An old boy I know swears this one makes money.

[Posts: 3125Joined: 31 Oct 2001, 19:43Location: Sussex by the sea]

An old boy I know swears that this simple system makes around £5,000 a year.
He has calculated that there are on average 6 meetings a month where no sole favourite wins.

This is so simple that I find it hard to beleive but he assures me it does make a profit every year.
He does his bets in a busy high street where he says he has quick access to funds from his bank should they be needed.

He thinks you need a bank of £2,500.

The simple method is thus.

Invest £5.00 on the first fav of the day and if that wins stop. If it does not double the stake on the very next race until one wins and then stop. If he cant split favs (ie joint or co he leaves that race alone).

I have paper trailed this one and its doing ok at the mo and on target to acheive what he has said.

To maximise profits I have taken the easily available price that has been on betfair.

31 DEC 1st race was at Uttoxeter at fav Baltimore won 5/2 bf won £12.50

01 JAN 1st race was won by ANDYTOWN 7/4 bf won £8.50

02 JAN 1st race fav lost so £10 on second race fav won 2/1 bf won £15.00

03 JAN Art Man won first race got evens bf won £5.00

04 JAN 1st fav lost but 2nd won (Craganmore) 5/2 won £20.00

05 JAN 1ST lost but bridgewater boys won 2nd race 7/4 bf won £12.50

06 JAN 1ST race Dickie le Davoiur won 6/4 won £7.50

07 JAN Hibiki won 1st race evens bf won £5.00

08 JAN Silver Hotspur won 2nd race 7/2 bf won £35.00
first race bf had trouble deciding fav as they kept changing but jf won in the end left the first race alone

09 JAN (first scare) as went 8 races until Reigning Monach won 6/5 bf won £133.00 race after fav won 5/2 though

10 JAN 1st fav lost but 2nd won at 4/5 won £3.00

11 JAN 1st fav starting point won 5/2 bf won £12.50

12 JAN 1st lost but 2nd race Sawaah won 6/5 BF won £7.00

13 JAN 1st race Psycho won 7/4 bf won £8.75

I calculate thats £280 in 13 days so an average of £21.53 a day and a cool £7,800 a year.
the results are very easy to check shouls you wish.
will keep posting these up could be a or a

rgds,

[Posts: 64Joined: 08 Oct 2007, 18:18]

It may well work in patches but in the long run it will be found out.
On a day when no favourites win in 10 races your stake is going through the roof. 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560

This means that on a day when it goes to your 10th bet, you are risking £2560 on a horse purely because its a favourite. Not to mention you are at that stage down £2555 already. If that loses you are over £5100 down and need to find another £5200 to keep going.

All systems that involve the stake spiralling out of control are bound to come unstuck at some point. Its the same as continually doubling up on red at the casino and presuming that black wont come out 10 times in a row.

[Posts: 3125Joined: 31 Oct 2001, 19:43Location: Sussex by the sea]

I personally agree with you that overall it may all end in tears.

Monitor it anyway since Jan 1st as thats a good day to start.
so far from that date until this morning profit of £272.75

MONDAY JAN 14 1st race won Savilles Delight 15/8 easily obtained bf
profit on day £9.37
profit to C/F £282.12

[Posts: 2638Joined: 25 Sep 2003, 17:11]

Seagull,

Very good of you to keep us up to date on this potential 'crash and burn' scenario. Excellent entertainment during these dark months when betting opportunities are scarce. We know what will happen here, but when? The essence of drama.

The maths show that at an average price of 2/1, a run of 8 consecutive beaten favourites will scupper the bank(not counting accumulated winnings). The probability of this happening is 1 in 25. In other words every time a sequence of bets is started 1 in 25 will end in ruin or loss of the bank. If you start a new sequence every day, you would be extremely lucky to last three weeks.

[Posts: 1208Joined: 30 Aug 2002, 12:04]

This is certain to fail if followed just as doubling up in a casino.

If you have £2,500 to play with and are interested in playing the early favorites on the card each day, aim for a small percentage growth by backing them and laying off for profit in-running. If you can do this and achieve just 5% increase in bank, you'll be a millionaire by early May!!!

Make it 2% and you'll have to wait until November to hit the million

Aim for just 1% per day and you'll have about £95k by the end of a year.

[Posts: 8464Joined: 10 Feb 2003, 15:43Location: Scotland]

Compound interest. The world's greatest invention.

[Posts: 1208Joined: 30 Aug 2002, 12:04]

"Compound interest. The world's greatest invention."

Some famous geezer said that!

[Posts: 1843Joined: 04 Jul 2007, 21:51Location: Stockton on Tees]

Colin,

As I'm only a £20 punter generally, I wouldn't know the answer to this so I will ask you (or anyone who knows the answer).

How easy is it to get in excess of £10k on a fav a few minutes before the off - can it be done or not?

