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Updating The Portfolio – A Profit Is Made

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In January of this year, I looked at portfolio betting and why it’s essential to anyone wishing to make a profit from their betting.

I trial a lot of tipsters and spend a heap of time looking and following the proofing on the Betfan proofing pages. You can view all of our services, here.

In my first article, back in January, I looked at a portfolio of 3 tipsters. They were –

The Judge

15 Point Plan

Value Wins

At the end of January, we can see that following the above three tipsters would have seen you more than double your bank after subs have been deducted.

The Judge made £35.31

The 15 Point Plan made £513.70

Value Wins made £637.65

After subs have been deducted our profit would have been £1,015.06.

Let’s look at how we would have got on so far this year. Using the staking plan highlighted in last month’s article (which you can read, here) we have the following results –

The Judge has made £1,764.06

The 15 Point Plan has made £384.55

Value Wins has made £76.96

This means that the portfolio is showing a profit of £2,225.57 since the beginning of the year.

Let’s be realistic and take away the subscription fees (based on 90-day subs) and we’re still £1,889.57p to the good.

So, you can see that by using the calculator from last month’s article, staking correctly and patience, after nearly 12 weeks, our bank is well intact and we’re in profit.

I will re-visit this portfolio, next month and we’ll see how this has done as we come to the end of the first quarter.

The Halfway Stage Of The Festival

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We’re now halfway through the festival and what a couple of days it’s been. We’ve seen Footpad win in impressive fashion. Buveur D’Air managing to get up on the line. Apple’s Jade disappoint. Altior running tamely but still winning in style. Fourteen races that have had the heart racing and six favourites obliging. If it continues like this, the bookies won’t be paying out any Christmas bonuses, this year! And all on the heavy ground! The festival never fails to impress.

My festival started with the necessary fuelling that anyone standing up all day needs and that was a fry-up. From there, my friends and I walked up Evesham Road to the sound of touts, buskers and Irish sing-alongs. Thirsty work and straight to the Guinness village for some refreshments.

Next, it was time to get money down on the first and my tip from last week, Kalashnikov looked mightily impressive in the parade ring. I was tempted to go on the nose but stuck to my guns and went each-way. Managed to get 11/2 with a few rails bookies and went down to the rail to witness the Cheltenham roar and watch my selection run.

Second by a neck (ouch). He was soaring up the run in and looked the likely winner with a furlong to go. Summerville Boy joined the party and turned a large payout into a barely breakeven position (ouch, again!)

Footpad and Buveur D’Air provided a nice double but Apple’s Jade would have paid for a holiday had she obliged. Anyhow, the day ended with a profit and spirits were high as 62,000 people left the course and headed into town.

You feel like you’ve walked the Cross Country course by the time you’ve found a pub and finding a seat is harder than finding the winner of the Grand National. It was a quick scoop and then a taxi back to the cottage for a takeaway and board games.

Not much joy, yesterday, as Altior was the only return on my wagers but was happy with the 6/5 I got on course before he was backed into evens. Nicky Henderson was looking very emotional as he entered the parade ring to pick up his prize and deservedly so. Let’s hope he can make history with Might Bite, tomorrow in the Gold Cup.

So, it’s been an exciting two days and my bank has increased by a whopping 1.3 points. Two more days to turn that around and today, I wanted to look at the Ryanair, running at 2.50 pm.

Here are some trends to get us going –

9 of the last 10 winners had won at Cheltenham before 

9 of the last 10 winners had won a Grade 1 Chase before 

10 of the last 12 winners were 6/1 or lower in the market 

9 of the last 10 winners were rated 161 or more 

Un De Sceaux looks like the winner, fitting all of the trends above and could certainly be another spoiler for the bookies. He’s best priced at 11/10 at the moment and it’ll be interesting to see how the market reacts to whoever gets the ride, now that Ruby Walsh is on the sidelines. There are obvious dangers in Cue Card, a veteran and Frodon at a big price could reverse the form with the latter and give the favourite something to think about. All in all, it’s going to be an exciting renewal and if you can’t part with your money at 11/10, at least watch the greats battle it out for the thrill of it!

