A Disappointing Post!

Loss since last update £34.77 & Subs worth £130 = £95.23 Profit to P&L

This is a bit of a disappointing blog post to be honest and I’m having to include a few recent subscriptions to even post a profit to the P&L on here.

As I hinted at last time, my trading was starting to suffer as a result of the tipping business and my lack of time to concentrate on my trading. I’ve therefore just been trading the races with my own horses and up until recently, this has been a very good income for me. Unfortunately, I’ve had a few selections that have run very poorly after drifting pre-race and I’ve not had the best of times of it. If it wasn’t for Folio winning yesterday, this would have been a 3 figure loss I’m posting and I’d have been really annoyed with myself.

As it turns out, it’s hardly a disaster considering I’ve been on a poor run with the tips. I hit 12 straight losers again which is the 3rd time this has happened since the inception of the tipping service. Apart from the fact I tend to play at bigger odds than most tipsters, it’s difficult to put my finger on why losing runs happen to me. I guess it’s partly because I’m quite cocky considering how good I’m going to do at this game, so instead of looking for a short priced selection when I’m on a poor run, I just continue on with my big priced selections and I end up putting myself under a lot of pressure to finally pick a winner and end the losing run!

One thing I have been doing recently is looking for more shorter priced selections that I feel may represent value. By shorter priced, I’m meaning more single figure odds and less double figure odds! So far, it’s been going OK although I do think it is much more difficult to make consistent profits long-term from backing shorter priced selections and it’s not something I’m going to do everyday. So far, I’ve been very selective with my shorter priced selections and a few have won this month which keeps the P&L ticking over.

Here’s the latest P&L for The Form Analyst:



As you may have noticed at the side of the blog, I’m now appearing on the proofing tables across at http://www.racingproofing.com. I’m still being proofed on racing index but it isn’t a fair reflection on how well I’m doing as I’ve said before since so many of my winners are punted on course.

At the moment, I’m up 61 points to odds available in the morning. I’m 35 points up to Betfair SP and 25 points up to Starting Price. Whatever way you look at it, it’s a pretty decent profit and considering I’ve only been at this tipping game for a few months, the potential is there for me to do something decent at this game.

One of the things that makes me laugh is when you look at my results to level stakes, I’m basically breaking even to BF SP and SP and I’m up about 20 points to early morning prices. This may raise a few eye-brows and people may say I’m using a staking plan to boost my profits but that’s part of the game I play. Because I give so many big priced selections, I need a staking plan to take into account that not every one of my tips is the same quality. When I have 0.5 Pts on some donkey and 3 points win on a strong selection, it isn’t fair to judge both of these to 1 point win. One of them is 6 times a stronger bet than the other one, so it makes no sense to look at the profit to level stakes.

I’ve lost a couple of subscribers this month but they have been replaced by new subscribers and I’m guessing that’s part and parcel of the game. I now have more subscribers than I’ve ever had and that’s a nice feeling. Obviously, the service is still very small and going by the fact the fees aren’t that large, I’m not exactly set up for life but it’s a promising start. I always knew the first 3 months were going to be the most difficult and now that I’m approaching the end of that with a decent profit in the bank and more subscribers than I’ve ever had, it’s looking promising for the future.

I would like to congratulate Alistair across at http://betyourlife.blogspot.com/ regarding the fact that he has made it past the £3k profit mark on Betfair this year. Ali’s blog is a great inspiration to any would-be trader and now that I’m not updating my blog daily, I’d suggest if people want a daily read they give Ali’s blog a try.

I’d also like to congratulate Leon on his blog and the fact he’s past the £10k profit mark on Betfair. As I’ve mentioned before, Leon’s blog was a great inspiration to my blog and was the reason I started a blog. I’m glad he revised his decision to stop updating his blog and I’ve been enjoying his little rants on all things Betfair and the like.

I feel like I’m congratulating everyone today but I must mention JP’s blog and his profit this year. JP uses a portfolio of tipsters to try to make money from gambling and The Form Analyst is one of the portfolio at the moment. So far this year, JP has made over £20k profit from his gambling which is an exceptional return. Obviously, he works hard to get all his bets on and obviously pays subscription fees with no guarantee of success, so it’s great to see someone making money at this punting game.

