Northern Monkey Punter Review – Hall Of Fame Tipster By SBC Proofing Service

Northern Monkey Punter – General Service Information

E-mail Frequency

All bets are advised via a daily e-mail. We have a bet most days, including Sundays during the turf season, though when the racing quality is poor we will have a day off.

If there are no bets on a given day I will still send out an e-mail (usually the night before) to give members a heads up that this is the case.

The majority of e-mails are sent out between 8.30 am and 10.30 am each morning, though, more specifically, most arrive between 8.30 am and 8.45 am.

I keep Saturday mornings free as my morning off so will send the bets for Saturday in an e-mail on Friday evening – usually, this is around 10.30 pm.

I have a Twitter account for the service, @NMPunter, and normally issue a Tweet five minutes before an e-mail is due, just to give members a bit more of an accurate idea as to when to expect the e-mail.

Relaying/sharing tips

I politely ask that the bets issued on the service aren’t relaid on to a third party or reproduced on any other website. Indeed, passing on any information sent in my e-mails is a breach of the website terms of use on my homepage.

I need to control how many members are receiving the e-mails to ensure the prices hold up for as long as possible and we aren’t oversubscribed.

Staking

All bets are provided on a pt 0.25 – 3 pt scale to give some idea of the confidence and perceived value behind the bets. ‘Pts’ is merely a term used for betting currency because it ensures results are relative for members, many of whom stake at differing levels depending on their own personal situation.

The average stake, based on thousands of advised bets, is around 1 pt. A 1 pt bet may be advised as 1 pt win, in which case you will only yield a return if the horse wins the race, or a 0.5 pt each-way bet, in which case half of the stake is divided between the horse winning and the other goes onto the horse placing.

The place terms differ between races depending on the number of runners and the type of race. With a 0.25 pt EW bet, 0.5 pt is staked in total, while with a 1 pt EW bet, 2 pt is staked in total, etc.

If a bet is advised as 0.5 pt EW and 0.5 pt win, a total of 1.5 pts is staked on that horse. For the 2016 results I broke the profit figure down and looked at the profitability of each stake size:

Profit breakdown by stake strength:

Stakes of < 1 pt: 271.78 pts staked. +12.20 pts profit (+4 % ROI)

Stakes of 1 pt: 359 pts staked. +44.59 pts profit (+12 % ROI)

Stakes > 1 pt: 187.95 staked. +20.89 pts profit (+11 % ROI)

These figures suggest the average and above-average bets yield the most profit/have a better ROI, and that the weakly fancied bets do in fact yield a lower return on investment than the stronger ones.

This provides a justification for having a staking scale rather than just backing everything to 1 pt level stakes.

One thing to consider with the staking figures above, however, is that for the purposes of calculating them, I took the original stakes as they were advised in e-mails and not grouped stakes together when bets on the same horse have been topped up (often this may have been because a horse was first backed ante-post before a draw was made and we then maybe topped upon them again after confirmation of a good draw etc).

So, for example, you had a bet like The Tin Man going down as a series of 0.5 pt EW bets when, cumulatively, we effectively had a maximum bet on him as we had 3 x 1 pt singles (as well as various multiples).

Such results served to boost the profit figure of the ‘average’ or ‘below average’ bets and taken away profit that should really be in the ‘above average’ column.

Despite this caveat, for the purposes of pinpointing some general figures, I think the numbers tell us what we needed to know all the same.

Bets of all stake strengths have proven profitable and the staking scale serves a purpose. It is entirely down to each individual member how they convert the advised pts into real-life betting currency.

All I advise my members is to never bet more than they can afford to lose and to stake small, to begin with, whilst getting a feel for how the service works.

Once an appreciation has been gained about the service’s modus operandi and the winning and losing runs have been experienced, it may then be more appropriate to increase stakes later down the line.

Betting bank size

I would recommend using a ‘betting bank’ to follow the selections, i.e. a pot of money that is put aside solely for betting and won’t be dipped into day-to-day for routine expense.

I would recommend a bank of 80 – 100 pts, depending on your attitude to risk. It is my aim, each season, to double my starting betting bank, i.e. aim to achieve 100 % bank growth (return on capital).