Good luck for the rest of the festival and I’ll be back next week when it’ll be all very quiet!

Eddie Lloyd

The Festival Has Arrived!

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It’s here! The first day of the festival has arrived and as I write this I’m looking out over Cheltenham and the hustle and bustle of the place. Bin men, people going to work, buses and cars driving about but not a single item of tweed in sight!

I’m pretty sure, everyone going to the festival is still in bed! We were out last night and there were plenty of festival goers supping ale and talking about who was going to win what. There’s always an air of optimism before the first day and it was great to see so many horse racing enthusiasts in one place. There will certainly be a few sore heads out there, this morning!

If you’ve never been to the festival before, then one of the first highlights is walking up Evesham Road toward the course. The atmosphere is incredible. It’s the same as walking to the stadium on a big match day. There’s the touts, buskers, burger vans, people handing out flyers, free scarfs, flags etc. Everyone is excited and the air is filled with optimism. The second highlight is arriving and walking into the Guinness village. Yes, a whole area devoted to the black nectar. The trick here is to stand by the bins! It’s easier to get a pint and you can get to the rails and watch the races a lot quicker.

Anyway, we’ll be heading to the course at 11.30 am to take in all of the sights and sounds. I’ve got all of my bets placed and have cash in hand to get money down on course. It’s always worth trying to get to the rails bookies where Hill’s trades as these are the first pitches and it’s where you can witness people placing £10,000’s. I’ve often seen people with 10K in £50 notes getting on a favourite. A spectacle in itself!

So, with the excitement brewing, it’s time to take stock and think about the plan for the day. I’ve covered my thoughts in previous articles and you can read those on the blog. I’ve outlined my best bets of the day, below –

13:30 – Kalashnikov each way

14:10 – Saint Calvados win

17:30 – Testify each way

Plus a double on the two odds-on favourites.

All bets have been placed and some more money will be placed on course.

I’ll be back on Thursday with a look back on the first two days and another look at Gold Cup day. Until then, be lucky and enjoy the festival 🙂

Looking Ahead To The Cheltenham Festival

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With less than three weeks to go until the Cheltenham Festival, it’s that time of the year where we need to look at how we’re going to tackle the big event. Some will have their ante-post selections already in the bag, some will have an idea of what they’re going to be backing and some will wait for the first day, before parting with their hard earned. Whatever camp you fall into, it’s important to make sure you’ve got a separate pot of funds to cover the major showpiece.

I always say this around the festivals, make sure you’re betting with a separate betting bank. Whereas with our day to day betting, we need to be looking for value, at the festivals, we need to be looking for the winners. It’s a very small window of opportunity to profit when we have only 30 or so races to tackle.

So, what do we need to do?

First up, decide how much you’re prepared to lose. Then, look through the cards and decide what races you’ll be betting on. Finally, take your separate bank and divide it by the number of races you’ll be betting on.

Here’s what my plans look like –

Tuesday – 

Supreme Novices

Arkle Challenge Novices

Champion Hurdle

Mares Hurdle

Wednesday – 

Coral Cup

Queen Mother

Glenfarcles

Thursday – 

JLT Novices’ Chase

Pertemps

Ryanair Chase

Fulke Kim Muir Challange

Friday – 

JCB Triumph Hurdle

Albert Bartlett

Gold Cup

Martin Pipe

Grand Annual

So, that’s 16 races in total. I feel that I can find an angle in all of those races.

Let’s say that I have £1,000 set aside for the festival. I simply divide these races into my bank, which gives me just over £60 per race, to try and make a profit.

I will now spend the next few weeks, going through the form, analysing trends, stats and data. Working through all of those, I will look at backing, forecasts, placepots, laying and some multiples. All, in the hope that I will come through the other side, victorious!

Next week, I will be looking at some of the key trends for some of the races I will be betting in and let’s see if we can find some early angles before we head into the glory that is the Cheltenham Festival!

