winningracingtips

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the system lays that I’ve been giving out since April this year have really been bringing home the bacon so far this season. As you will no doubt know one of the stipulations, and indeed a core part of the system is to only lay selections up to a maximum of 3.0 or 2/1 in traditional odds. As people will lay their bets at different times and the Betfair markets can fluctuate dramatically during the course of a day this can lead to different results being achieved by different people following the lays. With this in mind the proofed (to Racing Index) selections have the simple stipulation that the industry SP must be 2/1 or under. This gives a fairly accurate account of what would and wouldn’t have been traded. In actuality though I am pleased to report that I have achieved results superior to the proofed results, this could be because I only lay upto 3.0 on the exchange whereas the proofed results would take the Betfair starting price for a 2/1 shot, which has been as high 3.65 on one occasion. It’s interesting to note that for all of the horses that have an SP of exactly 2/1 I have been matched on all of them at or below 3.0 on Betfair. This indicates a general trend for these horses drifting, which brings me on to the next point - Trading out of drifters. There have been at least 4 occasions this season when I have thought it prudent to trade out of a position before the start of a race due to a massive drift in price. As an example most recently Derbass won at 2/1 on the 25th July. I laid this horse for £53.00 at 2.36 around midday. However before the start of the race it was available to back as high as 3.65 which was the cue for me to “close”. Generally speaking I will choose to lose my liability on a horse if I can get out whilst still keeping about 50% of the original profit on the horse losing. In this example that was something I was able to do by backing at 3.65 with £27 which meant a 40p loss if the horse won and a £26 profit(less comm.) if it didn’t. In this case the strategy saved me around £72.
Another point to consider in order to maximise your profit and use your betting funds most effectively is the staking. They lays are proofed to £50 a lay which is fine for proofing purposes as it gives a standardized look to the results. In practice though I am almost certain it is not the best strategy. I personally have found that working from a base of £1000, £80 is an acceptable level for the maximum liability, which means most of the horses end up being laid for £40 to £80. I do however “bend” this rule when I come across a very short priced horse, I have generally drawn the line at a maximum lay stake of £100, this keeps my losses small when the very short ones win, which they often do of course, and I’m sure it gives some more stability to the bank. This does have a flip side though and we saw a good example of this today when the system threw up Prime Mood which went and got beat at 1/7 (ouch!). I made a nice £100 on this but it is worth bearing in mind that a fixed liability of £80 would have collected a sum in the region of £500 from the unfortunate backer! I will stick to the above staking method though as I am of the opinion that this will allow for a smoother growth curve over the long term.

The stats and graphs for the lays are now included in the results spreadsheet which you can download from the performance page at winningracingtips.co.uk.

Its been an interesting first half to the year, but profit wise one to forget - at least on the each way front. I haven’t yet done the full figures but I think we are going to be looking at a break even or marginal profit situation to advised stakes/odds. This is far from the worst case scenario though and the most important thing will always be to keep the betting bank intact, awaiting periods of greater profitability during these lean spells.

For those of you who are yet to start making money from the lays this year the performance so far makes pretty good reading. You can see the proofed results at Racing Index and when you compare all lay tipsters since 1/4/08 (when the system started) these selections come out top of the pile! - From around 80 services. It is possible that we have already had the majority of this years profits out of this system so don’t get too carried away with stakes, but with last years data and now with this season almost sure to end with big profits things are looking good for this system. I have been working on a base of 8% liability per bet and although this is certainly not a low risk staking strategy it has effectively doubled my starting bank since April.

Whilst browsing the Racing Index results I decided to look at the real LONG TERM results of the backing tipsters and this was sobering to say the least. When all tipsters are compared over the maximum time span, which without going into archived results means 01/01/07 - to date, winningracaingtipsew is one of only three tipsters that have been able to make a profit at SP and that have proofed over the entire period. It just goes to show how difficult LONG TERM performance is to sustain. WRT was top of the Racing Index tables for a large part of last year, and whilst I doubt this will ever happen again, (due to the results now being graded on Betfair performance, which is the not where wrt bets should be placed) I remain confident that the service remains one of the best out there, especially when advised prices are taken into account.