What system have you failed at .

Backing any horse on the all weather, which reappeared again after winning on it (or soft ground), within 4 days.  The thinking behind this was that in (those days)  the all weather was very low class racing and trainers tended to get their horses fit on the track.  So that a horse may well have improvement in it after winning, and could defy a penalty.  You knew that it would be fit, unlike many others in the race.  In those days, all weather meant fibresand, which meant that horses had to be fit to win on it and also wouldn't get jarred up running on it (unlike firm turf, where unfit horses can win and horses can also sustain minor impact injuries.)
After initial success, I had a long losing run and became disillusioned with it, and gave it up. After which big priced winners seemed to go in every day.
This was in the days before Betfair, and before I realized how much hard work was required.
This system wouldn't work now, because all weather, nowadays, is mostly polytrack, which has more in common with turf than dirt.

Complicated  game this so simple systems dont work. You have to know the horses ability , best trip and going requirements etc. This takes years. If you cant be bothered doing that back with bookie at 8.0  and lay on here at 7 or 7.2 simultaneously. Its called arbing and it definitely works. This will also teach you which horses are REALLY fancied.

Laying the (RP naps) table

Suprised that does not pay TF  , what was your timing of bets ?

Swings and roundabouts!

Take yesterday, Slumbering Sioux (2 naps) was the big drifter and ended up at 32.0 BSP, (average price 19.94) from an early 11.09.    

If you had layed each tipster to win 10 at BSP (5% comm) you would have lost -570 on the day, lost -279 at average prices and only -147 at morning prices.

But if you have a cut off at 20/1, your profit would have been +199 instead of -570 at BSP, while the average and morning prices would have both shown a loss of -295 and -170 resp.

I have a thread on the horseracing forum, just search for 'free system' for the bigger picture.

Tightfisted - Its something i dabbled with a few years ago, went well for a couple of months, then boom, nearly wiped me out with some biggies. I then went no bigger than 5/1 and other filters and was consistent enough. Requires alot of time and research which i don`t have. I do
have another laying method in which i lay a certain newspaper selection and that has shown consistent profits for over 5 years. So it can be done.

Today program.

Racing Post naps , do they drift normally %%% , thanks for any replys ,  will save me time researching , freeing up more time to give my hard earnt to the rest of you .

I devised what i thought was a good system in the early days .

It was schoolboy stuff really looking back , decided to back the 3-1 (stronger team) and lay the shorter  Any unquoted .

All went well for 5 or 6 games until  it all went disastrously wrong when the home team went 3-0 up in a few minutes.

This year backing pwise at 10-1 or above only. Lots of winners this year, unfortunately for me I missed most of them.

sheffield you are wrong ---- you need to look deeper

Where ?

To think that the market is 100% acc at off time ------- many TYPES of horse are under/over bet and you must seek and bet accordingly

I see what you mean Zealot , i started the thread hoping to find failed plans , so i could eliminate them from ideas to try ,  i am interested in peoples timing of bets . ie  are  RP favorites likely to be shorter , closer to the off .

There are many horses  that are backed 10-15 minutes before the off .
Find some + criteria ,    put them to the horses and watch their betting patterns .

Thats a good idea Zealot , but would take months to set up however they say patience is a virtue

Used to back the Fineform max rated (won last two, course and distance winner) on a Martingale staking system.

Ah, the naivety of youth.

Laying The Nap Boys  in the Racing Post  Comp  is pretty much unbeatable  BUT  and with me  theres always a  BUT ...  take this Tightfist  we have in the past  had plenty of  banter  about this  matter    what you need  re the naps  boys and girls  .. price all the naps up .........your price  not  Laddies  Billys  Hills  or  Corals  ........ YOUR PRICE  get the drift  when they are out of line LAY EM  when  you agree BACK EM ....... its  easy peasy .....

The under x-number of goals system. It has a major flaw.

Kukken
I'm surprised that you're buying into or even investigating systems in the public domain.

Some stats outfits show you which systems no longer work. Try looking at Flatstats for instance. They've got data on systems that used to work but have gone off the boil. Could save you a lot of wasted time and effort.

live and learn as they say 

Not on here they don't.

Zip, you know I'm a system man, here's my latest.

Since you've returned to the nap comp., you've AGREED 32 times with the Naps 'Boys' which has made you a profit of +9.15 points and DISAGREED 55 times with a loss of -11.31 points. 

So if I place 400 on the nose when you AGREE and when you DISAGREE, Lay your nag to win 100, I'll be on to a winner... but this thread is for losing systems so I won't bother to dig deeper and publish the stats.

FAFH, I wonder if you could give an opinion on
the opening post question ? You never seem to
do that it seems.

I have never bought a system in my life, I'm happy to say.

Tightfist  the nap boys  (your words from now on in  Zip  Agreed  32 times  and made + 9.15  profit ....zip disagreed 55 times   and  lost   -11.31..
My advice to you  and yes i know this is Arrogant  Keep taking the pills & go and lay down in a dark room.You are such a ........
put your own word in

zip, when you start bragging how easy peasy it is, make sure the fan isn't blowing your way.

Backing Liverpool this season

Any more failed systems   ?

I've been following the nap boys for a few months and the results suggest backing them is the way to go. If you had put 1pt on every nap (ie 52 per day) since June 1st, you would be 342 points up. The naps table is misleading because it's done at industry SP. At betfair SP, most of the tipsters would be in profit.

31/07/10 Goodwood
Evens And Odds
3 Naps
Won @ 38.50 BSP



This one horse accounts for approx. 30% of the gains.

That's true. But why is that a bad thing?

Not saying it's a bad thing but that was one result that immediately came to mind.

