Thinking of subscribing? What to expect...

  We have done a few of these big horse racing festivals now and people often ask a lot of the same questions about how the week will go. Sometimes people sign-up and it's clear after they have followed for just a day or so that they should have asked some questions before they got involved.

 Let me first say that the York Ebor meeting is four days with six races each day and so we are talking about a smallish sample of twenty-four races. We have done seven of these "Festival" race meetings since we started Betting Emporium and we've won on four and lost on three. We have also lost much less on the losing weeks than we won on the winning ones. We have an ROI on racing of 29% which I think is quite impressive and perhaps slightly over what I would expect us to have. I can tell you that generally my ROI on racing is lower than this, (nearer to 18%), over the years, although I've never really broken it down into bigger and smaller meetings and I would definitely say that these bigger races offer us the best bets.

 Secondly I can say with some certainty that I'll be suggesting bets on most of the races and that I'll average twenty-five points in bets per race although those numbers will vary enormously, some races being just five points while in the others I suggest bets of forty or more points. Again that makes for more short-term variance as five or six of the races will make the difference between a winning or losing week. What we know for sure is that I'll bet around six hundred points during the week.

 I will be up each day at 5am and I'll get the first race written up and on the site for about 9.30am. There isn't much point me doing it any earlier as it's really impossible to get big bets on before that. The plan will then be to send each race at thirty minute intervals so that you have them all by noon. What will probably happen is that I get distracted by non-runners and the weather affecting the going and the last race is not with you until 1pm. I will try hard to get them earlier this week, but I would rather ensure the delivery of a quality product than focus on getting them all by noon. I realise there is a time-commitment to following these bets but hopefully the tweets and email nudges help you to get the bets the second they go up.

 If you feel like you are a £50 a race kind of punter then you should be betting £2 a point. That means that during the week your total stakes will come to around £1200 and if that is the case and we manage an ROI of 18% then you'll win £216. It may be that we win much more than that, it may be that we break even and it may be that we lose but I reckon winning £200 is about average for what should happen to you during the week at these stakes. I would also say that if that is your plan then maybe this is not for you. Paying us half of your potential winnings seems quite high. I'm afraid we have no plans to drop our prices, there is a lot of work from both Joe and I during these weeks and we'd like to be paid for that work, and to an extent we would like to limit the number of customers so everyone can get their bets on. I would generally say that £3 a point ought to be your minimum if you are going to join us this week. It is, of course up to you, and on all of our winning weeks you'd have comfortably won enough to make it feel the £99.99 was a bargain, even betting £1 a point.

 During the other meetings we covered people would often email or mention on twitter such things as "big day tomorrow", I'm doubling up" or "just need one more winner to get out of it".

 You should be aware that I shall certainly not be thinking that way at any stage and if you are thinking like that I suggest you stop. We are not selling a get rich quick scheme here, but it is a scheme that can help you to get rich. What you will need to do for that to work is to realise that you have paid to follow a professional at work and it's important that you take the responsibility to act professionally. If I said a horse was a twelve point bet that's because I thought that it was a twelve point bet. It doesn't become a 25 point bet because we won the last one, we lost the last three or we "need it" at the end of the day.

  One question people often ask is how much they need to have as a bankroll in order to bet £5 a point, £10 a point or whatever. It's like one of those poker questions...the answer is always: it depends.

 If you are someone who keeps a seperate gambling bankroll and this is easily replenished if things go wrong then you may be less worried about going broke. If you consider your bankroll to be every penny you have then losing everything means no money for food and bills then you should be much more careful. People will often say bet 3% of your bankroll on each event, sometimes people will say 5%. I will simply say that a lot of the time over the Ebor metting we will stake 600 points and we will win or lose 100 points. Those numbers are pretty normal and so you should certainly look to bet an amount where losing 100 or 200 points will not cause you to want to write hatemail to myself or Joe and where a totally disastrous week of losing 600 points which is highly unlikely, but still possible, is not going to ruin you.

