Timeform is a respected and well followed source of racing form and they rate each horse for each race by using a star rating. You may have read my post on using this rating system to pick your horses for the ITV 7 well what if you were to back each 5 star rated horse in every race for a day. Below is a PDF of the 5 star Runners for 8th June 2024 and how they faired. The figures are based upon the ISP (Industry Starting Price) and the stakes reflect a £5.00 profit should the horse win. It is worth noting that at least one of these selections (Billyb) was available at odds greater than the starting price as I actually backed it at odds of 4.50 at 11am that morning.
If you had backed each 5 star rated horse that ran on this day to a £1.00 level stake you would have got a profit of £3.87 which is a 10.18% ROI (Return on Investment) If you had backed them as I do to a £5.00 target profit then you would have a £24.93 profit but the stakes involved are greater! My total stakes for all races would have been £117.94 for that £24.93 profit but it is still a 21% ROI After a quick analysis of the results there were a total of 38 runners of which 15 won which is a 39.5% strike rate. More interestingly is the fact that if you had backed the horses which ran in just the handicap races then of the 31 handicap races run 27 actuall ran of which 12 won. This gave a profit of £12.41 to level £1.00 stakes giving a 46% ROI. Staking the horses to a £5.00 target profit gave a profit of £32.52 for a total of £58.79 stake money yielding a 55.3% ROI. This is just 1 days analysis but it seems that it may be worth pursuing further.
While sat waiting for yet another customer to come and unload their meat I quickly did the ITV 7 on Wednesday 5th of June. My criteria was simple – I just selected the 7 horses that Timeform rated with 5 stars. Not rocket science but nothing to lose. I had 2 winners from the 7 – this equates to a 28.5% strike rate. I then got to thinking what if I had backed these 7 selections individually for a target profit of £5.00 so I did the maths If I had backed these at S.P. my total stake would have been £13.16. With 2 winners both yielding £5.00 each in profit (not returns) I would have come out with a £2.81 overall profit
Yesterday I backed 3 ofHugh Taylors four selections at S.P. (one was a non-runner). Here’s what happened (If you have just happened upon this post and are thinking why would I back a horse at SP when the price is steaming in please read the post I did on researching his April Selections the link is immediately below and will open in a new tab)
£3.78 was my profit before these bets went on and with the stakes used they took me into a loss before they ran.
First to run was Phoenix Passion in the 16:27 at Nottingham and It actually won!!
Backed with a stake 0f £3.07 at S.P. for a target profit of £5.00 at equivalent odds of 13/8 the S.P was in fact 11/5 giving an actual profit of £6.75, £1.75 more than if I had just backed it at the available odds at the time.
Second to run was Remaat backed at odds of 3/1 as SkyBet operated a BOG policy with this race.
Remaat came a close second as as you can see from the bet settlement the odds drifted out significantly to 15/2 at post time.
Third and Final runner was Miss Kubelik who in actual fact didnt even place but went off at odds of 5/1 (6.00) this was greater than the advised odds
So after a good win and 2 also rans my profit now stands at £7.36.
Further to my post on Bookies and Tipsters I will be following Hugh Taylors Tips and Backing each one for a £5.00 Profit with SkyBet. Not at the advised odds but at whatever odds are available at the time but because Skybet like to pay out on extra places and offer few races with Best Odds Guaranteed I will be backing them at SP with a stake that will give a £5.00 profit at the odds given at the time.
Four selections today and going into the 5th day with a profit of £3.78 First selection to run today is
4:27 Nottingham : Phoenix Passion Advised Odds 5/2 (3.5) Odds available at 10:00 : 13/8 (2.63) Stake £3.07 Result –
Second to run is
5:35 Kempton : Remaat Advised Odds 11/1 (12.0) Odds available at 10:00 : 3/1 (4.0) Stake £1.67 Result –
Odds of 3/1 taken as SkyBet are offering Best Odds Guaranteed
The third Selection was City House in 7:15 at Kempton but has been withdrawn and is a non-runner.
Fourth and Final Selection today is 7:45 Kempton : Miss Kubelik Advised Odds 9/2 (5.5) Odds available at 10.00 10/3 (4.33) Stake £1.50 Result –
Good Luck all – need it – these bets take me into a Loss state 😂
Further to my post on Bookies and Tipsters I will be following Hugh Taylors Tips and Backing each one for a £5.00 Profit with SkyBet. Not at the advised odds but at whatever odds are available at the time but because Skybet like to pay out on extra places and offer few races with Best Odds Guaranteed I will be backing them at SP with a stake that will give a £5.00 profit at the odds given at the time.
Only one selection today and is as Follows
Lingfield 8:15 Advised Odds 9/1 (10.0) Odds available at 09:30 : 4/1 (5.0) Stake 1.25 Result –
Further to my post on Bookies and Tipsters I will be following Hugh Taylors Tips and Backing each one for a £5.00 Profit with SkyBet. Not at the advised odds but at whatever odds are available at the time but because Skybet like to pay out on extra places and offer few races with Best Odds Guaranteed I will be backing them at SP with a stake that will give a £5.00 profit at the odds given at the time.
