Racing Profit Booster Review

[review]

Product Name: Racing Profit Booster

Author:  Michael (not our very own Mr Wilding) and Steve Davidson

Contact Details: stevedav@iinet.net.au

Price: 6 months access is £99.97, a full year is £129.97 – just over 35p a day

Money Back Guarantee: None offered

What Do You Get? Access to arbitrage software program

Where to Buy: http://www.raceadvisor.co.uk/s/racingprofitbooster/

Brief Summary: Racing Profit Booster is a stand-alone arbitrage program which compares the odds available through bookmakers with the lay odds currently on Betfair, and provides calculations of the profits that could be achieved, based on the user’s preferred criteria.

How Much Money Do I Need To Get Started? The vendor recommends £500 in a Betfair account and £200/300 spread across two or three bookmakers of the user’s choice.

How Much Money Can I Make?  This depends entirely upon how much time you’re willing to spend at your keyboard, along with the number of opportunities that are a/ available at a bookie you use, and b/ your speed of taking the odds while they’re still there. Realistically, on first impressions, you should be able to clear between £5 and £15 an hour. In two half-hour periods of mid-afternoon, mid-week racing, the arbs available would have produced level-hedged profits of £66 and £84 – obviously one trader is not going to hit all of them, but it gives an idea of the potential arbs that the software flags up.

How Much Time Will I Need To Make This Work? You need to be around at some point of the UK and Ireland racing day, but it can be used only on weekends or for a short period that suits you. Arbs are out there from 10am until potentially the last race of the day.

Will I Need Any Equipment To Do This? You must have a PC, preferably with fast broadband access; a Betfair account is a must; one-click Betfair software would be very useful; a calculator will be of assistance, whether on-screen or on-desk; accounts with as many bookies as possible, but a minimum of two or three to start with. The software does not work with Macs, although using Virtual Windows might get round that.

What do I get?: After paying for a six-month or annual subscription you will get immediate access to the software, but will then need a licence key to make it work. The guys behind the software are a well-known Australian team who claim to be available 24/7. In my case, although it would have been close to midnight on a Sunday Aussie time, the key was sent through in less than half an hour, which I felt was most impressive.

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It’s a simple piece of software to use once you get to grips with it. An online video shows how the functions work and points out the options you can pick and choose from to set it up in the way that suits you best – and this can be amended in a matter of seconds at any stage of the racing day. The vendors claim that the software refreshes every 3.5 minutes and that 16 top bookies are covered, which is incorrect. In fact, contrary to most other falsehoods in racing product sales pitches, it outperforms those claims, refreshing every 2 minutes and covering 27 bookies. There are three options within the bet calculator, so you can select from a level hedge bet, a free lay bet or a free back bet for any of the opportunities identified. I’ll go into more details in the full review, but I can safely say, after a couple of days of testing, that the software is fairly easy to operate, but it helps to have a head for figures.

I’ll be testing the software for 60 days, and I intend to try it out in all possible combinations so that the review is a comprehensive one. I’ll also be recording the best arbs I manage to obtain each day, along with the ROI percentage against the back bet stake – for example an arb of £20 placed with the bookie netting £1 profit will be shown as an ROI of 5%.

Week 1 Report

Now that I’ve had chance to play around with the software, I think it’s time to let everyone know what they would get if they subscribed to RPB.

The software was a doddle to download – instructions were provided by the vendors, but anyone who has downloaded items before would complete the task in less than 10 seconds. As mentioned in my initial report, the verification code arrived in a matter of minutes , so a user could be up and running in a very short space of time.

Firing up the software each day/session from your desktop or toolbar takes just three or four seconds, after which the master screen appears.

At the top left of the screen is the Tools tab, which when clicked reveals 3 headings, which I shall tackle in the order they appear. ‘Bookies’ contains a check list of 27 bookmakers, 11 more than the vendors claim in their documentation. It’s nice to have more than expected, so a Brownie point is gained here. You can choose from 1 to 27 depending on which bookies you want to use in any given session, and indeed you can add or remove one or more during a session in just a few seconds. This part of the process is very quick and easy. ‘Play beep’ is the next option, which allows you to be notified of any new opportunity by means of a little alert beep (two notes) – I am finding this invaluable, as I can be working away at something else on the laptop yet still have the arb up in front of me in the time it takes to click the icon on the bottom toolbar of the screen. In my case this is a second at the most as I’m fast around a keyboard and mouse/clicker, and it shouldn’t take more than two or three seconds even for the slowest PC user. The third and final option is ‘Show advertisement of other products’, which is a banner at the bottom of the screen offering other items for sale by the vendors. Unticking the box in the Tools bar removes these ads from view.