Re-visiting The Portfolio And We’re Still In Profit

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A few weeks ago, I looked at portfolio betting and why it’s essential to anyone wishing to make a profit from their betting.

I trial a lot of tipsters and spend a heap of time looking and following the proofing on the Betfan proofing pages. You can view all of our services, here.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to concentrate on a portfolio of 3 tipsters. They are –

The Judge

15 Point Plan

Value Wins

At the end of last month, we can see that following the above three tipsters would have seen you more than double your bank after subs have been deducted.

The Judge made £35.31

The 15 Point Plan made £513.70

Value Wins made £637.65

After subs have been deducted our profit would have been £1,015.06.

In this article, let’s look at how we would have got on so far this month. Using the staking plan highlighted in last month’s article (which you can read, here) we have the following results –

The Judge has made £221.82

The 15 Point Plan has lost -£158.20

Value Wins has lost -£260.35

This means that the portfolio is showing a loss of £196.73. However, looking at the profit from January, the portfolio is still showing a profit of £818.33.

Let’s be realistic and take away this month’s subscription fees and we’re still £646.71 to the good.

So, you can see that by using the calculator from last month’s article, staking correctly and patience, after nearly 8 weeks, our bank is well intact and we’re in profit.

I will re-visit this portfolio, next month and we’ll see how this has done as we come to the end of the first quarter.

The Each Way Strategy

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Betting each way is a great way to make our money go further when investing on the horses. If we know what we’re doing we can find value selections that have an extremely high strike rate when placing our bets, that gives us either most of our stake back, break even or even a big profit.

Finding value selections in betting is a topic that is talked about a lot between professionals and novices alike. It’s not always about finding the winner of a race but more about finding a horse that has been overlooked in the market by the bookmaker and in the long term we can profit from these discrepancies if we know what we’re looking for.

I have put together one of the best ways to find this value and how best to use it.

This method can be used at any time on the day of racing but your results will be even more accurate if you can do the analysis within 30 minutes before the off.

So let’s get stuck in and look at how we can profit from value each way betting.

System Rules

Below you will find the 2 simple steps to finding the qualifying races each day.

  1. We only use handicap races
  2. We look for odds-on favourites

Once we have looked at these 2 simple rules we will have a list of potential races that will show us qualifying horses.

Today’s races are 3:45 Fontwell and the 6:30 Chelmsford.

We simply back the second favourite in these races. If you can find two races like this on a daily basis, then we put them into an each way double. Of course, they won’t always come in but even if they place, we’ll make a small profit from our each way bet. If they both win, then we make a tidy profit.

These are the qualifying horses, for today –

3:45 Fontwell – Tactical Manoeuvre

6:30 Chelmsford – Thahab Ifraj

Staking a 1 point each way double for a 2 point bet would make us 3 point profit if they both place, which is what the market is suggesting and if they both win, then we will see a whopping 45 points profit. This type of gain is what makes these bets worthwhile doing and will pay dividends in the long run.

Have a play around and make sure you paper trade initially but in the long run, these bets work out really well.

Each Way Heaven – A Look At Today’s Only Card

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There’s only one meeting on today with two cards being subjected to abandonment. Never great to wake and find that there are only 6 races to analyse. However, Southwell isn’t that bad a card and I’ve gone through all of the runners and looked for the horses I feel have the best chance of at least placing.

So, here’s my take on the only card of the day –

2.20 – 

A 13 runner handicap is never going to be easy but I can’t take the 15/8 about the favourite, Star Ascending. It’s always worth opposing such short priced horses in a big field. My pick would be for the Richard Fahey trained Ingleby Spring. She was slightly outclassed last time out and drops back into a class 6. She’s been eased in the weights by 3 lbs and the claimer on board has taken two very close of late. He’ll be looking to go one better, here and Ingleby Spring is worth an each way tickle.

Ingleby Spring 13/2 Betfair

2.55 – 

Another ticky affair and we’re 4/1 the field for this handicap. Caged Lightning looks to be the likeliest to go off the favourite. My preference is for Fran Berry’s ride on Argante. He’s got the stamina, having run well over hurdles and coming into a class 5 should see him up his game. He’s had a bit of each way money for him in the offices and this is worth a go.

