Most Horseracing websites that offer tips or insights usually give profit figures that are set to a level stake plan such as £1.00 level stakes or 1 point level stakes where 1 point equals your set stake like £1.00, £2.00, £5.00 etc. Unless you have a high strike rate with reasonable odds then this is usually unprofitable. Backing favourites is a classic example of this where in UK racing the strikerate of winning favourites hovers around the 32% mark when you couple this with favourite odds that can be as low as 1.10 then you need a very high strike rate indeed. To illustrate this figures taken from Adrian Massey’s website that has logged the fate of favourites from the last 16 years, list that of all the favourites that had an S.P. (Starting Price) of odds below 1.5 or 1/2 over the last 16 years of which there were 6868 only 74% of them won which gave a win return of 97% in other words for each 100 bets of £1.00 you would net £97.00. over the 6868 bets then you would lose £206.04 if you placed a £1.00 win on each race. Baring this in mind we can approach the problem from a different angle, we can adjust our stakes to achieve a net profit of a specific amount such as £1.00.
To do this we need a target figure and for this example I will use £5.00. To calculate the stake needed you divide the target (t) by the decimal odds(do)-1 Stake = t/(do-1) So if the odds are 2.5 decimal (6/4 in fractional odds) then our stake to achieve a £5.00 net profit would be : 5/(2.5-1) which is £3.33 When we use this in a real life scenario the results can be quite surprising.
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The table above shows the tipster from The Times Newspapers’ NAPs for September 2025 and clearly shows the advantage of using a “Back to Target” staking plan as opposed to a “Level Stake” staking plan. The figures used are from Betfair historical data using BSP (Betfair Starting Price) instead of the ISP (Industry Starting Price) as a consistent base starting price and a 2% commission rate on winning bets Using a “Back to Target” plan and a target of £5.00 the profit over the month comes out at £7.33 while using £5.00 level stakes the loss is £19.54. His strike rate is 26% for this month which is no great shakes when you consider that he is a National Newspapers main Horseracing tipster and these are supposed to be his best bet of the day but this is a clear illustration that fortunes are not to be made following tipsters but a profit can be.
Putting my research into practice I set aside a £10.00 “Bank” and at the start of the tournament started laying the top 10 seeded players for a liability of £1.00. These were in order of seeding: 1. Sabalenka 2. Gauff 3. Pegula 4. Paolini 5. Zheng 6. Keys 7. Andreeva 8. Swiatek 9. Badosa 10. Navarro
Round 1
The 1st round saw 4 of the top 10 seeds lose, namely Gauff, Pegula, Zheng, and Badosa. Gauff, the No 2 Seed lost in straight sets to Yastremska and I laid her at 1.20 for a stake of £5.00. Pegula, the No 3 seed, lost to Cocciaretto, again in straight sets, 6-2/6-3 and managed to lay her at odds of 1.13 for a stake of £7.69 Zheng, The No 5 seed, lost to Siniakova 7-5/4-6/6-1 Laying her at odds of 1.60 netting me £1.67 Badosa, the No 9 seed was the final casualty of the 1st round losing to Boulter 6-2/3-6/6-4. She was the biggest odds at 1.70 and with a stake of £1.43 The other 6 top 10 seeded players all made it through to the second round which meant that these 6 cost me a total of £6.00 in liability stakes but with the afore mentioned players falling I had a profit of £15.79 from these matches which gave me a £9.79 net profit from the 1st round matches.
Round 2
6 of the top 10 seeded players were now safely through to the second round and this posed a possible £6.00 loss if all 6 won their matches. Paolini, the No 4 seed, who I had laid at odds of 1.19 for a stake of £5.26 lost to unseeded Rakhimova 4-6/6-4/4-6. Losing £5.00 on the other 5 top 10 seeded players this shock exit of the No 4 seed netted me a small profit of 26p to add to my £9.79 profit from round 1. Total net profit from the 1st 2 rounds now stood at £10.05 and only 5 of the top 10 players left in the tournament.
Round 3
The sixth casualty was Madison Keys, the No 6 seed lost to Siegemund in straight sets 6-3/6-3. Having laid keys at odds of 1.19 for a stake of £5.25 this netted me £1.25 for the round and a total profit for the tournament so far of £11.30 as the other 4 seeds made it safely through to round 4
Round 4
This round saw the match up of No 7 seed Andreeva and No 10 seed Navarro which meant that my total possible loss from round 4 would be reduced from a highest of £4.00 if all 4 won their matches to £2.00 if Sabalenka and Swiatek both won plus, either a net profit if Navarro (Odds 2.60) won, or a net loss if Andreeva (Odds 1.62) won. In the event Both Sabalenka and Swiatek did indeed win their matches and Andreeva dismissed Navarro in straight sets 6-2/6-3 this gave me a net loss of 37p on this match plus £2.00 loss on the other 2 players making the 4th round my first loss of the tournament of £2.37 making this a total tournament profit so far of £8.93. This also left 3 players in the Quarter Finals and a potential loss in that round of £3.00
Quarter Finals.
