Weekly Summary up to 20/01/13

A cracking start to the week with three winners at 5/2, 7/4 and 7/1 from the first two days advice.

So with Monday and Tuesday adding funds to the betting bank we moved onto Wednesday and a fairly restricted view of Lingfield's second race. From a limited view point on At The Races it seemed that The Strig advised @ 9/2 switched to the outside with a 100 yards to go. I'll never know if that cost him the race as I couldn't make out what was where with all the mist surrounding the runners but it has established a "trend" in my betting that I have addressed today (days like today are ideal for evaluating your portfolios as we are "snowed under" and racing is abandoned!)........

I have decided to minimise my betting in 5, 6 and 7 furlong races. That doesn't mean that I won't tip anything in these short races if I feel they offer value but the time I spend researching them will be limited as I focus more on 1 milers and above. I have continued consistently to find winners in the longer races and this is something that will now be focused upon with Value At The Races

Onto Thursday and Definity didn't just miss out on a win he was beaten by 22 lengths having been fairly well respected in the market. It was a huge disappointment to the likes of myself as I'd staked quite a hefty chunk in him but it wasn't to be!

Then the weather hit! Friday was just a no go with non-runners galore and adverse conditions affecting everything from milk and bread supplies to four legged creatures running round in a circle!

Saturday started well with my tissue showing that Amosite was a 5/1 shot and offered tremendous e/w value at 11's. My thinking was that Glastonberry would be the main danger so getting 7/4 for the place was "standout", the win would have been even better! It wasn't to be for our other two runners and they were top rated in my book but just couldn't pull off a win on the day. Interestingly enough, Angelic Upstart runs in a similar race tomorrow and I think she'll come on for Saturdays run. I have availed myself of the 8/1 with Paddy's and hope she can run on and win the race tomorrow (after all it's a 1 miler and this is where I'm focusing from now on!)

Today was a wash out but as I stated before I've been productive, so onto next week and we should get a good run for our money, weather permitting of course!

Below is a list of this weeks runners and a summary below that:

Monday 14th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
14:00 Lingfield Sweet Liberta @ 5/2 (3.50) Bet Victor	Win	1	EVS	25.00	£1392.50	£13925.00
15:30 Lingfield Pairumani Prince @ 7/4 (2.75) Coral	Win	1	6/4	15.00	£1542.50	£15425.00

Tuesday 15th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
13:00 Lingfield Argentia @ 5/2 (3.50) Bet 365	Loss	5	9/4	-10.00	£1442.50	£14425.00
15:50 Ffos Las Tin Pot Man @ 11/2 (6.50) Boyle Sports	Win	1	7/1	70.00	£2142.50	£21425.00

Wednesday 16th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
15:10 Lingfield The Strig @ 9/2 (5.50) Bet 365	Loss	2	4/1	-10.00	£2042.50	£20425.00
Each Way - E/W Stake of 5pt(s) for a Total Stake of 10.00pts
17:15 Kempton Breakheart @ 10/1 (11.00) Coral	Loss			-10.00	£1942.50	£19425.00

Thursday 17th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
14:20 Wincanton Definity @ 3/1 (4.00) Stan James	Loss	2	9/4	-10.00	£1842.50	£18425.00

Friday 18th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
NO SELECTIONS TODAY					£1842.50	£18425.00

Saturday 19th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Each Way - E/W Stake of 5pt(s) for a Total Stake of 10.00pts
13:45 Kempton Amosite @ 11/1 (12.00) Bet 365	Place	2	12/1	7.00	£1912.50	£19125.00
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
14:20 Kempton Angelic Upstart @ 5/1 (6.00) Bet Victor	Loss	5	4/1	-10.00	£1812.50	£18125.00
17:05 Kempton Ryedale Dancer @ 4/1 (5.00) Bet 365	Loss	4	3/1	-10.00	£1712.50	£17125.00

Sunday 20th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Each Way - E/W Stake of 5pt(s) for a Total Stake of 10.00pts
16:25 Kempton Verse Of Love @ 10/1 (11.00) Bet 365	N/A	ABD			£1712.50	£17125.00

Profit/Loss: +5.70 Points
Strike Rate: 40%
ROI: 57%

Not a bad week and we can't complain about nearly 6 points on the board.

Weather permitting this good vein of form will continue as we head into next week and let's hope for some sun!

