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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!

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

Compounding And How It Works

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We’ve had a few support tickets through over the last couple of weeks about how compounding works, what is it, how it works and more importantly does it work.

In today’s short article I’ll go through the mechanics of compounding and how best to use it.

So in essence, compounding is a way to increase your betting bank at an accelerated rate. We start with a sum of money and then increase our stakes with our profits. There are two ways that we can do this.

  1. Instant compounding
  2. Interval compounding

 

So let’s look at number 1 –

We start with a bank of £1,000 and have a 2% stake for each selection. This would mean £20 per bet. With this method, we always use 2% of the bank regardless of our position. Let’s say our first bet loses, our bank would stand at £980. Our next bet would now be £19.60 and so on.

The other way and we’ve backed a 5/1 winner with our first bet. We would now be at £1,100. The next bet would be £22.

There are a few variations on the above and some people will always stick to the original stake size whilst the bank is in the negative. When they start to hit a profit they then up the stakes accordingly.

Method number 2 then, Interval compounding is my preferred method.

Same as above we start with a £1,000 bank and stake 2%. We keep betting at 2% no matter what happens. When we have increased the bank by 20% we then compound this profit and up the stake in line with the bank. So, in this case, we would now have £1,200 having made 20% and the stakes would now be £24. We wait for another increase of 20% (on the original bank, so another £200) and then our stakes become £28.

Here’s the sequence in 20% increments –

BANK SIZE STAKE SIZE
£1,000 £20
£1,200 £24
£1,400 £28
£1,600 £32
£1,800 £36
£2,000 £40
£2,200 £44
£2,400 £48
£2,600 £52
£2,800 £56
£3,000 £60

 

So basically with each interval of £200, you increase your stake by £4.

There are many variations on the above but that should give you a good idea on how the main principles of the method work.

Starting With A Small Bank And Growing It

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For those of you that follow my weekly ramblings, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of patience and discipline.

These two virtues need to be applied to our money management that I keep banging on about and needs to be enforced from the outset. One way we can instil this within ourselves is to save up for our betting bank.

A friend of mine actually gave up betting and quit for a whole year while he saved up and worked on his portfolio. He’s now one of the most successful bettors out there.

By showing you have the discipline to save money, not spend it and build up a bank will hold you in good stead for when you do go eventually live. It also means that once the bank is in place it won’t affect your monthly income. This in itself is also paramount to your success. One of the many pitfalls of betting is that people mix it with their monthly income and this adds more pressure. By having a separate bank you release the pressure of not having it attached to your current outgoings etc. By viewing that bank as a long-term investment and with a view to releasing profits from your investment you’ll be much better off.

Even if you don’t have much money you could stick a tenner aside each month and after a year you would have £120. Following the advice in these articles and working out your stake size you would then be able to build that small bank up and by compounding the profits you’d be surprised at how it can build up.

Here’s an example:

£120 invested –

Your approach/system/tipster shows a strike rate of 25% from the paper trading you’ve done. In working out your stake size we know that a 25% strike rate would result in up to 24 consecutive losers. We multiply this by three to protect the bank and divide this number into our £120. That’s 24 x 3 = 72. Therefore £120 divided by 72 = £1.67 per bet.

After the first month, we’ve made 30 points profit. That’s 30 x £1.67 = £50.10 + £120 = £170.10

We now compound this so take the £170.10 and divide by the 72 = £2.36 is our new stake size.

Realistically you will of course have losing months but let’s assume that we average 30 points profit on winning months and lose 10 points on losing ones. We have 2 winning months followed by a losing month. Look at the compounded bank over the course of a year below:

Month 1 = £170.10

Month 2 = £240.90

Month 3 = £207.40

Month 4 = £293.80

Month 5 = £416.20

Month 6 = £358.40

Month 7 = £507.80

Month 8 = £719.30

Month 9 = £619.30

Month 10 = £877.30

Month 11 = £1242.70

Month 12 = £1070.10

I appreciate that is a fairly simple example and betting can be more volatile but it serves to illustrate how effective compounding your bank can be. That £120 has turned into just over a £1000 in a year which is incredible. Were you to carry on with that for the next couple of years you would be making 10’s of thousands a year and all from £120.

Have a look into it and think about how you could grow your bank even further. Once you’ve found that reliable method and worked on your bank sizes etc you can look into compounding your betting and grow your bank even bigger.

