Pro Betfair Trading – Final Review

3rd September 2011

Inspector Rich – Reviews Pro Betfair Trading

Rating:

Passed

We have come to the end of the 56-day review period and as this strategy has proved to be profitable and as it is a mathematical or statistical strategy, I am happy that it will consistently make a profit whatever period of time is involved. See the graph below. The trend line shows a steady increase. Despite loss of all the profit so far, about half way through the review, the balance quickly recovered to its previous level and continued to trend upwards afterwards.

Out of 103 trades, 66 of them have now been profitable, 3 with zero profit, and 2 non-runners. 32 have made a loss. So 31% have made a loss – this has consistently hovered around the 30% mark through the review. The strategy predicts the losing trades will be between 20% and 30%. For me it has been around 30% for most of the review A strike rate or success rate of almost 70%.

A brief recap of the strategy: Without giving details away, you initially lay the selected horse when it shows the “perfect set up” pattern and then back it at, hopefully, higher odds. It is vital to accept losses when they occur and trade-out, otherwise, if you hope for a turnaround, you are simply gambling and not trading.

It is worth noting that Pro Betfair Trading does not involve any form study or statistics. It is purely determined by the movement of the odds. You do need to monitor races as they occur for a ten minute period before the off time and there is no realistic way to anticipate in advance which races may be candidate races. Therefore it is only suitable for those who can be in front of their computer during racing.

In practice and even though I was doing other betting and trading, I did find it frustrating to have to check race after race only to find no “perfect set up”. If I hadn’t been occupied doing other things. I think this constant checking of every race would have driven me mad! I can think of no way around this, you simply have to use the Betfair interface to check every race before the race start. The manual says to check it 10 minutes before race time. I did find that doing that I missed some “perfect set ups” and the odds had already gone against me before getting on with my first lay bet. I started checking more like 15 minutes before the off time and this did coincide with the sharp recovery shown on the graph. So I would advise checking for a candidate horse 15 minutes before the race time and applying the check of the odds for a half a minute or so, just as the manual suggests.

As well as the highly selective nature of the selection process, I have to say that the liquidity available on many races is an issue. Many UK races (except the major meetings) have just less than a hundred available on the back price that you want to take just before the off. Of course you can include the money available at one or two ticks lower, but this would seriously impinge upon your profit if you are using high stakes.

With a bank of £500 and lay bets of £25, your matching back bet of £20 or so, would easily be matched. But once you wanted to place a back bet to match, say a £250+ lay, as shown on the sales page and the manual – you would have to factor in allowing one, two, or three ticks lower to get your stakes matched.

The theory behind the Pro Betfair Trading strategy is an intriguing and rather clever one. According to this theory, the odds will go out after the “perfect set up”. There are lots of factors that determine whether a horse goes out in the odds or comes in, that are not taken into account in the Pro Betfair Trading theory. Things like how the horse looks in the parade ring, how it goes down to the start, how it loads into the stalls, withdrawn horses, etc. The theory in the manual predicts why the odds will go out, and doesn’t take any of those things into account.

To be honest, I am surprised that the odds do seem to go out 70% of the time, so it looks like the theory behind this strategy has some validity.

The total profit (£32.76) to £25 stakes (£500 bank) is small for the time spent monitoring the races. So to make this worthwhile, you would need to have significantly higher stakes. The profit is not scalable pro-rata, for the liquidity reason given above. You would probably have to take some ticks lower for your back stakes – this will reduce your profits and increase your losses.

Profitability compared to liquidity needed: £32.76 profit on £500 bank = 6.55% profit.  So I give it 3 stars out of 5 for profitability.

Ease of use: The Betfair interface is all you need to detect the “perfect setup”. It is quite easy to spot them, but due to their infrequency it is very tempting to see an almost perfect setup and hope that will be close enough. The discipline needed to avoid these is quite hard. For that reason I give 2 stars out of 5 for ease of use

Risk: The bank was never threatened and for that bank level for this review period we could easily have had more than the recommended 5% on each lay. The worst losing period only lost about £28 in total! You have to accept the 30% losing trades when they occur and you absolutely must trade out on a loss and not hope the odds go in your favour after the start of the race! 5 stars out of 5 for low risk

Return on liability (ROL): Rather meaningless as this is trading, not laying or backing. The longest odds that I layed at were 9.8 at £25 lay stake – that required £220 funds in Betfair. It was also one of the most profitable trades being backed at 16.0 for a 9.60 profit. The ROI on that was 4.37%. A more usual trade was £25 lay at 3.90 with a £72.50 liability, traded at 4.20 for a £1.55 profit giving a ROI of 2.14%’. You could put a max lay price of 5.0 or 6.0 to cap you liability. It wouldn’t alter your success rate, it would just mean you got fewer trades. 2 stars out of 5 for ROL.

Support and documentation: The manual is OK. The English is a bit clumsy at times, but the explanations are clear enough. 3 stars out of 5 for documentation

Time needed to apply the strategy: Each race takes only 30 seconds to check for the perfect setup. But you need to check every race that way for however long you want to monitor races for each day. Any race that you don’t check could be one that has the perfect set up, but most races don’t. I probably spent about 2 hours per day on average, including missing some days completely. I found it very frustrating to check race after race with no trades. 0.5 stars out of 5 for time needed to make the profit that I made.

The average of the above is 3.1 stars. So I am passing this system with a rating of 3 stars. To sum up I would say this is a safe strategy, but with low profit for the time spent to get it. But you must accept losses when they happen or this would not be safe and would be gambling not trading

Will I be using Pro Betfair Trading from now on? Not on a regular basis, but if I spot a perfect setup any time, I would certainly use it – I just wouldn’t go looking for them too intensively! It’s a useful and profitable trading strategy to have.

Regards

Inspector Rich

See the Pro Betfair Trading sales page here….

Inspector Rich – Reviews Pro Betfair Trading