The quarter finals saw Sabalenka safely through to the semi finals as did Swiatek giving a loss of £2.00 but Andreeva lost to Bencic which won me £2.05 after laying Andreeva at odds of 1.49. This gave me a round profit of 5p and even though small is still a profit and my tournament total going into the Semi Finals stood at a healthy £8.98
Semi Finals
Sabalenka played Anisimova and at last the No 1 seed fell! Laying her at odds of 1.4 for a stake of £2.50 this gave me a round profit of £1.50 to add to my total as Swiatek dismissed Bencic in straight sets 6-2/6-0 Total profit going into the final now stood at £10.48.
The Final
The odds for Swiatek to win the final were 1.42 which I laid for a stake of £2.38 this meant that if she did win my Tournament profit would be £9.48 or if Anisimova won my profit for the tournament would finish up at £12.86. Swiatek demolished Anisimova 6-0/6-0 to become the first Polish lady to win the Ladies Title and reduce my profit for the tournament to £9.48.
Summary
I made the rules at the beginning of the tournament and kept my liability to £1.00 per player and not by market which would have made things complicated in “Match-Up” matches. The chart above shows P/L in £ of each player. It is not actually necessary to have an exchange account as a similar result can be obtained by backing the opponents of the seeded players for your desired stake. As a quick comparison in the Match between Coco Gauff and Yastremska in the 1st round. I laid Gauff at odds of 1.2 giving me a profit of £5.00 but the best odds available to back Yastremska at the bookies was 4/1 (5.0), if you had backed her at these odds your profit would have been £4.00 instead of £5.00
Had I have lost my £10.00 bank halfway through the tournament then I would have stopped and that would have been that, but having researched this, the trends suggested that the Ladies tournament provided the better chance of profit than the Gentleman’s tournament using this strategy. I am sure that many of you reading this will scoff at the stakes involved saying is it worth it. I don’t really care what you think! this was a practical exercise where I had an idea and put it to the test with a bank that I was prepared to lose. I have now increased that bank by nearly as much again of which I will utilise by increasing the liability to £1.20 for the WTA 250 Hamburg Ladies Open and laying the top 8 seeded players
Disclaimer
If you liked this content please “like” so I can get some feel for the effort I am putting into this being beneficial to others who are looking to make a couple of quid but no fortunes.
Please gamble responsibly and don’t bet more than you can afford. The content of this post is historical fact and in no way guarantees the out come of future tournaments.
The ASB Classic is the first WTA 250 tournament of the year on the WTA 250 Tour. Comprising of 32 players competing for tour points and prize money that will advance their world standings as the points accumulate. As with other posts in this series I will be looking at the fate of the top eight seeded players for each tournament furthering my own research into making small profits by laying these players to a fixed liability of £1.00 (which is 10% of a starting bank of £10.00) at the Betdaq exchange, where at present I enjoy a 0% commission rate. The top 8 seedes in order of rank were for this tournament as follows 1. Keys. M 2. Mertens. E 3. Anismova. A 4. Sun. L 5. Tauson. C 6. Raducanu. E 7. Osaka. N 8. Volynets. K
Both Mertens and Raducanu withdrew from the tournament before the start due to injury.
Round 1
With just 6 of the top 8 seeds starting the maximum loss if all seeded players won in the 1st round would be £6.00. Both the 3rd and 4th seed lost their first round matches. Sun (4) losing 6-3/3-6/6-3 and Anisimova (3) losing 2-6/6-2/6-3. The table below shows the P/L of the first round matches where each of the seeded players were laid to a £1.00 liability.
Round 1 resulted in a small loss of 34p and 4 players advancing into the 2nd round.
Round 2
With 4 of the top 8 seeds progressing into the second round and a 34p loss from the 1st round our maximum loss if all players won the second round would be £4.34. Unfortunately for our laying strategy this is exactly what happened. The table below shows just this.
A total loss of £4.34 after round 2 still leaves us £5.66 of our £10.00 bank intact and is ample to now see us through to the end of the tournament.
Quarter Finals.
The quarter finals have eventually seen the match up of 2 of our seeded players, Touson and Keys so we now know that our Maximum loss for the Quarter finals is not £4.00 as in the second round but £2.00 plus whatever the outcome of the matched up seeded players returns. This could be a profit if the favourite has short enough odds and loses or a small offset loss if she wins In the event of it No 8 seed Volynet loses to Parks and in the Match up match between Touson and Keys, Keys was the odds on favourite to win the match but Touson won it in straight sets 6-4/7-6. This produced an overall profit of £1.95 for the Quarter Finals round as shown in the table below.