The other tab at the top left of the screen is an icon for ‘Mode Selection’ , which offers the user three choices – single race mode, auto scan mode or manual scan mode. The vendors recommend the auto scan option, and I’m with them on this. It enables the program to search for arb opportunities for the whole of the remaining UK and/or Irish races yet to be run that day. A check box option allows the choice of UK only or Ireland only, and individual races can be blocked out at the tick of a mouse if you so desire. Single race mode does exactly what its name implies, while the manual scan mode does a refresh run of all races for the day if you’re not prepared to wait two minutes for the next scheduled full sweep by the software.

Moving towards the centre top of the screen we find the ‘default method’ tab, which offers three options – equal hedge bet, free lay bet on Betfair and free back bet with bookie. The choice of option is obviously an individual one, allowing the user the chance to put up a risk free back or lay if they have a strong opinion of the horse in question. I will test these two options out in the second half of the trial period, but for now I’m concentrating on the level hedge strategy.

Below the default method tab are four sets of parameters, which allow the user to tweak the software to their preferred state of comfort and risk. ‘Commission’ enables you to reduce the default of 5% if you’re fortunate enough to have a lower level of deduction on your Betfair account. ‘Minimum lay stake’ provides the chance to set a minimum level of liquidity at the odds on Betfair before an opportunity is triggered. ‘Maximum lay odds’ is there so that the user can put a comfort zone limit on the lay part of any potential arb. ‘Minimum ROI’ lets you decide the lowest profit percentage you’re prepared to work with as a return on your investment.

Down the left of the screen is a list of the remaining races of the day, with the ones the software will be scanning for ticked as open. The main body of the screen is where the opportunities will appear, and it has headings for: the scan number; the race name (course and time); selection name; lay odds (current Betfair price to lay); lay money available (at current Betfair lay price, in pounds and pence); back odds; bookie name; and ROI (percentage profit on offer).

At the bottom of the screen is a scrolling area which provides details of the races scanned during the last update – I’m ignoring this area except for the time that the scan was done,  which is usually 2 minutes after the previous one, a lot better than the 3.5 claimed by the vendors (another Brownie point gained).

The only thing left is what I call the ‘opportunity box’, which appears when you double click on the appropriate line in the main body of the screen. This box provides:  the horse’s name, commission % and ROI % (all non-changeable); a drop-down box containing all bookies with whom an arb is available for the horse in question; a drop-down box with the three possible methods of arbing (level hedge, free lay bet  or free back bet – all three can be toggled between); boxes for lay odds and back odds, either of which may be amended by the user; the amount available to lay (which can be amended) and the amount for a back bet which, to my huge frustration, cannot be changed – I will be asking the vendors if they can do something about this, as I have to use a calculator to assess how much the lay bet will need to be if I’m not staking the full size of back bet shown.  There is then a block of eight boxes, which show the financial returns if the horse wins or loses, both on Betfair and the bookies – these figures will change if an amendment is made to the three amendable figures in the lay/back odds segment. This can be a bit cumbersome when time is of the essence, but I shall see if the process can be speeded up with more experience, or by adding a calculator to the mix.

I will be testing the software out on a different bookie each day for the next four weeks, and I’ll keep the spreadsheet updated with my progress. All arbs flagged up with 10 minutes or less to the off will be ignored, as the first week of testing has shown that they have invariably gone before you can get to them – in fact the vendors advise this too, as the market is too volatile at this point. My standard criteria for the testing is set at – commission 5%, minimum lay stake £5, maximum lay odds 10.01, minimum ROI 3%.

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to arb I go…

Week 2 Report

A difficult second week, with some limitations of the approach now becoming apparent. I have been looking specifically at one bookie a day, using the exact same set of criteria for each one – minimum lay stake £5, maximum lay odds 10.01, minimum ROI 3%. I have been ignoring signals in the final 10 minutes before the start of a race, and recording lower than £20 figures to reflect the amount available to lay at the time.

