Free Betting System

Free Betting System

**

The fortnight after the Arc weekend is always characterized by the racing equivalent of ‘a belt of calms’ and we are in the midst of that right now. Or, at least dear reader, I am in the midst of that right now.

I have to concede to feeling a little dull and listless myself this morning, with little to report on the horse-y front.

This changeover period is traditionally a difficult time to find winners too, with many of the flat horses being ‘over the top’ (i.e. having been in training for a long time and been taken to the well once too often), and an equivalent number of the jumps horses ‘not fully wound up’ (i.e. not quite match fit, and being aimed at bigger pots later in the season).

Whilst I love the Arc meeting, and I have a residual soft spot for Champions Day at Newmarket (where the Geegeez Racing Club members will be headed this saturday after a morning at the stables),  my big favourite is undoubtedly the Breeders Cup, held in the US either in the last week of October or, like this year, the first week in November.

I shall have much more news and opinion on that meeting, where European horses look likely to be well represented, from next week.

The other part of this transitional period is the new jumps season. With its fluent narrative which spans half of the year from October/November to March/April, the jumping game is barely wiping the sleepy dust from its eyes prior to Cheltenham’s November Open Meeting (12th to 14th this year). As such, the same principles of treading carefully amongst the fit and unfit applies.

One way to establish the horses that are more likely to be fit is to check on the trainers’ recent form table. If you go to Adrian Massey’s brilliant website and click on the trainer information tab on the left (or just click this link), you can get a view on trainers from the last seven days, 14 days, 30 and 60 days.

There is also a breakdown of profit and loss. For instance, I can tell you that as of today, Jonjo O’Neill has had just one winner from his 33 runners in the last fortnight. He has two horses at Huntingdon tomorrow, both to be ridden by A P McCoy, and both likely to be under 10/1. Would you want to be backing those?

Conversely, Nigel ‘Twist and Shout’ Twiston-Davies and Philip Hobbs have 6 winners from 22 and 7 winners from 20 respectively in the same period. Whilst Hobbsy has nothing entered on that Huntingdon card, N T-D has one in almost every race, and I’d be pretty confident he’ll hit the board.

Although this is a simple enough exercise, during the changeover months (April and October) it can serve you especially well. Obviously, trainer form is a key element all year round but at this time it is arguably the single most important factor when looking at any fancied runner.

[For the record, those summer jumping Welsh wizards, Tim Vaughan and Peter Bowen have hit the skids in recent weeks, with 0 from 16 and 0 from 15 respectively. Again, this can be a decent angle when looking for low liability lay material.]

So how about if we systematized this? Well, I’ve had a quick play with Adrian’s tool (oh please, stop sniggering at the back there!), and I’ve come up with a cracking fun system for the months of October and November.

Now I say ‘fun’, because we’re backing horses between 2/1 and 25/1, which means there can be loooooooong losing runs. As such, the approach is probably better suited to fun punts than serious backing. But that’s up to you. (In fact, obviously, it’s up to whether or not you completely ignore what I’m about to write!)

OK, so here we go:

Months: October and November only
Odds: 2/1 to 25/1
Trainer strike rate last 14 days: 10% or higher
Race Class: 4 – 7 (fitness usually / often beats class at this level)
UK National Hunt only

That’s it.

Whilst you’d have made a negligible profit at SP, the big odds that some of these win at (95 winners at 11/1 to 25/1 since 2008) mean you can often get double the SP on Betfair.

The overall figures, to Massey’s estimated Betfair odds*, show a profit of 672 points since 2008! That’s October, November, 2008 and 2009, plus the first ten days of this month…

*Now, to be clear, I checked a couple of these estimated Betfair odds, and they aligned closely with the Betfair SP. I can’t vouch for all runners and prices quoted. So in the interests of total transparency, I can tell you that the returns at industry (i.e. bookie) SP were a profit of 15 points (or 0.5% ROI).

So the system just about breaks even at SP, but with lots of double digit winners in there, Betfair prospectors may very well cash in!

I can feel those doldrums lifting already… 🙂

Matt