The Cambridge Target System
The Cambridge Target System arrived on the market this week with the grand claim of being “the most profitable system ever published” and boasting average monthly profits of £17,000, with £193,000 generated in the last 11 months alone using stakes of just £33, £50 and £100, which is amazing if it’s all true!
When the 50 page system guide landed on my doorstep yesterday morning I was instantly impressed with both the quality of the publication and also with the detailed research the author has put into it. Okay, so 30 pages of those 50 are made up of past results, but the other 20 do an excellent job of explaining the strategy and after reading it two or three times I was left with the feeling that the author really could be on to something here.
If you’ve ever purchased a system and skimmed past all bar one page because it’s a lot of baloney, thinking “oh well, as long as the system works I’ll be happy”, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise with The Cambridge Target System. If I’d put this one together I’d be feeling rather pleased with myself right now, because the author has gone into great detail about the system and everything in the manual is relevant, interesting and should definitely be read.
It starts by describing the basic selection process. I’m saying “basic”, but in truth you should read this a few times and even paper-trade your first day, because if it’s a busy day’s racing you really need to stay on top of your game, so you should make an effort to fully understand it all before you put your money down. Within an hour or two it was second nature for me, but I’m used to operating quickly on live markets and if this is new to you it might take a couple of days to find your feet. I wouldn’t let that put you off - I’m just stressing the point that you need to be on the ball for this, so make sure you read it a few times to be sure you understand it properly.
The next section talks about setting yourself targets and maximizing your profits. The basic selection method alone generated 1200 points profit in the 11 month period, but the author has gone to great lengths to research the past results and come up with a strategy that cuts down on the amount of work involved and then improves the profits by a further 700 points. This isn’t some weird or wacky staking system - it’s more of a commonsense approach to betting that could easily be applied to anything else you do. I liked the logic behind this too.
The next few sections provide you with an odds comparison table, which when you understand the system properly is probably all you’ll need open to operate it, a “course information” section that will help you when you’re working to the targets he recommends, a race card template that will be a big help to you if you’re new to operating on live markets, and finally a “race sheet” that enables you to track your day’s betting in the same way the author does.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, this isn’t a system that would allow you to pick your horses the night before and leave them to run. You do need to be at your PC and watching what’s going on in the market before the off, but here’s where it gets interesting….
The author has gone to great pains to explain that you DON’T need to be at your PC all day, or even every day, if you don’t have the time (and let’s face it, most of us don’t). The selection process works just as well in the evening as it does in the afternoon, it works every day of the week, and even if you only had an hour or two to dip in one day you could still use it and profit. Obviously the more time you have to dedicate to it, the more money you’ll make, but with so much racing on these days, even those of us with hectic lives should be able to use it okay.
With that in mind, I need to explain that I don’t have time to follow it for 8 hours a day at the moment, so for the purposes of the system test I’m going to dedicate as much time as possible, but some days I’ll be able to do more than others. I won’t be able to do Sundays at all and I’m going on holiday for a week on the 7th of June, so it’s going to be a shorter test than normal.
The author doesn’t mention a recommended bank in the manual, but I’ve set aside £1000 and I’m planning to split it into £25 units and see where it takes us. Whether 40 points is large enough I honestly don’t know, but from what I’ve seen I think that’s reasonable enough.
So, will The Cambridge Target System really turn out to be “the most profitable system ever published”? I guess it’s time to suck it and see…. 
As always, updates will be posted in the system testing section of the site each day.
Online Betting Exposed
The Cambridge Target System : Final Review
That’s us come to the end of my trial of The Cambridge Target System and I have to say that the last couple of weeks have been interesting, at times tedious, but overall very profitable. Most of all I think I’ve learned enough about the system to provide you with a realistic idea of what to expect from it, how to finetune it for more accurate performance and also (hopefully) show you how to improve the profits you generate when you make the decision to use it.
First off, let me say that I DO very much like the idea behind the Cambridge system. I’ve operated in a similar fashion on the betting exchanges for some years now and I know from experience that the general idea is a solid selection method that will almost certainly produce decent profits. However, after speaking with the author of the system at some length over the last week or two there’s a “niggling” aspect to it that I feel I should address first.
