This month in the labs we have had four tests going on. They are the Lay%, Place Bot, Spreadtrade and UKHorseracing.tv.

They are at various stages of progress and refinement and below you will find notes and updates on each.

Lay %. You will recall that this is a Grey Horse Bot strategy that tries to lay all favourites at a price a small percentage better than the Betfair starting price. We have had some interruption to the test when I had problems with my GHB install but we managed to bet on 27 days since my last update but have lost 6.9 points.

This article is a Betting School Insiders Club member only article, members can read on by clicking here.

To join the Betting School Insiders Club, Click Here.

Back Tipster

You will remember from the January issue that Back Tipster is a service that is totally automated, although it is not something of my making I decided to include it in this column as it is totally automated.

To recap the service provides selections that are to be bet to a staking plan. The user supplies their Betfair credentials to the website and all bets are placed for the user without any further input required, other than to check what profit has been made. Or as it turns out to check what loss has been made.

I wanted to give this a long trial because I liked the concept so much but I have now seen enough and lost enough to know that this is not a product I want to be using. The chart below shows how the near 50 point loss was achieved.

This article is a Betting School Insiders Club member only article, members can read on by clicking here.

To join the Betting School Insiders Club, Click Here.

In this issue I’d like to talk a bit about using the ladder stakes feature. This has been a staple option for quite some time now however with some of the recent updates in the version 3 cluster it can be used in quite an interesting way.

Let’s say for example we would like to back and lay runners in the same race but only within certain odds ranges with specific stakes for each range.

You can now do this by making use of both back and lay tabs in the bet settings options, set my ranked runners (up to 30 if necessary) and then setting up ladder stake options.

These settings I have applied to the greyhounds however you can also run them with horses

Here you can see my back and lay settings above. What I have done is set my lay range low to limit my liability and back range higher. I then choose all 6 ranked runners

And move over to the ladderstakes tab

As you can see I have staggered my stakes across different odds ranges so for example

Runners between 1.02 and 3.00 will be laid with 0.40

Runners between 3.01 and 4.00 will be laid with 0.30

Runners between 4.01 and 8.00 will be backed with 0.20

Runners between 8.01 and 15.00 will be backed with 0.10

The settings are a guideline as a demonstration as to how you can integrate ladder stakes into your settings, feel free to experiment with stakes, odds ranges, TTS times and other variables.

The settings we have shown here have shown some quite interesting results and although you don’t always get winning days when you do they can be quite substantial.

Malcolm Pett
www.greyhorsebot.com

Speed ratings can be obtained from the Racing Post, as well as being sold by many different companies. Some people live by speed ratings, whilst some like to use them in conjunction with other methods. However, most people who are successful at betting will acknowledge that speed ratings are definitely something that should be used in one way or another.

Very simply a speed rating assesses how fast a horse has run a race in comparison with the other horses. If only it were indeed this simple! Unfortunately, it is not, because every race is raced under different conditions which means that if you were just to calculate a speed figure for each race, then you wouldn’t be able to compare speed figures from different races as these would be for different distances, on different ground, under different conditions etc….

This is a Betting School Insiders Club member only article, members can read on by clicking here.

To join Betting School Insiders Club, Click Here.

The Perfect Punter tipping service made a big splash early in March with some very impressive claimed results and also some big winning days in the first few days of the service. (Sid has reviewed this service earlier in this report)

Prior to going live it was proofed to members of the Racing Investors Club where it performed very well also.

With all this in mind I wanted to find out a bit more about the service and the man behind it, what follows are my questions and Jonathon’s answers…

Hi Jonathan

So I guess the first question should be, tell me a little about your background and how you became interested in horse racing.

I have been interested in horse racing ever since my first experience at a race meeting with my Dad when I was only 8 years old. Ever since then, I have followed the sport with great interest.

However it was my time at Oxford University that really saw my passion grow in terms of making the sport pay. I started looking at how systems could be created to win from the game, and ultimately my passion led to the offer of a job on the TV to broadcast this great sport. Although I decided to turn the job down to give me more time to work for myself, I decided to use that passion and interest that they saw in me, to provide winning tips to my subscribers. Since then, the rest is history!

Could you tell us a little about how you find your selections, what is your starting point. You say on the Sportsworld site that the first stage is to look at how a race is likely to be run. I assume from this that you have a database with a rating for every horse and you use these ratings to get a feel for each race.

In my experience the key to betting success is to always have a starting point, some factor that indicates that one race should be studied over another. I believe we all have the ability to analyse form if we put our mind to it but without a starting point, a clue if you like, most will waste too much time on races that are too difficult to work out and will be disheartened.

Analysing a race is one of the best things in my day, it is a puzzle, that not many people have the ability to solve. So the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment of getting it right is one of the most rewarding feelings you can get. Then to be able to help others by supplying the winning tip is extremely satisfying.