I try not to worry about a bad month or two and take the view that it is our performance over the year as a whole that is most important – the long-term results cannot be skewed by good or bad fortune as they can often be in a small time frame, such as one month.

Expected Profits

Based on thousands of bets placed since 2010 we know the service has a long-term edge of 11 % in terms of a return on investment, i.e. for every 100 pts outlaid we’d expect to yield 111 pts, i.e. a profit of 11 pts.

As a result, over the course of an entire year, I aim to turnover between 650 and 700 pts, all staked out of the original 80 pt betting bank, thereby aiming to finish the season with a bank as close to 160 pts as possible.

We have often had losing runs where we will lose about 20 – 30 pts from the betting bank. The worst losing run we have ever had was -59 pts. It is thus necessary to have a betting bank in place to buffer against those inevitable losing runs.

Cyclical Results

We have tended to find results are cyclical and, in terms of winning runs, the profit often arrives in clumps. We have had months where we have made 30 pts, 40 pts, and 50 pts, for example, but much depends on the time of year.

We are more likely to experience a purple patch in the summer than in the winter. We might have 8 – 10 pts in play on a busy Saturday in the summer, but during the week maybe 1, 2, or 3 pts may be staked per day depending on how good the racing is.

Outside of the summer, our betting activity is reduced and our betting turnover is lower. Whilst first getting familiar with the service and its losing runs, a betting bank closer to 100 pts may be preferable.

Recorded odds

I settle the bets at the lowest quoted in the range in each e-mail. If a horse is listed at prices of 6/1, 11/2, and 5/1 in an e-mail then it goes on the official record at 5/1.

If you can pick the emails up as soon as they are sent and take the top prices, then that is a bonus!

As my service has gained popularity over the years and the membership base has grown, the pressure on prices has increased and the quoted prices won’t hang around for as long as they used to. I would say you need to be backing the prices within 10 minutes of the e-mail being sent, otherwise, they will have gone.

The prices do often sometimes recover in the afternoon if they have been cut swiftly in the morning.

Cut off odds

Members often ask me what my advised cut-off odds should be if they miss the advised prices. Generally speaking, I would take anything down to 6/1 if a horse had been sent out at the lowest advised odds of 8/1, I would take 12/1 for a horse that has been 16/1 and I would take 16/1 for a horse that had been 25/1, just to give a few examples.

For win-only selections, I would take 7/4 for one that was 9/4 and 11/4 for one that was 7/2.

It is a tricky balance because, long-term, taking prices lower than those advised eats into the value edge and puts a dent in the profit figure, but, on the flip side, missing out on a winner during the middle of a barren run can be psychologically detrimental and many would rather have something on all bets for completeness, even if not the full stake, in cases where the odds have been trimmed, providing the odds shift isn’t ridiculous.

Best odds guaranteed

I would strongly advise members familiarising themselves with the ‘best odds guarantee’ (BOG), and offer whereby bookmakers let you take a price at the time you strike your bet, but will pay you out at bigger odds if the horse drifts and goes off at a bigger price at SP.

Bet 365, Sky Bet, Bet Victor, Ladbrokes, Paddypower, Coral, and William Hill are some of those firms offering BOG to online customers, while Betfred and Stan James offer it online after a certain point in the morning.

Multiples

I usually send out a couple of multiple bets a week as these have proven a good way of bumping up the annual profit for relatively small stakes.

They are a great bit of fun, too, and add an element of excitement to the season – given some of the potential returns can be huge – even for small stakes.

Most multiples I send are doubles, which may win only or each way. With a win only double, things are pretty simple.

You add both selections to your bet slip and it is one bet, costing one unit stake. An option should appear on the online bet slip to place a double once both selections have been added.

If the first horse wins, your stake and winnings are combined and then automatically transferred onto the second horse by the bookmaker. You need both horses to win a return.

For example, if we wanted a 0.5 pt win double on Borderlescott at 5/1 in the 2.00 at York and Sole Power at 4/1 in the 3.00 at Newmarket, the calculation would be as follows… 0.5 pt goes onto Borderlescott at 5/1.