With some firms, there have been no arbing opportunities at all, even for periods as long as 6 hours, so they clearly have some very sharp staff at work. In fact only one bookie proved even mildly profitable, with a return of £15.61 for six hours of monitoring, and this was the only day on which the profits rose above the £3 barrier. Obviously the take would be higher had I tried to use larger stakes, but even so only two or three days would have seen a return into double figures.

At this stage there are still plenty of bookies to check out on an individual basis, so I intend to carry on in the same manner. As I have the alarm sound set to on, I can get on with other tasks on the PC, and only have to look at RPB when an arb is flagged up.

Week 4 Report

Week 4 was a bit like England’s performance on Saturday: bright to begin with, but then lacking something in front of goal. Mind you, the four bookies firing blanks are not ones high on my radar for racing bets, so the decent showing by Corals and Hills at the start of the week is perhaps more relevant. 

At just short of the halfway point of this trial, there’s a shortlist of half a dozen bookies who have passed their audition – take a bow Totesport, Betfred, Stan James, 888Sport, Corals and Hills – and five worthy of further investigation; I’ve ‘written off’ 7 of the 18 tested thus far, with 9 to go from the list of 27 covered by the software.

Of course, my criteria will not be the same as every user of RPB. I’ve set my odds limit at 10, as double figure laying at arbitrage speed is a bit too hairy for my comfort, but it means that there may be many more chances on offer for those with faster fingers and lower stress levels! I also want a figure of at least 3% as my ROI, so again there would certainly be more opportunities available for scalping at low returns. Once the final 9 have been assessed on the current criteria, I’ll reassess all 27 bookies on a pair-a-day basis at higher odds and lower ROI to see if there are any clear differences.

Given the amount of signals produced and available for conversion to real, achievable arbs across 6 major bookies, this package is still ahead of the game approaching the halfway stage of testing.

Week 5 Report

Nothing to report. Literally. Nothing to report because not a single arbing opportunity was flashed up all week.

I was counter-checking to make sure the software was working by having a major bookie flagged up at all times, and their arbs were coming through fine at fluctuating intervals. The conclusion must therefore be that the newer books on the scene are uniformly mean and consistently price up races at well below Exchange odds. To test this out I spent a few hours trying to catch them out manually, and failed to secure a single racing arb. This suggests strongly to me that the likes of Bet Bright, Winner and co. finance their generous joining offers by maintaining significant over-rounds.

So with only a couple more of the newbies to go, I’ve decided to move on to phase 2 of the 60-day trial. I’ve kept the minimum lay trigger at £5 available on Betfair, upped the maximum odds to 20 and reduced the ROI to the basic minimum of 1% on an assumed Betfair commission of 5%. I’ll be running two books at a time – an established firm and a newer one, and as usual reporting the ‘action’ each day.

Week 6 Report

What a week that was.

It started as week 5 had finished, with a couple of completely blank days, and then a very patchy one. I was on the point of emailing Australia to see if anyone had discovered a software glitch, as even the previously busy bookies were throwing up precious few scraps, when on Thursday it all went ballistic. The previous day I’d reset my preferences to show all bookies to see what action there was across the board, and again it had been a very light day in terms of arbing traffic. When I opened RPB up at 10.30am I left things as they were – when I closed it eight hours later I was in a mild state of post traumatic shock. I’d gone without lunch, surviving on coffee and squash plus a few biscuits (I know how to live, me…!), for fear of missing something vital. The ding-dong alert had barely missed a 119-second slot the whole day, usually with several alerts at a time, and I had been desperately trying to assimilate the flood of data washing from my laptop into my brain while trying to work out how on earth to record it all. I’d been moaning about a lack of information, and now I was groaning under the weight of the stuff. I won’t be showing my psychiatrist the paper records I made – she’d never let me out of the building again.

Fridays are basically a day off at the moment, as a weekly commitment in the afternoon comes smack in the middle of racing, so I switched my mind to stats geek mode for the day and came up with the following conclusions, which I sincerely hope will be of use to anyone considering leasing a copy of RPB.

