Horse Racing – a new avenue
When it comes to betting, Horse racing is still the most bet on sport in the world, Sports betting is catching up very quickly, but unlike sports, there would be no Horse racing without betting. When I started 4 years ago I was betting on the UK horses and my accounts were quickly shutdown. There are a number of good UK tipsters but after a few months you will no longer be able to get on at the correct odds and I have never found a system that can beat closing lines. After 6 months of betting on horses I knew there was no longer any point and just concentrated on sports betting. I never really looked at the Australian market and I now believe that it cost me a fair bit of potential profit.
Around April when I decided that the site was getting a lot of traffic and I could potentially make a viable business out of it, I thought as I was going to be sitting in front of my computer all day anyway, I may as well also look into betting horses. I also noticed the push for a change in the rules in regards to getting a bet on and joined the small vocal group that was trying to shake things up in what looked like a dying industry. As you’re probably aware, as of September 1, any bookie who wishes to use the NSW racing product will need to take bets from everyone to lose $2,000. Any banned accounts (and I have many), will need to be reopened and I will be free to take up any fixed price they offer. It is only a matter of time before the other states see the increased turnover and fees that NSW racing will achieve and then add these same rules to their product. Eventually we will all be able to bet on every race to win a set amount and never have the fear of having our accounts closed. Why this was never the case in the first place is a disgrace, but that is how the UK corporates choose to run their service.
So knowing that I would have the time, knowing that the rules were going to change and talking to others who had been making a profit for a very long time, I decided to dip my toe into the wonderful world of Aussie racing. I assumed with my knowledge of the sports industry and my skills in finding good tipster, I would be able to translate that pretty easily into Horse racing. What I found was pretty much the same old stuff, 99% of so called tipsters blatantly lying about odds, poorly and shoddy run services and thankfully, a few potentially profitable tipsters. Over the coming months I will talk about everything I have found.
The reason I have not written about this sooner was that the people who recommended certain services did not want me sharing them on the site. Anyone that gives me information knows that I will never share it unless they tell me it is ok to. Ahh the secrets I know, and all these secrets will never become public knowledge as I was told them in confidence. If you tell me something and say it is not to be shared, it never will be.
Over the last 4 months, I have tested about 7 services. In that time I have placed close to $400,000 worth of bets and made $1,600. After the massive monthly fees these guys charge, I am sitting on a loss. I have had a few accounts shutdown in that time and dread to think how many more would have been shutdown if I was winning. In that time I found 1 perfect service (which decided to shutdown last week after 12 years of service), some crap and a few with potential.
I am not sure if I will share the service names on this site or just call them service X,Y,Z as the odds available drop rapidly when bets are advised and I don’t want to compete against even more people. Also I know that a few of you will just blindly follow what I do and without the hard work of getting the best odds, you will lose a lot of money. So I am also saving you from yourself. As none of these have made a notable profit, it would be unwise to follow any of them anyway.
As the average odds on Horse racing are very high, variance plays a massive factor. It is very likely that my weekly swings will be massive. I am not sure if I will post my results fortnightly or monthly yet. I will start this Friday with my results for the past four months and then start updating every 2 weeks, but if it becomes too time consuming, then I will move to a monthly review. My goals over the next year is to find 3-4 good tipsters and to make close to $100,000 a year.
If you follow any good services, then I would love to hear from you.
Hey Steve,
Every so often I head over to racing-index and enter in to their proofing filters the following: Last 3 years, Win only, level stakes (not tipster advised stakes) and Betfair SP ticked (5% commission). All I am looking for is someone who to level stakes and only using Betafir SP can beat 5% commission with win only horse bets. Not many pass the test and even less by a significant margin.
The best area to target for Betfair SP is the larger priced horses (10.0+) so you can the add SP filter of minimum 10 in the odds which then gives you more services which would have given a reasonable return with some uncomfortable strike rates (5% – 7%). You really can’t afford to miss a single bet with these (maybe can smooth the run with in-running lays at 2.0 for stake and then full green at 1.10 but this is obviously a psychological measure not a value optimum).
You can improve the strike rate by dropping the odds minimum to 5/1. The essence behind this is that with UK racing odds terms being 1/5 or 1/4 then any horse priced above the EW break even point will see more EW bookie money and less exchange win only money not to mention those who back EW then lay the win on the exchange. Anyway you get an interesting de-coupling in the win market where you actually increase your value by backing EW tipped horses win only on exchanges and Betfair SP actually exagerates this with the way they cross bets to generate their SP prices. Supposedly there are other inherent inefficiencies with odds on horses in a variety of a different class races but I have never been convinced.
My dream is that all tipster of sports are proofed to the Pinnacle closing line and all racing tipsters are tipped to Betfair SP for UK races and to 1 unit level stakes (are you reading this SBC?). Pros would no that anything near break even or better could then be easily beaten by getting on early and hitting the odd soft bookie when they can.
Another racing alternative is to find a tipster who tips in the Asian racing tote pools (a long time home of mathematical system bettors and syndicates). I believe some of them are a bit of pain to get into or at least used to but I am sure getting on the Honk Kong Jockey Club and Japanese pool is easier than it used to?
Those seem like the restriction free options allowing for growing and large stakes. Anyway love the site and I will be interested to see which of the many strategies that the NSW bookies will use to protect their bottom line going forward (Increased over-rounds, deposit/withdrawal fees etc)
Regards,
Matthew.
Hey Matthew,
thanks for all that info. I agree that proofing to Pin closing lines for sports and BF SP for Horse racing is the only real way to proof a tipster. The problem is that 99.9% of tipsters would then show a loss and would not be able to sell anything. There is a reason this is not a popular way to proof.
But your right, it would show that they are beating the market and then someone like me would know that I could easily achieve the stated ROI, instead I have to automatically halve their ROI to see what might be possible if they honestly record their odds.
Sadly most people are idiots and don’t bother to check anything anyway, they see that this tipster has made profit and jump right in. Most of the blame really falls on them and when they start complaining about losing, well I don’t really feel that bad for them.
The new NSW rules are going to be interesting, and I have no doubt the bookies will do everything they can to protect their profit. Luckily there is a fair bit of competition around and a few of the easy things they would have done (like increased over-rounds), would just see people move to another bookie. But we will see a lot more profiling of customers and segmented customers with different rules applied to how they use the site.
Hi,
Where can I find past closing Pinnacle lines and past Betfair SP’s, or is it a matter of recording these as you go?
I use oddschecker for Pin, No idea about Betfair SP