If we add this profit to our previous losses in the 1st and second rounds we still have a loss of £2.39.
Semi- Finals
With just 2 of the seeded players in the semi finals and each playing another player our maximum loss for the semis is just £2.00 if both players advance to the final. And this is exactly what happened unfortunately. Both players won in straight sets Tauson winning 6-4/6-3 and Osaka 6-4/6-2. This brought our total tournament loss to £4.39 with a similar situation as in the quarter finals where two of the seeded players play each other. The table below shows the semi final results
The Final.
The tournament organisers must have been very pleased with themselves as the seeding worked and 2 of the seeded players meet in the final but depending on which one wins will either increase our tournament loss or decrease it depending on the odds. Osaka was the odds on favourite at 1.53 and if she wins then our tournament loss would be increased. If however she were to lose to the “underdog” Tauson who had lay odds of 2.79 then we would win more from Osaka’s loss than from Tauson’s Win and it would decrease our overall tournament loss. The table below shows just what happened.
As you can see in the table we lost £1.00 with Tauson winning but we won £1.89 with Osaka becoming runner up. This gave us a 89p profit to add to our tournament loss of 34.39 giving a total of £3.50 loss. The table below shows all the lay bets made and odds with stakes for each match.
Summary
Over the whole of the tournament we would have made a total of 18 bets at £1.00 liability. The early exit of Anisimova and Sun helped preserve the bank to a certain extent and from this point a total loss whilst possible proved unfounded and left us with a workable bank of £6.50 of which we can take into the second WTA 250 tournament using liability bets of 65p.
Disclaimer
If you liked this content please “like” so I can get some feel for the effort I am putting into this being beneficial to others who are looking to make a couple of quid but no fortunes.
Please gamble responsibly and dont bet more than you can afford. The content of this post is historical fact and in no way guarantees the out come of future tournaments.
The Eastbourne Open is held each year at Devonshire Park in the week preceding the Wimbledon Grand Slam Tournament and is part of the WTA 250 tour. Open to 32 players in the singles tournament, I will be looking at the fates this year of the top 8 seeds in my ongoing research into laying seeded players on the WTA tour. This year the top 8 seeded players were
Kasatkina
Krejcicova
Ostapenko
Kenin
Linette
Stearns
Raducanu
Sramkova
The 1st round saw 3 of the top 8 seeds lose or retire through injury and these were Kasatkina, the No 1 seed who lost her match 2-1 to Sun 7-5/2-6/6-3 and was odds on at 1.39 to win. Next on the chop list was Kenin, the No 4 seed who lost to Birrell in straight sets 6-4/6-4, her odds to win the match were 1.52 The final casualty of the seeded players in the 1st round was Linette who after losing the 1st set 6-4 was also losing the second set 4-2 when she sustained a knee injury forcing her to concede the match and punters cash at odds of 2.28.
So a quick summary of round 1 would, if we had laid each of the top 8 seeded players for a liability of £1.00, our maximum possible loss would have been £8.00 if all seeded players won. As mentioned above, there were 3 of the top 8 seeded players who were knocked out in the 1st round The table below shows, working from a bank of £10.00, a slight (15p) profit if we had laid the players at the exchange for a £1.00 liability.
Going into the 2nd round with our bank in profit the remaining top 8 seeded players just tumbled from the tournament as the following table shows with the only survivor being Krejcikova and a second round profit for us of £6.67
The last of the top 8 seeded players, Krejcikova, sustained an injury before the Quarter finals and withdrew from the tournament Leaving us with a Tournament profit of £6.82.
In Summary
Just as many tournaments before, the Eastbourne Open is not immune to seeded players falling at the 1st or 2nd hurdles. We can take advantage of this by either Backing the underdog at a sportsbook or laying the seeded player at an exchange such as Smarkets, Betdaq or Betfair. Please subscibe to my blog to get regular updates on my research into the WTA tour and the fate of the favorites.
If you liked this content please “like” so I can get some feel for the effort I am putting into this being beneficial to others who are looking to make a couple of quid but no fortunes.
Disclaimer.
Please gamble responsibly and dont bet more than you can afford. The content of this post is historical fact and in no way guarantees the out come of future tournaments.