Regards,

Ed

Weekly Summary up to 13/01/13

After a good start to the month we've struggled a little to turn a profit this week. The overall loss for this week has been 1.1 points since Monday which is nothing too drastic but a loss is a loss!

From 13 selections we've hit the frame 9 times with 2nd's and 3rd's. This tells me that we're getting it right here at Value At The Races and the tide will turn going forward. 8 of the selections have beaten the market so again we're certainly obtaining value and this will result in a profit over the long term.

Here is a list of the results so far with a summary at the bottom:

Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
15:20 Wolverhampton Arabian Flight @ 7/2 (4.50) Stan James	Loss	2	4/1	-10.00	£1152.50	£11525.00
15:40 Taunton Bennys Mist @ 6/4 (2.50) Paddy Power	Win	1	5/4	15.00	£1302.50	£13025.00

Tuesday 8th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
13:00 Leicester Caulfields Venture @ 10/3 (4.33) Bet 365	Loss	2	11/4	-10.00	£1202.50	£12025.00
14:10 Leicester Minella Class @ 10/3 (4.33) Coral	Loss	3	5/1	-10.00	£1102.50	£11025.00
15:35 Chepstow Loughalder @ 7/2 (4.50) Boyle Sports	Win	1	6/4	35.00	£1452.50	£14525.00

Wednesday 9th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Each Way - E/W Stake of 5pt(s) for a Total Stake of 10.00pts
12:40 Doncaster Little Dutch Girl @ 9/1 (10.00) Paddy Power	Place	3	6/1	4.00	£1492.50	£14925.00
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
15:35 Ludlow Kilvergan Boy @ 7/2 (4.50) Bet 365	Loss	3	4/1	-10.00	£1392.50	£13925.00

Thursday 10th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Each Way - E/W Stake of 5pt(s) for a Total Stake of 10.00pts
14:15 Catterick Lively Baron @ 13/2 (7.50) Bet 365	Loss	8	15/2	-10.00	£1292.50	£12925.00

Friday 11th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
15:20 Huntingdon Sophonie @ 7/2 (4.50) Bet 365	Loss	4	13/8	-10.00	£1192.50	£11925.00

Saturday 12th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
13:30 Kempton Cloudy Copper @ 5/2 (3.50) Bet 365	Win	1	5/2	25.00	£1442.50	£14425.00
Each Way - E/W Stake of 5pt(s) for a Total Stake of 10.00pts
14:40 Kempton Captain Sunshine @ 14/1 (15.00) Bet 365	Loss	F	10/1	-10.00	£1342.50	£13425.00
15:35 Warwick Restless Harry @ 7/1 (8.00) Bet Victor	Loss	8	13/2	-10.00	£1242.50	£12425.00

Sunday 13th January 2013

	Result	Pos		Pts	£10	£100
Single - Total Stake : 10.00pts
15:20 Kelso Shooting Times @ 7/2 (4.50) Stan James	Loss			-10.00	£1142.50	£11425.00

Profit/Loss: -1.1 Points
Strike Rate: 23.08%
ROI: -8.46%

I will be back next Sunday with another summary and this Saturday, I intend to do a thorough explanation into how I have arrived at my selections with a combination of trends, statistics and form reading.

Have a great week and let's hope that Value At The Races can continue to bring on those winners and show us a profit.

Regards,

Ed

A Free Angle

I thought I'd introduce you to a clever little trick today that you can use to follow the market and find a few winners. It involves following the money in a horse race and using it to your advantage. The below example relies on three principles. The horse has to be in the top four in the betting forecast, already been gambled on and still be in the top two most popular bets in the market according to Oddschecker. It's not difficult to find these three factors and you'll be amazed how many winners you'll find!

Firstly I look at the first four in the betting from the racing post's forecast as you'll see below:

As you can see this highlights 7 horses. The reason I choose the racing post's forecast is that it is very good at getting the market right. We now need to see if the horse has had money for it by heading over to At The Races.

On this page we will see that the below horses have had some money coming for them:

You'll see that Porters War and Another Trump have seen some money for them. However, looking at Porters War, he's not met our first criteria of being in the top four of the betting forecast.

We now head over to Oddschecker and look at the pie chart at the bottom of the odds table and we see this:

As you can see from this the money is around equal for Porters War and Another Trump. The only horse from the two that has met all three factors is Another Trump so this is the selection.