If he wins you get 5 x 0.5 pt = 2.5 pt, plus the original 0.5 pt stake = 3 pt, which then rolls onto Sole Power. 3 pt x 4 = 12 pt, plus the 3 pt stake that had rolled up from the first winner, meaning a total of 15 pts would be returned from the bet from the initial 0.5 pt stake.

The profit, therefore, would be +14.5 pts. If Borderlescott had won and Sole Power had lost, you would have lost the original 0.5 pt stake.

With each-multiple things are a little trickier to work out but, in essence, you are placing two bets, costing two unit stakes, one on the two horses to win (i.e. the same as the Borderlescott and Sole Power example above) and the other is on the two horses to place.

The place odds are 1/4 or 1/5 of the normal win odds. If one selection wins and the other places, for the place part of the bet you still only get paid out at the place odds, not a mix of the win odds on one and the place odds for the other.

With an each-way double, you can still yield a profit even if both selections don’t win, depending on the place odds and if both selections place.

The following website is ideal for working out your bet returns, especially for any each-way bets: http://www.free-bet-calculator.co.uk/ I settle the multiples covering normal day-to-day selections at SP to ensure everyone has access to the prices.

For the ante-post bets, SP isn’t appropriate, so I settle them at the generally available odds to ensure members are getting realistic access to prices.

In 2016 the multiple bets showed a -1.7 pt loss from 97.10 pts staked, however, almost all of those doubles were settled at SP (the exceptions were ante posts which are settled at the lowest general odds) even though the prices on some selections shortened considerably.

Even to the lowest advised odds, the multiples would have shown a profit for members. We also had some near misses – like Brando in the Wokingham and Growl in the Stewards’ Cup and Ayr Gold Cup – that, collectively, were worth over 200 pts profit to us.

Had the multiples involving those horses had gone in, they would have paid for two or three new betting banks!

Avoiding account restrictions

Some members don’t like placing big multiples on their online accounts for fear the potentially large returns may be a threat to the life of their account. For such members, I would advise placing such bets with cash in the shop, whenever is practically possible.

It means there won’t be an electronic trail of the bets against your name on your account and it will be harder for firms to link you with other service members as receiving information from the same source.

I appreciate not everyone can access shops, especially those based internationally, but, whenever possible, I use them myself for such multiples to try to extend the life of my accounts.

Other general advice I have, in terms of try to avoid account closures, is to split stakes up as much as possible, ideally so that the liability with any one firm is no more than a few hundred pounds for the singles.

Bookmaker traders are less likely to feel uncomfortable dealing with such smaller bets.

I would try and stake to a consistent level if you can, and if you plan on upping stakes on a certain account, to do so gradually.

Sometimes, if a trader sees an abnormally big bet on an account they think the punter has access to inside info. Often, such business is not business they feel comfortable taking if the horse is then gambled on and wins.

I would also advise avoiding betting in the early markets – the ones priced up at 5 pm the day before racing. Firms make most pricing mistakes in those embryonic markets and are more likely to close the shrewd punters that try and exploit them.

Bookmakers are very clever these days and use cookies and software such as IEsnare to monitor their customers.

They log the IP addresses that members access their accounts from, so even if your own account is closed and you were using the account of a family member, if it is from the same IP address you could be easily linked and both accounts could quickly be shut.

Building up an account history with a firm is always useful. A new account that opens, wins £1k on the first bet and stakes high from the outset is less likely to last than an account that is used to small, sensible stakes, say £25 per bet (providing it isn’t seen as being used from a ‘bad’ IP address).

Betting close to the maximum level allowed on your account (there is sometimes the option to click ‘max’ on the slips on some sites to see what the maximum level that firm will allow you to get on) draws in the attention of traders and is something to bear in mind if you are wanting to stay under the radar.

Sometimes, after a big win, having a few ‘mug’ bets, whether it be a few spins on the online roulette table or in silly football markets such as scorecasts, can help slowly build up a betting history (even if only to throwaway stakes) and may trick some traders into giving you a bit more time on your account if they think you are a mug punter!

