
1 x £5 free bet used
Researching bookies boosted bets. Are they really value or just a way of getting you to part with your money

1 x £5 free bet used

Todays SSPB from SkyBet has Leicester, Everton, and Sheffield United all to win at a boosted price of 5/1 from 3/1
Leicester City are hosting Burnley and are currently mid table, looking for a 3 pointer to boost them up the table The last 2 home games have seen them hold Manchester City to just a 1 goal defeat and a 1-0 win against Wolves. Burnley have yet to win an away game and after losing to both Merseyside sides. Leicester have won 4 out of their last 6 meetings at home against Burnley with this fixture last season ending 4-2.
Verdict: Leicester win
Everton are playing Norwich City at Home and have a 100% record here this season. Winning both games this season 3-1 against Southampton and Burnley they are currently 6th in the league on 10 pts with the top three sides on 13 each. Norwich City have yet to score away this season and have lost both of their away games 1-0 and 5-0 against Arsenal and Man City resepectfully. In fact they have yet to win.
Verdict: Everton Win
The final game in this boosted treble is a bit more tricky and takes us to the championship where Sheffield Utd host Derby County. Having won just 1 game at home this season they have a bit of a mixed bag of results when playing on home soil. With the Yorkshire side being unbeaten this season in the last 4 games (Home and Away) and the fact that they have scored a total of 9 goals at home so far this season to Derby’s 2 away goals from 4 games it would seem a home win is on the cards.
Verdict: Tentertive Sheffield Utd win.
I am going to back this boost with the free £5.00 bet which SKYBET is giving away for any cash bet on the Chelsea game this lunchtime against Manchester City.
N.B. you must opt-in to the offer to receive the free bet but a bet of as little as 5p will secure your free bet.
It would be unfair to not mention that there is also a Sheffield “Draw” option to this boost and is priced at 11/1 I will also be using one of my other free bets on this option as well


Yesterday both the betfair sportsbook and exchange had an “Outage”
While this is quite unacceptable from a global platform such as this company, It is unfortunately a fact of life that we trust our bets to such incompetence.
My DOB selection was Mobarhin in the 17:50 at Lingfield and had to watch as my back stake went straight into the pocket of another while my Lay bet order was cancelled.
Betfair have apologised and promptly wished everyone good luck with todays betting
While my loss is minimal and accept that in the long and short of it my horse lost I think that Betfair actually dont care about it as the main of there business are traders who will be mostly unaffected by this as they are in and out of the markets very quickly and I suspect from the lack of noise on the social media from these traders that they probably came out on top.
Not the best bet of the day with only 8 tips I have just backed Love is Golden at betfair odds of 2.86 and put a lay order into the market at 2.56 in the 15:05 at Ascot
An average run style of 2 this horse has won twice over this distance and only traded in play poorly on good to firm going with best results on good to soft. Todays going at ascot is good and with this in mind i am looking at trading just 15 ticks.
It is one of the top 10 tipped horses of the day by the racing press and will subsequently start favourite and this is the first time Silvestre De Sousa has driven.
lets see what happens

