FORM LAB BLACK ADVANCED USER GUIDE

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1 FORM LAB BLACK ADVANCED USER GUIDE This advanced user guide is written by head trader Will Wilde primarily for subscribers who have a Form Lab Black equivalent subscription, but all users will benefit from the insights this guide contains. If you are not yet a Form Lab Black or Form Lab Pro subscriber, you can get started today, or support@footballformlabs.com for details of how to upgrade your existing subscription. All Form Lab Lite subscribers are eligible for a free one month trial upgrade to Form Lab Pro, please support for details. HOW I USE FORM LAB BLACK As head trader at Football Form Labs I use all that Form Lab Black offers to make consistent profits betting and trading on football. I use the Daily Reports, Pre-Match and In-Play Queries, Players and LiveLogic in tandem to ensure I can take advantage of value opportunities throughout the season. I combine the tools available within the software with a cautious staking plan (1-3% of my betting bank) and a good information source of player, conditions and motivation news. The vast coverage of soccer around the world ensures that a cautious staking plan is adequate and that even at a low yield, stakes can be reinvested multiple times annually to achieve a healthy recession-free profit. Please feel free to contact me if you need any help or suggestions on how to use Form Lab. Yours, Will Wilde wwilde@footballformlabs.com DAILY REPORTS The Daily Reports are recommendations made by our traders which are selected from a proprietary algorithm which highlight a shortlist of potential positions in future matches. The algorithm is back-tested over 15 seasons and is proven to be consistently profitable. The traders then run a variety of pre-match and in-play queries to assess the strength of the shortlisted potential positions. Using their in-depth knowledge of their respective leagues as well as any available information sources they decide on whether the shortlisted selection becomes a Daily Recommendation. We have selected to use this process rather than just list every selection that the shortlist throws up partly due to the very high number of weekly bets it produces and also because while the algorithm has multiple inputs it is not all- P a g e 1

2 encompassing. Generally, recommendations in smaller leagues have to be more strongly supported by factors not taken into account by the algorithm than bigger leagues. Example Daily Report: While I will back each Daily Report recommendation on Form Lab Black I don t back all with the same stake, nor do I back them all solely as trade-to-expiries (i.e. I might trade out early on some bets). My staking depends on numerous issues including how strongly I support the bet from individual queries I do on the match, whether or not the match goes in-play with the bookmaker of my choice I m conscious that if a game doesn t go in-play that I can never reduce my stake, whether I ll be active to trade the game if it does go in-play with the 45+ leagues covered by Form Lab Black it is impossible to manually trade them all no matter our desire to do so! I m also aware of the price of the recommendation. Any significant change in the price will make me question whether I back it or not. Naturally, a large contraction in the price will make me wonder if the P a g e 2

3 position is still value or not. Although it is rarer, if the price of a recommendation has shot out and now appears to be extra value I ll also treat it with caution. This kind of price move implies to me that something other than stats are being accounted for in the price such as a change in team news or possibly motivation for one of the sides involved. Occasionally if the bet is on over goals then I ll look at both team s performance when, say, they are goalless after minutes. If both sides have strong records then I ll consider waiting to place the bet in-play. Here s an example of how you can use the in play query tab to investigate how teams perform when goalless after 15 minutes: If an early goal is scored then typically I ll leave the bet alone. If after investigation I find no reason to put me off the position I ll make the trade and keep an extra-special eye on it in-play. PRE MATCH QUERIES While the Daily Report recommendations make-up a large proportion of my pre-match positions I ll use other indicators from the Match Data page including the many form tables (I find the Match goals tab a very quick and easy summary of the low/high scoring sides in a division) and Pre-Match queries that I run manually. An example of the Match Goals tab: P a g e 3

4 A particular preference of mine is looking for away teams that have a strong record of scoring. You can find these teams by using the Team Goals drop down. The screen shot below shows individual team goals in isolation, not just match goal trends. The table is ranked by teams scoring in their last 20 games. You can see that Man U have scored in 16/20 away games. P a g e 4