Before the year 2000 you would have to go back to 1962 to find a player out of the top 5 seeding in the ladies tournament that won. Since and including 2000 there have only been 10 players that were within the top 5 seeding that have won the ladies tournament. Where did these players fall by the wayside and what odds on the exchange could you lay them off at? 2024 saw 31 seed Krejcikova winning the tournament with a 2-1 victory over 7 seed Paolini, but the top 10 seeds started falling out in the 1st round with the dismissal of Zheng and Vondrousova with sportsbook odds of 1.17 and 1.13 respectively. Round 2 saw 5 seed Pegula lose to unseeded Wang, her sportsbook odds were 1.25. The third round was a disaster for the seeded players with 1 seed Swiatek (Odds 1.08), 9 seed Sakkari (Odds 2.2) , and 10 seed Jabeur (Odds 1.5) all crashing out. This left just 4 of the top 10 seeded players progressing into the 4th round which also saw casualties in the form of 2 seed Gauff (Odds 1.29) and 11 seed Collins (Odds 1.44). (I have included Collins at 11 seed because No 3 seed Sabalenka withdrew before round 1 and did not play in the tournament). Both remaining top 10 seeded players, seed 4 Rybakina and seed 7 Paolini made it safely through the quarter finals but the semi finals were the limit for seed 4 Rybakini (Odds 1.2) who lost to eventual winner Krejcikova. As mentioned before Paolini was the last of the top 10 seeds to fall and became tournament runner up with match odds of 2.2.
The implications of these events warrant some serious investigation into either backing the underdog at sportsbook odds if you haven’t got an exchange account or laying the seeded player on the exchanges.
2024 Round 1 Matches
Wimbledon 1st round matches backing the underdog at £1.00 level stakes
The table above shows the results and profit had you backed the underdog with Bet365 sportsbook for a £1.00 level stake. As you can see your profit would have been £1.00
Wimbledon 1st round matches laying the top 10 seeded players.
This second table shows the results and profit achieved when laying the top 10 seeded players for a £1.00 liability at the exchange with a 0% commission If you factor in a 2% commission then the profit would be £3.02 instead of £3.25.
2024 2nd Round Matches
Wimbledon 2nd Round Backing the Underdog at £1.00 Level Stakes
In the 2nd round just 1 seeded player was knocked out and the “underdog” for the match was Wang Xin who was 3/1. Total stakes for round 2 was £8.00 producing, after Wangs’ win, a total loss of £4.00. This brings our total P/L for the tournament if we were backing the opponent of the top 10 seeded players to -£3.00.
Wimbledon 2nd round matches laying the remaining top 10 seeded players for a £1.00 liability
This table above shows the results if we had laid the remaining top 10 seed players. Our loss after 2% commission would be £3.74 giving a total loss of £3.72
2024 3rd Round Matches.
Wimbledon 3rd round matches Backing the underdog for a £1.00 level Stake
2024s’ 3rd round saw 3 of the top ten seeded players get knocked out including No 1 seed Swiatek which produced the highest individual profit of £7.00. The overall profit for round 3 backing the underdogs at Bet365 was £5.30 giving us an overall tournament profit of £2.30.
Wimbledon 3rd round matches laying the remaining top 10 seeded players to £1.00 liability
The dismissal of 3 of the remaining 7 top 10 seeded players has put our P/L back into the black with a 3rd round profit of £5.71 before commission deduction. With this factored in the 3rd round profit is £5.51 giving a tournament profit of £1.79
2024 4th Round Matches
Wimbledon 4th round matches backing the underdog at £1.00 level stakes
The dismissal of both Gauff and Collins in round 4 would have given us a level stake profit of £2.50 backing the underdog at Bet365 the retirement of both Keys and Kalinskaya ensured safe passage to the Quarter Finals of the remaining 2 top ten seeds Paolini and Rybakina. With these two wins in this round our total tournament profit for backing the underdog now stands at £4.80.
Wimbledon 4th round matches laying the remaining 4 top 10 seeds to a liability of £1.00.
Laying players at such short odds at the exchange has paid off in this round giving us an after commission profit of £3.10 adding to our tournament profit giving a total of £4.89
2024 Quarter Finals
Both of the remaining top 10 seeded players made it safely through to the semi finals reducing our Level stake profit when backing the underdog to £2.80. Laying the seeded players also had the same effect on our laying to a liability profit to £2.89 after commission.
2024 Semi Finals
Wimbledon 2024 Semi Final Matches showing the backing of the underdog at £1.00 level stakes
Paolini triumphed in her semi final match against unseeded Vekic but backing Krejcikova to win against Rybakina paid dividends producing an overall semi final profit to £1.00 level stakes at Bet365 of £2.0 giving us an overall tournament profit with just the final to play of £5.30.
Semi final matches involving the remaining 2 top ten seeded players when laying to a £1.00 liability.
