November Monthly Summary

With no tips tomorrow, the first month of TVB early bird tipping draws to a close…
I like to keep records of all the bets advised (well, I don’t actually like to – but I feel it a prudent thing to do !) so that I can analyse them.
This helps me better understand where my strengths and weaknesses lie – and helps me make sure I keep focused on the appropriate races.
November has been quite an interesting month. The headline figures are as follows:

37 Bets
37 points staked
40 points profit (so an ROI of 108%)

The number of bets is about where I expected (though I can see it increasing a little, as I’ve made a conscious decision to tip more of my ‘marginal’ fancies).
The points staked is lower than I would have expected. In part, this will have been caused by me tipping more marginal horses – a lot of these will be 0.5pt selections. I also tend to be overly cautious when staking (non of us are perfect !).
The points profit is higher than I would have expected – but not massively so. If I’m honest, I think I ought to be able to achieve 50% ROI per month, on average. 100% is obviously very good (though the odds quoted won't be achievable by everyone, so the number is slightly flattering) – but it is from a very small sample, so I don’t think too much should be read into it in isolation…

Looking at the results in a little more detail:
10 of the 37 bets finished either first or second. This is good – and is where I want to be. I aim for 25% of my selections in the first 2. A further 7 finished third or fourth, which reassures me that the first figure is reasonable – just short of 50% of my selections are placing.
The average odds of all selections were 15/1. This is a bit higher than I would have expected – but provided the strike rate is there, I have no issue with that !
If a quarter of your selections finish first or second at average odds of 15/1, you clearly have a significant edge. Broadly speaking, the suggestion is you are getting 15/1 on horses that should be 8/1. I would generally expect to be getting 12/1 on horses that should be 8/1 – so November has been a very good month.

Another measure I like to use is price taken verses BSP (Betfair Starting Price). The value of this measure is debatable, but I think that generally, BSP provides the most accurate indicator of a horses chance of winning a race (all of the relevant factors have been taken into consideration – and there is no over-round).
Based on this, I would have made just over 8.5pts profit. Clearly nowhere near as good as the actual profit – but non-the-less, reassuring that I’m picking the right kind of horses…

Although far from perfect, the staking has also been reasonable: there have only been 7 selections with more than a point bet on them and they have yielded 2 winners and a third (backed EW). This suggests that I have majored on the right horses.

I could analyse the results in a lot more detail, but to be honest, with a sample size of just 37, it would be of limited value !

In summary, it has been a good month – but one which could have been a lot better !
There may have been 4 winners – but there were also 6 runners up. They were priced at 25/1, 25/1, 16/1, 14/1, 7/1 & 11/2. 4 of the 6 traded odds on IR on Betfair – so with a bit of luck, profits for the month could have been crazy !
Furthermore, that ignores the 3 winners that I put on the blog as mentions. They were priced at 10/1, 11/1 and 16/1.
It’s fair to say, that if everything had fallen into place, 100 points profit on the month could have been achieved !
However, as we all know, things rarely fall perfectly, so I won’t be losing much sleep over the fact they didn’t in November.
It does give me something to target for December though... ;)