Win only vs each-way betting

I am often asked whether it would be advantageous to back my selections win only – as I have traditionally backed most selections each way, sometimes even down to 10/3.

Each-way betting can be viewed as a form of insurance that is taken out to smooth out variance.

For members staking decent amounts of money, and perhaps using horse racing betting as an investment strategy rather than a hobby, reducing the volatility may be something regarded as a positive.

Whenever I (and other members, who have fed back to their comparisons to me) have looked into win vs EW betting in the past, though, backing win only has always boosted profit (win only is a more efficient way of staking).

On the flip side, however, it lengthens losing runs, and a lot more patience is required when waiting between winners.

I recently performed a comparison on the 2016 results and compared the bets as they were advised in e-mails (a mix of win only and EW bets) versus backing everything to the same overall stake, but win only (so a 0.5 pt EW bet would become a 1 pt win bet etc).

The profit increased from +77.66 pts to +137.75 pts profit from 818.73 pts staked. That assumes you managed to get the full win stakes on at the same price as EW though which, in practice, may not always be possible if bookmakers knock the full win stakes back.

Whether you end up adjusting the advised stakes slightly to suit your own preference is something I will leave down to your discretion but I will only record the service’s official results – at the end of the month spreadsheet – as they are sent out in my e-mails, and not to any alternative staking strategy.

I would recommend using a higher betting bank if betting win only compared to if betting win and each-way as the bets are sent out – to reflect the higher risks posed by longer losing runs.

For example, in the 2016 results, we had losing runs where around 28, 17, 26, and 24 pts were lost to advised stakes. When staking win only, the losing runs were around 28 pts, 28 pts, 27 pts, and 32 pts – so not massively greater, but two of the runs were bigger all the same.

Increasing betting bank (which can be done by reducing stake size) would have implications for the return on capital figures following the service – it may take longer to double the betting bank, for example, because you might have reduced your standard betting unit to reflect the greater risk from going win only.

Betting exchanges

I politely request that my members don’t hoover up the liquidity on the exchanges or leave unmatched money on the exchanges immediately after e-mails are sent in the morning as this destroys the markets and often means even those betting with bookmakers can’t get access to advised prices (bookies cut their odds below those on the exchanges to avoid leaving themselves open to arbing opportunities).

The exchanges are websites like Betfair (suggest use of Betfair Alternatives) and Betdaq, where punters are betting against themselves, rather than a bookmaker, and all money traded is publically available for everyone to see.

As per my homepage, my service is geared to members using bookmaker accounts and those solely restricted to using betting exchanges (perhaps if they have had their bookmaker accounts closed) are unlikely to get the most out of the service, nor replicate the headline profit figures.

Members who only have access to Betfair (suggest use of Betfair Alternatives) would be best suited following another service which is geared towards members getting bets on close to the off and/or to Betfair (suggest use of Betfair Alternatives) SP.

Twitter alerts

If you are interested in receiving text notifications from Twitter before a tips email has been sent out you can sign up by following the steps below.

I am merely using Twitter as a tool to assist my members and don’t accept responsibility for any use or problems that may arise from using Twitter.

I have looked on the Twitter site regarding the cost of receiving text alerts and their policy states “Twitter does not charge for this service.

Standard message and data rates may apply”, You may not be able to receive text notifications depending on which country you live in or depending on your mobile phone network but this can be checked out from within your Twitter account.

How to receive tip notifications via Twitter

If you don’t already have one, you can open a Twitter account by visiting https://twitter.com/signup When you are signed up visit the following link… http://twitter.com/#!/NMPunter …and click the ‘follow’ icon.

Make sure you have mobile phone notifications turned on by navigating to your username on the top bar and click on your username to prompt a drop-down menu.

Select ‘settings and select the ‘mobile’ tab where you can activate your mobile to receive tweets by following the simple instructions on the screen.

Once you have enabled your mobile then navigate back to the NM Punter page and next to where you clicked follow there is an icon of a mobile phone. Click this to turn it green and then whenever a Tweet is posted on my page, you will now receive a notification.