2018 Recap and Analytics, lessons learned, 2019 goals/tips etc

[Sadistics]

OK, but how many $4 bets did you flush away before hitting that?

In all seriousness, is that screenshot framed and hanging above your gold and ivory fireplace at home?

Haha, I'll usually do 1 or 2 lotto parlays like that per card if I remember, never more than $5 per. Hit a couple this year but none close to that payout.

These were painful:

 

[burge13]

I've noticed big PPVs have consistently been my worst events, I attribute that to fighters overperforming with what's at stake, and plan to reduce the unit size for PPVs.

I've noticed this with me too; mainly main cards and main events. The smaller the event, the less likely the oddsmaker is to be right I guess giving us more edge.

 

[t6p]

2018 was my third full year of betting on MMA and my second full year of tracking my results. After finishing 2017 +72u, I only managed to end up +24u in 2018. This was even more disappointing because I was +35u in mid-September, when I hit a cold streak that I'm still trying to dig myself out of. This was partially due to not having the time recently to watch nearly as much tape as I have in the past.

Looking back at my results for the past two years, it's pretty clear what my strengths and weaknesses are. Underdog moneylines have been my most profitable wagers by far, while I'm actually in the negative on favorite moneyline wagers. For 2019, I'll be breaking that down into more specific odds ranges on my tracking spreadsheet. My biggest ROI was easily on live bets, something that I wanted to focus on more in 2018 but I still don't do nearly enough of. Parlays are also a losing proposition for me it seems and something that I'm going to reduce and/or avoid completely moving forward.

Best bets of 2018:
3.2u Cerrone +100 vs Medeiros
3.3u Moicano +170 vs Kattar
0.5u Lee KO/TKO +1200 vs Barboza
2.5u Anderson +145 vs Cummins
3u Moraes +150 vs Rivera
5u Covington +130 vs RDA
5u Lamas -163 vs Elkins
2u Barboza +100 vs Hooker

Worst bets of 2018:
4u Northcutt -195 vs Gouti (terrible bet at that price even though it won)
2u Chiesa -150 vs Pettis
1.75u Font +146 vs Assuncao
1.75u McGregor +165 vs Khabib
2.5u Weidman -125 vs Jacare
2.5u Ortega +120 vs Holloway
2u Mendes -155 vs Volkanovski

Not surprisingly, a high percentage of those "worst bets" came after mid-September. But on the bright side, I didn't lose a single bet all year where I risked more than 2.5u, so my track record is very good on high confidence plays and I'll be looking to invest more into them this coming year. Good luck to all in 2019.

 

[Yotsuya]

+1k for the whole year. I didn’t have a consistent unit size, but I can tell you, that my roi was not great. I had a 4k winning spree May-early June, got a bit manic, felt like I was dodging bullets next few events and crashed hard after rising the stakes. I tried simulating 100k bankroll by making only plays I could do on long run using 1000 euro unit size (though I only used 300 euro units), which meant fewer bets and that I was only using Pinnacle and Bookmaker and doing very low bets on openers and betting mostly on fight days. Losses on five close fights (Golm - Bhullar, Ray - Ayari, Hunt - Ol, Fili - Johnson and Hill - Casey) caused 6k swing. There were few actually bad bets too. October was a miserable month and killed my confidence. After 2.5 month / 6 event grueling losing streak, winning almost every bet at UFC 230 was really euphoric, but I had abandoned the experiment and really no big bets on that card. Rest of the year went ok.

Lesson learned from 2018: I don’t think consistency will ever be my thing and I should keep betting just for fun.

Favorite wins 2018: Joachim Silva ML (vs. Gordon), Modafferi ITD (vs. Honchak), Jacare ML (vs. Weidman), Nico Price ML (vs. Brown), O’Malley ML (vs. Souk) and Haqparast ML (vs. Diakiese).

Favorite loss 2018: Hermansson’s comeback against Leites. That was epic!

 

[pytycrys]

Second full year of betting for me. Haven't been so active in here as I am not very fond anymore with the current situation of the forum. Also tried to stay away more of the UFC and focus on Boxing.