Is this a good bet or not?
Aldershot, currently 2nd from the bottom, are hosting Yeovil today and both teams are going into this game winless Aldershots only home game this season so far ended 0-1. Of the past 4 times these two sides have met Aldershot have won just one. Yeovil have won 2 – convincingly, and the other game ended 2-2. Aldershot have yet to break their scoring duck this season and the stats suggest that Yeovil with 1 goal in 1 game and that one being early only conceding 2 in the latter half of the second half might suggest a 1-1 draw at best for Aldershot.
Southend are playing away at Wealdstone and an away victory at Kings Lynn will likely boost confidence after losing at home to Stockport last time out. With just 1 goal each this season but a win for Southend so far this season might just give them the edge.
The last game in this treble sees an inform Chesterfield away at Kings Lynn in the game that is most likely to be a winning leg which means of course that it will be the only leg that loses in this topsy turvey sport. 2 wins and equal on points at the top of the league, Chesterfield have a great opportunity to overtake Dagenham to take top spot outright.
The win odds for these three teams are as follows
Aldershot 2.1
Chesterfield 1.95
Southend 1.73
Given the boosted odds of 9.0 the implied probability of this treble winning is just 11.11% making the probability of it losing 88.89%
Good luck in whatever you decide to do
Please gamble responsibly and in my opinion this would not be a responsible bet
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Thanks for visiting
This week Ladbrokes “Where the Nation Plays Pays” have created a high odds treble to entice the unsuspecting punted to bet with them.
The following games are in focus
Man City v Norwich City
Leeds Utd v Everton
Crystal Palace v Brentford
Looking at The Man City game first and week 1 didnt go to plan for the premiership champions losing away to Tottenham. Norwich City also lost 3-0 against Liverpool at Carrow Road in their first league match of 2021/2022. When the two sides last met in the Premier League , Manchester City came out on top 5-0 at Etihad Stadium in July 2020. It is hard to oppose Man City in this game especially having a first game defeat against them. They will be out to prove that they are still the league champions, Even more so with a packed stadium watching on.
Leeds Utd host Everton in the second of the three games and this is the game which may well throw the treble into doubt. Leeds are favourites to win this at odds of 2.2 with SkyBet and previous meetings of these two sides have seen Leeds win or draw 4 times out of the last 6. While Everton will be wanting to capture a top 4 lot in the legue Leeds Utd will be desperate to lift themselves from the bottom. The ever loyal Leeds fans may well be a factor as well.
Finally we come to a London derby between Crystal Palace who lost at Anfield last week 3-0 and the “mighty” Brentford who shocked Arsenal and probably the league in general by winning 2-0 in front of Jubilant home crowd. The recent form of Brentford in club friendlies have plainly boosted the players confidence and they will undoubtabley be up for a repeat performance this week.
All things considered and being the ever cautious punter that I am there will be other bets today with better probabilities, it is a Better Not verdict on this one.
Good Luck in whatever you decide and remember to bet responsibly.


Of the many betting systems I have encountered in my quest for the “perfect retirement plan” the laying of horses at a shorter price than which you backed it at, is a common and often fatal “get rich quick” scheme many punters regret hearing about. But what if someone has put a lot of time and effort into finding runners that meet certain criteria and don’t actually kick the arse out of finding life changing profit, this might be a low risk opportunity to make your own little niche in the vast minefield that is trading horseracing. The someone I am talking about is a website called “In Running Trading Tool” and they have several schemes detailed on the site where you can use their stats to drill down to specific runners which stand every chance of fulfilling your expectations. To this end I am going to start yet another study into one of the systems listed and post my findings here on Bet-Or-Not so that you can Bet Or Not.
Before I get into the nuts and bolts of the system it may be worth explaining just what a “tick” is in terms of trading trading on the betting exchanges.
The odds on the exchanges (and bookmakers sites) are graduated and displayed as a decimal starting with 1.01 which equates to 1/1000 or “a thousand to one on” meaning bet £1000 to win a quid to 1000.00 which is 1000/1 or “bet a quid to win a thousand”. the graduations between these two extremes are known as ticks. Just to confuse matters further not all ticks are the same. For instance, 10 ticks above the odds of 1.01 are 1.1 (1/100), 10 ticks down from 1000.00 the odds are 950.00. So you can see that the closer you get to a 99.9% probability the closer the ticks are graduated. So if we are looking to lay a horse 15 ticks below the price we backed it at an odds on fav has to do a lot more work in terms of persuading the markets that it is going to win than a 100/1 ouside that perhaps just has to take the lead for a furlong to entice the markets to drop to 70/1 which is 15 ticks below. Its still not going to win but we will have taken our profit long before the finishing line. The all encompassing secret to this is identifying which runners are more likely to impress traders enough to warrant them backing the horse as it runs through the race.
The first thing that springs to mind is a “front runner” this is a horse that takes up the lead in a race and gives the impression that it has something to offer. While this can work sometimes I have just watched Every Breaking Wave lead from start to finish but only “DOBBED” at the last fence as the favourite chased him down. (Dobbing is another strategy where you back a horse at odds and lay it at odds whereby you double your money or lose the lot, hence the term Double Or Bust – another system for another study)
What the poeple at “In Running Trading” have done is narrow such runners down to starting prices, win percentages, and if the horse has been profitable in the past. With this work already done I can now settle down with this criteria and produce to you some profit and loss figures. On first look at this in a mid week race cards it seem that there are only going to be between 2 and 4 selections each day.
The criteria outlined on the website for this particular study are as follows
1. Settings as Default
2. Open the ShortInRunning tab
3. Sort by win% column, highest at the top.
4a. Selections must have at least a 15% win strike rate
4b. They must also have a positive figure in black in the ShortInRun column, directly to the left of the Green% column.
5. Max BSP is less than 21 and Min BSP is greater than 2.5

