FAQ

Staking Plans - Chasing Losing Bets

Introduction

Sometimes one sees well meaning sites and services such as Five Tarts Stripping who offer a near certain way to make lots of money. It seems to be too good to be true, but is it?

What they offer is a service which lists a number of horses in a number of races. The idea is that you aim to win a certain amount of cash per race by backing favourites or near favourites. If one loses then the stake is increased until a winner is found.

Five Star Staking Plan

The plan is absolutely simple. The idea is to stop at a winner after race four and the idea is to win 1% of your bank per race. So if the sequence stops at, say, race 7 then one would have won seven points.

Here's an example. It's a good example because it was the first three horses in one of their selection lists.

(1) 2.10 Kempton Park - Urban Warrior
(2) 2.20 Plumpton - Flaming Weapon
(3) 2.30 Wolverhampton - Auentraum

Assuming a starting bank of £1,000 this means that one is staking to win £10 a race.

Race One
Urban Warrior went off at 10/11 but let's call it evens to start off with simple arithmetic. We're aiming to win £10 so the first stake will be £10. The horse came second.

Race Two
We're £10 down now and so we need to win that £10 back plus win £10 for the first race and this race. This means that we have to stake to win £30. Flaming Weapon was another horse which went off at less than evens, but let's say that we could get on at evens so we'd stake £30 on this horse. The horse came third.

Race Three
Auentraum went off at 5/4 at Wolverhampton. We've already lost £40, so we'll want that back, plus we need three lots of £10 in profits to make our goal of £10 profit per race, a total of £70. So we have to stake £56. The horse wins by a length.

Alarm Bells?

Are there any alarm bells going off in your head yet? If not then consider this. This staking plan does not take into account any form of value it's trying to get a result by brute force assault from your wallet.

Race three in the above example was staking a total of £96 to win £30. That's effecively 30/100 on! And you are betting with this effective stake on a horse which is 5/4 against.

If you haven't worked it out yet; this could get painful. Let's carry on with the story.

March 27th, 2006

So, we're £30 up and we're feeling smug and content. This loss recovery system seems to be a piece of cake; all one needs is to watch a race and to have a calculator to one side and then watch the money roll in. Or does it?

The sequence continues with the following. Anytime after race five, if there is a winner, we're told to stop for the day and to walk away with the profits.

(4) 2.40 Kempton Park - Effective
(5) 3.20 Plumpton - Joe McHugh
(6) 3.40 Kempton Park- Danehill Willy
(7) 4.00 Wolverhampton - Miss Glory Be
(8) 4.10 Kempton Park - Fajr
(9) 4.30 Wolverhampton - Milk and Sultana
(10) 4.40 Kempton Park - Wise Owl
(11) 5.00 Wolverhampton - Indian Edge
(12) 5.30 Wolverhampton - Jalaouhar

Race Four
Effective went off at 4/1, so we should have staked £2.50 to win £10. The horse wasn't even placed so we're £2.50 down but that isn't a great problem as it's only small change and, besides, we're sure to score a winner soon.

Race Five
Joe McHugh was the 15/8 favourite (let's call it 2/1) so we need to win £20 for this and the last race plus our previous stake of £2.50. At 2/1 we ought to stake £11.25. The horse is pulled up in the Plumpton mud.

Race Six
We're now down £13.75 but Danehill Willy is available at 9/4, the favourite, with Frankie Dettori on board. We need to recover £13.75 plus win a further £30 as we're three races into the sequence. That means in order to win £43.75 at 9/4 we hand over £19.45. Danehill Willy is beaten by less than a length into second place.

Race Seven
Fourth race now into this cycle, which means that we have to win £40 plus we have to recover £33.10 in lost bets. This means that we have now to stake to win £113.10. Miss Glory Be is a female running in mixed company and coming from a lousy draw; not the greatest of selections in our mind, but nonetheless we plough on getting 6/4. We hand over a further £75.45 to the bookmaker. We are now staking more than our intended target on an odds-against horse. I would be feeling very concerned about the state of affairs right now as we have staked over 10% of our bank. Miss Glory Be comes a poor third.

Race Eight
Our outgoings now total £108.55 which we have to recover plus now it's £50 as it's race five. So we're looking to win £158.55 from this race. Back to Kempton Park to back Fajr; the 9/2 joint favourite. The good news is that the stake here oughtn't be too high at these odds. We bet a further £35.24 and settle down to watch the other joint favourite beat our horse.

Race Nine
£143.79 in the red so far. We've slightly less than 20 minutes to work out that we have to return £203.79 on a 5/2 horse, Milk And Sultana. This race requires £83.92. The selection comes in second from last and the stomach starts to feel as if it wants to wrench itself free.

Race Ten
We have to get £291.71 from this race (£221.71 in lost stakes plus £70 for the race). Next up is Wise Owl, the 15/8 favourite. Let's assume that we can grab 2/1 so we stake £145.86. Wise Owl comes in second and we're beginning to question the wisdom of betting such sums on a brand new course which is only on its second day of racing.

Race Eleven
Indian Edge has lots of strong words going for it. It's not 6.4 favourite for nothing. We hand over to the bookmakers £302.38. Indian Edge is beaten in the last furlong by Diamond Dan, a horse which started off at 9/1 in the betting and ended up at 4/1 at the off.

Race Twelve
We are now £675.95 down. Our hopes of salvation run on another 6/4 favourite, Jalouhar. We need to return £765.95 which requires a stake of £510.63! This is over half of our starting bank. However, there is a problem, there isn't this amount of money in our account; we have only £224.05 left from our £1,000. We place that on this horse and watch it come in third.

We have lost everything.

Conclusion

This isn't a contrived example, but a real life example of betting to chase losses; the selections were sent into us by someone who subscribes to this service. Or, rather, until yesterday he subscribed to this service.

This is typical of any loss recovery systems; sooner or later they will bite and then you will lose everything. You may be making money for weeks, months or even years. But, sooner or later, this run will come along and wipe you out.

So, what do you think? Are loss recovery systems a good idea or not? We don't think so.

Clarification

Why the strange name, Five Tarts Stripping? Well, the service was really called 'Five Star Tipping' and even though what we have published here is the truth and verifiable with eMail copies they still threatened to sue us if we published their correct name. They've subsequently stopped trading, which is hardly a surprise, and so we can safely reveal the proper name.

Mind you, we could have given their proper name right from the off but, at the end of the day, we didn't need any legal crap.