winningracingtips

Dear Members,
Firstly I’d like to thank you all for your continued support this year, it has been an up and down year but overall a profitable one and one in which I feel I have learned a lot. 2009 will see the 3rd birthday for Winning Racing Tips and I hope will see the service grow further both in terms of profitability and stature.
Each Way Tips
In terms of profits a return as things stand of just over 20 pts represents over 50% bank growth. This means someone operating a £2000 bank would have made around £1000 before costs and someone using £4000 around £2000. This is pretty good when compared to any other form of investing but I aspire to greater things than this performance especially given the previous years performance. Although it should be noted that my staking is undoubtedly more conservative now than when I started out. Bank preservation is always at the forefront of my mind and it must not be forgotten that many tipster services will have ceased to exist this year and afforded punters lots of hard earned, therefore any profit at all in this game is not to be frowned upon. That said I don’t think it is unreasonable to hope for the bank to be doubled over the course of 12 months with these selections, and that doubling of the bank is at the back of mind throughout the year as a target. Looking in closer detail at the results this year and it is easy to point a finger at March as the disaster area. I was very surprised by results at the time which saw the worst month since November 06 when the service was still in its infancy. It is possible that I jumped on too many opportunities in March and that is something I hope I have learned from. There on in apart from a sticky patch in June and July results were actually OK. It must also be noted that we “hit the bar” on at least two occasions with our each way doubles, twice we had a winner and 2nd placed horse. On the 14th August Sunny Future got beaten by 11/1 shot Such Optimism and foiled what would have been a 43/1 double and a return of around 15pts. So all in all things are looking up and not that far off where I’d like them to be. And most importantly the Each Way bets continue to provide a low risk opportunity for very good long term bank growth.

Lay Tips (April - Nov only)
I introduced these this year as I had already decided to bet my own cash on these simple system lays.
The proofed results show a small profit which is encouraging, but perhaps more significant was the odds that produced the best returns.
As I used the principle of 1pt per lay rather than 1pt liability this resulted in results that were perhaps worse than they should have been.
To explain: We made a profit of 4.74 pts (1.46% ROI) laying each for 1pt without taking into account liability. If you had used 1pt liability for each bet this would have been 13.71pts (6% ROI) - Quite a jump. So it is fairly safe to assume that the staking was wrong.
Secondly there was an obvious pattern that showed that the majority of profits were from the shorter priced lays. i.e. the shorter the price the higher the ROI.
To explain, all selections: MAX SP 2/1 produced 228 sels, 13.71 pts profit with an ROI of 6%.
Cut them down to selections with a MAX SP of 7/4 and you get: 184 sels, 14.5pts profit, 7.9% ROI.
At 6/4: 145, 11.34, 7.8%.
and 5/4: 122, 12.21, 10.9%
Evens: 85, 9.77, 11.5%
4/5: 62, 13.06, 21%.

There is an obvious bias of profits and the short end of the range. This is something that I think needs taking into consideration for 2009. However we must bear in mind that this is a small sample and that overall the 2/1 system is profitable and provides the most selections. Also, that we used SP not Betfair SP for this analysis. For 2009 I plan to give out all the possible selections as per 2008 but will be recommending liability staking and taking prices as close to the off as possible. The reason for taking prices close to the off rather than whenever it is low enough is because there seemed to be many occasions when I had layed a horse at 3.0 only for it to go off much shorter.
Where you set the cut off point for laying is up to you, I am thinking of using 2.75 rather than the 3.0 of last season. Certainly the absolute max must be 3.0 however there may be better returns for those that only play the very short ones. I will give you my official recommendation come April. (As a side note I am interested in hearing from anyone who knows the best software to lay these. The parameter needs to be as an example: if under 2.75, 2mins to off then lay to “X” liability.)

Bonus Bets
The 1000 pt bank for the bonus bets stands at 693 now which is pretty poor to be frank. That said I did only start recording these properly in March and I know there was significant profit prior to then. Overall I plan to be avoiding the more obvious bets and being more selective with these.