Argante 6/1 Hills

3.25 – 

The most competitive race of the day in terms of the prize money. Some of them might need to the run, here including the favourite Coeur De Lion. I’m going to oppose him at that price and go with the top weight, Mixboy. There will be a question mark about the standard going but he’s got the stamina, Fanning takes the helm and knows him well so he’s got to be worth an each way shout.

Mixboy 7/1 Betfair

4.00 – 

Another large field handicap and we’re 5/1 the field. I’ve gone with another top weight in this one and the Carroll trained Mister Music. He ran well over this course and distance last time out. He’s up 6 lbs but it’s a quick turn around and he’ll be looking for the double. I’ll side with him and there’s still some value to be had for the place part of the bet at the current odds.

Mister Music 11/2 Corals

4.30 – 

Not a fan of these Novice races so will be keeping the powder dry!

No Bet

5.00 –

It’s definitely a day for the top weights in my analysis! I’ll be siding with Dixon’s Crosse Fire. He’s not shown up of late but dropping into this class 6 and not a lot looking to threaten, I think today should be his day. He’s short enough in the betting and there’s money coming for him. On that basis, to end the day, I’m going to scrap the each way bet and go for the win only bet on him.

Crosse Fire 4/1 SkyBet

Let’s hope that we have a good day and good luck!

Eddie

Are You Punting Or Investing?

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I often get asked if I’m a gambler or an investor and my immediate response without hesitation is to answer that I am an investor. The way I approach my betting is that of an investor. I know that my initial starting bank is never fully at risk and that I expect to see a return on that bank come to the year-end.

So how do we know if we are gambling or investing and what measures do we need to put in place to ensure that we are not at risk?

At the start of every season whether it be the flat, jumps or the all-weather I start with a specific bank used for that code. So, for example, at the beginning of April of last year, I had a 500 point bank and that is solely to be used for the flat racing. Last November I withdrew my profits and the bank sits there until the start of this year’s season. That bank is my whole investment for the season.

Using carefully selected systems and methods I know each ones expected losing streaks and what percentage of the bank I should be risking on each selection. This allows me to cover myself when I do hit the losing streaks but also, by running several systems in one portfolio, when one is showing a negative, the other is showing a positive.

This picture is, of course, somewhat different to how I started out and that was gambling. Throwing money at anything in the hope that it would win!

Makes me cringe now!

So how do we know if we are gambling or investing?

One of the biggest parts of being a successful punter is money management which includes staking plans. If we know that our expected losing runs are likely to be 10 runners in a row then to only have a bank of 10 units would, of course, be gambling. This is because our investment of 10 units is immediately at risk. We would need at least 30 units to cover this type of expected losing run and this would then, albeit, as long as the system was a credible one, be an investment.

So how do we work out our banks to cover ourselves and make sure we are investing rather than gambling?

The easiest way to do this is by using an excel sheet and apply the following equation to one of the cells.

LOG(Number of selections)/-LOG(1-Strike Rate)

You’ll need to change the strike rate to a decimal format for the equation to work. We simply divide the strike rate by 100.

I then multiply the answer by 3. This will give me the bank required to know that I was investing rather than gambling.

Have a look at the example below:

LOG(120)/-LOG(1-0.21) = 21 losers (rounded up) multiplied by 3 = 63 units

So for the next 120 bets, I would expect to lose up to 21 bets in a row. I multiply this by 3 to give me 63 units. Let’s say I had £1,000 to start, then I would divide 63 into this to give me £16 per bet.

Have a look at your own systems and use the above to determine if you are using the correct size bank and also the correct stake size.

If you want a calculator that does the hard work for you, click, here

Spotting Market Moves And How To Play Them

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Today, we’re going to look at spotting market moves and the best way to play them. We can’t always get them right but in the long run, we should be able to turn enough low-risk trades into profit and make some good money.

