The country is currently sliding into recession, the cost of everything is going up.
I don't have a mortgage or own a property, and have no chance of getting a mortgage in the next 8 years (my credit is fine, but the interest rates and desposit requirements are stupidly high).
Property prices are starting to fall, and I would expect them to bottom out in about 18 months time, the perfect time to buy a house with cash.

I was thinking about saving up £1,000, and putting on a series of bets to try and win a house. Putting it on 10 winning 4/6 shots would turn it into £165,000, which would get about 3/4 of a 1 bedroom house where I currently live.
It wouldn't be in one bet, but even if I could pick out one absolute stonking standout every fortnight, in 20 weeks that would be enough time for 10 bets. I'm not suggesting it will come up, the chance of 10 consecutive 4/6 shots coming up is limited, but with selective picking it can be done.

Is it a worthwhile investment to effectively write off £1,000 to give myself the best chance of buying a house, or continuing to save up pointlessly for a house that I'll never be able to afford to buy?

Let us know how you get on.

Vital piece of information missing - how long will it take you to save up £1000?

A couple of months tops.

Edit; just done a bit of quick maths. On the basis that I can save up £500 a month, and a house costs £210,000, and a 25% deposit is required, and the interest rate is 6%, it would take me 8 years 9 months to save up the deposit, and over the 25 years of the mortgage I would pay £299,100 for a £157,500 mortgage. The mortgage would be £997 a month too. That's in real terms as of today, not accounting for inflation.

Surely the risk of £1,000 as a one-off go to get a house is better than saving it, which would only get me a house 2 months quicker than if I hadn't saved it, saving up for nearly 9 years to get the deposit, then paying over £140,000 in interest over the next 25 years.

Right - here's the plan - save for 18 months and you will have £9000 - put this on a 5-fold with average odds of 4/6 and you will have well over £100k.

Stick the lot on a 1/2 shot and voila £160k.

Nearly halfed the risk.



PS 10% commission applies.

You can stay in the granny flat at the bottom of the garden then.

ive got a grand saved up hmmm...i like stupid ideas

risky as how many 4/6 shots have you seen going down!!

however i say go for it and want an invite to your house warming

So long as you have the house in time for the Olympics, you've got a deal.

Excellent - send the grand to me and I'll send you as many stupid ideas as you like.

I am doing this with a tenner starting this weekend, but trying it on doubles that come out at around evens. however, i have a cut off point - if i get four in a row then i will split the money into three and start over.

Going through with your idea is good in theory, but how long would your bottle last? Also, if you could save 500 quid a month to start this off then why not just try it out with £500 and see how things go rather than waiting a month? It is maybe the best time to start this with the champions league just now, as it gives you two chances to pick out at least one each week.

As mentioned, it is a bit of a daft idea. It could work to a degree, and then most individuals would either get greedy, make a bad judgement, or just decide to lump a large sum on a short price just for the sake of it, and we all know what happens to a short priced banker. You will have to be very disciplined.

Good luck if you decide to go through with it.

Good feedback, gave me a few things to think about.

Exactly. If I had 9 successful 4/6 winners I would end up with £98,000 on the final selection, which would have to be betfaired as I wouldn't get it on at a convential bookies. Imagine watching Jeff Stelling talking about a random game that you happen to have £98,000 on? I would have to go to the game if it ever came to that.

That would then require 12 successful bets, which statistically is much less likely than waiting a month then going for 10 consecutive bets. I reckon 10 bets is the maximum you can do whilst retaining any realistic chance of it coming up.

Absolutely. That's why the premise is a quick get in, 10 bets over a few months, get out mentality, whenever I have had a big bank I have been able to keep it going for 6 months tops before I lose discipline.

i say go for it, it would be ace to say i won this house.

could you really put £98,000 on 1 bet or would you shit yourself( i would thats for sure)

BTW i to would like to come to the housewarming if you win

I could put £98,000 on a match if it was part of the plan, I probably wouldn't sleep the night before but I could definitely do it.

You can all come to the housewarming if it happens. It shall be a themed casino night

Obviously, the main idea would be when push comes to shove and you have 40,000 maybe (if you're lucky), after increasing your money to 40x it's original amount can you really stake all that on a bet that could turn out to be lost so easily to any number of factors, howlers, off days, red cards etc? I think chasing 160x your stake unit is very dodgy, but obviously you understand the inherent risk of it all. I'd probably think breaking it down and doing it over a lengthier period of time might be more sustainable, you'll win some lose some but hopefully your losses would be one or two thousand, not 60 or 80.