It’s been a while since my last post and a lot has been gong on with the service. Generally speaking the Each Way Value selections have been making hay whilst the Lay selections have suffered from a poor run of results over the last couple of months.
I have just updated the results spreadsheet which you can download from the performance page on the website and before I go any further I want to let you know about a couple of changes I will be making in that respect. Firstly the fastrack plans spreadsheet I have been using for over two years is very long winded to complete and whats more only shows results to SP. I will introduce a new tab with the each way selections on from next month which will be easier to read and will include results to advised prices and show the odds taken. This will coincide with a general move away from showing results at SP to showing results at advised prices. I can appreciate that some people may see this as an attempt to massage results so I want to make it clear as to the reasons for this: Tipster services generally will not make any profits to SP over the long term as eventually any egde that they did have over the bookies will be swallowed up by overbet selections and reduced SPs, the fact that my service has made money at SP and continues to do so is for the most part down to the fact that we take advantage of “overbroke” place markets. However the bookies have changed the way they calculate SPs since I started the service, they now use a sample of on course bookmakers that offer each way terms as oppose to “win only” which is often offered in the markets we bet in. Without going into too much technical details this was always going to have a detrimental effect on the SP from out point of view. In any case betting at an “SP” which as we know often turns out way different to what we expected is a very amateurish way of betting, I do not know anyone who sets out to bet this way. So it is about time that we switched focus to the ACTUAL profits that are available following the tips, which are profits to the advised prices that I myself take and make sure are available to all members at the time of the message. Results to SP will still be available and will of course continue to serve as a useful barometer.
Ok, back to the actual performance. I was very happy with August and September on the each ways, these two months alone have put us back on track for a half decent year after a poor 1st half. Having said that the luck has not always been on our side recently as without the late withdrawal of a 200/1 shot Bathwick Man would have returned our 0.8 e/w bet on the 12th of Sept as it finished 3rd of the new 7 runner field. October has had an annoying start with 3 straight 4th places.
Before I talk about the system lays it is important to remember that they are still in their infancy. A couple of hundred selections compared to around 900 for the each ways. So we are still learning about how they are likely to perform long term.
After a very promising start to this (flat) season the results turned the other way quite sharply and it is looking more like a break even situation for the system over the course of the whole season (April-Nov). Analysing the results though confirmed a couple of interesting observations of mine. The major point of note is that there seems to be a real stacking of profits at the shorter end of the odds range, the principle of the system is that the shorter they are the better value they are and the results bears this theory out. In fact if we had only layed the 5/4 shots and under we’d be looking at an ROI of around 17% - virtually unheard of when laying short priced favourites. Having had a quick look at last years results that I recorded, this seems to have been the case last year as well. The second is the bias of profits at the start of the season, which has been very noticeable this season but is contrasted by a smooth growth throughout the whole of last season. So I’ll have another look at the end of this month, but overall it seems that we may be better off reducing the bets and laying at lower odds next year. The last thing I want to say about the lays is with regards to the staking, I think overall the theory of laying each horse to the same amount is not good, it makes things perhaps straightforward on paper but in actuality laying to level stakes means the same liability NOT the same lay stake. With that in mind I think the advised staking will also have to be amended next season to give a much more smoother ride.
On the whole the service is strong and the last couple of months have proved that there is still plenty of each way steals out there!
I hope to get this Blog replaced with an AD FREE version soon as the ads weren’t part of the deal when I signed up for it!

And lastly look out for a very special membership deal which I’ll be offering to a very small number of members/ex-members soon.

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.

The database part of the site is still down but should be back within the next 24hrs I hope. It seems I’ve been targeted by a hacker who has nothing better than to mess up other peoples businesses. Unfortunately although protected by a secure code and several steps within the script this means that potentially the information you have provided me (such as your email address, payment history, name) could be used by someone for unscrupulous purposes. If you have received any Tipster Spam since Friday that you think could be related to this then I apologise and invite you to forward this to me as it may provide clues as to who the perpretator is, although the chances of finding out who is responsible are very remote.

Todays info:
4.30 Leicester 6. Mushtaaq 0.8pt e/w (4/1 Ladbrokes/Bluesquare/VCBet)
Likely bet in the evening racing to follow.

