Perfect Punter Questions
The Perfect Punter tipping service made a big splash early in March with some very impressive claimed results and also some big winning days in the first few days of the service. (Sid has reviewed this service earlier in this report)
Prior to going live it was proofed to members of the Racing Investors Club where it performed very well also.
With all this in mind I wanted to find out a bit more about the service and the man behind it, what follows are my questions and Jonathon’s answers…
Hi Jonathan
Thanks for agreeing to this interview, your new service has made a big impression with horse racing fans and I’m sure my readers will be very interested in how you came to create the service and the background that led you to this point.
So I guess the first question should be, tell me a little about your background and how you became interested in horse racing.
I have been interested in horse racing ever since my first experience at a race meeting with my Dad when I was only 8 years old. Ever since then, I have followed the sport with great interest.
However it was my time at Oxford University that really saw my passion grow in terms of making the sport pay. I started looking at how systems could be created to win from the game, and ultimately my passion led to the offer of a job on the TV to broadcast this great sport. Although I decided to turn the job down to give me more time to work for myself, I decided to use that passion and interest that they saw in me, to provide winning tips to my subscribers. Since then, the rest is history!
Could you tell us a little about how you find your selections, what is your starting point. You say on the Sportsworld site that the first stage is to look at how a race is likely to be run. I assume from this that you have a database with a rating for every horse and you use these ratings to get a feel for each race.
In my experience the key to betting success is to always have a starting point, some factor that indicates that one race should be studied over another. I believe we all have the ability to analyse form if we put our mind to it but without a starting point, a clue if you like, most will waste too much time on races that are too difficult to work out and will be disheartened.
Analysing a race is one of the best things in my day, it is a puzzle, that not many people have the ability to solve. So the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment of getting it right is one of the most rewarding feelings you can get. Then to be able to help others by supplying the winning tip is extremely satisfying.
My starting point is to utilize my ratings and extensive form notes on all the horses in training on the flat. From that, I match up each of the runners in a given race and see how that race will be run. I will then use a set of factors, including but not exclusively, weight, draw, going, jockey and trainer form (and some others that I have to keep secret as otherwise my edge will be taken away!) to produce a set of ratings for each of the competitors relevant to each other in that race. I can then use these ratings to form a set of prices that I think each horse should be.
I then use these prices as a guide of the ‘true’ chance of each of the runners, and compare those prices to the market prices. My aim being to look for VALUE in my top rated selections. If I can beat the price that the horse should be, i.e. I can bet at a bigger price than the horse should be, I will suggest that as a tip.
Remember, the trick is not necessarily always finding winners, and this alone is not enough to win in the long term. It is by finding consistent winners, but also at VALUE prices that makes this service its profit month on month. I think that after 5 out of 5 winning months, we can say that statistically the service is heading in the right direction.
How much time does it take you to find your selections?
I like to spend about an hour per race. If you can’t see anything after an hour, it is usually time to move on to another race. To be honest, as I follow the form so carefully everyday of the week, I often have a pretty good idea within 5 minutes if there is going to be a strong selection, it is then just a case of doing the maths to make sure that I can beat the market by getting a value price.
What size of bettor are you?
I never really like to talk about sizes of bets, as I encourage my subscribers to play their own way, and this varies greatly between everyone. However, I talk in terms of ‘points’ that you can then interpret these to your own size of bets.
Regarding my own betting, I am currently building my bank with the aim of turning fully professional very soon. I will have a heavy bet when I think I have a particularly strong angle, and the rest of the time I will be staking medium sized bets on most of my selections that I tip, as after all it is a winning service, so I might as well make the most of it!
Do you worry that the value will be eroded from your selections as more people use them?
This is a very common question, and an issue that I have spent a lot of time making sure that can be avoided. My aim for the service is to make sure that ALL my subscribers will profit from the tips. I therefore have a number of safety measures in place to make sure that everyone can get the value.
I learnt my biggest lesson during the Cheltenham Festival. Here I was trying to tip in the flat meetings that were happening at the same time. BUT there was no strength in these markets, as all the money was focused on Cheltenham. I am therefore aware that I must tip in races that have strong markets. So during Cheltenham, I tipped the evening meetings, when that was the only meeting going on.
As we talk now, we are moving into the start of the summer turf season, and so flat racing takes center stage. The markets will be strong, and consequently will be able to absorb the bets that will be struck by my subscribers.
Finally, my main safety net exists in the prices that I am tipping. I am tipping selections that I believe have a lot of value in their prices. Therefore it would take a huge collapse in the price for the value to disappear. I am not tipping selections as 2/1 when the value is at 15/8, as it wouldn’t take much movement for the value to be lost. Instead, I am playing selections where there is at least 3 points of value, and even more in many cases. This means that the market will continue to offer value even if there is a drop in the price.
What advice would you give to somebody who wanted to make their own selections?
Hard work! There is no substitute for it I am afraid! You need to do this pretty much full time, or not at all. Gone are the days of being able to sit down and have a quick look through the cards. With the invention of the betting exchanges, the other punters are extremely educated, and an edge is very hard to achieve. It can be done, but you need to be putting in many hours each day to find that edge.
OR you can find someone else to do that hard work for you, someone who has gone through the trial and error of compiling their ratings and learning how to price up a race. You can then get them to supply you with the selections, something that my subscribers have done!
Our thanks go to Jonathon for taking the time to answer these questions, on the following page you will find the results of some research that I carried out on an earlier Perfect Punter product which was sold on a small scale on eBay.
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