The screenshot above shows how you should have the “short in Running” Tab set up and you can see that there is one selection showing in the shot, Robin Des Foret running at Killarney at 16:35. The forecast odds are 13.00 which is well within the parameters. Its win strike rate is 26.67% and it has a short in run return of £57.00
In actual fact there are 4 selections for today and with this website you can export specific selections into an excel spreadsheet which contains the whole history of each horse including previous race prices and in play lows as well as the tick drop count for each race and a host of other information too vast to list in this post
To this end I have exported todays selections and provided the spreadsheet for you to download
Check back later or do your own study to see how these runners faired and what profit is possible
To get your own 7 day trial of the in running trading tool click here

With the Premier League back in action this weekend the bookies are eager to make more profit off the unsuspecting punter and today’s focus is on the ever greedy Ladbrokes and their Premier League Treble.
Leicester are at home to Wolves this afternoon and with fans being allowed back into stadiums the home side advantage must be taken into consideration and with each new season brings the uncertainty of lack of stats. Looking at last season’s last 5 games for these teams Leicester won 3 out of the 5 with 2 being away to Man Utd and Chelsea with the other win at home against the mighty Man City. These two sides last met on 8 Nov where the winning goal was a 15th minute penalty by Vardy. Wolverhampton are full of uncertainty with a new manager in the saddle and a tentative vote on the side of Leicester goes to this Match.
The next game in the treble is the newly promoted Watford hosting Aston Villa and who would have thought Brentford would have given Arsenal a spanking last night, could the same happen this afternoon with these two teams? I have Traore in my VirginBet fives team and really hope he scores a hat-trick. Watford scored in every home game last season bar one which was against Cardiff in December. Aston Villa, last season, came out on a winning mission being victorious in all four of their opening games scoring a total of 12 goals. Home side advantage may play a part in this game but on previous goal scoring ability and the loss of Grealish to Man City not withstanding another tentative vote goes to Aston Villa.
Brighton travel to Burnley today and this it would seem is likely to be the bogey match. Winning just 5 away games last season their start to the 20/21 season did not inspire confidence. This fixture in February ended 1-1 and ended goalless in their previous meeting to that. perhaps 2-2 might be a progressive step as home advantage with a full ground today may make the difference. Both of these sides were in danger of sinking into the Championship last season and my vote goes to a score draw
As with all these trebles better odds may be found elsewhere and the same odds can be got on smarkets and Betfair sportbook is offering 9.5 (17/2) unboosted.
This treble is a tricky one as there is no real recent form to reference and with all things being equal a max stake bet is out of the question but a sneaky quid may well be acceptable
Good luck with whatever you decide to do and please gamble responsibly

Further to my previous blog post about the Sporting Life Recommended bets. Simon Holt (@SimonHolt3) had an outstanding May with his racing tips and this post is just about breaking down the figures into which category of race made the most points profit. His profit to advised odds for May was 41.3 points and was all flat racing tips over various distances and an even spread of handicap and Non-handicap races.
Starting with his Handicap race tips, he tipped horses in a total of 18 handicap races with 5 winning tips (28%) gaining 11.8 points profit at S.P. and 24.5 points profit at Advised Odds. If we drill this down further into race distances his profit was greatest when he tipped horses in 5f sprints, achieving 12 points profit from 2 winners out of 3 tips at advised odds in handicap races and 8.8 points from the same strike rate in Non-Handicap races. The tables below show the races in which he had success and those which failed!!