It sounds like an amazing way to get a house

You obviously understand Gambling more than me - and most others on here - but I'd say it's a bit risky and I would only try it with money I could afford to lose.

Would be a good story to tell folk you won your house though.

You could always try a roulette system - easy money so I hear

so are you going to go for it then ?

Yes, but not for a while. I'm paper-trading it first just to see how it goes.

Would people have failed to notice is that its a mind thing. You might be staking 98k on a game but if you convince yourself that thats not real money you have (ie the only real money you have ever seen is your starting stake) you might be able to do it !

Yeah, I'd be aware that it was real money, but the loss would only be £1000, as that was what was invested when the rules were drawn up. Anyway, £98,000 isn't enough to buy even half a house so what's the point??

Never thought about just winning your downpayment and getting a mortgage

From near the top of the thread, getting a mortgage would involve paying £140,000 of interest over 25 years, I'd rather pay cash thanks.

After each successful bet would you withdraw £1000 just incase it went tits up, you'd at least have your initial stake left plus an extra grand for every week of betting!

Fucking hell, that would be immense if you could hold your nerve, especially staking the final £98K, I remember, years ago, starting with £20 and placing single bets each week. my nerve cracked when I reached £80 odd!

Why not do enough to get the mortgage but then set yourself a target of winning enough each month to say make an overpayment of at least double the mortgage amount?

Or get an offset mortgage and keep all your winnings in the account that offsets the interest on it?

Just a couple of different ideas.

First time I've seen this, but thought I'd have a look as you mentioned it to me earlier.

If you did this and lost one of the final couple of bets, you'd probably be suicidal for years afterwards! I would bank a percentage of the winnings after each bet to give yourself some consolation if one of the later bets went wrong. However much you tell yourself that you'd only lost the initial £1000, once you had the £98,000 or whatever and bet it and it lost, you'd still have lost £98,000 and it would be hard to get out of your head.

Like I was saying earlier though, if you want to build up a large amount of money quickly to bet with, you'd need to either get very lucky or take large risks. This would require doing both.

I appreciate it's a long shot, and in paper trading it I've done alright without managing 10 in a row, but I was thinking about refining it so that after 2 bets, £1000 is taken out of the pot, and if it goes wrong after that I start again with my £1000.
As long as I can get the first two bets correct I won't bankrupt the scheme, as you say it makes sense to take out some money after each bet, the trade off of that is that I need a longer sequence of consecutive wins to get to my target.

In your paper-trading (which I presme is a test run?) how many bets have you made so far mid-table?

Or have you been making your bets with 'real' money?

Paper trading is purely fictional, but under the same test conditions as if it were for real.
I've had 6 bets over the last 12 weeks or so, the only one that went down was Rotherham losing at home to Barnet.
I'm more pleased with the bets I haven't put on that would have been easy to place without being 100% confident.

I spent a bit of time refining a staking strategy today based on various comments.

Get it all on and stop being a pussy. That is all.

One thing I would say is that if you're going to do this, going with two-outcome events might be better in some respects, mainly due to the tighter margins being offered - you can usually get close to 100% books by shopping around which isn't always the case for football matches, particularly in the lower leagues. You'd also have trouble getting £9,800 on Rotherham to beat anyone at anything like a good price, let alone £98,000.

You know my opinion on NBA basketball for example in the second half of the season, tennis is also a good betting sport. I've placed far, far larger bets on the NBA and tennis than I ever have (or would do) on an individual football match. Football Asian Handicaps usually have tighter margins and higher limits than match odds markets as well of course.

I've revised the staking of this based on feedback, it's attached in a .zip file (it always annoys me that you can't upload Excel files on here, but zip them and they're fine )

Click to view attachment

If you can follow Excel formula then it should make sense, pretty much a % of returns after each bet are banked, after getting past the initial dodgy spell if a bet is a loser then you go back 3 bets in the process. So if you can get at least 3 winners before every loser, in theory you will eventually make it to the holy grail.
I know I shouldn't be fixated by the price of the selections, but for this example I have used 4/6 (it displays at 1.67 but is the 5/3 value)
I have calculated the value in cell J2 myself, but there has to be a formula that will do this for me, as there is a direct correlation between the values right the way through the process, if anyone can come up with the correct formula I'll buy you a pint. I spent a few minutes trying to calculate it but it got too cconfusing.

