The Curse Of The Handicapper: Final Review
The Curse Of The Handicapper test drew to a close on 31st August after a month of tracking and testing.
Making the selections each day was very easy, if a little laborious at times as there can sometimes be 50 or 60 potentials to pick out and make a note of! I tracked the outcome of the potentials that qualified, recording results to SP (as in the official results) and also to SP plus ten percent, to allow for the fact that Betfair odds are usually higher than the starting price.
Here are the final figures:
Days operated: 29
Profit to SP: £561.59
Profit to SP +10%: £306.43
This is to £10 stakes, with 5% commission taken into consideration. I feel it is reasonable to dismiss the SP figure, as generally you’re not going to achieve that. That leaves a respectable 30 point profit to SP plus 10% - the question being, how achievable is this?
The Curse manual states that it’s possible to use Grey Horse Bot to place your bets - this is true, and I did so as often as I could. What the manual doesn’t state is whether or not it is profitable to do so, and I saw enough to conclude that it wasn’t. I’ll qualify that… I used GHB to place the bets automatically, one minute before the official off. Unfortunately I lost my spreadsheet during a catastrophic PC system crash, however I do know that the profits were slightly negative by that point, and I remember that they’d bounced around, sometimes slightly positive and other times slightly negative. Overall, I felt that breaking even would be the best case scenario. The reason for this was that the Betfair prices on the winning horses were usually significantly higher than the starting price, and indeed significantly higher than SP + 10%. All this proves, however, is that how I ran this through GHB is not the best way to run this system.
Many feel that obtaining prices that are as little as 10% (and less) above SP is achievable if you are betting manually, and I can see how this can be possible if you are following the markets and can bet based on judging which way the odds are generally moving. (This is where most bots fail, as they just bet a set amount of time before the off.)
Additionally, there are further options to explore when using a bot - for example, asking for a price that is better than that currently on offer, or allowing your Betfair order to persist while the market goes in-running, in order to get a better price and not accept whatever is available just before the off. Also, you could place bets earlier in the day as a test to see how that compares - these are all on my list to check when I have some time spare. Another consideration (but not necessarily a recommendation) is a gentle loss recovery system, or rather, an overlay recovery system that recovers only the excess you have lost compared to SP; this particular idea is something I am planning to explore, starting with small stakes and building up from there.
Overall, I came out feeling ambivalent towards Curse, so I’m going to give it a neutral review. It’s another system that advertises hefty profits, but you come to realise it’s not quite as simple as that, because those profits are based on obtaining prices that are close to SP. Straight automation with a bot (as I did) doesn’t cut it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be automated if implemented in a more sophisticated fashion - something I’m going to continue to look into.
I feel this system does have decent potential, if you’re prepared to work out how to run it the most effectively, which probably means running it manually; I don’t have the inclination or the time to run something like this manually, but if you are prepared to put in some effort to judge generally which direction the odds are going in, I feel this could indeed be a viable system to add to the portfolio.
In a nutshell… simple automation is unlikely to be profitable, but the potential is there if you are prepared to work on obtaining odds that are as low as possible.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 31st August
The final day of the test for Curse Of The Handicapper was much quieter than yesterday, with ‘only’ 22 potentials. Unfortunately we ended with a small loss, but nothing too serious.
I’ll gather my thoughts into a final write-up over the next couple of days.
Bets: 7
Winners: 2
Losers: 5
Profit/Loss (SP):-£27.50
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): -£35.00
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£561.59
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£306.43
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 30th August
The penultimate day for Curse Of The Handicapper revealed a huge 62 potentials… this is where the ability to automate the selection process would be nice! Of those, 22 qualified, from which we reaped 16 losers, giving us a small profit for the day.
Bets: 22
Winners: 6
Losers: 16
Profit/Loss (SP):+£22.50
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£9.55
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£589.09
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£341.43
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 29th August
Heading North again!
Bets: 23
Winners: 3
Losers: 20
Profit/Loss (SP):+£96.25
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£86.88
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£566.59
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£331.88
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 28th August
We seem to be experiencing a few ‘South Winds’ over the last couple of days. Let’s hope it changes direction as we near the end of the test.
Bets: 11
Winners: 4
Losers: 7
Profit/Loss (SP):-£46.50
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): -£57.80
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£470.34
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£245.00
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 27th August
Well, during this test I’ve endured the Curse Of The Grey Horse Bot (some bugs - now ironed out, I should point out), and the Curse Of The Broadband Connection (also solved). But yesterday was the biggest one of all - the Curse Of The Catastrophic And Irrecoverable PC Crash, which cast the good ship “HMS Tester” aground on the shores of despair. Along with the ruddy results spreadsheet!
All is far from lost, however. The results are here in the system test, and I’m simply picking up from where we left off. It does mean I’ve lost the GHB odds data - however, I have already arrived at some conclusions regarding that aspect of it, which I will share in the forthcoming final review.
So, to continue with the wanted Curse:
Bets: 5
Winners: 2
Losers: 3
Profit/Loss (SP):-£71.50
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): -£81.50
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£516.84
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£302.80
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 25th August
Quite a non-eventful, break even day for Curse Of The Handicapper today.
Bets: 15
Winners: 4
Losers: 11
Profit/Loss (SP):+£8.25
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): -£1.38
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£588.34
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£384.30
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 24th August
Grey Horse Bot is an amazingly useful piece of kit for automating bet placement. However, you still have to program it with your selections, and making these selections is still a manual process. I’ve been away this weekend, and wasn’t present to make the selections this morning. Such is the nature of systems that rely on manual selections - i.e., most of them! By the time I returned, the Racing Post card data had all but disappeared for the day as well, so I couldn’t check the day’s results against the selections that would have qualified.
However, the test is going well, and tomorrow I’ll be back onto it for the final week. Undoubtedly we’re going to come out positively to SP +10%, so let’s see how much we can add for the final phase.
Enjoy the bank holiday!
Curse Of The Handicapper, 23rd August
Another excellent day for Curse Of The Handicapper today - we’re on a good run now, after going sideways for a little while!
Bets: 21
Winners: 4
Losers: 17
Profit/Loss (SP):+£68.24
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£58.92
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£580.09
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£385.67
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
Curse Of The Handicapper, 22nd August
The upward trend continues from yesterday… not in such spectacular style, but in the right direction nevertheless.
Bets: 15
Winners: 3
Losers: 12
Profit/Loss (SP):+£17.75
Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£8.13
Total Profit/Loss (SP): +£511.85
Total Profit/Loss (SP +10%): +£326.75
All profitable bets are recorded net of Betfair commission at 5%.
