The Betalay Horse Racing System
I’ve done a lot of research into horse racing systems over the years, so when a system lands on my desk nowadays I’ve normally got a good idea of whether it’s likely to work or not within a couple of minutes of looking at it. Of course, many of the systems I see are just plain junk, but occasionally you come across one that’s worth investigating and that’s what happened to me this week…
The system I’m talking about is The Betalay Horse Racing System and the first thing that hit me about this system is that (a) it appears to be incredibly easy to operate and (b) the advertised profits are incredible…. which is exactly what we’re looking for, if it’s all true!
Before we get started, I’d like you to take a look at this web page.
The reason I want you to look at this first is because I’m going to explain some of the things they’ve done to achieve the spectacular figures they advertise and that way you’ll be in a better position to make an educated decision about whether it’s for you or not.
Secondly, I should tell you that although this is listed under “Betting Books“, the PDF file you download is only 5 pages in size, so don’t expect to have to spend days trawling through chapter upon chapter of information. It’s a simple system that can be easily condensed into 5 pages, but in my opinion that’s a good thing - cut straight to the chase and all that.
Now, as far as systems go, this really is about as simple as they come. There are only three rules involved, you’ll know exactly which races to bet in within seconds of looking at the cards and you only ever lay one - easily identified - horse in each race. The system operates in the last few minutes before each race starting, but you can automate it using Malcolm Pett’s excellent Grey Horse Bot software, so even if you’re working during the day you can easily set it up in the morning and leave the software to do the rest for you on auto-pilot, which is a bonus.
To sum up the benefits:
- It’s VERY easily operated.
- You can completely automate everything.
- The advertised profits will make your mouth water.
That’s all well and good, but now let me get into the nitty gritty of it for you….
I was able to backtest this system, somewhat loosely because the software I used wouldn’t allow me to run reports using the exact odds range they recommend, but I was able to get it pretty close and (in my opinion at least) that’s good enough for our purposes here.
I’m in little doubt that their reports are accurate and that the selections they recommend you lay are 100% correct, but there are two things you need to know about. The first is that the numbers they display on their website don’t include Betfair’s 5% commission (although you’re probably on less than 5%) and the second is that the odds they’ve used are calculated to the industry Starting Price (SP) and not to the higher odds you can expect to lay at on Betfair.
When you factor these in it does have a detrimental effect on the advertised profits, but in my opinion the very worse case scenario would still see you showing a profit every year and the very best scenario - when you lay at as close to SP as possible, with a reduced BF commission rate of say 3.5% - would still see you generating an exceptional profit every year.
From a personal point of view I would attempt to fully automate it, so judging the odds before the off wouldn’t come into the equation, and I’m also on roughly 3.5% commission, so I would expect to be in a position to make a profit of perhaps half of what they advertise every year.
I can’t see how you would ever make the advertised profits, but hey - looking over the last few years it wouldn’t be unrealistic to think that you could make an extra £15K a year doing this and when you combine it with the Grey Horse Bot you can do the whole damn thing on auto-pilot.
That’s all good to me.
Another thing the author recommends is using a “recovery plan” where you attempt to recoup a percentage of any loss on your next four bets and again this is an easy thing to do when you use the Grey Horse Bot. I’m not always keen on these kind of staking plans, but when you consider that the strike-rate of the system is a healthy 88%, I think that in this instance you could (and probably should) use it to boost your profits from the system quite substantially.
All in all, I like The Betalay Horse Racing System and when used in conjunction with the Grey Horse Bot I think you’ll have a consistent, completely automatic, money-maker on your hands.
This is one that I’ll happily recommend…
Until next time,
Online Betting Exposed
Hi Marco,
Sounds good. The way you describe the software, it picks the horse as per betting order, is that correct ? Using Betmechanic in the past the strike rate on the correct horse was about 90% as the software takes the betting order from the course which tends to reflect the final official betting order and sp
Hi Everyone,
In reply to NG posted on June 26th and various others about the lack of profits, you have to understand that this is basically a loss recovery system. If you do not apply any loss recovery it should return a profit of around 16% excluding commission. This figure is easy to calculate assuming that
1) The success rate is 88%
2) The average loss can be assumed to be 7.00 (i.e 6/1 being mid way between the recommended extremes for selection.
Using this data the calculation is now fairly straight forward. Over 100 races this should return 88 lay wins and 12 lay losses
88 wins each at 1 unit yields 88 units profit which becomes 83.6 units at 5% commission
12 losses each at odds of 7.00 (6/1) yields a loss of 72 units
expected profit = 83.6 - 12 = 11.6 units per 100 races (11.6%)
The data at http://www.betgear.net/systems/betalay.pdf pretty much bears this out even though it is applying different selection criteria to the published betalay system. It returned a profit of 123.6 units (at 5% commission) from 1228 races (5 of the 1233 being non-runners) giving a profit of 10.07%.
NG is right in that it reached 124 units in January and ended on 123.6 thereby apparently making a small loss between January and May. In reality this is partly because it evened itself out after getting off to a way above average start….such is the nature of statistical methods! In practice it peaked at over 151 units before being hit by a losing run from which it hadn’t recovered by the end of the monitored period. This does, however, hint at the possibilities of the system if it is used with a workable loss recovery strategy.
A more detailed analysis of that data actually shows a lay win rate of 87.05% for the full period and average losing odds of 6.61 (5.6/1) so while the success rate is sightly lower than that claimed for the full system, the average losing odds are also lower than the rough and ready average and works in our favour.
