First published January 24th 2020
This latest SBC Insight article features a guest piece from Wayne of the Northern Monkey Punter service addressing his withdrawal from our Hall of Fame in the January 2020 SBC Tipster Profit Report.
If yet to download this latest report, you can download it directly via this link or through the Tipster Profit Report page.
Northern Monkey Punter held its HoF award for several years and has proven to be very popular with many of you for various reasons – including the fact that Wayne quotes and settles all results to very fair odds.
He was naturally disappointed to lose his HoF award, yet after speaking to Wayne both before and after this news was announced, he agreed to pen today’s article discussing not only how his service works but how the racing world operates from a betting point of view – particularly so you can get a better sense of what is taking place when it comes to odds movement.
It is very difficult to distill all of this information into just a few paragraphs in each report – hence why this article is so helpful.
Whilst Wayne acknowledges at times in 2019 there were some tricky periods of form for his followers, he also outlines the boost available if taking the better odds that are often available including if betting to win rather than each way. As he mentions in the piece, SBC will be re-reviewing in detail the NMP later this year – including a full update on odds availability.
Finally, he also details the ongoing 2 week free trial he offers all SBC members, which includes a £50 discount if signing-up with him for a full year after the trial concludes.
Over to Wayne….
Overnight Racing Markets – A Changed Landscape
There is absolutely no question that, these days, the greatest ‘value’ opportunities in horse racing markets can be found in the overnight betting markets.
10 years ago there may have only been the likes of William Hill, Bet 365 and Paddy Power pricing up races at the overnight stage, though these days most firms are at it.
For example, I am interested in a class four seven-furlong handicap at Newcastle tomorrow and, at the time of writing, on the eve of the race, 18 of the 22 fixed-odds firms whose prices are comparable through the Oddschecker website have the race priced up.
That includes all of the traditional big firms; Coral, Ladbrokes, William Hill and the major online firms Bet 365, Paddy Power and, if you can count them, Sky Bet.
Bookmaker Cost Cutting & Its Knock-on Impact
I do question whether firms actually employ traders to price up races anymore – especially at the overnight stage. Employing traders costs money and the similarities the early markets show to the commercially available (free) betting forecasts is striking.
If there is a mistake in those commercial forecasts then the bookies could, in theory, get filled in when they replicate them. Of course, in practice, the firms cap their liabilities in the overnight markets and restrict or shut down punters who regularly try and exploit them.
The next morning, with the big ricks ironed out of the market, firms are more willing to take bigger bets and then merely manage their risk and track the exchanges to prevent leaving themselves open to arbing situations.
A recent example of an overnight pricing mistake (although the horse in question did not win) was Dream Castle in a handicap at Meydan last Thursday. One of the major firms had him priced up at 11/2 at 3 pm on Wednesday afternoon, yet he went off 11/4. That he was beaten was irrelevant. He was overpriced by as much as 50 % at the overnight stage and there will be countless other examples that pop up every day – even in the UK and Irish markets.
Bookmakers are seemingly happy to accept that, every now and then, they will take a hit in the overnight markets by offering out-of-line early prices, but if they limit their liabilities and clamp down on those punters repeatedly taking advantage they can knock a more reasonable betting market into shape by the morning, when the bigger stakes players will be looking to get their money down, all the while potentially saving on salary costs they’d otherwise incur from employing a big team of traders?
Let’s face it, the bookies are offering markets on everything these days and anyone who has walked into a betting shop on an evening and seen the boards on the wall teeming with American meetings will appreciate what I mean!
There are tech savvy punters out there who are able to repeatedly source fresh accounts and continue to mine the early value in overnight markets. Fair play to those who do.
I am sure there are also many SBC members, like myself, who grow frustrated at seeing the tempting overnight prices but are unable to cash in.
For such punters, I run my horse racing service, Northern Monkey Punter (NMP).
The Northern Monkey Punter Service
My aim in running NMP is to offer a racing tipping service which can be followed in a sustainable manner by members with bookmaker accounts (the service won’t suit those limited to using the exchanges, unfortunately, due to the timings of e-mails).
Most bets arrive within a narrow time window in the morning (8.30 – 8.45 am) but the unique selling point, if you like, is that most of my members are actually able to beat the prices I note on record for my bets – something of a novelty with racing tipsters, especially for a long-standing service which held its place in the esteemed SBC Hall Of Fame for the best part of a decade.
The reason for this is due to the fact that, when bets are issued with an odds range in NMP e-mails, it is the lowest advised price which is noted on record, yet the highest or intermediate prices available can still be taken by members to boost their own profit. For example, if a horse is 8/1, 15/2 and 7/1, the price noted on record would be 7/1.