I have just finished updating the website and spreadsheet for the past month of October, a task I don’t find exciting at the best of times but it can be damn right painful when the results have been poor - And they have. It does help to reflect on past performance though which can help highlight any mistakes and show where things went wrong. I know that that some of the races we have bet in we have just had rotten luck, such as when Pertinent fell when in contention and booked for a place on the 13th of Oct. However luck evens out over time and therefore we must take the rough with the smooth. What the results clearly show is 6 “near misses” which finished 4th (I hate 4th) and also 4 “off the bar” 2nd places, if just one these had won the results would be a whole lot better. But perhaps the most eye-catching figure is the recent success percentage, that is the percentage of horses that place or win, this has dropped right off and for October was a mere 17%. Quite simply this is not good enough, and I’ll be looking very hard at getting this back to normal in the immediate future. This doesn’t mean that I will be making a knee-jerk reaction and changing my approach, I know my approach is sound. It may mean dealing with certain races differently though, as I feel the problem has stemmed from races in which there is a decent horse for us on paper but where there are simply too many others also with place possibilities. This may or may not mean fewer selections over the coming weeks; I cannot predict what races I will be looking at. I am happy that my membership has now “matured” to the stage where most of my members can accept that losing periods are unavoidable, and would like to thank all of you for having faith. As usual I cannot say when the next winner will be but only that I remain focused and confident of future profits.

As a side note, the weather which had played a big part in messing up the summer racing with all the rain, is now not playing ball at the time of year it should be raining! This has meant the horses that prefer cut in the ground haven’t been out yet and resulted in small fields and fewer opportunities for us. We all know it will rain though so no worries there!

On to other news, we have picked a nice couple of winners the last couple of weekends with the additional sports recommendations with both the Boxing bets on Joe Calzaghe and David Haye winning impressively. My other horse racing interest - the short priced place selections, have been ticking along since the last update in September without making any massive gains, the profits have been up and down but are currently over £1000 up since I started them. I’m still quite excited about the longer term potential of them and will be looking to evaluate them at the turn of the year. If you wan to follow them you can do so via the forum thread in which I post them (see my previous Blog post).

I will have some other betting systems updates for you soon but enough of my ramblings for now!

Oh dear. I’m sure everyone has weeks they wish hadn’t happened and the last week was one of them, from a betting and perspective and as an England fan. If I’d stayed in the peat bog at Woodbury common last Sunday instead of dragging myself through it, maybe I’d have avoided the miserable week’s work that was to follow. The horse racing results have been very unkind, leaving the results for October looking like someone has taken an axe and hacked into the profit graph. Whilst I know this will turn around in time and that the overall results are massively in our favour, a run of this kind always bothers me. The triple calamity of England’s footballers being virtually knocked out of Euro 2008, the England Rugby Hero’s narrowly missing out in the World Cup Final, and then the final straw last night which saw Lewis Hamilton fluffing his lines on his big day has hardly helped to lift spirits. Being an Aston Villa fan I expect to get salt rubbed into my wounds which happened on Saturday when we were thrashed by Man Utd in a game that I lost another £150 as I layed “over 4.5 goals”.
That last bet just about sums up the week when even collecting on South Africa at 13/2 has felt like a kick in the cojones.

I mentioned a couple of times over the last few weeks that I was looking into a new way of making betting profits and that I was putting myself on trial to see if this new approach had any legs. I have been very happy with the results that I have achieved so far and with that in mind I’m happy to share more details including the future selections with you. Please forgive me for not giving out any of the tips so far to you that no doubt would have made you some good money but I didn’t know for sure that the results would be good. I must stress that this is still in the early stages for me and I do not want it to distract from my main each way service which is performing so well. The approach is basically looking for things that I think “will happen” i.e a strong favourite to finish in the first three, and backing them at odds that still provide good enough returns (via the Betfair Place market). I often come across such bets whilst I’m going through the cards looking for my each way bets.

Ok, so here are the all important figures so far: 52 selections 50 winners. 7.83pts to level stakes profit. £942 profit from a £400 bank using my staking plan.

You can see all of the past results and a full explanation on this thread:
(I deliberately chose this board as I wanted it to be kept low key)

http://www.racing-systems.co.uk/cgi-bin/boardp//discussion.pl?forum=2&discussion=4974

If this continues to go well I do plan to set up a separate service selling the tips although this wont be until many more results have been proofed. In the meantime if any of you want to follow the selections then you can do so via the above thread, however I make no guarantees with regards to performance and I would suggest that you start small and certainly do not use your each way betting funds. Since the selections are mostly quite “liquidity sensitive” I only expect to sustain about a quarter of the current membership size of Winning Racing Tips to allow people to get on. So please be aware that this will not be a large scale opportunity and if people start backing these before I set up a membership site the prices might not be attainable.

