Strange end to a great month!

Profit since last update £239.77

I wanted to do a post to round off the month of November since it was the best month of The Experiment so far. Being honest, if someone had told me at the start of the year that I could have won this amount from trading/gambling on Betfair in one month, I wouldn’t have believed them.

I’ve came a hell of a long way since the start of March and amazingly, 9 months down the road, I’ve made £5.3k. When I think back to my first 2 months on Betfair when I made pennies trying to scalp the markets, it’s a very long way in a relatively short space of time.

£5k of the profit is from Betfair and a little bit is from subscriptions at the site. Unfortunately, my honesty across there has appeared to annoy a few of my subscribers and when they read this post, I can’t imagine they’ll be happy for me but I’ve been honest since day one on here and at the site and I’m not going to change now.

On Saturday, I put up 4 selections as tips and not surprisingly going by my current run of form, they all lost. However, in two of the races, I backed a couple of others. Due to the fact I knew I was going to post the profit on here when I got around to it, I mentioned it in the daily email on Sunday that I’d cocked up and tipped the wrong horses in two of the races.

I’ve admitted this to Andrew and I’m sure some of the guys who subscribe will read this but I should have really given the other 2 as tips. I went for High Chimes in the Hennessy which was the right decision regardless of where it finished but I should have given Madison Du Berlais as a smaller bet for 1 point win. It was 4th in the race last year and I was going to give Character Building as a point win simply because it was 3rd in the race last year. When that became a non-runner, I made a poor judgement call and dropped the idea of a second selection and it cost the guys a 25/1 winner (was 33/1 in the morning!).

In the other race, Andrew was a massive fan of Helen’s Vision and that was going to be the tip. I then looked at the race, saw the form with Khyber Kim and talked myself into Khyber Kim in a big way. I even backed it to win the Champion Hurdle!

I also made sure I backed Helen’s Vision but didn’t tell the guys to do likewise. Khyber Kim traded at 1.06 but lost it on the run-in to Helen’s Vision and due to the fact I lay off low on all my bets, it won me about £140 but lost the guys 2 points. Obviously, I can’t be held responsible for a horse getting beat at 1.06 I tipped but it didn’t help the guys feel too good to hear that I felt I should have tipped Helen’s Vision.

On the Saturday night, I was looking back at the race to understand why I didn’t back Helen’s Vision and I found out I’d misread the form a little with Khyber Kim. I knew it had a big weight turnaround but it was something like 21lbs for 24 lengths or something and I’d somehow misread this and thought it was 10lbs for 24 lengths or something. I honestly can’t remember but if I had read it the way it actually was, I would have tipped Helen’s Vision as it was 3 times the price of Khyber Kim.

Anyway, it’s water under the bridge now but I held my hands up, said I made a couple of poor errors and cost the guys a 25/1 and 11/1 winner. I expected a bit of stick but I think a few guys mistook my admission of guilt as me gloating I’d backed the two winners and a few words were exchanged in the forum about it.

I maybe got a bit on my high-horse about the fact I’m not really a tipster and I hate to be judged like a tipster and it’s not my fault if my tip loses and my two dangers win. Things have settled down into a reasonable debate now and I’m happy with that.

I’ve said this on here before but it’s vitally important that people separate me from The Form Analyst. TFA is getting judged on how good he is at selecting a horse to win a race and he will be judged on how many points he can win his subscribers.

I’m someone who doesn’t really gamble on the horses but who trades to get a riskfree bet on lots of races (far more than I tip a selection in!) and I make money that way. My P&L won’t match what happens with the tips and when I do well at the tips, I won’t do as well on Betfair and vice-versa.

Earlier this month when I was picking lots of winners, the gamblers were doing great and I wasn’t doing that great from trading my own horses. However, I made it clear on here that I live with the fact my betting strategy will allow me to win consistently small amounts and assuming I don’t mess up the trading part too often, I’ll make money at this game.

I’m sure a few of you must be wondering how the trading is going. Basically, my trading skill has probably plateau’d to a great extent and I’m about as good a trader as I’ll be. However, that still means I’m good enough to get in and out of most markets to enable me to get a riskfree bet on the horse I want. When it doesn’t go to plan, I take a bit of money IR and lay at various odds to get my stake back and then look to eventually make a profit.

Every 30 races or so, I’ll get involved on a huge drifter that I’ve backed and it becomes a case of minimising the damage. It can get a little bit hairy at times but I live with this. It would make a conventional trader pull their hair out if they tried what I do but I live with the fact I’ll lose a decent amount every now and again.

One point to make here is the amounts of money I am discussing. Since I mostly trade horses in double figure prices, I only use stakes of between £10 to £60. Obviously, I’m not looking for 1 tick movements but swing movements. If I can get £10 on a 80 shot and it shortens to 50, I get £300 riskfree on it. Obviously, that’s equivalent to £6 for a conventional trader but I take the £6 free bet.

If I can get that on a front-runner, I’ll leave a lay of £20 at 10 and maybe £30 at 2.1 and if it runs well, I’ll get £20, I’ll get £50 if runs very well but doesn’t win, and £65 if it wins.

That’s an easy example but you get the picture. If it runs crap, I move on to the next race and since it was riskfree, I didn’t lose anything. Conventional traders may say I lost £6 but I’d disagree. The £6 was never mines, so I didn’t lose it. We could argue this point until our hearts are content but as I’ve shown in November, when my horses win, the money soon adds up. Why would you green up at 50 if that’s the wrong price of the horse?

Every 30 races, I may take £50 IR on a donkey I’ve backed but that’s life. As I said, I live with it. Taking money IR on a horse you think will win can work for you as well as against you. Looking back over the year, most of big wins (£100 +) have come from backing drifters and either shortening pre-race to get me out riskfree or getting out IR. All of my biggest losses have come from backing drifters also, but by using smaller stakes, I manage these better nowadays.

Overall then, a great month for me, an OK month for The Form Analyst and an OK month for the subscribers. It should have been better for TFA and the subscribers but I lost a bit of form at the end of the month and I’m not on a poor run again with the tips!