Lastly, as I said at the end of last month, I’m now past the £5k profit for the year on Betfair. I didn’t show my Betfair P&L at the time as I hadn’t past the £5k net deposit mark due to the fact I’ve used my account for a few friends to have losing bets on Betfair! However, even with my recent loss, I’ve managed to make a withdrawal to make me currently £5,060 up this year which is a nice achievement in itself. I’m up about £150 more but it makes little difference to be honest! I’m happy! :)

Sacrificing my Trading..........

Profit since last update £145.54

I’m sorry to say this but the profit for the past week looks nothing like the P&L for The Form Analyst. However, unlike other times, my own profit is much lower and I’ve struggled with my trading over the past week and finding enough time for it.

When I started the tipping, it was always the case that it would run alongside my trading/gambling on Betfair and I couldn’t see a reason why they couldn’t work in harmony. The past week though has shown me that I need to choose which means more to me and concentrate on that. At the moment, The Form Analyst means much more than my own trading and therefore, I’m happy to sacrifice making money on Betfair to put my efforts into making money for the subscribers.

I’m sure a few of you will read this and think that’s what I am paid for by the subscribers but as I’ve said since day one, the time and effort I put into The Form Analyst far outweighed my return for the first 3 months but I knew that before I started. Therefore, I worked very, very hard trading my own selections as well as lots of other selections which included night racing when I got in from work where possible.

You can see the results on my November P&L and as I said at the time, I was putting an amazing amount of hours into form study and trading and ultimately, it started to take its toll and I ended up in hospital with a nasty infection. Thankfully, it was nothing too serious and I’m over it now but I’ve no doubt that the strain of The Form Analyst and my own trading had taken its toll on me.

Part of me working so hard to make money myself was because the subscription fees were so low and I wasn’t even getting anywhere near the minimum wage for my time and effort. Obviously, with the results I‘ve had, I’ve started to attract a couple of new subscribers and I took the decision to increase prices for new subscribers on Saturday night.

I’ve spent a long time over the past week or so checking out my competition in the tipping market and looking at prices and the profits that they achieve long-term. The conclusion was that I believed I was underselling the service in quite a big way and this led me to have a rethink of the prices. I didn’t see too many services out there that can compete with my results and I’ve increased prices as a result.

I’ve said this to the subscribers but one of the reasons I’m only offering a maximum of 3 months at a time is because I believe I can keep these results going and I’m not going to try to tie people in to long-term subscriptions off the back of good results. In 3 months time if I’m not doing so good, I’ll look to reduce prices a little and hopefully convince people to stay with me. I like the way this model works and the better I do, the more I can charge although I won’t ever ‘milk’ it the way other services out there do. If I can increase my membership, I’d reduce prices and ultimately, the aim would be to reach a level of membership and close the doors on new subscribers. I’m not even half way there yet!

I was looking at one service out there that charges £2,000 a year and from looking at their results, I struggle to see how they can justify this sort of price. That looks to be a case of someone living off past results and I can’t imagine that too many people fall for that sort of thing.

One thing I quickly realised in this game is that you are only as good as your last few tips. When I was on a losing run a few weeks ago, people were saying that we were in the shit again and yet, we were up over 30 points in 2 months. I know people get frustrated at losing runs as do I but I would never judge anyone in the short-term at this game. I’m a great example of what can happen in the short-term and why it can be misleading. I’ve had two horrendously bad losing runs in the short-term but bounced back each time.



As you can see, it’s a fairly easy decision to spend less time on my own trading/gambling and I’ll put all my efforts into The Form Analyst now. I reckon I may have been spending 120 hours a month on everything and when you consider I work full-time, it’s not too surprising I ended up in hospital.

I’m going to reduce my trading time considerably and I won’t be trading all of my own selections now. Being honest, I was a bit annoyed in the past week as I’ve hit a fair few winners and all of them have shortened a fair bit pre-race and if I was taking the trading seriously, I could have won over £1k but something has to give. I’m sacrificing my trading.

A few of you may be shocked at this considering the strides I’ve made this year on Betfair but the skill I’ve developed will always be with me now. I will continue using Betfair when I’m in the house and have some spare time and I will continue trading some of my own selections but I can’t go flat out like I was doing for 2 months.

