Comments on: Betfair Pirates Review: Free Lay Tips

By: Peter Fuller

Peter Fuller — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:41:02 +0000

I tried their free trial a few months a go but it turned out to be a bad month for them.

After that I was not willing to pay their monthly fee to find out more.

By: gdahustla

gdahustla — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:44:17 +0000

So has anyone joined the Sovereign service and got any results for previous months?

By: Peter Fuller

Peter Fuller — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:13:00 +0000

What you are missing is that there is a spread between a Win Bet and a Lay Bet, plus the 5%.

If you were just about to place a Lay Bet but decided at the last second to change it to a Win Bet, would you get the same price?

Of course you could put in an offer price, but there will be people ahead of you and there is no guarantee you will get the price you want.

As for the Betfair Pirates, all I can say is that anyone who uses the ISP to post their results are trying to manipulate you

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:28:35 +0000

Peter, By definition I would have to disagree with your last comment. If I lay a series of bets, and lose money, then there will have been corresponding punters matched with a win bet. If I lost, it follows they won. They will have won the money that I lost. Or am I missing something here?

The pirates have sent out their results for August and they made a profit. I guess at the end of the day, some months they win, some months they lose. Show me a service that wins all the time every month. )

I’m tempted to try their subscription service sovereign which has an offer at the mo. It’s supposed to be just short price favourites, so BSP should be a lot closer to SP. Have you tried it (for any significant length of time)? Bests.

By: Peter Fuller

Peter Fuller — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:13:21 +0000

If a laying system is losing it does not mean that you can just start betting the selections to win.

What I do suggest is to trade their selections. Get in early when they first post their picks and then trade off. If the horse drifts you make a profit. I have found that more than 50% of their picks do drift and if the do shorten it happens very close to the off.

I finally stopped tracking them on July 10th.

They had a terrible June 29th and ended up with a reported loss of minus 11 using the ISP. Right now they are reporting a plus 5 for July using the ISP so that tells me that at best they are even or losing in reality.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:31:06 +0000

Hi Peter, I thought I’d try an experiment based upon your findings. I’ve been backing the Betfair Pirates selections (ie doing the opposite). Only min stakes £2 a time mind. I’ve just finished a month and I’m quite well down!! ( So I don’t know what to think now? You say no-one should lay their selections, yet when I’ve done the opposite and backed for winners I’ve lost money. Surely if my theory was correct then I would have made a profit? I’m going to carry on for another month in case it was just a good month for the pirates. What do you think I am doing wrong?

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Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:46:33 +0000

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By: Peter Fuller

Peter Fuller — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:39:45 +0000

Your opinion is always welcome

I have been tracking Betfair Pirates since January 22nd and my numbers show that for losing bets the price tends to shorten.

They are showing a profit of 9 points for May while I show a loss of 1 point using the BSP and a loss of 8 points using prices chosen about an hour before the off.

The differences are significant.

I have been tracking another service since April 1st that actually sends out updates and recommends trading off horses that have drifted significantly. I will post results soon.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:50:47 +0000

Good work, keep it up. Just a point of conjecture which anyone else reading may like to comment upon – using BSP will always show a laying service in a poor light compared to official SP, granted. That is because BSP is invariably higher than SP (although not always with a 20% margin as you suggest, this is an over-used average which Betfair have touted to gain business since they launched). The point is NEITHER give an accurate measure of performance UNLESS you are actually betting at the Off time. My experience with the Betfair Pirates selections is that they tend to drift throughout the day, and if you bet earlier in the day you will often find yourself betting even BELOW official SP. Any experienced punter will not need reminding that laying below SP is a pretty good way of making money! So your report is fine if people can only bet at the time of the race, but potentially mis-leading to those who could take the opportunity of laying drifting horses (and perhaps locking in profit by trading) earlier in the day and making a profit. Just my tuppenny worth of opinion.

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Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:25:28 +0000

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