows that yesterday was the best day of the trial so far.
For those who are reading this and still concerned about the variance (volatility) of sharp betting following this system, these graphs are also useful.
The graph on the left shows that I never actually went very far into the negative, despite what seemed like a tough run at the time.
Video entry - "average profit of £43 a day"
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DAY 67 (13:43)
A screenshot from my bank statement shows my initial deposit of £200 to one company here. Followed by a £707 withdrawal the same day.
This was my shortest time with an individual sportsbook during this trial, and it was a good one:
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DAY 69 (11:02)
Another few days of sitting on or around the £2,700 profit mark. I will next update this blog only if I have something noteworthy to report.
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DAY 76 (17:47)
Into week number 11 of this trial and I reach the latest landmark of £3,000 in betting profit.
It has taken me a couple of months to resist saying this, but "boom! I am buzzing!". At this stage with £3k locked in, I am now increasing my stakes another level to a maximum bet of £50.
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DAY 77 (12:49)
After increasing my stakes last night, I’ve made a further £400 from last night’s matches.
I have been placing sharp bets for nearly 11 weeks now, and have made £3,456. On average, I spend around 50 minutes per day placing these SharpOdds.live bets.
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DAY 78 (09:23)
Back-to-back days of around £400 in profit sees my winnings reach £3,800. It is a Friday morning, mid-November, and exactly 11 weeks since I started sharp betting.
To date, I have had 5 accounts stake-factored and I no longer use them. My profit performance breakdown from those five companies looks like this:
- £300 profit from 100 bets,
- £300 profit from 800 bets,
- £100 profit from 400 bets,
- £200 profit from 400 bets,
- £700 profit from 1000 bets.
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DAY 78 (18:51)
This decent run continues as I pass the £4,000 profit mark after exactly 11 weeks of activity.
The graph here shows an insane run of winning bets so I will brace myself for a quiet few weeks. Let's see...
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DAY 81 (11:34)
I have just withdrawn £720 from one sportsbook. I had deposited a total of £400 into that account so that is a net profit of £320.
I also withdrew £385 from another firm. I had also deposited a total of £400 with them. So that is a net loss of £15. I lost money with them and they restricted me.
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DAY 89 (17:58)
Having been sharp betting for 12 weeks, my total profit is now £4,200. The return on investment is 4.0%.
If I take this chart and focus on the main milestones since this trial began at the end of August, my progress looks like this:
You can see in this chart that the first £2,000 of profit took 7 weeks of effort. The most recent £2,000 of profit has been won in 5 weeks.
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DAY 90 (12:55)
Another account has been put to pasture. I have made over £800 with them and have had 550 bets. That is my 8th account closure in 90 days. Until bookmakers decide that they can run a business that welcomes winners, this is all part of the process.
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DAY 91 (14:13)
There we have it. I did it. £5,000 betting profit achieved in less than three months of action.
I started betting in the first week of September for a maximum stake of £20 and here I am, sitting on five grand of tax-free income.
Honestly, I would have been happy to win £5,000 in a YEAR, let alone 3 months. I am tempted to wrap things up here. But for the sake of the trial, I’ll keep going for another month - until my Christmas break.
Please note that occasionally I refer to our sister company, BetSharp.com, as this was the original intended platform, which ultimately became SharpOdds.live when it was launched…
Video entry - "a tremendous success"
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DAY 93 (07:44)
I started this trial on 27 August, exactly 3 months ago today. Now, after 13 weeks of betting for around 45 minutes per day, my Actual Profit has caught up with what the SharpOdds model expects. And I was never really very far into the negative even during my nervous few days at the start - all documented in this blog.
I have made £5,628 and a 5% Return On Investment.
Looking back over this diary, you can see that I have made £2,000 profit in the last two weeks. I am enjoying an incredible run of great results.
With profits of more than £5,500 and my original £2,000 bank, I am now going to increase my maximum stake again. From £50 to £75. This might be foolish but I want to see what can be done. I am nervous to do this after such a good period of recent results, but it’s early Saturday morning and I have a full weekend ahead to place bets at this increased staking level.
I have also just opened my latest new account. Last night I had my first two bets with them. And from now on, they will be getting my new staking levels. So here goes. My first bet to win £75:
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DAY 93 (14:35)
I wrote my update this morning at around 7am celebrating the fact that I was sitting on £5,600 of profit in three months. I then did a workout, had lunch, and sat down to check the morning results and place a few more bets.
Here are my first few settled bets with my latest new account, the one I set up last night. Eight wins and one loss out of the first nine bets placed with them:
Literally just a few hours after that earlier post I have made an additional £500 today. I have now won £6,100 in my three months of sharp betting.
It’s now just before the 3pm kick-offs as I write this; I have 50 open bets for the afternoon.