Hopefully, with the increase in prices, this will ensure I feel like I’m being paid for my time now and I won’t need to trade like mad to make additional money. One reason for trading my own selections so much was to prove that I can make money at this game. I had to prove it to myself first and foremost and I have done that now. I know I have a strategy that I can use to earn consistent money on Betfair and it’s a great place to be in. I now need to try to conquer the tipping world…………

I’m currently up 60 points since the inception of the service in October. Lots of people mocked me on this blog when I said I would attempt to make 240 points a year from the tipping game. I can understand why to be honest as very few tipsters in this game would aim for that and even if they aimed for it, very few would achieve it or even look like achieving it. I’ve got a long, long way to go before I get anywhere near that target but the great thing about that target is that it is a big target. If I was to end up with 230 points profit in year one, would that be a disaster? Would 220 point be a disaster?

There are some services out there that would consider 60 points a year a great year. If I hadn’t started off so well with this service, maybe I would have saw 60 points a year as a great achievement but not now. I’m bang on target for my 240 point target and that’s the aim. It’s about 1.01 that I don’t make it but I’ll work my ass off to try to make it.

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope you are having a good time on Betfair and the like. Going by my blog hits, I doubt anyone is still reading this but I’ll continue updating it weekly until The Experiment finishes and I’ll pull everything together at the end and calculate how much I’ve made this year and what it has meant to me.

A frustrating day!

Profit since last update £129.52

I’m trying my best to find time to update the blog and after the day I’ve had, it felt right to do it tonight!

The profit is from this week as I had a couple of trades on Thursday and Friday but most of it is from today. If I traded today again 100 times, I can guarantee you 100% that the least amount I’d win on the day is the amount I’m posting but sometimes, I have to live with the fact that things don’t go my way when I’m trading.

I gave out 7 tips today, 3 winners at 9/2, 5/2 and 5/1 and 2 placed horses at 22/1 and 10/1. Two of the tips were unplaced.

By following my staking plan, you made around 20 points profit on the day and being honest, if you were playing on Betfair, you could have made more.

Clearly, this looks the sort of day made for me but unfortunately, things didn’t quite go according to plan. I made £100 on the first race and then £30 on the rest of the day although I was trading on my Betfair Mobile for much of the day and as I’ve said before on here, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone but it suits me when I’m Christmas shopping.

My errors today were much my own making and I seemed to miss the winners and back the losers but thankfully, I made a decent profit on the day and many of the subscribers probably had a very good day today also, so all in all, I’m not going to complain one iota.

I started off with Fabalu in the 11.40 race and it was very weak on Betfair which got me in a spot of bother and I had to take £40 IR on it. I got out a bit of the bet fairly early on and greened up very early also as I wasn’t sure it would stay the trip in that ground and a £100 green win on the race for me. Taking £40 IR on a 6 chance and winning £100 isn’t a bad result but sometimes, I get myself in a muddle on these drifters and I’d have been really annoyed to lose £40 by 11.45am on a Saturday!

It turned out well and got me in the mood for the rest of the day……

I traded a few of my early races in the house and I lost £16 on Lordsbridge and that annoyed me a little. I knew the way it ran and I just should have taken my medicine pre-race as I was struggling to get out but I ended up taking a little more IR than I wanted to gamble and the whole £16 was lost.

I was very sweet on Pause and Clause and backed it to win against the Nicholls hotpot when I should probably have just laid the 1.3 favourite. I couldn’t get anything out IR and it was another £12 loss and I was a bit annoyed at this point. I’d backed Free World to win in between for £10 and this was pipped by Aruldar on the run-in and at this point, I wasn’t too pleased.

I then struggled to get any money on Polar Gunner as it was too strong in the market and I ended up with £3 on it. Obviously, when one of mines is heavily punted and I can’t get a penny on it, it wins. That pissed me off a little more and I agreed to go out at that point to do some Christmas shopping.

Before I left, I backed Wingman to win and left a lay which wasn’t matched and it was another £12 loss when I checked when I got home.

My biggest error was in the 3.35 where I put up L’Aventure each-way and backed it at 23 on Betfair before I left the house. I knew I’d make it to the bookies in town to watch the race and I thought I’d put in a lay on my phone when I got there. Unfortunately, I missed the start of the race, played around getting up Betfair Mobile, couldn’t be bothered putting in a lay as my phone was pissing me about and watched the race. I had £8 on at 23 and it traded at less than 2 I heard and finished 2nd. I was really annoyed then and was fuming with myself.