The system has evidentally worked for the period you have shown, but I would say you needed much more than a £2500 betting bank. You know and I know that there will be days when there are 3 or 4 cards (18-24 races) and there will be a succession of 10, 11, perhaps in excess of 12 races where the favourite won't win.

If you get 10 losing favs, you then need to stake £2560 on the 11th race, 11 losing favs then it's £5120 on the 12th race, 12 losing favs then it's over £10k on the next race - would you be able to get these bets on easily enough?

I would also take into account these 'six' meetings a month where the fav doesn't win. What if 2 of these meetings were on the same day and were the only 2 meetings of the day. That's at least 12 losing favs, a loss of around £10k if you stick to your system - that's you whole years profits wiped out, in fact, it will almost guarantee a loss over the year.

This system is one of the oldest systems around and is known as the 'doubling up' system. There is far too much risk for very little reward. On January 9th you didn't stop after 7 races but thankfully the 8th fav won. Seven losing favs is a total loss of £635, meaning you have to stake £640 on the 8th race. If that gets beat then you're bank is nearly bust - so hopefully you can see how easy this system fails.

I won't go into detail but you can easily see that your £280 profit in nearly two weeks could be wiped out in one afternoon if 8 or 9 successive favs get beat. You know and I know that 8 or 9 consecutive losing favs will happen a hell of a lot during the course of the year.

Mike

[Posts: 1843Joined: 04 Jul 2007, 21:51Location: Stockton on Tees]

Apologies to Colin (and to ahitchcott & Artemis),

It's already been said what I've just taken 20 minutes to type

That will teach me to read the rest of the postings before jumping in to a reply after reading just the initial post .

Many thanks for keeping us updated Colin and I hope you continue to do so - as someone has already said, the drama and intensity waiting for this to fail is pure theatre .

Mike

[Posts: 1630Joined: 19 Mar 2007, 17:02Location: Halifax]

I'm not normally one for the 'systems' board, but this one has got my attention. It combines probably the two greatest misdemeanors a gambler can commit; blindly backing favourites and chasing losses! It shouldn't work, it won't work, but I'll be interested to watch and see just how long you can get away with it, Colin!

How easy is it to get in excess of £10k on a fav a few minutes before the off - can it be done or not?

It can be done on BF (where Colin is running this experiment) fairly easily Mike, as you'll probably know there's a good couple of hundred large go on in the last 5 minutes before the off in just about every race. Although there probably won't be £10k sitting at the current 'backing price', you'd have to accept some at lower I'd imagine.

As for the shops, it may depend on the competence of the staff. I can only speak officially for Hills, but a bet that big would require permission from the race room to lay the bet. Personally, as long as you had the cash on the counter before the off I'd take the bet and phone afterwards, explaining the situation. Other managers may be more pedantic.

[Posts: 346Joined: 17 Oct 2007, 21:37Location: Embra']

If you are going to blow your entire bank with a run of losses, perhaps better to have a stop loss. Say after 4 losses, go back to £5, accepting the £75 loss.

After a run of possible 8 losses, your loss is restricted to £150 instead of £640. And you NEVER have to place a bet more than £40.

This would have reduced the profit to January 13th to £147. On January 9th you would have broke even.

Funny how the longer the run of losses, the bigger the gain!

[Posts: 72Joined: 02 Aug 2007, 16:46Location: Huddersfield]

Hi Seagull,

This isn't greatly different, I submit, from the system I've been piloting recently (see the post "Picking Winners"). The problem for both of them is that they smack of "chasing your losses" which, in my list of don't-do-it commandments, stands proudly at number two, second only to "Never bet more than you can afford to lose".

I think the other correspondents are quite right in their reservations, unfortunately. My similar system seems to win until, about every three weeks, it goes utterly belly up bust. I haven't given up on it entirely - I'm still tweaking it here and there, to see if there are any conditions that can be created to avoid the crash, but, so far, I'm not particularly hopeful.

The bottom line is that I have a nasty feeling that there's no such thing as a winning system.

[Posts: 4585Joined: 25 May 2005, 15:57Location: Co. Meath, Ireland]

See the 3rd post on this thread here for a warning from somebody who has tried a similar system.

[Posts: 3125Joined: 31 Oct 2001, 19:43Location: Sussex by the sea]

tues 15 Jan
+ 4.75 1st won

wed 16 Jan
+ 25.00 2nd won 3/1

profit to cf +311.87

[Posts: 3125Joined: 31 Oct 2001, 19:43Location: Sussex by the sea]

thurs 17
there were 2 races where the betfair market found it hard to decide what one horse would start fav. These two races were one by a joint fav but left alone. If I had split stake would have done very well.
Pomme Tiepy won @1.83 but yesterday the maj of profit wiped out.
Now just +46.27