The ROI Boost On Official Figures
SBC’s figures provided in their January profit report showed that, in the last 12 months and based on betting out of a £2,000 betting bank, in the 0-15 minute window after the NMP bets have been released each morning you could have actually improved your annual profit from £1,214 to £1,873 by taking those prices which were higher than my lowest advised odds.
This would translate to £659 additional profit and a ROI increase of 4 % over the course of the year – which is the highest ROI improvement of any of the 30 racing services tracked in the SBC profit report. The SBC recommended bank for following NMP is 85 pts.
In terms of profit, the adjusted annualised figure of £1873 (which corresponds to a ROC of +94 % over the year based on a £2,000 betting bank), ranks as the seventh most profitable of the 30 services tracked. So while NMP is not the most profitable racing service, there is seemingly greater scope to improve on my advertised profit figure than there is with other services (some of whom realistically need their headline profit figures downgrading).
In 2019 my official profit on record was +31 pts to lowest advised prices, but with the SBC’s figures suggesting that the ROI on record of +6 % on record could have been boosted by +4 %, we were probably more likely looking at an annual profit of over 50 pts in reality.
My Worst Drawdown & Football Bets
That figure was achieved despite the service experience its longest historical drawdown around Royal Ascot (remember the horrible wet weather we endured at that time?) last summer (Clon Coulis losing by a nose in the Royal Hunt Cup, at 33/1, to a rival whose rider broke the whip rules, didn’t help) and despite the fact the football ante posts, which settled in May, are not included in the profit total (all eight ante post singles won at odds between 5/4 and 9/1 and five of the seven accumulators won at odds of 75/1, 35/1, 24.84/1, 10/1 and 9.74/1 for a bumper payout).
The football bets, as with my punting interest in Eurovision, is more a bit of fun on the side for the service and the articles are freely viewable to all on the website without any stakes being attached.
For 2020 onwards I am still going to be recording racing profit at lowest advised odds but I am also going to record a separate profit figure to highest advised odds to also give everyone an indication of the potential for improving on the baseline figure.
In truth, it will be difficult to replicate the top figure point-for-point to recommended stakes unless you have widespread access to accounts and back selections right after they are sent, but hopefully all members will still produce a profit somewhere between the two figures and at least improve on the baseline numbers.
The service advised 123 winners in 2019 as a whole, so even if the average price difference between each of those winners in the advised odds range was only a quarter of a point (i.e. a horse was advised at top price of 9/4 and bottom price of 2/1 or a top price of 5/4 and a bottom price of evens etc) there is a great deal of potential to boost your own personal profit figure.
It thus becomes obvious, quite quickly, how there is scope for profit improvement following the service, and that is even before you consider the differences that can result from backing winning multiples, when two potential price differences are multiplied together to yield a greater combined profit discrepancy. We had 12 winning doubles in 2019.
Blogger MPP’s profit following NMP
Respected betting blogger Making Punting Pay (MPP) revealed in a November update (https://makingpuntingpay.
Over the same period I had reported a profit of +31 pts on record to lowest advised odds – so MPP had trebled my profit figure on record.
MPP’s profit improvement was seemingly due to two factors – 1) beating lowest advised odds regularly and 2) backing everything win only.
A lot of the NMP bets are sent out as top heavy each-way bets with a heavier stake on the win part of the bet, for example, 0.25 pt EW and 0.25 pt win, as I like to maintain a place element in some of the bets to shorten the losing runs.
However, MPP’s figures last season highlight the potential profit that can be made following the service win only with bookmakers and add further weight to the argument that win only betting is the most economical form of staking.
Each-way betting is a form of insurance that you ultimately pay for – it is an approach which shortens losing sequences but yields a reduced overall profit.
A win only approach does, however, require a higher patience threshold and bankroll, so is not suitable for everybody.
SBC members trial / sign up discount
NMP is due to be re-reviewed by the SBC in 2020 and fresh odds tracking is expected to commence on the service’s bets in the coming months.
I have offered an exclusive two-week trial of my service to SBC members for several years now and that offer very much remains on the table for anyone who is looking to add a new horse racing service to their portfolio (the link is: https://www.
The Cheltenham Festival in March, and the Flat turf season, which runs from March to November, are my main areas of focus in the year. At present, we are betting on the all-weather and tackling some of the main jumps races on a weekend on a reduced staking scale until the new turf season begins.
If anyone decides they’d like to join the service for the full season at the end of their trial (or without having a trial at all) then there is a discounted payment option for SBC members at the above link – the cost to sign up until the end of the 2020 NMP service (membership from the day you join until 30th November 2020) is reduced from £275 to £225.
The discount is available to previous and new NMP members and the offer is available until the end of February.
Thanks for reading
Wayne
Please note – the links and detail in this article are relevant and active as of January 2020, when first published.