In the last race, I’d put up Chiles Cross and backed it this morning. Thankfully, it shortened pre-race and gave me £260 riskfree and I left a lay on my phone to make £60 profit and that turned an OK day into a good day for me.

Some people may read this and think it’s not a great return but as I said last week, I live with the fact I don’t make as much as gamblers when the horses win I tip.

I was really chuffed with the tips today and how they ran and I know a few of the guys made a few quid. JP had an exceptional day as you can see on his blog and the run for JP just goes on and on. I know a lot of people are very sceptical about paying for tips and whether you can really make a portfolio of tipsters pay for you in the long-term but I’d direct them to JP’s blog and ask them to have a look at what he does and how he makes it pay.

I was glad to hit a couple of winners for the guys today and I was on a sticky wicket after my recent run, so as usual, I tend to do better with my back against the wall and feeling like I need to find a winner urgently. I just need to find a way to find winners when I’m doing well! :)

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!

Getting nearer to the Holy Grail?

Profit since last update £915.65 plus £40 subs (in addition to £140 subs already banked this month)

These blog updates are becoming less and less regular no matter how hard I try to find time to write them but that’s the way it has become I’m afraid.

I do want to try to get in a routine of writing a weekly blog post with some thoughts but it is very difficult to find the time. If I do find a bit of time at weekends, it’s better spent on doing something at the site, studying some results or doing some form study etc. so the blog has dropped down the pecking order of things to do.

However, as I said on the last post, the blog will not ‘die’ until The Experiment finishes, so those of you that like to read blogs and have enjoyed reading mines should keep stopping by to see if there are any weekly updates.

In the summer of this year, I think blog readers were spoilt for choice as there were a number of daily gambling blogs on the go and mines was just one of these. You also had Leon’s blog, Alistair’s blog and JP’s blog to name but a few. Leon is updating his blog as irregularly as I am, so that’s two of the best blogs gone in my opinion.

I still read JP’s blog and Alistair’s blog regularly though and there are links at the side.

So, what’s been happening with me and the subscribers at The Form Analyst site?

I’m sure lots of you keep tabs on my tipping and I’m sure lots of you want to see me do well. I also know a fair number of you want to see me fall flat on my face which always spurs me on a little during the bad times but it’s all part of being a tipster I’m afraid.

My tipping has been very good and the results speak for themselves. Here’s a graph of my P&L for the Form Analyst which looks like the one at Racing Index apart from this graph is to suggested odds and not Starting Price:



I’m not going to rub anyone’s face in how good I’m doing at the tipping as it’s not going to get me anywhere. Most people knew I had the potential to do something pretty special at the tipping game with my knowledge of horse-racing but I blew my best opportunity during the free trial month.

I’ve decided that I’m going to keep the service going into the New Year and I’m hoping most of my current subscribers will stay with me. I’m looking into other avenues to grow the business but I’m being very careful about where I look for potential subscribers.

I don’t want Joe Punter subscribers who look at my results and think I can make them a million in a year. I had a bad experience with these types during my free trial month and I can do without their subscription fees. I’m being very careful about recruiting new members and I’m not going to discuss it on here even. Let’s just say that I’ve a few things in the pipeline.

One of the reasons I keep a blog is to obviously record my own punting activities and it’s been a strange couple of months.

Since I started giving out analysis, I’ve dabbled between trading and punting. I started off punting and switched to trading after being well down during the month of October and having a poor September but it has worked well. I’ve still been continuing to trade my selections this month and it’s probably cost me a fair few quid but I’ve been doing OK on other races where I haven’t given a selection but fancied a horse to run well, so it’s all looking pretty good at the moment.

This is the best month I’ve had this year trading/punting by far and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that it has happened at a time when I’ve been reading races very well and giving out a lot of winning tips. So much of the tipping and trading game is about confidence and I’ve been flying high on confidence for most of this month, so it has followed that I was going to win a fair few quid from trading my own selections.

