FINAL REVIEW
by Graham Laurie

When I first got The Selector software I was initially quite pleased with it. It’s quick to install and all you have to do is turn it on in the morning and it takes a couple of minutes to scan the Racing Post website looking for certain criteria to find selections to bet on each day. Sounds good… press a button and hey presto, heres your days bets.

I paper traded to £50 level stakes and made some good profit in the first week. The luck was soon to run out, however, and very quickly the profits dwindled and turned into hefty losses. By the end of the first month I was down by £548.

I was also getting reports that refund requests were not being honoured even though there was an unconditional refund guarantee on the website. I contacted the website owner myself and was pleased to hear that he had started refunding those that asked and I did recieve confirmation of this from a few of my newsletter subscribers and blog readers, however I suspect that there may be some that were not so lucky.

I gave the Selector another month to see how results pan out, after all with level staking everyone can have a bad month. Not good results though, I’m afraid, with another £1,313 loss which, added with the previous £548 makes a grand total of -£1861 to £50 level stakes. In a word… terrible.

I also have concerns about the transparancy of this whole outfit. I’ve done some digging and it transpires that apparantly this was set up by Lee O’Hare of Ex-Jockey and sold onto the new owner, James. I did get a lot of marketing e-mails from Lee promoting the Selector so it could be that part of the deal was that Lee would promote the site, regardless of how well it performed. This could very well be true although I’m therefore not sure why I got an e-mail from The Selector domain but with Lee’s signature, and also when I asked Lee about The Selector, he told me that he had nothing to do with it, he just promoted it. When I then asked why it was his name and e-mail address listed as product vendor in The Selectors affiliate program, he then told me he had created the site and sold it on.

So it turns out Lee actually created few sites and apparantly sold them on. These include freehorseracingtips.co.uk and greyhoundtipster.com (review to follow), and they all promote each others products. Of course there is always the possibility that they are all just run by Lee and he cross promotes all the sites under different names. This is a well known marketing tactic and not illegal although I would suggest that it falls into the catagory of ’slightly iffy’. This is just speculation of course and I wouldn’t want to suggest there is anything untoward going on.

Suffice it to say, I will put this in the Failed section on the blog and I don’t recommend purchasing The Selector, at least not if you want to back the selections. There may be some merit in it as a good piece of kit for identiying Lay bets though… every stone has a silver lining, as they say.

I’ll be doing a final review of Ex-Jockey plus I have a one-off review of greyhoundtipster over the next few days.

You can get The Selector here:

http://www.cash-master.com/theselector.htm
Thanks

Graham

I have a review, of sorts, by Derek Hyde on his experience with the Sectional Timing Software sold by Greyhound Tipster for use, obviously, with greyhound racing. Due to the amount of work involved with inputting data into the software I have had great difficulty actually finding anyone else willing to put in the time required to test it, so I’m very appreciative of Dereks efforts here.

It’s worth noting that on the website you can get a free 3 day trial of the software so if you are particularly interested in the software or the accompanying service then I’d highly recommend having a go at the free trial first before parting with any hard earned! At least that way you know what you are getting into. However, as per Dereks review, I have added this software/service to the Failed section.

On to Dereks review…

Sectional Timing Software & Greyhound Tipster
Reviewed by Derek Hyde

This is one that I really have gone into with Burnsie (Bobby) - and I threw it out !

The selection software is fine but very, very, time consuming entering an enormous amount of data for each runner. The software costs £112.

I have had three 3 day trials, which in fact run of for about a week. The problem with the software is that on average about 2 or 3 races out of 60 races will qualify for entry into the software - I remember this as I once had a count up of a day’s racing. An awful lot of time is wasted checking all the races to see which ones qualify for using with the software.

When I pinned Bobby down (eventually) about the software he said that his own (different) software picks up a lot more races to qualify, but the real situation which he advises is to take a subscription to his greyhound tipster service. There was no answer when I asked why then was it necessary to buy the software. I have had literally dozens and dozens of emails with Bobby on this subject and also I have taken a couple of 2 or 3 week long tipster trials - one was free and one I got for half price at about £33.

