Keeping track of bets

[David Says...]

When I started matched betted I diligently logged bets on the Ultimatcher spreadsheet. The reports that Ultimatcher generated were impressive but didn’t really make a difference to what I did.

As time went on, I found it far too faffy – I was spending longer logging bets than placing them! At busy times such as during Chelts there’s no chance that I could keep up with logging bets that way.

OddsMonkey has a useful ‘bet logger’, and presumably PA has something similar (where one leads the other follows, it seems). However, whilst it helps track profit, it doesn’t help with day-to-day tracking of free bets which need redeeming and multi-step qualifying offer tracking.

And as good as some of the Acca tracker tools and offer spreadsheets are, I’d need a spreadsheet to keep track of the spreadsheets!

Because of this I tend to track best in a paper notebook. It doesn’t have the fancy reports or auto-calculations, but is as flexible as I want it – and I can clearly mark free bets that I need to use.

How do you log your bets? Is there a better way that I’m missing?

 

[jkg-jkg]

Ultimatcher is the best I have found for me. To make logging a bit quicker you can rename the various sheets in the Control tab and set them up for each exchange. I have tabs for Smarkets, Matchbook and Betfair and one for Mug Bets so that I just go to the right tab when I am placing that sort of bet. You can also assign common fill settings to 4 buttons (e.g. a £10 bet @ PP @ Matchbook) and clicking that button will fill in the info for you. I can usually log a bet in 10s or so so I don't find it too much of an overhead

 

[David Says...]

I do see the power of Ultimatcher and it's a very impressive bit of Excel design and coding. I just find it a bit irksome for what it does well, and missing in other areas. It doesn't quite fit my workflow, hence looking further afield.

 

[geebobuk]

I use an exercise book to log all my activity. I also use three spreadsheets, two basic ones I have created from scratch in Excel, one which records all activities (basically an online version of the exercise book), one which is a summary by bookmaker showing total deposits, withdrawals & current balances - this should balance with the previously mentioned spreadsheet - then I also use a spreadsheet I found online called Automatcher where I record all outstanding bets, just to make sure I don't miss anything.

Hope that helps