It’s mainly about the way the company report their results. If you follow the system to the letter there are some subjective aspects to it, but to combat these I reported everything based on the final shows that were available on every single qualifier and this meant that my results should almost certainly be as close as you’ll get to perfect. There’s no room for subjectiveness at all when you do it like this, but Roger, the author, doesn’t do it this way and that bothered me.
I spent 40 minutes on the phone to him the other day and he’s a nice bloke, but he told me that he isn’t always able to watch the races himself and therefore when there are delays at the start or whatever he still picks his selections roughly one minute before the official off-time. Now, over the last two weeks we’ve had a lot of delays and a lot of meetings where every race was running late, so if there’s a 5 or 10 minute delay a lot can change before the races actually start.
This meant that on many occassions the selections he was backing were entirely different to what myself, and everyone else who knew when the races were starting, were backing. I’ve made it clear that when it comes to reporting the official results a simple check at the end of the day to compare the liveshows with the forecasts from the newspaper he recommends would mean that the results were 100% correct, and undisputable, so I hope he listens
Now that I’ve got that little grumble out of the way, let’s get onto the system test itself…..
The first thing you’ll notice if you read back through my results is that I hit the ground running on day one with a profit of no less than £378 to £25 stakes. I never did manage to repeat this feat over the next 13 days, but I think there are good reasons for why that happened.
For starters, I ignored the targets that Roger sets on the first day and basically sat there betting all day long. That isn’t something I’d recommend as I think it’s better to follow his lead and stop betting when you’ve made your wages for the day. Secondly, for a full week of this system test the racing conditions were terrible, there was a lot of abandoned meetings, an unusually high number of non-runners and days when the going changed halfway through the day.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the days where I lost money using this were the days where there was a lot of non-runners and the conditions were extreme, so my first piece of advice for you would be to avoid betting at meetings where the going is described as soft/heavy/firm and when you see that a lot of runners have been pulled. If trainers are pulling out their runners it’s because the conditions aren’t what they were expecting, so this is a straight commonsense approach that will almost definitely help to save you and make you more money.
My second piece of advice is with regard to the way the bets are graded. At this point some of might be saying to yourselves “you only tested this for two weeks, what do you know?”, but I’ve got enough experience with system analysis to appreciate when rules are cool and when rules aren’t so cool and I don’t really dig the grading system much. For those of you who don’t know there are two ways to grade the runners - grade 1 bets are as solid as you can get and should be backed, grade 2 bets aren’t so strong and in my opinion these could probably be dismissed.
I’m sure that in the big scheme of things the grade 2 bets won’t be nearly as profitable as the grade 1 bets and it will make life a lot easier on you if you chose to ignore them. That’s just my opinion, so take it with a pinch of salt if you like, but it seems pretty sensible to me.
Thirdly, in The Cambridge Target System manual the author recommends that you use a daily newspaper as the guide for picking your selections. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I disagree quite strongly with this, because the paper only provides you with a limited amount of information and I think you would do far better (as I’ve proved actually) if you were to use the Sporting Life website as your guide instead. If you do that you’ll have ALL of the info you need to hand.
So, all things considered, would I recommend The Cambridge Target System?
Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve probably spent a good 70 or 80 hours on this in the last two weeks testing the system, tracking the results, answering questions about it and generally just trying to help people to use it in the best way possible and I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t particularly impressed with both the manual and the idea behind the system.
The fact that I made a tidy profit of more than £870 using £25 stakes, in just 14 betting days, obviously helped to cover the cost of my time on this, but I can’t help thinking that if I’d followed my own advice above that the actual profit would have been closer to the £1500 mark and there’s probably a valuable lesson to be learned there. I’ll continue to use this system personally and as time goes on it’s likely that I’ll continue to tweak the rules too, so stay tuned for more info.
If you haven’t got your hands on a copy yet, you can do so via the link below:
The Cambridge Target System
I’m going to be away for a week, as from this very minute actually, but I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have about anything I’ve spoken about here on my return.
The Cambridge Target System 06/06/08
It was a bit thin on the ground for winners this afternoon for The Cambridge Target System and the afternoon target wasn’t reached, but in the space of 30 minutes tonight the evening target was easily reached, plus a bit more, and a decent profit was made on the day.
Please note that I didn’t have a lot of time today and from 3pm onwards I’ve backtracked through the day’s results using the forecasts from the newspaper and the live show information from the Sporting Life. From what I could tell it would make no difference today anyway.