Remember, the trick is not necessarily always finding winners, and this alone is not enough to win in the long term. It is by finding consistent winners, but also at VALUE prices that makes this service its profit month on month. I think that after 5 out of 5 winning months, we can say that statistically the service is heading in the right direction.

How much time does it take you to find your selections?

I like to spend about an hour per race. If you can’t see anything after an hour, it is usually time to move on to another race. To be honest, as I follow the form so carefully everyday of the week, I often have a pretty good idea within 5 minutes if there is going to be a strong selection, it is then just a case of doing the maths to make sure that I can beat the market by getting a value price.

What size of bettor are you?

I never really like to talk about sizes of bets, as I encourage my subscribers to play their own way, and this varies greatly between everyone. However, I talk in terms of ‘points’ that you can then interpret these to your own size of bets.

Regarding my own betting, I am currently building my bank with the aim of turning fully professional very soon. I will have a heavy bet when I think I have a particularly strong angle, and the rest of the time I will be staking medium sized bets on most of my selections that I tip, as after all it is a winning service, so I might as well make the most of it!

Do you worry that the value will be eroded from your selections as more people use them?

This is a very common question, and an issue that I have spent a lot of time making sure that can be avoided. My aim for the service is to make sure that ALL my subscribers will profit from the tips. I therefore have a number of safety measures in place to make sure that everyone can get the value.

Finally, my main safety net exists in the prices that I am tipping. I am tipping selections that I believe have a lot of value in their prices. Therefore it would take a huge collapse in the price for the value to disappear. I am not tipping selections as 2/1 when the value is at 15/8, as it wouldn’t take much movement for the value to be lost. Instead, I am playing selections where there is at least 3 points of value, and even more in many cases. This means that the market will continue to offer value even if there is a drop in the price.

What advice would you give to somebody who wanted to make their own selections?

Hard work! There is no substitute for it I am afraid! You need to do this pretty much full time, or not at all. Gone are the days of being able to sit down and have a quick look through the cards. With the invention of the betting exchanges, the other punters are extremely educated, and an edge is very hard to achieve. It can be done, but you need to be putting in many hours each day to find that edge.

OR you can find someone else to do that hard work for you, someone who has gone through the trial and error of compiling their ratings and learning how to price up a race. You can then get them to supply you with the selections, something that my subscribers have done!

Our thanks go to Jonathon for taking the time to answer these questions, on the following page you will find the results of some research that I carried out on an earlier Perfect Punter product which was sold on a small scale on eBay.

Product Name: The Perfect Punter
Supplier/Author: Sportsworld Publishing
Website: www.sportsworldpublishing.co.uk
Price: £149 for 3 months, £249 for 6 months
Category: Horse Racing Tipping Service

Product Overview

The Perfect Punter is a straight forward tipping service for backing horses to win or place at value prices on the flat meetings in the UK.

Summary

This is a service that gives daily selections by email, or you can find them on the national rate telephone message, for backing horses to win or place in the UK meetings.

Every selection is also accompanied by the recommended amount of points to back with.

You can use the selections as long as you have access to a bookie or any online media for placing your bets.

This article is a Betting School Insiders Club member only article, members can read on by clicking here.
To join the Betting School Insiders Club, Click Here.

Product Name: Pro Tennis Tipping Service
Supplier/Author: Steve Davidson
Website: www.betting-tennis.com

Price: 12 months £295; 6 months £195; 2 months £95
Category: Tennis tipping service.

Product Overview

This service sends its selections by email detailing who it expects to win tennis matches to be played either that day or up to a couple of days in the future. It also gives suggested odds which are usually achievable on Betfair.

Summary

During the test period from the 20th January until the 25th March the service gave 108 selections, all but two were men’s singles; one was a double and one was for woman’s singles. 60 of the bets were successful giving a 55.6% strike rate but there was a small overall loss of 6.4 points due to the winning odds averaging at 1.73 together with a deduction of Betfair’s commission at 5%.

This article is a Betting School Insiders Club member only article, members can read on by clicking here.

To join the Betting School Insiders Club, Click Here.

Product Name: Quick on the Draw
Supplier/Author: Sportsworld Publishing/Steve Carter
Website: www.sportsworldpublishing.net
Price: £79
Category: Horse Racing Backing System

Product Overview

The system comes as a well written eighteen page booklet explaining how a situation has been identified where the backer has a definite advantage over the layer in certain horse races. It goes on to explain how this is best exploited together with suggested money management and a summary of last year’s results.

Summary

The rules of the system are easy to follow and should take no more than five minutes to identify selections on a day when there is a qualifying meeting using any newspaper or online race card. Everybody should get the same selections. The test period was from the 18th February through till 2nd April when six qualifying races were identified which meant backing eighteen horses and resulted in three winners with average BSPs of 13.5 (100/8 in old money) after deduction of commission. This gave a net profit of 22.86 points for an ROI of 127%.