The results are as follows:

As always, I only recommend playing around with this concept with paper money and when you feel comfortable with it and have shown a profit on paper, should you use it as part of your portfolio. As with anything to do with the market, it is always open to interpretation. Another Trump was ridden by A P McCoy so you could argue the money was coming from his legions of fans!?!

Let me know what you think in the comments box below and as always, leave me a question and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Ed

Some VATR Stats and What's to Come!

Hello and welcome to any new readers here at the Value At The Races blog.

Please take some time to read my previous entries and of course the below ramblings!

I know some people are put off by the lack of explanation as to why I arrive at a selection on the daily advice e-mail. The purposes of this site are to help people understand that every tip I send out has been well thought out and represents value from the calculations that I use. I'd also like to add that the tips sent out are part of my daily portfolio and are backed by myself at all times.

Anyway back to the service and how it has performed over the last 12 months. The service went live on the 20th February 2012. We were well into the back end of the jumps season at this point and a lot of my energy was gearing itself up for the flat season. Suffice to say this flat season has been the hardest and most testing times of my professional punting career! I've still managed to turn a profit but there has been no holiday for myself and Mrs VATR!!

So as I'm sure you're aware we need to treat betting as a long term investment so here are some figures for the service, had you been with me from day one.

Start of service (20/02/12) till end of Feb: +11.70 Points
March: +36.37 Points
April: -4.624 Points
May: -17.989 Points
June: +16.239 Points
July: +5.666  Points
August: +10.508 Points
September: -10.802 Points
October till today (15/10/12); +20.808 Points

Total: + 67.858 Points

The cost of subscribing to the service would have cost you over that period of time 38.40 Points of your bank so your overall profit would have been 29.458 Points. I know that is not amazing but it is a profit and as part of a portfolio is certainly worth its contribution.

We are now coming into our 9th month of being live and I strongly believe that the service will continue to profit as we head into the jumps. I have been burning the midnight oil over the last two months and have unearthed every single profitable statistic for the jumps and the All Weather with trainers, jockeys, horses, going, tracks and combinations galore! Going on the data I have for the last 5 years I would be looking to make well over 60 points profit between now and the end of February 2013. A bold statement but every angle I use is different to that of the bookie so it is a proven fact that we will turn a profit.

I will be publishing another post later on today that will give you a bit more of an insight into how I arrive at my selections and how I interpret "Value" which will keep my service in profit over the years to come.

Any questions, please leave a comment and I will answer within 24 hours.

Regards,

Ed

An Insight Into My Selections

I thought I'd do a post about how I view the racing the night before racing and show you my ramblings about each card and what my views are.

Ayr is a weak meeting from a stats point of view, however it looks that Richard Fahey has a few lively ones and an inspection of the markets tomorrow morning should indicate which ones to side with. The two that catch the eye are Dutch Heritage and Cosmic Moon. They both have good bookings with their jockeys and the combined strike rates look to be the market play. Look for any value in the morning for two good bets.

Lingfield is an extremely dissapointing card and offers no interesting angles. However Saeed Bin Suroor's Mizbah in the 1710 looks to be a good chance with Dettori booked to ride. 11/4 at the time of writing looks a massive price about a horse that has shown not a lot on previous form apart from last time out, being very unlucky in running but ran on well to come second behind Enery. My tissue states anything above 6/4 to be a good bet.

Yarmouth has nothing to work with.

Wolverhampton only has the one eye catcher and that's the top weight in the 1900. Almaty Express from the John Weymes yard, who boasts a 15% SR at the track with a fairly impressive £63.50 profit to £1 level stakes. The horse loves it round here with no less than 17 wins and several placings. The handicapper may have him in his grip but 5/1 looks too big about a course specialist. Horses for courses as they say!

Uttoxeter shows nothing of interest.

So there you have it. I will now spend a few hours constructing a tissue about each race of interest and any horse that is a bigger price than I anticipate, it becomes a bet and a tip.

Any questions or views, please leave a comment and I'll respond as soon aa I can.

Regards,

Ed

A Day In The Life Of A Professional Gambler

In today's post, I thought I'd give you a perspective into a day in the life of a professional gambler.
So to begin, I want to explain that it's not an easy profession and is fraught with psychological pitfalls and is not as glamorous as people first think!

I start the day with breakfast (not unusual I hear you cry!) like most people. After a usual start to the day, I then sit down at my computer and the hard work starts.

