FINAL REVIEW
Those of you with long memories will recall that some time ago I tested Curse of the Handicapper. As you may have noticed (if you can remember that far back) my postings were more irregular than normal and there has been no final review, until now. This was largely due to circumstances beyond my control and beyond the control of all but Murphy.
During the course of the active test, it seemed that Murphy and his Law were well in attendance and everything that could go wrong did go wrong, plumbing, electrics, health issues, you name it. Consequently, I toyed with calling this posting “The Curse is Lifted” rather than “Final Review”.
With regard to things non-horse racing, “The Curse” seems to be very aptly named. Unfortunately, regarding matters related to horse racing, and specifically laying, my experience was that it is just as aptly named. The Curse is, by a large margin, the most difficult system I have tested; not because it is difficult to follow, but because it is so simple.
I mentioned in some of my posts that I thought an eight year old could operate the system, and that’s part of the problem. My concern is that anyone over the age of eight would not only find it easy to operate, but would be in danger of suffering terminal boredom. This is when using GHB to remove a lot of that boredom. Without GHB I would have probably given up on the test at the end of day two.
Moving to the system itself, the ebook is very short and to the point – in common with other Sportsworld Publishing products. While it is extremely simple, it felt to me like something that has not been tested over time but has, at best, been back-tested. Maybe I am doing the author an injustice, but to me The Curse of the Handicapper has the feel of something that has been put together very quickly and then hyped.
As I’m sure is obvious by now, the rules are very simple and straightforward. They also throw up something like 30-50 potential selections each day. Just before the off a large proportion of the selections will fail due to the odds being out of range, which means sitting in front of the PC virtually all afternoon or employing a bot. Just to belabour a point, even with the bot I found the selection process incredibly boring.
I said at the beginning of the test that this is the sort of system that would be prone to long losing runs. This proved to be the case while I was testing it. On the other hand there were no long winning runs, the best that happened is that towards the end of the test (figures not recorded here) the system managed to move the bank up and sideways. However, even if that trend continued it would take a long long time for the bank to move into profit.
I based my assumption for long losing runs on past experience and the use of a well known site ideal for back-testing systems. From these I deduced that this system could, over a very long period, run very close to break even, possibly with long winning runs and almost certainly with long losing runs.
I would expect to find that a backer using the same selection criteria would return in the region of £95-99 for every £100 backed. At Betfair SP, this would indicate a small gross profit for layers, but a net loss after commission.
At the time of the last post for this system (not what is played at military funerals, though that might be apt) the bank was down from £1,000 to £629, a loss of £371. I ran the test for a few days more, but have not recorded the results here. The bank recovered slightly, but still showed a substantial loss. Based on this I am recommending that this system be firmly planted on the failed list.
Curse of the Handicapper has been withdrawn from sale.