As you can see the basic system should return a small profit over time but any significant amount has to come from the application of a loss recovery plan. I am currently testing a number of recovery plans against this data and will eventually also apply it to all of the results posted on the Betalay web site.
Hope this helps
Marco, That’s very brave of you if you are recovering 100% of your losses. Your profits should be much higher though as you would basically be making 1 point for every selection you lay. Should be about 200 points per month after BF commission.
Hi,
i am using Betalay combined with Market Feeder Pro for 5 weeks now. I am placing my bets about 10 seconds before the off. I compared my selections to the results of the betalay website. In many races the selections are the same on some other they are different (e.g. races where punters judge many horses equal). This is because of the fluctuation in odds at betfair. But the strikerate is at 88% with aprox 500 bets made.
I am using a 200 point bank and configured Market Feeder Pro to recover loses within 4 bets. This is a bit more agressive than discussed here and i think i will change this by time when races become more unpredictable due to weather conditions.
Up to now my profit is at 146 points. (58 points with 1€ stakes in June, 88 points with 2€ stakes in July)
I think this are really good results for almost fully automated betting.
Sometimes i decided to stop betting althought there were races left to bet on.
This was to take profits when there were left less than 4 races so no full recovery cycle
could be made in case of a loss.
This are my experiences with betalay so far.
Marco
Hi Paul, I have received an e-mail from the Betalay people. The software is still in the early stages
of developement. Meanwhile I have been using Betmechanic that fully automates the Betalay system. It takes the on course information to chose the horse to back rather than the Betfair betting order. Early days yet to decide if it’s working well
Denis, I think the guys from Betalay have just been in touch with a programmer about building a bot that will let you lay horses and use an overlay type recovery system. It’s someone who visits here actually. It might be worthwhile contacting them to ask about that.
Hi Paul,
Thank you. Although I use Excel through work, I am not sure I would be able to programme
an overlay recovery system. Do you know of anybody who I could commission for such a
system ?
Denis
Denis, if you know a little bit about Excel you can use the Grey Horse Bot for almost anything you like now as it has an Excel feature that lets you specify your own rules.
Hi, I have just recently read the thread regarding the overlay recovery for use with Betwise.
Could anybody advise if a Staking plan now exists which incorporates an Overlay recovery, for use with the Gray Horse Bot .
If one should exist I would like to compare it’s accuracy with another Bot that I have been recently using which also has an Overlay recovery coupled with selecting horses from the on course SP rather than the Betfair prices..
Rob,
I don’t run the Betalay system personaly because of work comitments during the day, and as you have found it is probably not profitable at level stakes with the bot, so manual is the only way to go at present.
Once somebody gets round to sorting out the overlay with the excel feature I think you will have a profitable system.
I notice you have said you are going to try the staking option to recoup losses. If this is the overlay then please let us know how you do it. If it’s recouping your losses over the next 4or5 races then be very carefull as your bank does not look big enough.
If you haven’t alread, take a look back through the thread, bank sizes are discussed at length.
Hope you get on okay.
Cheers
Mark
Hi, I bought both the Betalay system and the GreyHorse Bot and have been running the system thorugh the GreyHorse Bot for the last 2 and a half weeks, starting on 11 June (only missing 1 day of racing since then). I have only been betting £2.50 from a a bank of £500. As it stands, I have made a profit of £1.61. Now, I know that this is long term system, but i was just curious to find out if anyone else has had a similar result for this time frame??? I am pretty certain that my bot is set up correctly, correct computer clock etc.
I have added the staking feature today to the bot, i’ll see how that affects the p & l.
Great website btw
So many systems and most of them have been given the thumbs up, soon as i become interested in one system that has had a good review and i think of buying, another system appears with a thumbs up, i mean i cant afford to buy them all, i just want the two best up to date systems for backing and laying.
Just another thought that you might like to consider.
When i tested the betalay live(only about 100 races so it was only a small sample) i found that the betfair overpricing varied dramatically. It would appear to me that if you were only to get involved with those selections that were say within 10% of sp, then long term you should be able to turnover a profit i would have thought.
You also have the ‘in-running’ option quite often sp is achievable and the markets tend to be quite volatile early in the race which means they are fairly inefficient.
Hi all,
how did the cambridge do today, was working so didint get near it?
I have a variation or at least 5 years results of a similar idea, i could send the figs to Paul and he could pass them on, well if he’s happy to do that. The s/r is slightly lower, but then so is the liability and the betfair overpricing is slight less dramatic as well.
Paul should i send it to you or Maybe Jack at betalay and let him hand it out, its just a word doc containg results/profits etc that i put together on flatstats a while ago?
Hi guys,
so could those of us who didnt buy betalay get in on this from the start?
Agreed, it wouldn’t be the betalay system, just borrow the mechanics from it, and I assure you it is most certainlly a winner.
Cheers
Mark
@ NG - forgive me for the way this is going to come across, but it wouldn’t take a genius to come up with a slightly different version of the system, using a different selection in each race, apply the overlay recovery and do very well indeed
If we could automate it, as we’re discussing on the Forum right now, it could be VERY good
I have noticed the Betfair odds are now much higer than the SP (probably due to the popularity of this system). The site http://www.betgear.net/systems/betalay.pdf shows that Betalay has actually made a loss since the end of January.
When laybot pro includes the overlay recovery feature, the Betfair odds will become even higher - mark my words!
Here’s something that should interest you all….
http://www.betgear.net/systems/betalay.pdf
That shows the full results from the Betalay system since September 2007 using level stakes and laying each runner at the actual Betfair odds about 1 minute before the official off-time.
This doesn’t include the overlay recovery plan, which would send the profits through the roof.