I have been looking at Fire & Forget from the Pro Betting Club stable, a horse racing tipping service for backing horses to win. The service normally costs £49 per month.
It is very simple to operate, you get the selections and put them on, using Betfair too, so I will record prices to BSP. You are betting the favourite though, so you need to select a time, say 30 seconds before the scheduled off, and back which ever horse is the favourite and the best odds you can get; therefore your results will slightly vary from mine.
The website does leave it open how to use the selections, but does make this recommendation, “it is suggested you use them with a ‘loss Recovery’ staking plan. The best staking plan we have found to use since using these selections is the ‘Stop At A Winner’ staking plan, whereby you take into consideration any losses from previous selections, with you then staking sufficient money on the next selection, this allowing you to recover your previous losses …”. I used this staking plan and in doing so I did not a losing day during the trial.
The trial finished 75 points up, £750.00 using the cash-master standard of £10 per point. Even deducting £150 for three months of subs leaves you £600 in profit. The website recommends 2% TARGET, so you need £500 for £10 per day, but I feel this is aggressive; more on this later.
Easy to use, nice profits even with subs deducted, I would normally approve this immediately. HOWEVER, please read the two caveats below before making your decision.
First caveat is easily solved.
There are several candidate races per day. The Bet Engine is recommended so that you can place bets without having to be near a computer all afternoon.
Second Caveat, and it is a biggie.
I haven’t had a losing day, there have only been 7 since October 2015. So what follows has to be a wee bit of conjecture.
Each day the loss recovery is a simple martingale. The average odds through the trial is 2.15. If a losing day has 6 bets, and there are quite a few days with 6 races identified, you could lose £494 (looking for £10 per day); remember the recommended bank is £500, so a losing day could wipe your bank out. This is why I stated that I feel that 2% target is too aggressive. Replace one 2.15 with a 1.75 odds-on and your bank will have disappeared before you get to place the final bet!
A few days ago, we had 1.26 (lost), 1.33 (lost) and 1.89 (won). That was £461 laid out to win a tenner. The remaining bets that day were 3.81 (won), 2.16 (won) and 1.76 (lost). Looking at the possible worst-case scenario here that is a potential loss of £2887, to make £10 and way over the recommended £500 bank. To be fair 3 of the 6 horses won, and the £10 target was made. Also, this service appears to be able to do the 288 winning days needed to recover this loss.
Also, to be fair, it could be months before you hit a losing day and you may have grown your bank quite nicely before this happens. Remember, only 7 losing days since October 2015! Further, looking back over the data we were never sweating the final selection, we were usually done for the day within 2 or 3 races. Did have a couple of days where we got to race 5 though!
The potential for one losing day to wipe you out has me seriously thinking of a neutral rating. If you are happy to take this risk though, it could be a nice little earner; £600 up off a £500 bank in 13 weeks after all (120% profit); if you keep to £10 targets, you both build resilience to a wipe and may have 60% growth in the next quarter.
One final thing to consider: 779 days since 1 Oct 2015 (as I write this) less 111 days as the service does not operate on Sundays is 668 days. 7 losing days at £500 is £3500 lost versus over £6600 won. Long-term profits seem achievable, so my concerns of the effects of a losing day may be overly negative.
I am going to approve this; in the end I didn’t see a losing day and was nicely in profit. In doing so I hope the betting Gods are kind and you do not see a losing day for many months. I strongly urge you to be cautious and that your daily target is no greater than 1% though.
More info HERE. (click the Back And Win service)