Again laying the seeded player instead of backing the underdog produced a greater profit before 25 commission was deducted even with the commission subtracted the profit is £3.28 giving a total tournament profit with just the final to play of £6.17
2024 The Final.
The Final for Wimbledon 2024 where 31 seed Krejcikova beat 7th Seed Paolini 3/6 6/3 6/4
Backing the “Underdog” in the final at Bet365 produced a profit of 73p which when added to our tournament total for backing the underdog at £1.00 level stakes has given us a tournament grand total of £6.03
Laying the seeded player paid off again giving a small profit after commission of 78p
Laying the no 7 seed Paolini at odds of 2.25 has seemed the only sensible bet in the tournament given the odds of the eventual winner, Krejcikova, of 1.8 at the exchange. A profit of 78p was achieved after the reduction of 2% commission and when added to the tournament total for laying each and every one of the top ten seeded players produced an overall profit of £6.95. This is 92p more than backing the underdog at a sportsbook.
Analysis of the tournament.
Without doubt had we laid the top ten seeded players then our profit would have been more than backing the underdog at the bookmaker. However there is the fact that bookmakers need to create at least a 7% overound and we may well have benefited more by backing the underdog at an exchange especially if you have a promotional 0% commission. Without the top seeds falling by the wayside early on in the tournament the profit would have been less or even a loss might have occurred, certainly our profit was boosted by the single fact that Swiatek crashed out in the 3rd round! Overall a success and in fact a low risk strategy. Laying to a liability of just £1.00 means that we can monitor and control any losses. We can make the lay bets in the knowledge that if we start with a small bank of just £10 and not let any emotion enter into our decisions we can keep this strategy fun.
How the seeded players faired in previous years.
2023
Top 10 Seeds
Swiatek – Lost in Round 4 (Odds 1.19) Sabalenka – Lost in Semi Finals (Odds 1.7) Rybakina – Lost in Quarter Finals (Odds 1.71) Pegula – Lost in Quarter Finals (Odds 1.76) Garcia – Lost in Round 3 (Odds 2.05) Jabeur – Lost in The Final (Odds 1.5) Gauff – Lost in round 1 (Odds 1.34) Sakkari – Lost in round 1 (Odds 1.36) Kvitova -Lost in Round 4 (Odds 1.8) Krejcikova Lost in Round 2 (Odds 1.35)
Swiatek Reached the 4th round where she lost to Svitolina After losing 3 lay bets at £1.00 each we would have won £5.26 giving a profit of £2.54 Sabalenka Reached the Semifinals where she lost to Jabeur. After losing 5 lay bets at £1.00 each we would have won £1.43 giving a loss of £3.57 Rybakina Reached the quarter finals were she lost to Jabeur. After 4 losing lay bets at £1.00 each we would have won £1.41 giving a loss of £2.59 Pegula Reached the Quarter finals where she lost to Vondrousova. After losing 4 lay bets at £1.00 each we would have won £1.32 giving a loss of £2.68 Garcia Reached the 3rd round where she lost to Bouzkova. After losing 2 lay bets at £1.00 each we would have won 96p giving a loss of £1.04 Jabeur Reached the final where she lost to Vondrousova. After losing 6 lay bets at £1.00 each we would have won £2.00 giving a loss of £4.00 Gauff Lost in the 1st round to Kenin. We would have won £2.94. Sakkari Lost in the 1st round to Kostyuk. We would have won £2.78 Kvitova Reached the 4th Round where she lost to Jabeur. After losing 3 lay bets of £1.00 each we would have won £1.25 giving a loss of 1.75 Krejcikova Reached the 2nd round where she lost to Andreeva. After just 1 losing lay bet of £1.00 we would have won £2.86 giving a profit of £1.86
Conclusion.
We would have lost £5.51 over the whole tournament this year if we had laid each of the top 10 seeds to the end.
2022
Top 10 seeds
Swiatek – Lost in Round 3 (Odds 1.2) – P/L £3.00 Kontaveit – Lost in Round 2 (Odds 1.50) – P/L £1.00 Jabeur – Reached the Final (Odds 1.83) – P/L -£4.80 Badosa – Reached the 4th Round (Odds 3.4) – P/L -£2.58 Sakkari – Reached the 3rd Round (Odds 1.20) – P/L £3.00 Pliskova – Reached the 2nd round (Odds 1.71) – P/L £0.41 Collins – Lost in the 1st Round (Odds 1.79) – P/L £1.27 Pegula – Reached the 3rd Round (Odds 1.57) – P/L -£0.25 Mugurusa – Lost in the 1st round (Odds 1.25) – P/L £4.00 Raducanu Reached the 2nd Round (Odds 1.70) – P/L £0.43
Conclusion
We would have Won £5.48 over the whole tournament this year if we had laid each of the top 10 seeds to the end.