5 I ll then look at how their opponents do at home when they concede by using the dropdown on the Query Output. Often you ll get examples of 80%+ for +2.5 goals when the home team concede at home. The example below from October 2012, shows how Chelsea home games go over 2.5 goals 83% of the time when they concede at some point. I also take advantage of the Players functionality in Form Lab Black pre-match. Using this and various freely available information sources I ll build up a list of any significant absent or returning players for the covered leagues. I ll then investigate whether those players are statistically significant to their team s performance. Often the results are counter-intuitive and you can pinpoint players that are actually more important to the team than the star names. Team news and the stats in Players are often large enough to put me off a stats based tip but if they support an existing position I am content to increase my exposure to that opinion. The example below shows how Gibson has been a valuable player for Everton At the time of writing, they hadn t lost when he played. Once the team line-ups are announced for games in which I have a position in I ll take a quick look to see if there is any reason to put me off a bet. While team news is taken into account in the market, the moves can be either too little or too much so it is always worth examining the pre-match prices at kick-off. While not a favoured tactic of mine, there is merit in an approach of greening up if a price has contracted from a value price to what you see as the true price particularly if your % returned on the position is larger than P a g e 5

6 your target yield of all bets. I would only recommend against trading off if you felt that the price still offered back value. If you lay off a bet that you would still back at you are giving up value. IN PLAY I use the In-Play Query in Form Lab Black in three distinct fashions. Firstly, when looking at a fixture that I know I ll be in a position to trade (that it goes in-play) I ll examine different scenarios for that match. My first mode of analysis is to use In-Play Instant to give me an overview of the match. Here s the in play instant set up from the In Play Query tab: And the resulting output that shows that if Chelsea are losing after 15 minutes, the game has gone over 2.5 goals 86% of the time. P a g e 6

7 This gives me a snapshot of the fixture and lets me assess quickly whether there is anything of interest in the match. This may seem short-sighted but the vast coverage of Form Lab Black means you don t have to bet on every single fixture. Looking around for games which show obvious indications of potential in-play value allows me to work out a strategy for games that I plan to watch. Preparation for in-play betting enables you to trade much more effectively as you can anticipate what the market will look like in various situations. I ll look predominantly at the match outcome market in the opening half (including identifying where teams might have a strong scoring first record allowing the opportunity to trade and green up), I ll then look for matches where strong trends exist for there being more than one second half goal (for example backing Over 2.5 goals when the score is 1-0 / 0-1 at halftime) and indications of another match goal in the final 20 minutes. I use these tactics for games that I won t necessarily be watching but when there is a cluster of in-play games at or around the same time such as Saturday / Sunday afternoons. Before the cluster of matches kicks off, I ll have my in-play notes close at hand to assist and alert me in-play. Secondly, when I know I ll be watching an individual match at a given time. I ll go through the same approach as above but I won t be put off if the original in-play instant doesn t show off anything significant. I ll do further research on how many further goals I expect in the game at various points and which team I expect to score them. It is near-impossible to watch a football match and not form an opinion on how you expect a match to pan out. What I ll do is compare my opinion to the in-play and prematch research that I have done before the match. Generally, if my opinion agrees with the analysis I ll make a trade and if it differs I ll leave the trade alone. It is worth tracking how often your opinion differs from the market s and what happens in those matches. My third in-play approach is probably the crudest but from my experience the most successful. Using LiveLogic, I am immediately alerted to positions in matches where value could exist. LiveLogic is available on all Form Lab Black leagues and LiveLogic text is updated every five minutes or each time a goal is scored in any of the live matches. There are a number of things that I ll look for in LiveLogic, but the best performing indicators for me have been when two consecutive alerts (second occurrence) suggest the same position and when there is text for both the home side and the away side supporting the position (and by association when there isn t a contradiction between the two). The simplest example of this would be an alert for the home team suggesting a win then a second alert five minutes later suggesting a loss for the away team. This sequence of alerts is rare, although it does occur occasionally, and more often it ll be two lines of text suggesting the same text indirectly such as a home team to score first alert followed by a strong another match goal alert for the away side. Such has been our success in betting on positions indicated by LiveLogic, and the lack of manual interrogation necessary once the appropriate alerts have come up, we have begun building a bot to automatically place bets once the alerts occur. We are confident that this will provide consistent profitable results. BETTING SMART There are tomes and tomes of information on staking plans and money management published for free on the internet. Most of it is worthwhile, however, the key to any attempt at making money from trading P a g e 7