The quickest way to spot a market move is to cheat! Head over to the At The Races and look at –

Market Movers

The first thing to note is that we want to focus on the top of the market. The first horse, Heron, although heavily gambled on, is still not at the top of the market. We ignore this as sometimes we have something called false gambles and it could be a professional moving a price on a no-hoper so that the bookie pushes the price out on a favourite.

We also want to focus on Handicaps. The money that comes in these races is usually a lot more informed than, that of a Novice or a Maiden race.

Our first qualifier from the table above would be Shades Of Mist running in the 14:40 Southwell. We now need to head over to Oddschecker and look at the market.

We can see that the horse is within the top three of the betting. We now need to check to see if the horse is still one of the most backed horses.

Shades Of Mist is the second most backed horse and is worth backing as he’ll most likely go off shorter than the current price.

Ladbrokes are going 6/1 about our horse and if you can grab some of this, all the better. Realistically, though we’re probably more likely to get a bet down at around the 9/2 4/1 mark. This is still okay and we need to get the best price possible. If you can get BOG, then even better.

Once we’ve identified our horses and placed our bets, we now need to head over to Betfair to set up the second stage of our trade.

We’re going to assume that Shades Of Mist will be going off a shorter price than the price we have taken. This is where we can lay off our original stake to secure a low risk/profitable trade.

Let’s assume that the horse will go off at 3/1 (4 in decimals) and we have £10 staked. We now place £10 on the lay side at those reduced odds.

So, if the horse wins, we collect £60 from Ladbrokes but lose £30 on Betfair. Our trade has just bagged us £30. If the horse loses, then we lose the £10 from Ladbrokes but make £9.50 back on the exchange.

There will, of course, be times when our selections drift in the market and we still need to do the same thing. If the horse wins we will actually lose some money but if it doesn’t we still get our stake back.

Have a go and make sure you paper trade first until you’re comfortable with the strategy.

I have listed below, the horses that I will be trading on today –

14:40 Southwell – Shades Of Mist

15:15 Southwell – Jasi 

15:35 Wincanton – Le Boizelo

I’ll be back next week with more ways to beat the market.

Eddie

Portfolio Betting And How To Make It Pay

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I hope you guys managed to follow the “Another Winning System” from last Thursday’s article, as it found the winner in the 4.10 Cheltenham – Remiluc at a tasty 20/1! Sometimes, it’s best to keep things simple and when that “simple” finds winners at those prices, it’s hard to disagree!

If you missed last week’s article – Click Here To Read More

This week, I wanted to look at portfolio betting and why it’s essential to anyone wishing to make a profit from their betting. I’ll be looking for services to follow, staking plans and how best to manage the whole thing.

I trial a lot of tipsters and spend a heap of time looking and following the proofing on the Betfan proofing pages. You can view all of our services, here.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to concentrate on a portfolio of 3 tipsters. They are –

The Judge

15 Point Plan

Value Wins

Let’s assume that we joined on the 1st January 2018 and have £1,000 as our total investment. The first thing we obviously need to do is to allow for the subscription costs. The total cost of joining all three services (on a monthly basis, it would be cheaper if you subscribed on a quarterly basis) is £171.62. A big outlay but manageable on a £1,000 bank.

We then need to look at how we manage our stakes. Looking through the proofing that we have available to us, we can work out our basic staking.

The Judge 26% Strike Rate

15 Point Plan 26% Strike Rate

Value Wins 35% Strike Rate

We use these strike rates to determine our stake size.

You’ll see in the image below how the calculator has calculated the required stake and how much profit has been made –

We now do this for the other two services –

You can download this calculator for free, here

So, as we come to end of the month, we can see that following the above three tipsters would have seen you more than double your bank after subs have been deducted.

The Judge made £35.31

The 15 Point Plan made £513.70

Value Wins made £637.65

After subs have been deducted our profit would have been £1,015.06.

You could take your original £1,000 back and play with the bookie’s money, or you could change your bank and adjust the stakes accordingly.

Have a play around with various services and see what works for you. You’ve got the right tools and information to build your own successful portfolio, now!

Back next week with a look at more useful ways to make your betting pay 🙂

Eddie