I have recently subscribed to the Sun’s Templegate tipline where I get his next day tips before 6pm the previous day to running. This costs just £3.00 per month which is a whole lot cheaper than buying the paper everyday. Using the secure staking plan on TSM (The Staking Machine) and editing the settings to a £10.00 Bank and a Maximum stake percentage of 10%. This staking plan graduates the stakes used in relation to the odds. On Monday 17th March 2025 Templegate tipped 21 horses of which 10 won with an average of winning odds of 2.91 (In Decimal Odds). The highest stake used was £1.00 and the lowest stake was 30p with a total money staked over all racing of £12.90 producing a total profit of £7.70 giving a ROI (Return on Investment) of just under 60% at 59.69% and a strike rate of 47.6%.
The excel file available to download above details the horses and odds with the stakes involved and a total cumulative profit. They are not in any particular time order except for race meetings.
Yesterday I showed you how to create a basic query in TSMs’ Selection Hunter to find some likely winners using the back test mode to discover any trends and it came up with the following 3 horses The selections are 13:50 Stage Star 14:25 Copperhead 15:00 Sunray Shadow.
13:50 Stage Star Stage Star met the provisional odds criteria of between 2.00 and 2.99 but went off at a BSP of 3.21. Our conditions of placing a bet with betangel were that the BSP had to be between 2.00 and 2.99 for the software to trigger. 3.21 was out of our range at 3.21 so no bet was made.
Stage Star only managed 4th out of 5
14:25 Copperhead Joe Tizzards’ Copperhead also qualified as the provisional odds were posted as 2.85 but again the BSP was outside of the criteria and went off at 3.5 giving us another miss fire from Betangel. Copperhead Won by 14 lengths!!!
15:00 Sunray Shadow The final selection was the Skelton trained and ridden Sunray Shadow who’s Provisional odds were posted at 2.5. Winning by a length and a 1/4 the BSP was well within the range at 2.23 and Betangel Fired the bet in 10 seconds before post time catching 2.25
Summary 2 of the 3 selections went off at odds outside the criteria one of them winning but alas one losing 2 of the 3 went off as favourites despite all 3 being ranked as provisional favourite. Betangel fired just one bet and this returned 125% ROI Given the strike rate of the criteria when back tested (68%) 2 actual winners from our query seemed to tentatively back this trend.
Cautionary note While this was a completely genuine test run you should not go out and back every Aintree runner with a BSP of between 2.0 and 2.99 even though I back tested over a period of nearly 2 years results you should always do as much research as you can and start with stakes that you can afford to lose.
Build your bank steadily Racing is not going to finish tommorrow!!!
The staking Machine software has limited use for free but If you want to take advantage of the Selection Hunter you will need to pay – It only costs £24 for 1 year – Twenty Four!! this is not a typo and can be paid via paypal That’s only 2 quid a month and if you had backed Sunray Shadow for a quid you would have made over 1/2 a months subscription already.
There is a new addition to the TSM armoury called the Selection Hunter and it does exactly what it says! By entering criteria in a series of easy to use drop boxes in its user interface you can quickly build a module/query that shows the runners for today. As a demonstration I will build a query for todays racing at Aintree using the backtest mode and then post the selections before racing starts. We need to open the selection hunter first and this is achieved by opening TSM and then clicking on the racecards tab at the top and then clicking on the “UK/IRE Horse Racing Selection Hunter” shown below.
This will open the selection Hunter Interface as shown below.
As you can see I have already produced some queries but for this demonstration I will start from scratch.
To start a new query click the first tick box and then, under criteria, select RaceMeet from the first dropdown box make sure “Like” is populated in the String Op box and Type the race course name into the value box as shown below.
Make sure the Back Test Mode switch is set to on and the date range is Jan 23 – Now by selecting it from the date range drop down box and then Click the run query using settings below at the top of the interface. This has produced 991 results which in effect is the number of horses that have run at Aintree since January 2023. We need to now analyse this queries results by clicking the box which is arrowed above. This will open the screen shown below
Next click the additional breakdown button arrowed to bring up the following screen.
We can now drill down our query to specific criteria such as Jockey, Trainer, Racerunners etc. For this demonstration I will select odds from this dropdown list to produce the following screen.
From this screen we can determine the optimum odds that produced the greatest strike rate and in this case with a strike rate of 68% odds of 2 to 2.99 BSP produced a return on Investment of 61.4% We can now enter these figures into the Selection Hunter interface as follows.