8 on football is successful systems. No money management technique will turn a losing system into a winning one. With the Daily Reports and LiveLogic, Form Lab Black subscribers are privy to two successful systems but there are many more yet undiscovered profitable approaches within the database. Many suggested staking systems are too risky for the level of coverage provided in Form Lab Black. Some weekends we will encounter over 100 value scenarios so it is mindless to have more than 5% of your bank on anyone position as the risk of ruin is too high. Our goal is creating long-term profit so there is no point in having one or two stellar months then going broke. I advocate a maximum stake of 2% of my total betting bank but then I am examining 300+ games per week at some points of the season. My average stake is 1.2% of my bank. At its busy point, I will turnover my bank every fortnight. I can then divide my bank by the number of positions I ll take in that turnover to get my average stake. Once I have turned over my bank, I re-assess its value and recalculate my average stake based on the new bank. This becomes my stake for the next turnover phase. This ensures that I never over-stake. After a poor phase my stakes reduce and after a good phase my stakes increase. A consistently profitable approach then benefits from the advantages of compound interest. This continual re-evaluating of one s betting bank ensures, theoretically, that you will never go bust. KEEPING RECORDS A very important part of my betting strategy is record-keeping. I record every bet / trade I place and various details about it including the date, league, teams involved, stake, which system, price and profit and loss. This allows me to thoroughly analyse my approach at any point. The most important figure is your Return on Investment (ROI). Your ROI is best expressed as a percentage and shows your yield per bet. It is calculated by dividing your total profit by your total stake. A long-term ROI of 5% is very impressive. For example were you to make 5% while turning your bank over 15 times annually a completely feasible number considering the number of Form Lab Black leagues you would make an annual profit of 108% on your original bank. For comparison, an ROI of 3% would make a profit of 56% while and ROI of 8% would make a profit of 217%. Another important number is your yield. This assumes you place exactly one unit on each bet. It is also expressed as a percentage and gives a more consistent idea of how your system is performing. It is possible to have a positive ROI and a negative Yield, or visa-versa, but typically they ll be similar. After you have a large enough sample size you can analyse how you perform when you trade out of bets (it is also worth weighing this up with the pieceof-mind gained from an all-green position and whether you were able to re-invest any profits before the match was finished) and also how you perform in various odds-ranges. I also keep a daily log of my total profits. I record the date, daily P/L, running average, whether I placed a bet that day and the running total. I then calculate my total P/L, the number of days I have bet, daily/monthly/yearly average, strike rate, average win, average loss and standard deviation. Quickly visible are the number of days I have bet on average during a year (334 for the past four years) and also how rare / common the previous day s results were based on the standard deviation. From my experience my daily results follow a normal distribution. Visually I plot my 10-day moving average, 30-day moving average and my life-time average (as a horizontal line). This gives me a quick indication of how I am performing relative to my lifetime average. The 10-day average is obviously spikier than the 30-day P a g e 8

9 average and keeping both above 0 for an extended duration is a constant battle. I don t plot the daily average as it can be too easily influence by one poor result on a low-turnover day. Using all that Form Lab Black has to offer and a sensible approach to betting one can make consistent profits far outstripping any mainstream investment vehicle. While more challenging, it is infinitely more rewarding. Please feel free to contact me if you need any help or suggestions on how to use Form Lab. Yours, Will Wilde wwilde@footballformlabs.com ====================================================================================== If you have a question about how to use Form Lab or would like to request a strategy to be researched, please do get in touch via support@footballformlabs.com If you are not yet a Form Lab Black subscriber, you can get started today, or support@footballformlabs.com for details of how to upgrade your existing subscription. P a g e 9