1. Whatever temporary problem there may have been with the data feed is well and truly fixed.
2. Any sane person using RPB with all bookies enabled and no filters applied will remain sane for very little longer.
3. The problem identified in 2 is easily overcome by using filters. This helps all users, as it means that we won’t all be fighting over the same slice of arbing pie, and there should be more than enough to go round, even for a stocky salad dodger like me.
4. Thursday was not the busiest racing day of the year, but it felt like it at the time.
5. Twenty-three horses appeared as multiple arbs for between three and ten bookies each; the main 13 racing bookies produced a minimum of 400 indicated arbs between them (such as BetVictor 83, Stan James 61, Totesport 36); every single race had numerous potential arbs during the day.
6. Of course, I have no idea how many of these arbs were actually achievable, as I only had time to record the possibility of their existence – and I missed dozens more while doing so as I only have the ability to write with one hand at a time.
7. Next time I try anything that daft, I must make sure I have a large supply of chocolate to hand.

I approached Saturday in the fine old British tradition of the Six Ps – proper planning prevents p***-poor performance – and, while still a gibbering wreck at the end of it, this time I was a gibbering wreck with some great data. I recorded potential arbs by horse, by bookie. Bet Victor top-scored with at least 66 different horses on the day (I may have missed the odd one here and there), Stan James breached the 50-mark and six others posted scores in excess of 30. Of course many of these horses appeared on other bookies’ charts too. Again, as I was working flat out recording hundreds of bits of info, I must stress that I had no chance to verify how many of these potential arbs could actually have been achieved.

Having since gone through the data from several angles, I’ve concluded that the best approach is likely to involve: picking two or three bookies you’re fond of :)); setting the RPB maximum lay odds filter to 10.01; having Betfair up on a separate tab, split screen or better still a separate screen to your open bookie accounts; using a one-click Betfair trading application such as A Geek’s Toy or Bet Angel; having a clear plan of what you want to achieve for the racing session/day and sticking to it (perhaps make £50 then stop, or trade from 10am to 3pm only).

I’m going to do exactly that for you over several days this coming week, and I’ll record daily summary results on the Excel spreadsheet. Now, where’s my chocolate stash…?

Week 7 Report

With a brace of family illnesses this week, I only managed to trade three decent sessions of 2-3 hours, covering 6 bookies. Across this span the software highlighted 79 potential arbs, 45 of which were available to be taken when attempted – a hit rate of 57%. Of the ‘failures’, 22 had seen the odds disappear at the bookie while the other 12 had vanished from the Betfair end. I set the maximum spend per arb at £100 and the minimum at £5, and achieved a gross profit of £55.49, some of which ended up in Betfair and some with a selection of the books. The hourly pay rate worked out at a respectable £7.93, but the work was at times fraught with some nimble keyboard work required and a couple of minor scares – a second laptop/PC would certainly have helped and may well have made the return a bit higher. The hit rate varied from 87% with betVictor down to just 37% with Coral; the average profit per arb was £1.23.
This week I’ll be continuing with a sweep through the remaining seven big-time racing books and, each day I trade, I’ll post the results on the Excel sheet.

Week 8 Report

The last full week, and completion of the final testing for the 13 bookies who provide most arbing action. I actively traded each of them for either two or three hours, with a total of 14 hours of arbing. The gross profit was £106.17 – actual was less due to Betfair deductions of between 4 and 5% on the arbs where the horse lost, but still over the £100 mark.

In all 136 possible arbs were flagged up. Of these, 20 were available at the bookmaker end but the odds had vanished on Betfair; 44 had already disappeared on the bookie site; 72 arbs were achievable. This means that 53% of the highlighted potential arbs were valid and there to be taken, while 62% of them were valid calls from the bookie angle, had the Betfair odds not moved.

The average profit per achievable arb was £1.47, to a maximum stake of £100 – in some cases up to £300 could have been used.

For the final few days of the trial I will be looking purely at the number of potential arbs signaled per hour and per bookie, and I’ll pull all of the data together for the conclusion of the review later this week.

Week 9 report

In return for your six or twelve-month subscription, you get full access to a piece of software that needs to be downloaded just the once onto your PC/laptop. [Note for Mac users – RPB is for Windows only, but I believe it will work if you have Virtual Windows up and running – please check this out with the vendor before you take out a sub.]