Under criteria and in the second dropdown box select “Provisional Odds” then in Num Op select >= then in the value box type 2 – this tells the query to look for horses that raced at Aintree in this period that had odds of 2.00 or more In the next box down select provisional odds again but in the Num Op box select < and the value type 3 – this tells the query to look for horses that had provisional odds of less than 3 Make sure both tick boxes are filled nest to provisional odds and click the Run Query button again This will bring up the next screen shown below.
This is a very basic query which when run with the back test mode switched off will list all todays runners at Aintree that have a provisional starting price between 2.00 and 2.99 as shown below.
Thre are 4 runners today that meet this criteria and if you notice there are 2 selections for the 3 o clock – Sunray Shadow and Takt Des Touques. In the column next to Prov Odds you will see Prov Odds Rank and this is another factor that you can drill the criteria down by as shown below
In the screenshot above I have expanded the interface so this picture is not vey clear but if you click the image you will see a lot more information is readily available for each runner So we have our short list of runners and with the strike rate of this query being 68% we can expect 2 of the 3 to win as long as the BSP is between 2.00 and 2.99 We can use Betangel to place or bets for us at the BSP range specified. ie 2.00 – 2.99
The selections are 13:50 Stage Star 14:25 Copperhead 15:00 Sunray Shadow.
The “Percentage” staking plan is different to level stakes in the way you link the stake to your profit. With “The Staking Machine” software you can do some very clever things such as applying a different percentage to any profit and adding it to the base stake. In this post I will explore the myriad of settings to discover whether or not we can improve on the level stakes debarcle outlined in the main introductory post. If you have arrived here straight from google or some other entety other than the introduction post you can read it here
The first thing to do is to apply our desired settings to the relevant staking plan. To access this feature we click on the “Staking Plans” Tab at the top of the screen and then click the Edit Staking Plans Settings” button on the top left of the screen as shown below.
Accessing TSM staking plan settings.
To begin with we should set our “bank” to the same as level stakes and the initial stake percentage the same. We are also going to set the minimum stake allowed to that of the initial start stake to make the staking machine calculate a stake that will never go below 2.00, this is done by ticking the box marked “Minimum Stake equals start stake” We are also going to tick the box “Re-calculate after x amount of bets” and enter 1 into the box. This will instruct TSM (The Staking Machine) to recalculate the stake after each bet. This can be seen more clearly in the screenshot of TSM below
Click the image to open in a new tab for a clearer view.
As you can see from the top image I have already loaded the data for last seasons Manchester Citys’ games and the software has calculated the stakes using the settings we have just entered, adusting the stakes for any profit or loss made. The same image is shown below and it clearly shows that when there was a profit made the stakes increased but when the cumulative profit became a loss the minimum stake rule kicked in and the minimum stake became £2.00. If we had left the “Minimum Stake Equals Start Stake” box unticked when Man City started losing you can see that the stakes reduced to 2% of our “Bank” – See bets 14 onwards shown below.
When the bank dips below its starting amount i.e. when you are no longer in profit TSM calculates the stake to 2% of the running bank if the minimum stake is unticked.
Because we are using the same data for level stakes as well as the percentage plan TSM can produce for us a graph that compares the two systems alonside each other. This is shown below.
A comparison of how the Percentage plan performed against level stakes using the initial settings determined above.
If you click the image above it will open in a new tab so that you can see from where i hovered my mouse above bet 38 on the percentage plan line that the plan ended with a further 10p loss compared with the level stakes plan. So on first impressions the percentage plan follows the level stakes plan very closely finishing with a very slight greater loss. There is however more setting that we can apply and one of these is to apply a different percentage to any profit and adding this to our base stake of £2.00 as the following shows. To turn this feature on we need to go back to our staking plan settings and tick the “Apply Different Percent % to Bet to any Profits” and enter the percent rate you would like to impement. I have entered 10%, this means that if we are £5 up it will add an additional 50p to the stake as shown below.
The following screenshot shows the increased stakes when this feature is implemented and the image immediately below that shows the normal percentage plan.
As you can see the percentage plan with the increased stakes the bank stands at £104.35 giving a profit of £4.35 where as the basic percentage plan the total is £104.09 or a £4.09 profit. When we start to lose however our increased stake means that on a losing bet the loss is greater. After Man City didn’t win the match against Wolves the basic plan shows a greater profit. If we get TSM to generate a new comparison graph using the new setting and compare it with level stakes the plans still follow similar paths but the percentage plan while rising above the level stakes plan at the end of the season it has under performed it by a further 40p loss.
Click image for a better view in a new tab
In quick summary for Manchester City it would seem that the percentage staking plan would not be suitable for bets involving very short odds even though the strike rate is quite high. What is becoming apparent is that if the strike rate is below the required strike rate determined by the average winning odds then you don’t stand much of a chance and it might be better to commit sacrilege and back your team to lose 😲. This we will explore later.