If anyone spots anything that doesn't quite add up (don't think there is anything) please let me know.

hey mid-table, i've got an alternative solution, why dont instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, try sticking on four or five singles instead. I know this would take alot longer but the chances are you would at worst be able to take 3 out of 5 single bets easily out of the bookies. I've only been sticking on five trebles on at the weekends and i ve still to come out of a weekend without being in profit(maybe am due one but if it keeps working why stop). Also got one of my mates at work trying for the first time last week and he came out in profit. I know it's alot different from sticking on a fiver compared to £1,000 on one, but i think it's a idea that has paid off for me in recent weeks.

I don't understand, all of the bets in my example are singles. Give me an example of the bets have been placing, I didn't quite get it from what you said.

In all seriousness, I think you should carry out this idea using NBA short-priced favourites. You'd need a lot more winners to reach your target, but as I've told you before it is a very easy way to make money if you're careful with your selections.

example.

single 1 4/6
single 2 4/6
single 3 4/6
single 4 4/6
single 5 4/6

it's slower i know but at least you re not putting all you re eggs in the one basket.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do, we're on the same page here.

Assuming I've read the original post correctly, you are going to do one 4/6 result per week, whereas I think (I may be wrong, mind) the jambo-rocker is suggesting you split your stake over 4 or 5 games instead.

Example, in week one, instead of betting £1000 on one 4/6 shot, you do 5 different 4/6 shots at £200 instead.

Or I might have gotten that totally arse over tit.

Ah, get you now, thanks for the clarification.

I'm not keen on backing lots of teams, more teams that are backed the greater than chance of it going wrong, even in singles. I could end up treading water for months on end, under my proposal in theory the same could happen, but the stalemate would be broken one way or another a lot quicker.

So are you going to do this or not then? Bite the bullet man!

I'm actually starting it with a friend, we have chucked in £100 each, he is happy to let me have overall control of the selections, and are going to try it for a couple of months.
I still intend to go for the full bifta version, need to pay off a couple of things first.

Good luck with it.

After reading the thread a few eeks ago it crossed my mind to do the same but with a smaller amount and aim for a new car.

I have my student loan from last year (didn't get one this year) sitting untouched in the bank.

So was thinking take a percentage of that. Say £100/£200 and work my way up to be able to afford a car.

It is something I may do in future so would like to know how you progress.

p.s. If you read this Cowden Til I die, I know you will be thinking of something to say but let me first say piss off.

Has anyone managed to crack the formula that should be in cell J2 of my spreadsheet?
The reward is up to 2 pints now.

Edited because i made a simple mistake, ignore me

I thought i had it but im pence out.

Right =(((E2-C2)*0.33)/E2)*100

E2-C2 = 666.67
*.33 because it is the inverse of 1.67
and divide by E2 and times by 100 to make it into a percentage

i ll say it on behalf of him then

will never work you crazy fool

Write in words what you want it to calculate and I'll have a go.

I just received a very interesting email on a similar theme:


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TaiKai is the ulimate platform for displaying your expertise on sport and betting, while competing against worthy opponents. The tournament will allow you to predict outcomes for a range of events in sports like Football, Rugby Union & Rugby League, Boxing, Darts, Tennis Snooker and NFL.



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You're welcome to have a go in my place mid-table if you send me the entry fee (assuming they haven't invited you of course). I'm not sure whether to give it a go at the moment or not.

Hahaha you'd have to take valium just to get through the first game!!

That systems seems not to bad to me.

But i wouldn't be too keen on having to wait till the fourth bet before you would be safe if you lost.

I would put all profit from the first two bets into the bank, so you would have £1333.37 safe.

Thereafter i would go with putting your 13.22% into the bank.

I would also have a max bet of say £60k. So if that one came in you'd have £100k(if your staying with 4/6 odds) and thereafter that you'd be gambling with profit(near enough lol) and have the return on each bet of £100k. This way you wouldn't lose everything if you lost a bet.