MY RATING: 4.0 out of 5
I started following this laying system Betting Against Horses For Profit by Henry McAnenly at the beginning of December, and I can now give some initial comments. I wanted to follow the system until I had at least thirty days worth of results to analyze before expressing my initial feelings, and here we are, a little over two months later. So the first thing to say is that the method is quite selective in its approach, and does not highlight bets each and every day of the week. In my book being selective is no bad thing.
Let me start by giving some background. As the name suggests Betting Against Horses For Profit is a method of selecting horses to oppose on the betting exchanges, and lay to lose their race. It has been developed by Henry McAnenly with whom many of you may already be familiar. Indeed, another of his betting guides Going The Extra Mile is in my ‘recommended’ list. Henry writes a fair bit on horse racing and has published a few other guides before now.
The system is delivered as a PDF document and stretches to thirty one pages. There are several pages of introductory text before the reader is presented with the nuts and bolts of how the system is operated. But to be fair it is not the usual ‘fluff’ and garbage that we are used to reading, ie. the history of horse racing, how to place a bet, different types of bet, how to open an account at Betfair, what a horse looks like, and more such irrelevent prose which is only there to somehow justify the price tag. In this instance the author goes to the trouble of explaining the background and logic to how the system was developed. I think this actually serves to give purpose to the whole strategy and also gives the reader a degree of confidence that some thought had gone into the method beforehand. Most system sellers are extremely lazy in their approach, and simply back-fit a few filters to suit their needs, rather than research an angle to find a genuine edge.
The reader arrives at the “How It Works” chapter on Page Nine and the rules are clearly described over the course of the next fifteen pages. That is not to say the system is incredibly complicated, but the author takes us through three distinct phases of selection, before we arrive at any final bets. The text is also nicely illustrated with screen shots and other graphics to make the method easier to follow.
Without giving the game away Betting Against Horses For Profit identifies horses that are race favourites but at the same time vulnerable to defeat. The most likely value to be found when laying horses is invariably with the favourite, so I was pleased to see this was not another unrealistic system suggesting the user should lay outsiders and look to achieve 95-99% strike rates. By focusing on the favourites we can at least keep liabilities to a minimum, which should also help keep the heart rate under control. The author does focus on obtaining value, and the price available about the horse you want to lay is taken into consideration. Again, anything that steers the user towards placing value bets gets a big tick in my book.
One thing to bear in mind is that this system uses information from the Racing Post. If you are using the online version then you will need to be a member of the site, which does mean shelling out a subscription of £7.50 each month. A lot of you are already in the Racing Post Members Club and so this news is irrelevent, but I think it’s only right to point this extra cost out to those of you that are not members, and may be interested in purchasing Henry’s book. From a personal perspective, I think that the Racing Post web site provides tremendous value, and access to a great depth of racing information for the price. If you are halfway serious about your betting, then it’s a notional payment for a tool that helps you to accomplish your goals.
So how did this system perform whilst under my watchful gaze? Well it returned a profit, and a very decent profit at that.
This is a summary of the results:
Number of selections: 53
Winning bets: 41
Strike rate: 77%
Profit/loss: +23.71pts
I took into account a 5% commission on winning bets.
These figures suggest that for every selection you make, you could expect to see 0.45 points profit. This is a very high positive expectancy, but I would suggest you take this with a pinch of salt, as that is extremely good. In all probability I think I captured a sample of selections that performed above average. But the results are nonetheless very encouraging.
SUMMARY
Betting Against Horses For Profit is a system to highlight horses to lay on the betting exchanges like Betfair. The method identifies race favourites, or at least horses that are favourite at the time the user works the selection process. More often than not the horse selected would also be the favourite at the time of the race, but a number of selections did drift noticeably in price. Of course this would give you the opportunity to hedge your bets, lock in a profit, or secure free lay bets, if you so wished.
The system works in quite a selective manner, and does not highlight bets every day. Over the course of the two months I was trialling the system, it provided thirty days of betting action, and returned a profit a fraction over 23 points. I will take this opportunity to stress that I have only got a sample of 53 selections. At that rate, I would want to see twelve months of results before committing full stakes. By that time I would expect to have around 300 results, which would constitute a significant sample statistically.
But I would definitely suggest this laying system is worthy of further evaluation. It currently costs just £7.00 so at that price it’s a no-brainer if you like lay betting systems. Many of you will use mechanical systems such as this to give you a daily short-list of horses for further analysis, before finalising your own bets. If you prefer to follow rules-based selection systems blindly, then my advice would be to paper-trade this particular example for a minimum two months. If the results are similar to my trial, then you can decide to begin investing at minimal stakes. But as I previously suggested, I would prefer to have a full twelve months results under my belt before increasing stakes and elevating this system to a full Portfolio status. But the initial indications are this is a laying system with an edge. Go and buy it.
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