First year, 2017, ended with £2000 profits after starting with stakes between 2-5£. I started 2018 hesitant as well, with stakes closer to 10-20£. I built more confidence in my plays especially on long shot odds and live betting. It was an amazing year for me as a student which delivered £33028 profits and I am looking forward to hit the 50K mark in 2019. I managed to pay a deposit for our mortgage just from having fun on Saturday nights and that feels amazing.
Ended up with a ROI over 25% for both Boxing and UFC, but that is a very underestimated as it has included the stakes for freerolls/hedges, hence the figures should be a lot bigger.

My worst play of the year was by far "Not Canelo ITD" vs Rocky Fielding at +250 odds. The play itself was not that bad, it was just my bankroll management on that fight.

Congrats @Sadistics, great results year after year and it certainly is based on your mint bankroll management. Probably the most disciplined and successful person on this forum. You usually get the odds movement perfectly as well, so that surely helps. If you wanna join our discord, it'd be an honor.

Honorable mentions of nice odds and long shot parlays that just missed are in the attachments. Khabib KO/DEC certainly hurt, would have brought 16-17K more to the profits, same with Gokhan Saki. Hehe

 

[Jordan3399]

Guess I'll just start writing and see where this goes. Edit: Damn that ended up longer than expected, had to do way too much coursework recently lol

Overall a good year especially from a learning to bet perspective. I started off way too well and that led to a complete mismanagement of my bankroll for several months but in the latter third I more or less resolved most of this and losses on events became a far less frequent and relatively minor. As a result of this though trying to calculate an accurate unit profit but I calculated my ROI as just under 14% which I was happy with given several utterly terrible cards earlier in the year. Amusingly a lot of my best bets have been on WMMA such Ji Yeon Kim vs Justin Kish at +275, All of Jessica Eyes fights where she was a dog and one of my first best (technically 2017) of Carla Esparza vs Calvillo which I was big on.

I definitely improved the more I utilised this forum and I have to say a thank you for all the solid bettors who have shared their wisdom over the last year.

I need to be more consistently disciplined in my approach and I've been trying to play more favourites and not just underdogs which I avoided a lot before. Mainly after watching Frankie Edgar get finished a long with 20% of my bankroll. Absolutely need to not bet while I'm out of the country as every time I went abroad and did anything more than 1 or 2 plays a card I'd do terrible. UFC 223, 225 and 228 were all when I was travelling distracted and that with close decisions particularly screwed me over on fights such as Wonderboy vs Till and UFC 225 was especially bad with so many dogs coming so close in decisions ultimately failing. I did notice also I do particularly bad on big PPV cards with mediocre to terrible results on every PPV from 221 until 231 where I had a great night. Not sure on exactly why although I expect the bigger build up to these cards gives me too much time to overthink outcomes of fights and ultimately make additional plays I shouldn't. For that reason I'm trying to be more controlled in my betting not being too specific when I should just hit the ML.

Limited betting on other organisations ended up being great with solid returns on the few events I bet with Bellator, PFL and boxing events throughout the year. I hope to continue that this year. For this year I need more disciplined betting and bank roll management as that particularly let me down as I would go on a good streak only to blow a lot of the profit on overconfident plays that fell through. If I can balance that then slowly implement a bigger unit size I should have a great year. My ultimate goal is just to have something to supplement my income as a student and I'm confident that's possible I was just too focused on generating a usable larger bankroll in the short term rather than focusing on long term sustainable growth. In terms of my actual bets betting favourites, Over/Unders and avoiding props in favour of ML's looks like a solid methodology going forward looking at my past trends as I blew a lot on pointless props early on after hitting Emmett KO over Lamas and thinking it was easy money.

In conclusion I'm happy now and confident although I'm wary enough due to past losses that I should be able to generate consistent results without any major setbacks with a more efficient approach reminding myself not to repeat mistakes and what actually has a high success rate.

 

[nebulousned]

My first year betting.

I've had pretty good success betting on head to head but i've had terrible success betting on the method.

I predicted Jones would win by decision vs gus because theyd both been away for so long, both had a lot of decisions in their last 10 fights (50% each), Jones typically finishes by submission if he does finish and he couldn't get Gus down the first time. In hindsight it was a dumb bet because I can't identify holes in Gus' game like Jones can.

 

[bossman071]

Great work everyone, not much of a poster on here but appreciate all your insights. Curious does anyone post plays on Twitter? Only reason I ask is for notifications as sometimes I forget to check the forums here. Would be lot easier and convenience to get a push notification. Just a thought if anyone had any suggestions or handles they would like to share. Thanks again. Heres to 2019!