Racing Profit Booster – Final Review
16th April 2013
Sgt Colin summarises his review of Racing Profit Booster
Passed & Approved
Introduction
Hi, Sgt Colin here, with the final review of the Racing Profit Booster system, an arbitrage horse racing software package from the extensive Steve Davidson stable. The software automatically compares the odds on UK and Irish racing from 16 high street bookmakers (those on Oddschecker) with the lay bet odds on Betfair. It flags up where, after Betfair commission, you can make a profitable trade – i.e. the odds at the bookmakers are higher than the odds available to lay on Betfair.
The system costs a little under £130 for 12 months, and for that you get a license to operate software which works from a single computer you own on an external server. The software works daily from 10.00 am whenever horse racing is operating.
There have been a relatively large number of comments from users of the system posted on the site. This review should be read in conjunction with those comments.
My review covers 3 areas: ease of use / effectiveness,customer service and profitability
Ease of Use / Effectiveness
First did the system do what it was supposed to, i.e. identify profitable arbitrage opportunities?
Whatever users’ opinions of the value of this system, they all agree that the software works well. Other than one day when the server failed to work, the system ran smoothly, with little (or no) effort and correctly identified arbitrage opportunities between Betfair and the selected bookmakers, based upon the minimum liquidity & return on investment criteria you selected.
One slight quibble is that the staking calculator was a little cumbersome to adjust, so I devised my own spreadsheet version.
Clearly, as with all arbitrage systems, speed of response is often crucial – as the bookies aren’t fools and don’t like to be offering “over the odds” unless they intend to. You therefore needed to be prepared, logging into the bookmaker sites at the start of the day. Even if you were well prepared, some of the opportunities disappeared well before you were able to place the bets. However, it soon became clear which those were likely to be;
a) arbs within 5 or 10 minutes of the race start time, or
b) arbs with certain bookmakers whose systems were effective at flagging their existence and responding quickly.
Hence some bookmakers generated far more opportunities for arbitrage bets than others. They tended to be the ones who had a different approach to protecting their profits – either restricting staking levels to miniscule amounts, or closing accounts. In my review, Stan James soon closed my account, whilst SportingBet limited stakes to next to nothing.
So, top marks to the system for generating opportunities, ease of use in placing bets is more tricky!
Customer service
I found this to be very good, with the system being easy to set up & working well. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get an apology for the poor running of the system on the day it failed without me asking – but otherwise, no problems.
Profitability
Now to the crux of the matter, and the area where opinion is divided.
By its nature you expect an arb service to be profitable, and this one was, with only a single instance where I made a loss due to the odds changing mid-bet.
I placed (or monitored) 277 bets with a total stake of £2129, using 14 different bookmakers, an average stake of £8. I made a profit of £136 – which (ignoring the Betfair liability) is a return of approx. 6%.
However, there are three other key factors:
a) the time taken in monitoring the bets – is the profitability worth the effort? There is clearly the potential to scale up the staking, but then the following comes into play……
b) how sustainable is this – due to the potential for accounts to be closed / restricted. The service comes with a PDF suggesting ways of avoiding having accounts closed. That is useful up to a point, but bookies have become ever more sophisticated.
c) the cost of the service itself. At £130 for a year, this is is competitively priced , and is quite quickly recoverable.
Final Thoughts
In summary, I think this product does what it says it does – identifies arbitrage opportunities on horse racing, and at £130 for a year is not expensive (look at other wider reaching arb services and you’ll see).
However, arbitrage betting requires a disciplined approach, timely access to a number of bookies and pretty deep pockets to begin with (in order to fund them & your Betfair account). There is a significant risk that the staking levels you need to use to make this very profitable will result in your accounts being closed / restricted pretty quickly. I would not recommend that you use it as your only betting system, as this will only increase the risk of this happening.
My review shows that the key day for profitable use of the system was Saturday, with much higher numbers of arbs being highlighted – so you could make most effective use of your time by simply using the system on that day!
Be aware of the comments made by subscribers which are attached to the review – they’re all valid, and this isn’t for everyone.
I’ve passed the system with 3.5 stars if you use it as “a racing profit booster” – as the name suggests.
[Click here to see Racing Profit Booster……]