If you like the idea of growing your bank in the way above you seriously need to check out the service below….

Visit Odds On Bankers

Is This Tipster Right For Me?

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Visit Nap Investor

This week I’ve uploaded a brand new video that shows you how to find out if a tipster is right for you before subscribing to them. I’ve created a calculator at the bottom of the page that you can use after watching the video.

IS THIS TIPSTER RIGHT FOR YOU CALCULATOR

Click on the link above to download your calculator and see if a tipster is right for you.

As always if you have any questions let me know.

Eddie Lloyd

Visit Nap Investor

How To Win At Doubles

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This week we’ve no video but a look at a better way of placing a double bet. It’s a question that I get asked a lot and a question I always answer the same. DON’T DO MULTIPLE BETS.

However there is a way of enhancing our chances of landing a double bet (the lesser of two evils when it comes to multiples!) should we choose to place such a bet.

There is a bet that is called block betting and the bookies don’t publish it because it’s not in their interests to do so. This block betting is a very old method of placing a bet that can still be struck today and although many a cashier in your local bookies won’t understand it, it is perfectly legitimate.

So how do we go about constructing such a bet.

Let’s say that we have two races of which we want to bet in. Usually you would select your two horses and place a double.

Well you’ve done it many a time before and either one has placed and the other won etc. You know the score. But what if we could cover two horses in both races.

We have our two fancies in each race but we also think that there is another horse that could outwit us.

So we now have two horses in each race. We need to perm this as you’ll see in the photo below:

slip 2

By placing two horses in the same race we enhance our chances of landing the double. This of course will cost us extra but it’s not too much of an extra and we have a better chance of hitting the double.

So how does this work?

Any one from two means that we are asking the bookies to allow us to have one horse from the two selected in each race. I have shown this in the explanation below –

2.10 Wolverhampton –

Horse A

Horse B

2.40 Wolverhampton –

Horse A

Horse B

Any 1 From 2 in a double.

Staked as 2 chances in the first leg multiplied by 2 chances in the second leg. This breaks down as follows –

Horse A from the 2.10 can win and so can Horse A from the 2.40 (this is one bet)

Horse A from the 2.10 can win and so can Horse B from the 2.40 (this is one bet)

Horse B from the 2.10 can win and so can Horse A from the 2.40 (this is one bet)

Horse B from the 2.10 can win and so can Horse B from the 2.40 (this is one bet)

As you can see we are covering four outcomes in two races and this is the best way to optimise our stakes.

Have a go at finding races where you fancy two contenders and find if this way of betting will work for you.

I’ll be back next week with how we can do this with trebles and may even film a video of how I place the bets online.

Eddie Lloyd

Is This Too Complicated?

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Have I overcomplicated this?

That’s a question I often get asked when helping people with system development and betting in general and if I’m honest it is a question I often ask myself!

You see sometimes we do have a tendency to overcomplicate things, not just in our approach to betting but also generally in life.

“Focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple”

The above words were spoken by Steve Jobs and couldn’t be truer, especially when it comes to our betting. So what the hell am I on about, the man that wrote about Archie scores and has a habit of bombarding you with all the maths required to be successful!?!

It’s the approach, not the method I’m getting across here.

I was in America a few years back and whilst in a bar in New York, watching multiple sports channels aligned across every wall, I got chatting to a group of guys keen on sports betting and what they call the beautiful game of baseball. Upon asking them how they did in terms of profiting they complained that despite picking plenty of winning selections they made no profit.

Upon delving a little deeper it was all to do with their approach that was losing them money, not the method.

They understood the value and admitted to only backing teams when they thought the sportsbook had got it wrong about the likeliest winner. They knew the sport inside out and had a full understanding of how the lines and odds worked. They were also selective about what they backed. Sounded perfectly simple to me and I wondered why they made no money.

Turns out they had no separate bank, altered their stakes all the time and didn’t always back their opinions, instead, following the media!

So looking at the whole picture it was obvious that their selection process was spot on. Very simple but grounded in their knowledge of the game. The thing that was cocking it all up for them was over-complicating the approach to the whole thing.

I left them in the bar with several bits of advice and they thanked me for sharing it. Will they go and profit? I’ll probably never know but as long as they have a separate bank, keep to level stakes and only bet when they think it’s value then they should make a profit as we all should.

Of course, this rarely happens as we have a habit of over-complicating things!