I’ve written lots and lots on here about whether my trading strategy works or not and people have their own views on it but being honest, when you’re selecting decent priced horses that trade very low IR, anyone could trade these horses and not lose. I gave up on trying to be a good trader a few months ago and I’ll never be a trader that can make money by trading odds movements on Betfair.

However, I have shown consistently on here that if you trade the right horses, you can’t fail to do well and since I’m picking the right horse to trade for many races this month, I’m doing well. Here’s my P&L for the last 3 months:



I’m only using a bank of a couple of hundred pound still (drawing down every week to help pay the bills at the moment!) and my staking size is around £30-£60 on most races I trade, so the returns are off the planet compared to a scalper but I take more risks than scalpers by letting trades go in play in many races, so it’s a simple risk v return game where my risks have worked very well this month. I’m not stupid enough to believe that these returns are achievable every month but I won’t complain about this month.

One of the criticisms that many people threw at me when I was thinking of starting a tipping service was the famous quote “why don’t you just back your own horses with your own money if you’re any good?” and I’ll repeat what I’ve always said. There are punters out there in a much better place financially to be able to exploit my knowledge better than me and it’s these guys that I wanted with me at the site.

I have a very diverse bunch of guys at the site who are playing with stakes from £4 a point to £50 a point. All of them are well in profit this month and overall and obviously, the ones who play with higher stakes are the guys that can exploit me to the full! My target for the service is to make 20 points a month and I’m doing a little better than that after 2 months.

If I can make 240 points a year, that means that the £50 a point guys make £12k and out of this, I’d only take a return £500 or so across the year. Seems like everyone’s a winner and this was always the plan when I started the site.

Obviously, other tipping sites charge much more than my site but as I’ve promised on here before, I’ll never overcharge for the service. If I don’t get enough subscribers to make it worthwhile, I’ll stop the service as I wouldn’t expect subscribers to pay more no matter how good I do at the tipping.

Overall, it’s been a great month for me and the subscribers and I’m now past the £4.5k mark this year with my trading/punting which is a nice achievement. Obviously, I’m not spending much time on the trading now and I’m sort of happy with my own trading strategy on Betfair and most of my time is going to spent on trying to grow the subscription business.

I feel in a great position now whereby if I do decide to stop the tipping, I know I can make a nice sum from just trading my own selections on Betfair which is basically the Holy Grail for most punters. 2009 could be a big year for The Form Analyst……..

46 points profit in 8 days!

Profit since last update £118.76

I’m not sure what happens but every time I write a blog post, it appears I then follow it up with a succession of losers! Thankfully, I stopped the rot yesterday and managed to pull out a 22/1 winner (20/1 SP) which was a nice way to stop a poor run.

One of the most satisfying things that has happened during this tipping spell to me was when I saw that someone had re-subscribed to the site today. Given my current form, this wouldn’t be a surprise that someone had re-subscribed but this person had the worst luck of all time!

Basically, he joined after I had hit 5 winners from my first 11 selections and he probably thought it was the best investment he could have ever made. Unfortunately, his first 34 ‘tips’ lost and he lost 45 points during this run. Before he joined the site, he asked me how many points of a bank would he need and I said 60 points although most people on the site were playing with 100 points in a bank.

Therefore, he had lost 75% of his bank if he was playing with a 60 point bank and I’ve no idea what must have been going through his head. I haven’t heard a peep from the guy to be honest and I’m not sure what I would have said if he had got in touch with me. Anyway, his 1 month subscription was up today and by my reckoning, he must be about 1 point up overall after this month.

Clearly, this isn’t what he hoped for when he joined the site but to be able to get back to level from being 45 points down takes some going and I was pleasantry surprised that he has joined for 2 more months!

The plan has always been for me to have a go at this for 3 months and then see what options are on the table. One thing that is a shame is that I haven’t had a new subscriber apart from the guy above and I’ve now lost a fair few who gave up on me too early, so it’s not like the service is growing at the moment.

One thing I would need to consider in the future would be the potential reward versus the time, effort and mental strain that comes with providing the service. One thing that I decided a while ago was that I would never charge a high price for the service no matter how good the service was. I like the idea that normal people playing small stakes can use the service and this is vitally important to me. I’m in the same sort of boat and therefore, I would never consider pricing the service outwith their price range.