I'm not disputing your figures either, but a few long-priced winners can distort the picture.  I remember years back the trainer David Nicholson showing a substantial level stakes loss with his runners at Leicester.  Then one day he sent out a 150/1 winner and at the next Leicester meeting the Trainers Table in the Racing Post showed his runners had recorded a sustantial level stakes profit.  All down to that one winner.

If you can do do it, it may be an idea to work out the VSP% figure.

This is a percentage return calculated using variable stakes on a cover-to-win one point basis (e.g. 1 point staked at evens, 0.5 point staked at 2/1, 0.1 staked at 10/1).

This gives a useful measure of the distribution of winners' prices.  High LSP% profits produced by the occasional long shot will not be reflected in similarly high VSP% returns.

Many commercially available systems with apparently good LSP% returns fail to live up to expectations precisely because their historic profits were based on fluke high priced winners.  Comparison of LSP% and VSP% figures will expose this weakness.

Good luck.

Thanks, top2. I agree the VSP would be informative. It would be interesting to see if there was a profitable cut-off point in the odds for a backing or laying system. It's something I might look into.

I did quite well backing the naps over the summer but have backed off recently. I thought profits might drop as the NH season kicked in before the form settled down, but if anything, the naps have become even more profitable. I haven't got the figures in front of me, but it's something like 9 winning days from the last 10 and a 31% strike rate.

It's also surprising how their opinion can be so divided and yet as a group they come out on top. In some races, they can nap up to eight different horses, but remain profitable.

not-so-flash-harry

You may be aware that you can view the Napster's daily selections for free at http://www.dailynaps.co.uk/

You can also view the Napster's daily selections going back as far as September/October 2007 by clicking on the Previous Racecards tab near the top of that page.

top2rated
I hope the very sensible suggestion you just made, re VSP, does not get lost in all the other generalised twaddle being posted on here.

Yes, I've seen those before, thanks. I'm not full time on here so it will take some time for me to go back through previous years and see if there is any consistency. For now I'm pausing while I'm ahead as I'm surprised the naps are that successful and I'm not convinced it will last. I'm aware that many people have tried and failed to base a system around them so I may have just been lucky.

Out of interest, has anyone tried the Dailynaps software for sale on the site? The "loss recovery" plan doesn't fill me with confidence. I smell Martingale.

No so flash
A strong argument for buying any publicly available system would be that it should at least teach you what not to do.
The reason, and the only reason I can see, for anyone selling a system is that it has outlived its usefulness ( if it had any in the firstplace) and has become a failing endeavour.
Too cynical perhaps ?

One of my first systems on the horses was one when where I used to look for strongly tipped favourites and lay them, then back them back if they drifted in the betting, or otherwise let them run.
It was all a bit too messy though it did not really lose much money, and probably actually made a little before commission.

Not cynical at all. I strongly suspect you are right but was curious to know what the system involved. My experience of the markets on here, pre-match or pre-race at least, is that they are very efficient and profit is hard to come by. Much easier to persuade someone else you have found an edge and charge them for it than find one yourself. I came across this website ibgaming.co.uk recently which claimed to be making decent profit on a system, but the same thought occured - if it's going so well, why share it?

I have tried a few systems of my own making and I think it would be fair to say that some of them have failed.
But the thing about systems is that you never know whether the time period under scrutiny is long enough.
For example, you might have  a winning system which is just about to go into its longest losing run ever. Conversely, you could give up on a system which is just about to go on a fantastic winning run.

So now, I look for systems that have 'averageness' (for want of a better word) in their recorded results.
The criteria should contain non-specifics imo (e.g. no actual trainers or jockeys, no factors like going which can change on the day of the race), the criteria should be able to remain unchanged for many years and the win strike rate should be a consistent percentage based on a sufficient number of selections. I like something of the order of 120 selections a year with a 16% win strike rate.

After a run of 3 winning Favs in the States would lay the Fav (unless odds on), increasing stakes accordingly,then stop at a winner.

Got up to £2000 up (after about 3 months) before being wiped out. with a meeting that had 7 or 8 Favs on the run.

Wasted about 2 years of my life with the "Reverse Laboucherie" system at the casino. The penny finally dropped, when having won about £1600 in three months, I decided to spend 3 days at the casino from 2pm until 6 am each day(Yes 16 hrs per day). Total Wipeout. Game over!

Tried Unionjacks system of laying one of the RP napsters. Also got wiped out.

not-so-flash-harry

"Out of interest, has anyone tried the Dailynaps software for sale on the site? The "loss recovery" plan doesn't fill me with confidence. I smell Martingale."

Strange you should mention the software because I was looking at the dailynaps site a few months ago in connection with a thread on here regarding the Napsters.

To cut a long story short someone on their site was allowing people to download the software in exchange for purchasing & downloading a song he/she had recorded.  As the cost was something trivial (less than £1) I thought I'd take up the offer.  I've uploaded a PDF file on Google Docs which reveals all.   

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BzriKHhwpRQQZTZlOGQ2N2UtODBiYi00Zjc0LWJjNDYtM2E4OTU0YzJlMWRm&authkey=CMzynsgM&hl=en

PS  The song was c r a p !

Thanks for sharing that. Very good of you. I'll have a read and see if it seems feasible. Another good day for the nap boys today. Up 20 points so far.

Got to laugh at the artist's incentive to get people to buy their song. Perhaps we can expect to see Take That giving away a Martingale system with every copy of their new album.

I'll tell you a system I tried to small stakes that crashed and burned fairly spectacularly. I used the the vegas lines to decide which side of baseball games to lay, figuring that a combination of the casino sports books' knowledge and putting up offers on fairly slack overrounds should at least break even after commission and get me out of some PC, and hopefully make a bit and be scaleable.

after a couple of hundred bets I gave up because it would actually more than have broken even after commission to do the exact opposite. what this says about the vegas sports books I have no idea.