The software is extremely simple to download – instructions were provided by the vendor, but anyone who is used to downloading would complete the task in a few seconds. Based on my experience the verification code you need to get the program working will arrive very promptly, but be aware that the vendor is on Australian time and make some allowance for this. The code only needs to be entered once, and from then on firing up the software each day/session from your desktop or toolbar takes just two to four seconds, after which the master screen appears. The software appears to be extremely robust: I have never needed to remove/reinstall it and it has always loaded up fully at the first time of asking.

At the top left of the screen is the Tools tab, which when clicked reveals 3 headings. ‘Bookies’ contains a check list of 27 bookmakers, 11 more than the vendors claim in their documentation, although during my in-depth testing I have only ever witnessed alerts from 15 firms. You can choose from 1 to 27 depending on which bookies you have an account with, or indeed just the one(s) you want to use at the time; it’s child’s play to add or remove any at any time. I would recommend using any combination of the first 14 on the list.

‘Play beep’ is the next option, which allows you to be notified of any new opportunity by means of a little alert beep (two notes) – I am in a love/hate relationship with this tool. The pros: having the sound on allows you to get on and do other things on the computer (or within a room or two away) until a new alert arrives; in theory you need never miss an arb by doing something else; you don’t have to have your screen permanently showing RPB all the time you’re using it. The con: the beep is a harsh mistress, clamouring for your attention up to 31 times an hour.

The third and final option is ‘Show advertisement of other products’, which is a banner at the bottom of the screen offering other items for sale by the vendors. Unticking the box in the Tools bar removes these ads from view.

The other tab at the top left of the screen is an icon for ‘Mode Selection’ , which offers the user three choices – single race mode, auto scan mode or manual scan mode. The vendors recommend the auto scan option, and I’m with them on this. It enables the program to search for arb opportunities for the whole of the remaining UK and/or Irish races yet to be run that day. A check box option allows the choice of UK only or Ireland only, and individual races can be blocked out at the tick of a mouse if you so desire. Single race mode does exactly what its name implies, while the manual scan mode does a refresh run of all races for the day if you’re not prepared to wait two minutes for the next scheduled full sweep by the software. If you never want to miss a potential arb you could sit and refresh five or six times a minute – I tried this and had to fight hard to retain sanity after a while.

Moving towards the centre top of the screen we find the ‘default method’ tab, which offers three options – equal hedge bet, free lay bet on Betfair and free back bet with bookie. The choice of option is obviously an individual one, allowing the user the chance to put up a risk free back or lay if they have a strong opinion on the horse in question. I dabbled with the free bet options with some success and can confirm that they work effectively. They also allow different-looking bets to be placed, which should help in some measure to disguise your identity as an arber from the bookies, and can indeed assist in transferring funds between Betfair and your bookie accounts if used wisely.

Below the default method tab are four sets of parameters, which let you tweak the software to your preferred state of comfort and risk. ‘Commission’ enables you to reduce the default of 5% if you’re fortunate enough to have a lower level of deduction on your Betfair account. ‘Minimum lay stake’ provides the chance to set a minimum level of liquidity at the odds on Betfair before an opportunity is triggered. ‘Maximum lay odds’ is there so that the user can put a comfort zone limit on the lay part of any potential arb. ‘Minimum ROI’ lets you decide the lowest profit percentage you’re prepared to work with as a return on your investment.

Down the left of the screen is a list of the remaining races of the day, with the ones the software will be scanning for ticked as open. The main body of the screen is where the opportunities will appear, and it has headings for: the scan number; the race name (course and time); selection name; lay odds (current Betfair price to lay); lay money available (at current Betfair lay price, in pounds and pence); back odds; bookie name; and ROI (percentage profit on offer).

At the bottom of the screen is a scrolling area which provides details of the races scanned during the last update – I’m ignoring this area except for the time that the scan was done,  which is always 2 minutes after the previous one. The only thing left is what I call the ‘opportunity box’, which appears when you double click on the appropriate line in the main body of the screen. This box provides:  the horse’s name, commission % and ROI % (all non-changeable); a drop-down box containing all bookies with whom an arb is available for the horse in question; a drop-down box with the three possible methods of arbing (level hedge, free lay bet  or free back bet – all three can be toggled between); boxes for lay odds and back odds, either of which may be amended by the user; the amount available to lay (which can be amended) and the amount for a back bet which can’t be altered. There is then a block of eight boxes, which show the financial returns if the horse wins or loses, both on Betfair and the bookies – these figures will change if an amendment is made to the three amendable figures in the lay/back odds segment. This can be a bit of a pain when you’re working under time constraints – I’ve found that having a calculator with a large touch pad available is of great help.