Obviously, this does raise lots of questions about you can run a successful service and charge a low price when you don’t have many subscribers! If I decide I would like to carry on with this, I’d really need to look into growing the subscription list. However, I could somehow try to link the service to profits made in some cases which would help to fund the service. Why should someone playing £4 a point pay the same as someone playing £50 a point? They both value the tips differently, so maybe they should be charged differential prices?

I think there is a lot of trust between myself and all the guys at the site. If I did think of doing something a bit different with subscriptions in the future, I'm sure they'd be keen to give a view of how things can work also. I'm just throwing around some potential ideas in my head but we'll see what happens!

I’m trying to not think too much about the future as things can change in this game very quickly I’m finding and the next long losing run could just be around the corner but that’s the life of a tipster I guess.

I’m sure a few of you are tracking my profits/losses on Racing Index. I decided a few weeks ago that I’d never manage to do well on RI simply due to the fact that all my winners have shortened significantly and therefore, it’s not a true indication of my profit.

Amazingly, I’m now in profit on RI and when you consider I was 28 points down on the 30th of October, to be in profit now shows the sort of form I’ve been in recently. To SP, I’ve made 36 points profit in 8 days and to suggested odds, I’ve made 46 points profit in 8 days.

46 points profit in 8 days...... :)

Much more like it!

Profit since last update £376.46 + £140 subscriptions

Just a quick post to say that I’ve managed to haul my ass off the floor and start picking some winners again.

It’s been an amazing last week or so and with a little more luck, I’d be looking at much more profit than this. Importantly, the subscribers would have been looking at much, much more profit than this but this will come in time hopefully.

As at last Thursday, I’d managed to select 31 straight losers and being honest, things were looking very bleak. I’d lost all of the profits that the subscribers had won at the start of last month and I was 99.9% sure I was pulling the plug on the service at the year end as I’d have no subscribers left and we’d all be skint! :(

Roll on 7 days, 4 winners later (14/1, 5/1, 5/1 and 11/4) and placed horses at 10/1,13/2,9/2,12/1,10/1,9/1,14/1,10/1 and 7/2 and the world seems a much better place!

As I hinted at above, lady luck has deserted me big time and after seeing Idle Talk (14/1) trade at 1.04 on Sunday and lose on the run-in, I was all for jumping off the nearest bridge but thankfully, I followed it up with a 14/1 winner yesterday which made up for it in part.

I’ve now had 12 horses trade odds-on IR and lose in the past 3 weeks and this includes 2 in the past 3 days at 1.25 and 1.04 which is a killer!

Even allowing for the bad luck and missed opportunities, the P&L for the form analyst now looks like this:



Obviously, we could analyse this to death but basically, I went on the sort of run that would give any tipster a nightmare but it happens to everyone I guess. I’m probably more prone to longer losing runs due to the fact I’m very inexperienced at this game and when I hit the bad run, I struggled to cope with it and it just seemed to snowball and at one stage, my confidence was about as low as you could ever get!

At the moment, I’m feeling good again but probably not as good as JP as you can read across at his blog. http://spenner68.blogspot.com/

JP has been following me with chunky stakes since I started and the mind boggles how he managed to keep on going during the bad run but thankfully, he kept the faith and he’s now on an amazing streak himself and let’s hope it continues for both of us.

I’m up just over 30 points in 5 days which is a great run and I’m now looking forward to every selection running at the moment whereas a week ago, I was dreading it as I didn’t think any selections would win.

As you will have noticed, I’ve stopped quoting figures to SP as it’s not an indication of my subscribers’ profit. Every single selection that I’ve tipped and has won has shortened dramatically in price and Ashley Brook was another example yesterday. It was freely available at 14/1 all day and it opened on course at 14/1 and was backed down to 8/1.

I can see I’m 8 points down to SP on Racing Index now which will put me mid-table on there but a better indication is the fact I’m 14 points in profit to suggested odds. Some people would quote that Betfair SP works better but that only works if some of the winners are drifters. All of mines shorten pre-race, so the BF SP isn’t much different to the SP.

I’ve obviously cost myself a few pounds by not just following a staking plan and by laying off IR over the past week but I can’t have it both ways! Obviously, when I hit lots of winners, I’ll miss out but when horses like Idle Talk trade at 1.04 after being 16, then it makes it an easy decision to lay IR.