Have a think about it and try to simplify your approach to betting in general and if you’re reading this on an iPhone or Mac then you’ll understand that simplicity is the way forward as Steve Jobs would have said 😉

Money On-Line – Is It Real?

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I wanted to talk today about the concept of betting on-line and how we need to approach it differently to betting on course or in the shops. The problem with having money in a betting account on-line is it becomes almost unreal. It’s all very well seeing a balance that says £100 but it’s not really there in front of us and because we may lose an emotional attachment to it we may have the tendency to gamble it all away.

If you walk into a shop on the other hand and you have £100 in your pocket, you may have two £20 bets but because you are going to the pub afterwards you’ll keep the £60 and move on. That’s because you have it there as a tangible source of cash.

Can you see the difference?

The mind-set is completely different when using an on-line account.

This is where we need to, in order to make our betting more successful, reattach our emotional connection with our online betting account.

When I first started out I used to, when I’d reached a certain goal of let’s say for example a £100 in profits, withdraw £15 and treat myself to a CD (it would be a download now!!). That way I had something tangible to show for my profits and it made me view my online balance in a different way. As my betting grew and I became more successful, that, something tangible would become a holiday!

Nothing better than sitting in the sun after it’s been paid for by the bookies!

So remember, when you’ve had a good winner and your balance increases, that is REAL money and you need to pull it out and treat yourself. It may only take a few times but you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll view your betting balance and treat it as real money. It’ll also stop you having the tendency to gamble your money and as a result, you’ll be utilizing one of the many useful skills it takes to be a profitable bettor.

Why You Should Always Take A Price

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Screen Shot 2016-08-29 at 08.30.41

The SP (starting price) is the most accurate measure of a horses chance of winning the race. If it goes off at evens then it has a fifty-fifty chance of winning and so on. This is the case 90% of the time but what of the other? The other 10% is what is called smashing the SP and the bookies are behind it.

The SP or starting price is effectively the result of people’s opinions expressed from their betting throughout the day and then finally at the course. The bookies have an opinion in the morning and they might think that a certain horse has a 10% chance of winning, therefore, it becomes a 9/1 shot. Remember that is just the opinion of one odds compiler and a pre-constructed odds line (or tissue in the trade) which is compiled the night before by another odds compiler.

There are so many variables in horse racing he can’t possibly account for everything and as the day progresses new factors come into it, like the changing of the ground or a jockey change on another horse, etc etc. The money starts to come as 1000’s of different opinions, angles come for that horse and it becomes apparent that the horses chances are a lot higher than first thought and then they have to shorten their odds.

There is a bit of a myth that when a gamble is going down its informed money going on, therefore, the horse is likely to win. Don’t get me wrong this does happen but a lot of the time it’s just a change in circumstances and with the age of the internet there are so many well-informed punters out there it doesn’t take long for the market to collapse.

Anyway, that’s the SP, what of this smashing it?

On the course, the SP is determined by between four to six on course bookies just before the off. An official will collate the average price available from these bookies just as the horses are set to go. Once the winner has been declared this is officially stamped by an official and then sent to all the shops, bookies head offices etc. Now what the big bookies do is when there is a large liability going down on a certain horse, for example, a multiple bet like the lucky 15 or a treble, they will need to lower the SP before the off so that they don’t have to pay out as much money.

I’ll use an example.

A punter in a shop has put a £10 treble on. First horse wins at 9/1. He’s got £100 going onto the next one which wins at 9/1 also. He’s now got a grand rolling onto the next horse. The punter hasn’t taken a price but the money’s rolling onto the favourite in the next. That favourite opens at 4/1 so at that price, the punter will stand to win £5,000. That’s a £4,990 loss to the bookie but of course, there is something they can do!

They smash the SP.

The on-course rep for the bookie in question will now go round to all the main bookies in the ring having £200 bets (if it’s a weak market or maybe £500 in a strong market). These £200 bets over several bookies mean the price will now go into 7/2, 3/1, 11/4. The horses leave the stalls or jump away and the bookies now only stand to lose £3,750 to that punter if the jolly wins. Of course, if it does they are collecting the money from the other bookies to go towards the punter’s winnings but if it losses they’ve only lost the money that other punters were having on the horse anyway.

The moral of the above story is the bookies are clever in how they reduce their liabilities which is why you should always take a price. You can’t beat the SP if you don’t take a price!!!