Over the 60 days of testing I turned RPB upside down and inside out, looking for as many profitable or unprofitable angles as I could find. What it has been devised to do is quite simple – it compares bookie prices recorded on an odds comparison website with the lay prices and amounts showing on Betfair. Obviously these prices, and the amounts available to lay, are in a constant state of flux and, as anyone who’s had an arb will know, they can be gone before you get to them. However, the majority of the potential arbs identified are from one to seven hours before the race, meaning that prices are more stable and less likely to leap around in a matter of moments.

So does RPB do what it says on the tin? Yes, it does. Are all the arbs available on investigation? No, of course not. If they were, I would be writing this review from Barbados not Buckinghamshire. I believe that the key question to ask is: are enough arbs available, at sufficient profit margin, to make this program worth leasing and using? Yes, there are. With provisos…of course!

Over a three-week period in May/June I tested out most of the bookies on an individual basis, looking at arbs with a return on investment of 3% or greater, staking a maximum of £30 a time. Over a period of 68 hours I emerged £132 ahead, which worked out at £1.94 per hour. For the first fortnight of July I used the 13 key racing bookies, with arbs from 1% ROI upwards to a maximum stake of £100. This time I did everything right up to confirming each bet, in effect testing that the odds were there and the bet was achievable (sadly I am persona non grata with some of the chaps with short arms and deep pockets and can’t get bets that size on with them). After 14 hours of work (I tested them in pairs for at least two hours each) I grossed £106, which equated to £7.58 per hour – £1.94 x 330% = £6.46 per hour. An hourly gross rate of around £7 would seem reasonable, and this would be increased, if the user concentrated their fire on the more generous of the books, to something in the region of £10 an hour.

Completion rates per bookie range from nothing to as high as 81% in these tests, so I embarked on a major test of potential arbs for each firm. I recorded every new highlighted arb for the 13 bookies on an hourly basis, with hours taken at random over a period of four racing days. I then added up the number of possible arbs per bookie and divided by the number of hours in the survey. The results can be seen on the accompanying spreadsheet, and range from 1 to 30 per hour per bookie.

Clearly not all of the arbs exist at the time you go to claim them, with many long gone and many more reduced in scope by the vanishing of Betfair lay amounts, and the overall completion rate during testing came out at 53%. That means there’s a slightly better than 50-50 chance of nailing an arb highlighted by RPB.

I should also add that, based on my research, the information generated by RPB can be used for much more than just arbing or creating risk-free back or lay bets. It can be used to flag up early ‘steamers’ for back to lay strategies; it can act as confirmation (or otherwise) that a selection you like is fancied in the market; it can show positions being taken on individual horses by individual bookies; it can highlight a significant odds move when several bookies are all shown as possibles for the one arb.

And so to the conclusions.

Profit – by definition a successful arb is profitable. RPB takes into account Betfair commission deductions, so the amounts recorded are in hard cash terms. The only risk is that the Betfair lay odds disappear in the crucial couple of seconds after completion of the back bet with the bookie – this happened three times during testing and I got out level or in front on all three occasions, with the actual position recorded, not the theoretical one. Using a maximum £100 back stake, an hourly profit figure of around £7 appears achievable – not exactly pension pot-sized earnings, but more than the minimum wage and in the comfort of your own home.

Ease of use – getting it up and running is very simple, as is selecting the criteria you want the software to operate. The information is easy to read and understand, and is displayed clearly. Not being able to amend the back amount in the calculation area is the only drawback I encountered.

Cost-effective ratio – under the annual lease, RPB works out at 35p a day. One modest arb should clear that and the rest of the day is free.

Support – I haven’t needed to request much, but when I have the responses have been speedy and friendly, even late into the Australian night.

I wouldn’t expect to make a living by using this product, but then the vendor doesn’t claim I will. I shall, however, continue to use it to boost my racing profits.

Current Total Profit = +132.31

Individual Trade Results

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