Let's clear this up......

No selection today for me. I did quickly mention the 6.20 at Kempton this morning and the mystery horse was Wadnagin. It was 3rd at 6/1 having been backed from 10/1 on course and 12/1 this morning.

I spoke about the horse on the 17th of August on here and I thought it was a great bet to return to form then. It finished tailed off after being well backed and I was left scratching my head. 3 weeks later, it returns to form and it would have won tonight if it had a better draw than the car park draw! Sums up my month thus far….(glad it lost though since I didn’t select it!)

A quick point on the monthly P&L for the tips. I was looking through my results today and I see I had Fort Churchill in my spreadsheet at 10/1 and not 11/1, so I’ve done myself out of a point. So I’m now -1 on the month and not -2. Managed to make a point profit today without having a bet, so it’s cheered me up! (if anyone else is tracking the profit to SP, can they confirm I’m correct please).

OK, I was a bit down this morning when I wrote the email and I think I need to clear a few things up regarding trading v gambling. The anonymous knob who has been writing on the blog actually raised a good question in a comment on the last post - not you Anthony :) – so I’ll give an answer tonight as I promised.

He asked whether I’m running a tipping service or a trading service i.e. horses to back to lay. As I’ve made clear on here many times now, my forte is analysing form and reading races. That’s what I’m best at. No one has said I’m any good at tipping and even I can’t answer that. I have no historical records (apart from a 2 week spell on The Handicap Forum) and I really can’t say whether I’m going to be any good as a tipster.

However, what I can say is that I’ll work hard to analyse races and try to select the winner. This month, I’ve had 1 winner at 11/1 from 12 selections. I’m on a losing run of 9 at the moment but the average odds are 11/1 of these losers, so a run of 9 losers isn’t a disaster.

The only reason that the traders are doing very well this month is simply because my horses have been travelling well and running well. I’ve had a few horses run way below form but apart from these, most horses have run solid races and I’ve had a 2nd at 14/1, 3rd at 12/1 and 3rd at 15/2 and these all traded very low in running which helps the traders. I have even had a horse that was freely available at 65 on Betfair (33/1) that traded at 4 in running, so it’s easy to see why traders are doing well.

However, the main purpose of my service is going to be race analysis and giving out selections to win. I am not advocating that people trade my horses in running and therefore, I hope this clears things up a little.

In the long-run, once the winners start to flow, the traders will be limiting their profits greatly by trading IR and the gamblers should do much better and earn a much better return. When I select a 33/1 chance, it’s not because I thought it could run well and trade lower. I selected that horse as I thought it was maybe well handicapped and would run much better than the market thinks (I was right).

I’ve really struggled with the whole tipster thing this month as some of you know and people losing money on my selections doesn’t sit easy with me at all. A few of you have suggested that I’m maybe just too nice for this game and maybe you are right. However, I made it clear at the outset that this is a trial month and I didn’t make any promises about how good I would do, so I shouldn’t worry so much about how people are doing.

In the long-run, I still don’t have any doubt that I’ll make a decent return for people but it’s not my money I’m risking, so I will let other people decide if they want to take this risk……

I made the decision today that I’m going to go ahead with next month regardless of what happens this month. I had to make a decision and I couldn’t wait to see how much profit or loss I made this month before deciding to give professional tipping a try. Work has started on a website and I have a name for the site but I’ll keep it private at the moment until the website is developed.

Lastly, a few readers have sent me some examples of the analysis that other tipping services provide. My initial reaction was one of shock and I couldn’t believe that anyone would buy that rubbish. Obviously, analysis isn’t the thing that matters and it’s picking winners that matter. At the moment, these sites are probably better than me at that but in time, I’m sure I can match them or beat them. Once I do start picking winners and combining it with my analysis, maybe I can have the best tipping service out there in 12 months time……

Thanks for the continued support and I hope I can repay the faith that so many of you are showing in me at the moment. I’ll be trying my best whatever happens!