On to Tottenham and their creditable 5th place last season. As we saw in the introduction post Tottenham had a winning strike rate of 52.6% but their average winning odds of 1.81 dictated a required strike rate of 55.4% so even though the strike rate is still below the required strike rate can we recover losses with increased average odds or are we still doomed to failure and lining the bookies purse even more. The answer I am afraid is we lose even more than with the shorter odds. The screenshot below (which is another great feature of TSM) shows the comparisons to a greater detail with totals such as highest peak profit and lowest trough loss
You will need to click the image to gain a better and clearer view of this screenshot – it will open in a new tab.
This feature is accessed by clicking the Analysis Comparison button on the main screen which will open in a new window the entire comparison stats for all the staking plans on the system – I have just shown the two that we are looking at so far. If you click the image above it will open in a new tab so you can see more clearly the data it has produced The first column shows the largest single stake used so you can get some idea of the stakes involved, With the level staking system the largest and smallests stakes are obviously going to show £2.00 as this is our level stake and that stands to reason. With the Percentage Staking plan with the settings described above the largest single stake was £3.39 and the smallest being £2.00 as we set our stake to be never below this figure or 2% of our starting bank which if you remember was £100.00. In the 5th Column it shows total stakes used and in this case the level staking plan used £76.00 as you would expect (38 games x £2.00). With the percentage plan our total stakes came out at £90.46 The most interesting column for us is the second to last which shows cumulative profit. This is our end of season figure and the Percentage plan under performs the level stakes by £2.80 with the cumulative profit being -£6.54. We can see this a lot clearer with the comparison graph below.
Performance of the Percentage staking plan against the level staking plan for Tottenham 23/24 season
As with the Manchester City analysis we can bring up a bar chart that identifies when Tottenham performed to the match odds this is shown below
This graph shows the number of matches that tottenham played where the win odds are grouped and the number of time they won in those ranges
As you can see when the odds were below 1.5 Tottenham had a 100% strike rate. If we bring up the “Odds Report” we can see that the only grouping of odds where we would have made a profit was 2.0 and below.
Tottenhams strike rate when the match odds for them was below 2.0 was 88.89%
In summary then, using the percentage plan on matches that had win odds of 2.00 or below would have produced a profit of £7.51 over the season or a 41.07% Return on Investment.
We now move onto Crystal Palaces’ data and with £2.00 level stakes we would have profited by 11.48. If we remind ourselves Crystal Palaces winning strike rate was 34.2% for the 23/24 premiership season and they managed a creditable 10th place. Their average winning odds were 3.36 giving a required strike rate of 29.7%. Using the Percentage Staking Plan with the settings unchanged from the two studies above our maximum single stake would have been £2.88 and again the lowest £2.00. There is another odds report that is available in TSM and the grouping of the odds is a lot more precise see below.
This report groups the odds into more precise bands.
Analysis of this kind can be invaluable as we can identify odds ranges that are more likely to provide a profit for instance if you look at the “Range F” row you will see that the odds range between 2.0 and 2.5 with a total of 10 games in that range with a 60% strike rate. If we tick the box in “Apply Filter” column and click the “Apply Chosen Filters” button at the bottom as shown in the screenshot below then it will populate the main TSM screen with just those results.
By filtering out other odds ranges we can analyse specific results.
By filtering out unwanted odds ranges we can make a more detailed analysis of specefic matches we would be better advised to bet on as shown below.
This screenshot shows just the matches where the match odds for Crystal Palace were just from match odds ranging from 2.0 to 2.5
We can see from the quick stats panel at the bottom of the screen that the strike rate is 60% and the average winning odds from the 6 matches that Crystal Palace won came out at 2.28 requiring a strike rate of 44% to enable us to make a profit. Only backing matches that fall into this sort of odds ranges can make for a dull season but the aim of this small section where i have diverted from the bigger picture is that with detailed analysis such as this and the pure ease that TSM enables this you can analise all the teams in the premiership in this way – or any other league for that matter to improve your profit potential by having separate files for each team and using a plan for each such team individually.
Any way back to the full season comparison between level stakes and percentage plan for Crystal Palaces’ 23/24 season.
Comparison graph for Crystal Palace between Percentage and Level stakes staking plans.
This is the familiar comparison graph showing the track from bet 1 to bet 38 and as we have come to expect they follow each other very closely. In this particular instance the Level Staking plan out performed the percentage plan by 10p over the season.
In summary, generally the level stake staking plan is ahead as far as the ROI factor is concerned but there are factors that you should be aware of. Staking plans can, if the right research is done, provide profit where there is the right correlation between the Ave win odds and strike rates.
Betornot 