06-Jun Cat 1.50 -£25.00
06-Jun Wol 2.00 -£25.00
06-Jun Wol 2.35 -£25.00
06-Jun Cat 3.00 -£25.00
06-Jun Wol 3.20 -£25.00
06-Jun Cat 4.45 £100.00
06-Jun Wol 5.00 -£25.00
06-Jun Cat 5.15 -£25.00
06-Jun Goo 6.15 £87.50
06-Jun Bat 6.25 -£25.00
06-Jun Don 6.35 £50.00
06-Jun Goo 6.45 £75.00
Day 14 P/L = £112.50
Total Profit = £873.49
Bank = £1873.49
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 05/06/08
Thursday was easy enough for The Cambridge Target System. There was a whole host of winners in the afternoon, including a 6/1 winner that I haven’t even included here as I didn’t back it, and it didn’t really matter whether you used the newspaper or the Sporting Life yesterday as the afternoon target was easily reached no matter what.
The evening didn’t go as well, but there was one race where I suspect some (perhaps most) of you might have backed an 11/1 grade 2 qualifier. I didn’t, so I haven’t included it here either, but either way the profit on the whole day wasn’t too bad at all.
05-Jun Ham 2.10 £49.98
05-Jun Lin 2.20 -£25.00
05-Jun New 2.30 -£25.00
05-Jun Ham 2.40 -£25.00
05-Jun Lin 2.50 -£25.00
05-Jun Ham 3.10 -£25.00
05-Jun Lin 3.20 £75.00
05-Jun Ham 3.40 £87.50
05-Jun New 4.00 -£25.00
05-Jun Lin 4.20 -£25.00
05-Jun Ham 4.40 -£25.00
05-Jun Lin 4.50 £137.50
05-Jun Wet 6.35 -£25.00
05-Jun San 6.45 -£25.00
05-Jun Wet 7.05 £47.00
05-Jun San 7.50 -£25.00
05-Jun Utt 8.00 -£25.00
05-Jun Weth 9.15 -£25.00
Day 13 P/L = £71.98
Total Profit = £760.90
Bank = £1760.90
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 04/06/08
If you followed the newspaper today you’ve probably had the worst day ever since I started this trial, but if you followed the Sporting Life you would have picked up on the 10/1 winner in the 7.40pm at Kempton. That was the only one that made the difference between a no-lose day and a bloody well drastic day, so I hope you followed me in on this.
When I finish this trial on Friday I’m going to give you a few tips that I feel could improve your profits considerably from this system. There are a few things (not least of all the published results) that I’m not exactly comfortable with, but on the whole I do like the general idea.
I’ve taken a clean approach to this whole test, not getting involved in yo-yo prices at all, and basing everything on the very last show that’s available for you to bet at, so I feel - without any doubt at all - that the results you see here are as close as you’ll get to perfect. On the whole it’s been a very profitable period, but stay tuned because I’ve got more to say on the matter.
04-Jun Lin 1.50 -£25.00
04-Jun Lin 2.20 -£25.00
04-Jun Fon 2.30 -£25.00
04-Jun Lin 2.50 -£25.00
04-Jun Fon 3.00 -£25.00
04-Jun Lin 3.20 £75.00
04-Jun Fon 3.30 -£25.00
04-Jun Lin 4.20 £56.25
04-Jun Fon 4.30 -£25.00
04-Jun Lin 4.50 -£25.00
04-Jun Kem 6.40 -£25.00
04-Jun Kem 7.10 -£25.00
04-Jun Rip 7.20 -£25.00
04-Jun Kem 7.40 £250.00
04-Jun Kem 8.10 -£25.00
04-Jun Rip 8.40 -£25.00
04-Jun Kem 9.10 -£25.00
Day 12 P/L = £31.25
Total Profit = £689.01
Bank = £1689.01
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 03/06/08
Any of you who took my advice and checked out the racecards from the Sporting Life website yesterday will have noticed that the odds were identical in all bar one race (unless I missed one) and the slight difference there made no difference at all to the results, so what you see below are the 100% correct, based on SP, results for The Cambridge Target System on Tuesday.
I thought I should mention that as a couple of you were concerned about using a different source for the forecasts, but they’re supplied from the same place and the number of differences is tiny (in the region of 3-4 horses a day), so as far as I’m concerned the downsides are almost zero and you have the added bonus of being able to see the forecast odds for every single runner.
