September 2026: How we turned it around

September finished 14.71 units down from 117 picks, minus 12.6 per cent. It is the worst month this system has had in a long time, and you deserve a proper account of it rather than a shrug.

What went wrong. The new European seasons changed the market faster than the system adjusted. Teams had new squads and very little recent form, and the bookmakers priced those games tightly. Two things kept happening. Favourites on the minus one line won by a single goal, so the stake only came back. Seventeen stakes came back this month, most of them that way. And the bigger prices simply stopped landing. Bets at 2.00 or more lost 16.71 units from 54 picks. Everything below 2.00 was in profit.

From the running high of 454.4 units on 26 August the total fell to 424.8 on 26 September, a drop of 29.6 units. That is the deepest fall in the system's history and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The low itself came two days into the new card, as the first couple of slips under the new rules lost.

What we changed. On the 9th a stricter set of rules went live that cut the pool of systems allowed to bet from around two and a half thousand to around three hundred. It helped, but it was not enough on its own, and the 20th was the worst Sunday of the year. So I stopped sending cards for three days and rebuilt the selection from the ground up.

From the 24th there has been one card instead of two lanes, with no more than two picks Monday to Thursday and three on Fridays and weekends. Leagues coming back from a break lean harder on the most recent results for their first two months. No pick goes out without a real price to take. Stakes went up to 2 units because each pick now has to earn its place.

How it has gone since. From the 24th to today the new card has sent 23 picks and 17 of them have won or returned the stake, for +4.03 units at level stakes. Saturday's three from three in the Czech lower leagues was the best day since the change. The running total is back to 432.1, 7.3 units above the low.

It is early and 23 bets prove nothing on their own. But the card is smaller, the prices are more sensible and the losses that defined September, the one goal favourites and the long shots, have mostly gone. Into October.

David