As I’ve not posted today and because tips are likely to be thin on the ground this week, I thought I would take a little time to look back at the past fortnight and see if things have really gone off the rails, as appears might be the case…!
There is no arguing, that in terms of performance, the last 2 weeks have been very poor.
24 tips haven’t yielded a single winner – and a loss of 26.5 points (on 32 staked).
Things don’t get much worse than that !
However, when I dig a little deeper and use the same measures I used at the end of last month (which had decent profits) the picture looks very different indeed…
5 of the 24 tips have finished first or second (well, second actually !) which is just under the 25% target (same as last month). Additionally, a further 6 have finished third or fourth – so as with November, around 50% of the horses tipped have placed (additionally, Otage De Brion took the wrong course and Pockets Aces unshipped his rider).
The average odds have been 13/1 – slightly down on 15/1 in November – but not significantly…
The price taken to Betfair starting price ratio (adjusted for amount staked) shows a profit of over 8 points. This is really strong and almost matches the level achieved in the whole of November.
So, as you can see, based on these measures, the performance during the past fortnight has been just as good as that of the proceeding month !
Of course, we all know that there are lies, damn lies and statistics – and the only thing that actually matters, is the profit/loss.
However, there will always be variance over any short period of time – luck can either be with you or against you – and the re-assuring thing from my perspective is that the measures I used when things were looking good, tell me that things have looked almost exactly the same over the past 2 weeks.
The fact that there has been a sizeable loss during this period is obviously unfortunate, but the suggestion is that I’ve not significantly deviated from my path during this time. Therefore, this is just a short term blip and everything should still turn out fine in the end !
That’s the way I’m interpreting the theory, anyway ;)
As a long-term blogger cum tipster I know that the difference between success and failure is slight and, as you've shown, having a very high "placed" strike-rate is no guarantee of profits. I believe, when your luck's in, you have to ride the wave.
ReplyDeleteOne of the metrics I use in my own betting and when following tipsters is the ability to regulalry and consistently beat SP. By my count almost 85% of the last 40 tips have beaten SP and most by quite a significant amount. That in my view is the key to longterm success.
ReplyDeleteKeep on trucking then!
Banaz
When I refer to the ‘price taken to Betfair starting price ratio’, I am talking about the ability to beat SP – only Betfair SP, rather than Industry SP.
ReplyDeleteIndustry SP generally contains a fairly large over-round (typically 10%+) – Betfair SP has no over-round whatsoever.
If you can consistently beat Betfair SP, it is pretty safe to say that you have an edge…
So far, I have put up 69 tips. If you had backed them all to suggested stakes, where 1pt win is 1pt and 1pt EW is 2pts etc, and then laid off all of your potential profit at Betfair SP, you would have turned 79 points into just over 100 !
That’s a potential 25% profit without having to worry about any of the horses actually running !
Of course, my objective here is to tip winners, not trade profits – but all the same, it provides interesting food for thought…
TVB