Yesterday was a funny old day. The weather was awful and there was a lot of non-runners (like one of the earlier days when I also lost) so there wasn’t a lot of qualifiers and it was hard to feel confident considering the conditions. It’s maybe something to keep in mind in future.
03-Jun Sou 2.15 £47.00
03-Jun Rip 3.00 -£25.00
03-Jun Rip 3.30 £37.50
03-Jun Sou 3.45 -£25.00
03-Jun Rip 4.00 -£25.00
03-Jun Sou 4.45 £37.50
03-Jun Fol 6.20 -£25.00
03-Jun Sed 7.05 -£25.00
03-Jun Fol 7.20 -£25.00
03-Jun Fol 8.20 -£25.00
03-Jun Fol 8.50 -£25.00
Day 11 P/L = -£78.00
Total Profit = £657.76
Bank = £1657.76
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 02/06/08
I’ve had a lot of discussions about The Cambridge Target System over the last few days and I wanted to let you know about something that should be useful to you if you’re using it now.
Since I first started testing the system last week I’ve been using the Sporting Life betting forecasts - the reason being that it’s the SL who supply the forecasts to the newspaper that’s recommended in the manual, but instead of only showing you the odds for the first few runners in the betting the SL provide you with the forecast odds for every runner in each race.
Roger Purssord, the author of the Cambridge system, doesn’t mention this in the manual so I’m somewhat acting alone here, but if you would prefer to see the odds of every runner (and if you’d like to save yourself the cost of a newspaper every day) then you can go to……
http://horses.sportinglife.com/Meetings/
….and use that for your forecasts instead. Occasionally the Sporting Life update the odds on a handful of runners in the morning, so sometimes there are small differences from the paper, but I’m sure your results will be even more accurate if you use the SL as your source, because you’ll have access to the odds of every runner in the field and not just 25%-30% of them.
You don’t need to take my advice on this, but I do think it makes sense! 
Anyway, onto the results. This is what I had today….
02-Jun Car 2.15 -£25.00
02-Jun Lei 2.30 -£25.00
02-Jun Lei 3.00 -£25.00
02-Jun Car 3.15 £29.13
02-Jun Lei 3.30 £137.50
02-Jun Lei 4.00 -£25.00
02-Jun Car 4.15 -£25.00
02-Jun Lei 5.00 £24.99
02-Jun Thi 6.15 -£25.00
02-Jun Thi 6.45 £53.13
02-Jun Win 7.00 -£25.00
02-Jun Win 7.30 -£25.00
02-Jun Thi 7.45 £25.00
02-Jun Win 8.00 -£25.00
02-Jun Thi 8.15 £31.25
02-Jun Thi 8.45 £31.25
02-Jun Win 9.00 £62.50
Day 10 P/L = £169.74
Total Profit = £735.76
Bank = £1735.76
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 31/05/08
Saturday was a better day for The Cambridge Target System. It took a while to pick up and you’ll be getting sick of hearing this, but AGAIN there was a whole host of runners that looked like winning only to be ran out of it late on. 10/1, 8/1, 7/1 and so on…. there was loads of them again…. and from a trading perspective I’m sure you could have made the proverbial fortune this week, because I’ve lost count of the number that have gone 1/1 or less in-running.
Still, at least a decent profit was made today and it was relatively easy to make a further 5 or 6 points on top of what I’ve got here, because I was backing them right at the last few seconds - just as they were going in the stalls - and I was on at better odds on a good few of the winners. There was one that I took 10/1 on with only 2 or 3 to go in and by the time the SP was returned it was 13/2. I’ve used the SP for my results, but it’s something else to keep in mind.
The researchers among you might be able to add your own - probably very profitable - twist to the original system rules that are outlined in the manual, I suspect anyway!