Firstly I have to go through all the various selection processes I use with various systems. This can take up to three hours in itself and consists of running through the cards repeatedly looking for qualifying bets. Once I have all the data collected I then have to start reading the form of every horse in every handicap and then construct my own tissue and compare this with the morning markets. If I find a horse, I believe to be over-priced then it becomes a bet.

Then I post these value bets for my subscribers over at Value At The Races so they can benefit from the early prices.

So we're now around the 1100am mark and all the day's information is laid out in front of me. The next hardest task is to now try and get my bets on. Not as easy as you think!

Most Bookmakers have closed my accounts or limit my bets to a minimum, so it's a constant cat and mouse game I have to play. I obviously use the exchanges a lot as this makes my life easier but sometimes there isn't enough liquidity in the morning to place a large bet so I have to use a bookmaker. I have a few contacts who can place these bets for me and they are then paid a commission. Sometimes I'll even go into a shop and use cash, although nowadays it is easier to keep everything on-line.

Once the day's bets have been placed, I'll have some lunch and go for a walk or a swim. It's important to take your mind off racing and get some exercise as it helps to keep the mind focused.

Back to the afternoon and it's about trading through the various races and finding over-priced horses that I think will be over bet come the off. I'll back the horse at the over-priced odds and then lay them off to create a green book. In other words no matter what the outcome, I make a small profit. Do this on every race and it soon adds up!

It's very hard to stay focused throughout the afternoon and manage your time constructively but my wife does a good job of keeping me in check!

I still work part time for a large bookmakers which I thoroughly enjoy. I won't tell you what I do but I quietly work behind the scenes making sure bets are legitimate and we don't lose too much money.

Once the day's racing is over, which can obviously run into the evening, I then tally up everything that has been bet and work out my profit/loss for the day. Every single bet has to be recorded with explanations as to why they were placed and notes to be made about any future bets on the horse. I then kick back and relax for a few hours and then it's another day.

I do try to take one day off a week but invariably this type of work goes on for 7 days a week and consumes your whole life................. Good job I love it!!


Any questions then leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.

Regards,

Ed

Finding The Value

I thought I'd give you an idea today on how I arrive at my selections that are tipped on my service Value At The Races everyday.

By browsing through the posts on this blog you'll see my interpretation of that elusive "Value". All my selections are tipped as I believe they are over-priced. To date my selections have beaten the market 86% of the time.

Our current strike rate is 28.87% and the average odds are 9/2 with the average SP returning just over 7/2.

So I'm getting the Value bit right but how do I arrive at my selections?

Over 3 years ago now I read a book by Dave Nevison and I was fascinated by his approach to creating a "tissue" This meant pricing a race up with my own odds and then if the market was bigger than my price then I had found a bet.

Every evening or morning I select the handicaps I will be tackling and start looking through each declared runner. I break the race down into form reading, trainer and jockey strike rates and general trends from the last 10 years. Each horse is then given a rating and with this rating I then go about pricing up my book.

As long as I think the horse has a good chance of winning and the market is bigger than my "tissue" price then it becomes a "tip"

As an example I thought I'd run through my reasoning behind the 2035 @ Southwell this evening.

Selection: Beachwood Bay @ 4/1

The horse likes it around Southwell with three wins, a second and a third under his belt. Although not having won in a class 5 on this occasion I feel that it shouldn't be a problem having been fairly treated by the handicapper.

The trainer Jo Hughes is in terrific form at the moment with a 33% SR in the last 14 days. That's 2 winners from 6 and an overall, impressive 23% SR overall on the all weather. Delving a little deeper, Jo is showing a 15% SR with her horses over 6 furlongs which is a good SR in my book.

From looking at the other horses, I believe that Clear Spring to be the main danger but at the time of writing, 9/4 is way too short in what could be a fairly competitve affair. Using the above and implementing statistics with all the other horses I then arrived at the below "Tissue"

Punching  11/1

Salik Tag   8/1

Clear Spring  5/1

Beachwood Bay              3/1

Elhamri    20/1

Ace Of Spies     14/1

Tunnager Grove       5/1

Gracie´s Gift   10/1

Amber Moon

25/1


Now if you add all the percentages up on the above tissue you will notice that it's very close to a 100% (102.12%) . This is because I've not included an over round into my calculations like a bookmaker would. As you can see, I fancy Beachwood Bay and believe that the horse is a 3/1 shot. Having looked at the market this morning, I was able to get on at 4/1. I now have a value bet and we should get a good run for our money.

Any questions then please leave a comment below and I'll answer as soon as possible.

Regards,

Ed