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DAY 93 (17:42)
Those 3pm matches went well. I’ve made another £800 in the last three hours.
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DAY 94 (08:46)
Yesterday was crazy. A £2,000 day of betting profit from less than one hundred bets.
My total profit for the three months using SharpOdds.live is now over £7,500 and a 6.5% Return On Investment. To think I was nervous about increasing stakes to a maximum of £75.
The last few days have been incredible. Look at this graph and notice how the variance and volatility that I experienced in the short-term has all flattened out when you look from a long-term point-of-view.
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DAY 95 (08:20)
Week 14 done. Monday morning. What a weekend that was.
I mentioned earlier in this blog how it felt like some of the results had been “unlucky” and yet I was still making good returns using SharpOdds. Well, this weekend made up for any earlier misfortune.
Go back to Friday morning and I did a post about the satisfaction of reaching £5,000 in three months. I then made several more updates as the profits kept growing.
Over these last three days alone, from only 200 bets, I have made a further £3,000. It took about one and a half hours out of my weekend to place those bets. Ninety minutes for £3,000 profit. I have seen a lot in sports betting over the years, but this is up there with one of my absolute highlights.
With £8,000 profit reached, I am now increasing my maximum stake to £100.
There has now been nine sportsbooks to restrict me in three months. When the latest one applied the stake factoring to my account I was £760 in profit with a few open bets remaining. When all settled, I ultimately made £850 from them.
Video entry - "bet placement as data-entry"
At this stage, I wonder if some of these accounts would have lasted longer if I had kept my maximum stake at £20 as they were at the start and never increased at various milestones over the last few months. When I do a what-if analysis and cap all my bets to a maximum of £20, the profit and loss graph (below) since the start of the trial looks very encouraging. The low point at the start would never have got lower than £140 down (it barely registers on the graph) and I would be sitting on £4,300 profit right now. So that methodology is also valid. For me though, the scheduled increase in stakes approach was definitely worth it.
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DAY 97 (11:08)
A tenth company has now restricted me. It has been a good run. During this trial I have placed 1600 bets with this firm and I have won around £3,500 off them. I have over £4,000 sitting in that account so I will withdraw that and use it with my next new accounts. All part of the process:
The account restrictions are mounting up so this is where I have decided to call it a day. I would have been thrilled to make £8,000 in a year of betting, let alone just over three months.
I have placed around 6,000 bets in that time. It has taken me about 100 hours of effort to place these bets. Once in the zone, I have been able to place at least one bet per minute for thirty-minute sessions. For that “work”, I have made an average of £600 per week.
And if I look back at the start of this diary, I was excited about the idea of making £500 in my first month. [Check out the post on DAY 29 (07:35)]. During that first month my average stake was only £12 and I have come a long way since then.
Video entry - "that's a wrap"
This real-money trial has shown me that the soft sportsbooks can be beaten. It has shown me that patience is essential, to trust the process. And to accept that some books will apply restrictions more quickly than others.
It is now hard for my activity to stay under the radar with stakes up to £100, so if I decide to continue into the new year, I will probably limit my action to £50 maximum stakes. For me, that has been my perfect middle ground of high turnover and manageable risk.
But for now, with more than £8,000 of tax-free profit in my pocket, I am going to wind this blog up and post it to SharpOdds.live for anyone new to the site to read and hopefully learn from it.
At the start of this blog, I said I don't know much about football. The truth is, you don't even need to know much about betting. As I wound down my trial, we were onboarding our first new user to trial the SharpOdds.live feed in another real-money test. Leah, now an integral part of the team, sat down with me, with literally no warning or time to prepare, and explained how she won £5,500 in her first two months of using the service. We will post a separate blog about her story soon. In the meantime, you can see that unedited conversation by clicking here.
From the outset of this trial, it was my intention to stake a decent amount of money in order to show that anyone with conviction and commitment can win using this system. I feel that this goal has been achieved (and then some), but I am also aware that not all users have the same mindset. Not everyone will be comfortable placing upto 100 bets a day or even to stake up to £100 in a single bet. If you fall into that category, rest assured you are not alone and we want this product to be suitable for everyone. I would highly recommend reading the article here, "Sharp Strategies for all levels". It explains what type of money can be made even if you just want to dip you toe in the SharpOdds water with a less aggressive, less active approach to betting.
So that's that. If you have any questions you can contact me on X at @dwmh and don't forget to join our 10,000 followers on X at @SharpBettingGB.
Thanks for reading and as always, please bet responsibly.
co-founder
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Other reading
- Free tips via email? Click here.
- Betting 101; the basics. Click here.
- Sharp Strategies for all levels. Click here.
- What is the Sharp Stakes method? Click here.
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