31-May Don 2.00 -£25.00
31-May Yor 2.20 -£25.00
31-May Goo 2.30 £18.75
31-May Hay 2.45 -£25.00
31-May Yor 2.50 £16.66
31-May Goo 3.00 -£25.00
31-May Don 3.10 -£25.00
31-May Hay 3.15 £25.00
31-May Yor 3.25 -£25.00
31-May Goo 3.35 £43.75
31-May Don 3.40 -£25.00
31-May Hay 3.50 £12.50
31-May Goo 4.05 £68.75
31-May Don 4.15 -£25.00
31-May Yor 4.30 £47.00
31-May Goo 4.40 £18.75
31-May Hay 4.55 £30.00
31-May Don 5.25 -£25.00
31-May Goo 5.50 £100.00
31-May Lin 6.05 -£25.00
31-May New 6.20 -£25.00
31-May New 6.50 -£25.00
31-May Lin 7.10 -£25.00
31-May New 7.25 £87.50
31-May New 7.55 -£25.00
31-May Lin 8.15 £112.50
31-May Lin 8.45 -£25.00
31-May New 9.00 -£25.00
Day 9 P/L = £181.16
Total Profit = £566.02
Bank = £1566.02
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 30/05/08
I wasn’t around on Friday, so this morning I had to go through the painstaking task of comparing the forecasts with the liveshows from the Sporting Life to get a breakdown of the selections from yesterday. It wasn’t exactly an inspiring day, but something I did notice was that the percentage of runners that made the frame, often just getting beaten at decent prices, was huge.
Here are the stats:
26 races
6 winning races (23%)
12 placed without winning (46%)
18 either won or placed (69%)
And here are the runners that made the frame without winning:
Yor 3.20 2nd at 13/2 (beaten a short-head)
Yor 3.55 2nd at 5/2 (beaten a neck)
Goo 4.45 2nd at 15/8 (beaten 1/2 length)
Bri 4.55 2nd at 13/8 (beaten 1/2 length)
Yor 5.05 3rd at 7/4
Goo 5.15 2nd at 5/2 (beaten a neck)
Bri 5.25 3rd at 7/2
Mus 7.20 2nd at 7/2
Hay 7.40 2nd at 4/1
Mus 7.50 2nd at 8/1
Tow 9.00 2nd at 3/1 and 3rd at 10/1
Mus 9.20 3rd at 5/4
An extreme case of “seconditis” there!
I don’t know if the trend of such a high number making the frame will continue, but it’s certainly been evident (in a BIG way!) this week, so it could be worth watching.
30-May Yor 2.10 £56.25
30-May Goo 2.25 -£25.00
30-May Yor 2.45 £37.50
30-May Yor 3.20 -£25.00
30-May Yor 3.55 -£25.00
30-May Goo 4.10 £37.50
30-May Bri 4.20 £47.00
30-May Yor 4.35 -£25.00
30-May Goo 4.45 -£25.00
30-May Bri 4.55 -£25.00
30-May Yor 5.05 -£25.00
30-May Goo 5.15 -£25.00
30-May Bri 5.25 -£25.00
30-May Goo 5.50 -£25.00
30-May Tow 6.30 -£25.00
30-May Tow 7.00 £56.25
30-May Mus 7.20 -£25.00
30-May Tow 7.30 -£25.00
30-May Hay 7.40 -£25.00
30-May Mus 7.50 -£25.00
30-May Mus 8.20 £68.75
30-May Tow 8.30 -£25.00
30-May Hay 8.40 -£25.00
30-May Mus 8.50 -£25.00
30-May Tow 9.00 -£25.00
30-May Mus 9.20 -£25.00
Day 8 P/L = -£196.75
Total Profit = £384.86
Bank = £1384.86
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
The Cambridge Target System 29/05/08
When I sat down to “work on” The Cambridge Target System today I was expecting to be at the PC all day, but after one race the afternoon target of £90 (to £25 stakes) was made, plus a bit more, so I was finished for the afternoon after earning approximately £25 a minute!
Unfortunately the evening meetings didn’t go nearly as well and by the end of the night we were showing a loss of approximately 3 points between the afternoon and evening sessions. However I have to say that once again there was a host of placed horses that were only just ran out of it, including one that finished 2nd at 12/1, so I couldn’t help feeling slightly robbed tonight!
29-May Yar 2.10 £125.00
29-May San 6.40 -£25.00
29-May Wet 6.55 £27.25
29-May New 7.05 -£25.00
29-May Wet 7.25 -£25.00
29-May San 7.45 -£25.00
29-May Wet 8.00 -£25.00
29-May New 8.10 -£25.00
29-May San 8.20 -£25.00
29-May Wet 9.00 -£25.00
29-May New 9.10 -£25.00
Day 7 P/L = -£72.75
Total Profit = £581.61
Bank = £1581.61
All results are taken at SP and the bets are placed with a bookie, so no commission is applied.