 If you feel you are simply not comfortable with these sort of numbers then we urge you to not buy. Stick to the masses of free information on the site and play at a level with which you are comfortable. If you had bet every single selection on the site so far then you'd have achieved a very healthy ROI of over 9% and after a while of winning with us maybe you can consider upping your stakes and following us with one of the horse meetings in the future. Joe and I are certainly not desperate for your hundred quid and we really don't want to encourage people to bet with money they can't afford or at stakes they are not comfortable with.

 During Cheltenham and Royal Ascot we lost on day one and at Goodwood we lost over the whole meeting. We received quite a lot of emails from people complaining about the service after those days. Some people seemed to think that they would just sign up and win every single race with no blips at all. I think it's good that we state here straight away that this will almost certainly not happen. I'd imagine I'll bet about 45 horses this week and I hope I'll have a few winners. At Goodwood I seemed to bet quite a lot of horses that were unlucky in running and quite a few that came 2nd, at Cheltenham I think I was running pretty well and there weren't too many painful 2nds. It is gambling, there will be variance and whether we win or lose I am telling you I will be working for twelve hours a day on the bets and by subscribing you'll get to follow exactly all the bets I make at the meeting. It is that hard work that you are paying for and unless you were thinking of writing to offer us an extra couple of hundred if we had a winning week then please don't bother asking for your money back if we lose. If it doesn't work out it won't be because we have had a lot of -ev bets, it will just be down to variance. I can assure you it is possible to bet one horse a day at 8/1 and watch it go off 4/1 every day for three months and still be losing over that time. If you feel like you are one of those people who simply cannot cope with this kind of variance and especially if you feel that you are one of those people who will need to lash out and who feels that you've paid for the right to abuse me if we lose then please stop reading and never come back to our site again. We don't want your money and everybody's life will be better if we never have to deal with you.

 During some of the other meetings a few people have written to make "helpful" suggestions...why don't you have less bets? Why don't you bet each-way on anything over 14/1? Why don't you have a few races with no bets? Why don't you back a few of the favourites that are just "obviously" going to win?

 To those people I shall simply say...we have an ROI of 29% on horse racing. Why would you want anything to change? If you are going to suggest anything it is that we should make more bets not less, as we have proved over a decent sample that the bets we place are +ev. I can understand that some people are just not used to betting a high volume of bets in one day, with sometimes four or five horses in one race. I totally understand that the races where I bet two horses at 20/1 and 33/1 to win will quite often lead to another 30 minutes of anticipation and another loss and that can be hard to take. All I will say is something I've said before...It's not how many, it's how much. You have chosen to pay a professional to share his methods with you. I think you've made a good choice. What you then need to do to make it worthwhile paying for that service is to let me share MY methods. They may seem unusual to you but they do work for me and by simply following the easy steps you ought to win. Why you would want me to change my methods is a mystery to me.

 Finally a word about getting on. After a very successful few meetings earlier in the year lots of people wrote and suggested we offer our service for Goodwood and York. I was a little worried that the markets at these meetings would not be strong enough for all of us to get on. We have a three figure number of followers and some of our subscribers bet for £50 and £100 a point. I don't want to be the kind of tipping service which boasts about profits at prices that just weren't available so I make it a rule to only tip with the bigger firms, at prices that are freely available even if that means we record the bet at 12/1 in our results when a couple of smaller bookies had 14/1.

 It would make things much easier for everyone if people helped us all collectively. By passing the selections to friends who haven't subscribed you are helping to double the number of people seeing these bets and therefore making it harder for all of us to get on. If this continues we'll have to consider either covering only the really big meetings or just putting the prices right up. We can't sell a service that suggests bets that the paying customers cannot get on. On a similar subject there was one customer, (I'm assuming it was just one), who would attempt to bet large amounts on Betfair at considerably lower than the prices available with the high street bookmakers within seconds of me releasing the bets. I appreciate it is hard to maintain betting accounts these days and you may not always get the full pick of the prices but by sticking up £800 at 11.5 when we have suggested 12/1 with Hills, Ladbrokes and Bet365 then you simply cause the price to crash very quickly. Maybe that person could spend their time today getting some friends to open them a few new accounts ready for battle tomorrow.

 If anyone has any other questions then feel free to email either Joe of myself.

 Here's hoping we run well, but I'd settle for running normal.

nc

Should you wish to subscribe to to the York package the cost is £99.99 for the four days and is available here