August has been well and truly a strange month in terms of results for my service. Just when it appeared that we were coming out of a losing run the selection on Thursday Danish Blues stood rooted to the spot in the stalls and that it appeared lady luck had frowned upon us once again as the 1pt selection went down without even running in the race. But how quickly that loss was forgotten today as two of the three selections came in to record one of the best days the service has seen. The day started with the first selection Cow Girl coming in a comfortable third and returning stakes for most and giving a small profit at SP. This was a race that highlighted the importance of the third place payout as the top three in the market were always going to be the only horses to contest the finish. The 2nd selection of the day was a newcomer Perfect Stride which was a little bit of a speculative selection and hence only a 0.5pt bet at 5/1, everything looked right about this horse and the favourite looked over rated but I always like to exercise caution when the animal hasn’t raced. Misplaced caution in this instance though as the horse looked to live up to its big sales price and sneaked in by what on most TV’s was less than a pixel! With the last selection of the day (Demolition) I had a small suspicion that the general view of the form on show was off the mark and really liked the early 16/1 on offer. Demolition really completed the job nicely for us as it turned over the 4/11 favourite, the only negative being the rather shameful 8/1 that was returned at SP. I hope that most members got on at 16/1 though which was available with at least 4 separate bookies at lunchtime. Today has given the overall results for the month a big boost and although I’ve yet to tidy them all up I’m pretty sure that most members will have recorded profit once again, which I’m quite happy about given the losing run sustained. It also goes to show that there is no way I, or anyone else, can predict or deliver results that sit in neat and tidy order with regular winners. It just has to be accepted that over the course of hundreds of selections we are generally well in front.

The third maximum stake bet of the month Alhabeeb came in yesterday at 6/1 (5/1 advised) to record a much needed 1st win of the month. This race was notable for the market which was amazingly in favour of the each way bet on Alhabeeb. According to the market (and my analysis) there were only three horses that could win, the rest of the horses were priced at 250 or over on Betfair! This effectively made any of the top three “bankers” to place and at a nice each way friendly 5/1 Alhabeeb was a a prefect example of an “Each Way Steal”. The place price on Betfair was down as low as 1.26 on Betfair, and whilst the win price drifted to 12.0, this was more likely due to people laying off the win part of their each way bet in order to maximise their place profit as described in the Value Horse Method rather than an accurate reflection of its win chances, as I thought this was the case I added to my each way bet with a small additional win bet!

Today’s horse Magical Wonderland went on to win its race, but will not be included in my results as the withdrawal of the race favourite made our horse the new favourite with an SP of 7/4 - not a feasible each way price. Congratulations if you let your bet ride rather than lay off and won on the race! In this instance it is not the end of the world if you let your bet stand as the selection is likely to have better win chances anyway without the favourite running so the Rule 4 imposed would simply reflect the new chances, the only problem would have been if the runners had been reduced below 8, but that is another issue which I’ve already covered.

Often I get asked about the problems non runners can cause us with regard to each way betting.
The problem is when a race gets reduced from 8 or more runners to less than 8 the bookmakers then change the place terms to 1/4 the odds for places 1-2. This 3rd place is often critical to us as often there are 2 or 3 horses that are likely to contest the race. So what can we do? Well firstly I would advise leaving it as long as possible before placing an each way bet in a race with 8 runners, this may often mean missing an early price but it is better to know what terms you are betting on. The factors that may bring on more non runners than usual are factors such as poor weather or ground that is already soft or heavy. Be particularly careful under these conditions as even 10 or 12 runner races can sometimes be reduced to below 8 if there is unsuitable ground.
Generally speaking this non runner issue doesn’t come in to play very often but it is something all members need to be aware of. With regards to reversing a bet already placed, you do have the option of laying off with Betfair however this can create further problems as the Betfair place market does not change with Non Runners, therefore I think this is best left to those with experience in making these calculations.

The poor run we are on is dragging on but I am determined to turn this around. To be clear about this though, this may take weeks, it may take months, to me the most important thing will always be the long term outcome.