He averages 10 winning lay runners out of 12 races each day but I found that the two races where the lay runners won the race they completely wiped out any profit and sometimes produced a loss. Now and again he produces 12 out of 12 which is fine, and now and again he only produced 8 out of 12 which was not so fine. The bottom line is that after many weeks following his tipster selections I made a loss overall.

I finally completely gave up.

You can try the Sectional Timing software here:

http://www.cash-master.com/greyhoundtipster.php

A final update on this. This system has hit a really rough patch over the last month. It would still be in profit from my proper test of it in July, but not by much. I would not be keen to use this with a bot longterm. I think the system is good but you do need to use your own judgement to make a profit. You have to be a bit more selective with the races. Increasing the time you start the bot before a race did not help a great deal because of the lower levels of liquidity in place markets it is easy to get false selections and prices. I have also had a bit of a play with the USA racing using the system and would strongly advise against it. It was awful. I tried it for two weeks on paper and didn’t have a single winning day. It may have been better if I used the later races from the states, but I ran the bot up to 10pm and it failed to make any money.

In conclusion, I would still say that this system is worth having. It has had a bad run, but using the bot has made it look worse than it is. I would only use this system whilst watching the race/market and would avoid use of a bot of any kind.

A poor month for The Selector but seeing as this is level staking I want to give it a fair crack of the whip. There have been some issues with refunds which is always a concern when an unconditional refund guarantee is offered but I believe all (or most) refund requests have been honoured. I’ll try this for another month and update you at the end of September.

Total Profit: -£548

Saturdays Bets:

Bath 5:45 Turn To Dreams LOST -£50   
Bath 6:15 Ambrose Princess LOST -£50
Bath 7:45 Rescue Me LOST -£50
Newton Abbot 4:05 Dark Energy LOST -£50
Sandown 5:25 Western Roots LOST -£50

Daily Profit: -£250
Total Profit: -£498

Sundays Bets:

Musselburgh Apache Nation LOST -£50
Musselburgh Pressed For Time NR

Daily Profit: -£50
Total Profit: -£548

Thursdays Bets:

2.10 Ayr Bold Account WON 3/10 +£15

Daily Profit:+£15
Total Profit:+£152

Fridays Bets:

Chester 2:55 Fathsta LOST -£50
Chester 4:40 Nightjar LOST -£50
Hamilton 2:30 Bold Account NR
Hamilton 4:15 Wednesdays Boy LOST -£50
Hamilton 4:50 Grazeon Gold Blend LOST -£50
Hamilton 5:20 Prince Rhyddarch LOST -£50
Hamilton 5:50 Stoneacre Chris NR
Wolverhampton 7:20 Thoughtsofstardom LOST -£50
Wolverhampton 7:50 August Days LOST -£50
Wolverhampton 8:20 Adorabella LOST -£50

Daily Profit: -£400
Total Profit: -£248

Wednesdays Bets:

3.40 Ayr Handsome Falcon WON 11/4 +£138
5.10 Ayr Select Committee LOST -£50
5.20 Catterick Winthorpe LOST -£50
5.00 Great Leighs Benhego WON 5/2 +£125

Daily Profit:+£163
Total Profit:+£137

Tuesdays Bets:

5.00 Great Leighs Circadian Rhythm WON 4/1 +£200

Daily Profit:+£200
Total Profit:-£26

A good day for the Selector yesterday.

Mondays Bets:

5.55 Huntingdon Fourpointone WON 9/2 +£225
2.45 Kempton All In The Red LOST -£50
3.20 Kempton Artistic License LOST -£50
2.25 Ripon Bold Account WON 11/8 +£69
5.20 Ripon Eton Fable LOST -£50
1.30 Warwick Coconut Shy WON 7/1 +£350

Daily Profit:+£494
Total Profit:-£226

Sundays Bets:

5.40 Goodwood Don Pele LOST -£50
3.30 Yarmouth Al Rayanah LOST -£50
4.05 Yarmouth Desperate Dan LOST -£50

Daily Profit:-£150
Total Profit:-£720