This is the final write up and verdict on the Bank Builder service.
First, I must apologise for the lack of updates over the last month, this was in part due to the nature of the system meaning that I was very limited in what I could actually say in public about it, and partly due to my being unwell for most of December.
There’s not an awful lot to say about it really, the idea is to bet aggressively on lower priced odds football matches using a set staking plan until you double your starting bank. You then either withdraw all profit & start again, or you can keep some back as a larger starting bank for the next cycle.
When Graham first asked me to take on the review, I told him I expected it to fall over within the first few weeks. But, to my surprise, it actually took off and ran well. The first bank cycle duly doubled up, with 10 straight winning bets.
I was really quite impressed with this first cycle, as they avoided several “Dead Cert” type fixtures that suffered unexpected defeats. I thought that maybe I’d been a bit quick off the mark in giving it the “Pfft” before we got going and that they had some sort of selection criteria that’d help dodge some of the shockers.
Sadly, Cycle 2 proved to be far more in line with my initial fears. The very first bet lost, a recovery period ensued and we’d got back to around 38% profit when the next loss happened. Again, a rebuild started, but this time the losses came more frequently. They used their “Wildcard” which was basically a bank top-up to try and keep it going long enough to ride out flurry of losses.
To be fair, they did use an International Break period to go back over their results & previous models to try and find a reason for the major downturn. They did say they’d identified some factors and they added extra services for members to “try and recoup some of the losses while Bank Builder gets back to normal service.” I did say on an update on here that I hoped people didn’t use them as they seemed rather unwise to me. I certainly wouldn’t change that opinion now.
On 1st December, the decision was made to start Cycle 3 with a new full starting bank and run Cycle 2 in the background using the same selections but sticking to its own staking level using its own (massively reduced) balance. Since then, Cycle 3 has done quite well and is, at the time of writing, just over 75% of the way to its target of doubling through its bank.
I really don’t think I can, or need, to add much more. I’m afraid Bank Builder must be placed in the FAILED section. They may well go on decent recovery run for the next little while as a large part of the problems encountered involved the domestic fixtures of Champions Lge qualified teams. Although it must be kept in mind that a lot of the European leagues will now go on winter break and, no doubt, the restart will throw up a few dodgy results as team get back into the swing of things. But, that’s speculation, what is hard fact is that we haven’t made any actual profit yet, and what we did make wasn’t made with anywhere near the the confidence needed to recommend taking this further forward. IF Cycle 3 lands its next couple of bets and completes its target of doubling up the starting bank, we’ll show roughly £500 profit (before membership fees) based on the £1000 starting bank model. That’s £1000 profit for Cycle 1, £1000 for Cycle 3 and a £1500 loss on Cycle 2. IF Cycle 3 suffers a loss in any of its next few bets, it’ll knock us back a fair bit and we’ll have to rebuild that again Not something I’m willing to put my name to after 5 months of testing.
You can try Bank Builder HERE