Detailed Findings

During the test period there were twelve meetings when there could have been qualifying races, this system only selects at one All Weather race course hence the low number of qualifying meetings.

From the twelve meetings only five of them found races to bet on. Two races at one meeting and single races in the other four. There were three selections in each of these six races and the results were as follows: winner at BSP 8.8; lost; winner at BSP 14.53; lost; lost; winner at BSP 19.22.

One of the filters is the number of runners in the race so as there can be late withdrawals it could be risky placing the bets too far in advance. All my results had the correct number of runners and they could have been different if the bets had been placed on the morning of the race.

Having said that, everything else should be straightforward. As the author says “this is NOT a ‘Get Rich Scheme’ but it does provide a steady stream of BIG PRICED WINNERS on UK Horse Racing”. It could well be one for your portfolio. It is refreshing to test a system that during this period delivers exactly what it says on the tin!

Flat turf racing takes place in the UK between late March and early November on Turf. There is also all weather racing on the artificial surfaces at Great Leigh’s, Lingfield, Southwell, Wolverhampton and Kempton all year round. The main All Weather season starts in December.

We have now entered the transitional period between the end of the proper winter jumps season and the beginning of the flat season. This period can throw up some strange results the layers can take advantage of.

Serious layers should now be preparing to focus their efforts on flat racing.

Flat races are run over various distances from 5f sprints up to the maximum of 2 ¾ of a mile. However races at the maximum distance are uncommon. Mostly you’ll be assessing races between 5f to 1m6f.

This article is a Betting School Insiders Club member only article, members can read on by clicking here.
To join the Betting School Insiders Club, Click Here.

Since my article in last month’s report, Formula 1 has been turned on its head. There was talk about KERS playing a big part in this years championship. And it has, but nothing has changed things like Mr Button’s Brawn GP car has.

If you look through last months report and you will see no mention of Button or his car, other than a sporting bet 150/1 for his team to win the constructors championship.

Buttons career was going in reverse the past year and his team Honda had pulled out of F1.

Two weeks before the first race on 29th March he had no team, no car, no job.

Then appeared Ross Brawn, formally with Ferrari and the man behind Michael Schumacher’s seven world championships. He liked the team so much he bought them and did what he does best, which is to build a wining team. He then got Virgin’s Richard Branson to Australia to see them qualify on pole and go onto win. This ensured Virgin as a Sponsor so they can continue through the 2009 season (£250million to run a team for season).

Now Ross Brawn is not just smart business man, he can also make the most of technical ambiguities. Hence the diffuser in Brawn GP’s car that has helped Button win twice in a row. Check my article on 27th March and forum post on the 4th April respectively.

There has been a ruling and an appeal is coming up on April 14th, but the stewards who decided that there was no issue will be the same stewards in the appeal so I don’t see any changes.

This means that all the teams like Maclaren and Ferrari will have to get their act together.

Maclaren have other issues not least the fiasco In Australia, Hamilton got caught along with a senior member of the Maclaren team lying to the stewards and trying to get another driver penalised. This was all done rather amateurishly, cameras and radios don’t lie. Clearly Hamilton is not happy with the team, you can see by his body language in the garage, he hops out of his car keeps his helmet on and goes straight to his trailer. Trouble is brewing there me thinks.

Ferrari just don’t seem happy and the issue of Rakkionoon being one of the laziest drivers means they won’t get their act together very quickly.

Brawn GP are not the only team who have discovered the benefit of a diffuser design, and I am sure the others will make the most of it while they are ahead of the game.

The top four in the drivers championship are all using their version of the diffuser as well as the two top teams in the constructor championship. I have pulled off the current odds and standings of the teams and drivers.

Driver Championship Odds

Jenson Button (15/8) Felipe Massa (9) Kimi Raikkonen (9) Lewis Hamilton(10) Rubens Barrichello(10)

Current Standings after 2 races

01 Jenson Button 15
02 Rubens Barrichello 10
03 Jarno Trulli 8.5
04 Timo Glock 8
05 Nick Heidfeld 4
06 Fernando Alonso 4
07 Nico Rosberg 3.5
08 Sebastien Buemi 2
09 Mark Webber 1.5
10 Lewis Hamilton 1

Constructors Championship Odds

Brawn GP (7/5) Ferrai (3) Toyota (8)

Current Standings after 2 races

01 Brawn-Mercedes 25
02 Toyota 16.5
03 BMW Sauber 4
04 Renault 4
05 Williams-Toyota 3.5
06 STR-Ferrari 3
07 RBR-Renault 1.5
08 McLaren-Mercedes 1
09 Force India-Mercedes 0
10 Ferrari 0

It is going to be a very interesting season, keep an eye out on the forum as I will be posting more F1 info coming up to the next race in China on 19th April.

Any questions you might have about F1 post them and I will do my best to answer them

Paul Norman