Only one selection today and is as Follows
6:10 Hamilton Cargin Bhui Advised Odds 11/4 (3.75) Odds available at 10:30 : 2/1 (3.0) Stake 2.50 Result –
Further to my post on Bookies and Tipsters I will be following Hugh Taylors Tips and Backing each one for a £5.00 Profit with SkyBet. Not at the advised odds but at whatever odds are available at the time but because Skybet like to pay out on extra places and offer few races with Best Odds Guaranteed I will be backing them at SP with a stake that will give a £5.00 profit at the odds given at the time.
Todays Selections are as follows
2.00 Epsom Downs : Sea of Thieves Advised Odds 14/1 Odds available at 10:30 : 9/1 Stake 56p Result –
3.10 Epsom Downs : Billy Webster Advised Odds 10/1 Odds available at 10:30 6/1 Stake 83p Result –
5.15 Epsom Downs : Relentless Voyager Advised Odds 13/2 Odds available at 10:30 4/1 Stake £1.25 Result
6.15 Doncaster : Wild Waves Advised Odds 9/2 Odds available at 10:30 5/2 Stake £2.00 Result –
I recently watched a youtube video by Caan Berry, who, quite accurately, put forward a case for not backing online tipsters as the odds very quickly diminished as soon as or even before the tip was published online. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that there may be some collusion between tipsters and bookies that would enable bookies to make a bigger margin on the tips that lose and perhaps cutting the online platform that published them a bigger affiliate payout. There is no doubt that odds do disappear very quickly but in the bigger picture of racing as a whole to keep the odds low on a horse just because a tipster tipped that horse could prove very expensive for bookies if another horse with better ability and was being backed towards the start of the race stayed at the bigger odds and went on to win. Bookies are scaredy cats, money going onto other horses will lower their odds, its a fact! It is true that if a tipster has a big and loyal following then those punters will undoubtably blind bet on the selection for fear of the odds dropping even more, this is bonanza time for the bookies. They take pots of cash at crap odds on a horse trying not to split their sides laughing at all the punters doing their bank blindly. What is a little more concerning is that on some bookies sites “Best Odds Guaranteed” doesn’t kick in until an hour or more after the tip is published so they don’t have to payout at the bigger price if the odds drift. That’s the conspiracy part over now I will look at some facts and as Caan Berry singled out Hugh Taylor of At The Races Website I will look at his results from April 2024 (His latest complete results available).
In April Hugh Taylor had 65 tips in total claiming a 30.09 point profit for the month at advised odds and stakes. Of these 65 tips 3 were E/W tips and for the purposes of this post I am going to discount them as I personally rarely back E/W bets. Many of you reading this may disagree, this is your choice and you could apply the same staking method that I will outline in this post to all of his tips, that is your own personal possible course of action. The purpose of this post is not to condemn any one party whether it is Taylor himself the website for misleading information or the bookies for offering criminal odds, it is to analyze the timings of the tips published and the reaction of the markets to these tips and most importantly what the actual SP of the tip was at the off. To make this a fair study I am going to stake each tip with a profit if wins of £5.00 on the advised odds, Industry SP and the Betfair exchange SP. I know that the minimum bet on the exchange is now £1.00 and the stakes you will see on many of these selections is way lower than that but these lower stakes are possible if you use software that allows this such as bet angel ( I will put a link to this at the bottom of the post)
To achieve a level profit target figure the calculation is simple.
Stake = Target / (Odds-1)
If we look at Taylors first tip of the month which was Twilight Madness in the 16:05 at Kempton on 1st April he advised odds of 12.0 (11/1) so the stake for this bet would be
Stake = 5 /(12-1) = 45p Unfortunately I have no way of knowing how far the odds dropped just after tip publication but the horse did go off at the same odds and on the exchange the BSP was 15.67. Figures courtesy of Timeform who publishes these figures for reference purposes) The horse lost of course (Last actually) so our losses would have been Tip publication Time (If actually available) -45p Bookmakers SP -45p Betfair exchange SP -34p. As you can see we would be better off by 11p if we had used the excchange to place our bet. The following excel sheet lists all of Hugh Taylors tips for April except for the E/W bets.
Of the 62 remaining tips after discounting the E/W bets you can see that a total of 15 won and using the staking method outlined above the profit to the advised odds of just £6.01. If we had backed the same horses at the industry S.P. you can see that we would have won nearly twice as much and better yet before commission is taken from the exchange bets three times as much. So, there is a case for backing Taylors tips. He has a strike rate of about 25% but the profits are not breathtaking.
Conclusion. Hugh Taylors tips are for free, there is no subscription to pay, and if you keep your stakes to a manageable level there is no reason why you shouldnt have a couple of bets each day. There is however another option – we can lay these tips and then back them just before post time!
We know that the bookies lower the odds just after publication and that perhaps the more savvy amongst us back them on the exchange to get a closer price to advised odds than backing them at the bookmaker. This acts to cause the exchange market to react in the same way as the bookies price lowering and the exchange market starts to reflect the industry prices more closely. If you look at the spreadsheet above you will notice that in most of the tips the exchange S.P. is quite a few ticks higher than even the advised price earlier in the day. This means that there is a possibility of a viable lay to back trade opportunity here.
Betornot 