CAN YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE?
Spot-the-Difference is a fun observation game especially for kids – but can you spot-the-difference in these two pictures?
Pretty easy – its BSP (Betfair Starting Price).
What? … surely your eyes are playing tricks … surely that 62% ROI at BSP can’t be right?
But don’t jump on this band-wagon just yet because the answer to that question is yes AND no.
This post explains why you should always be wary of headline figures.
Professor Plum’s Plums
Did you see Tipstrr put Professor Plums Plums at number one in their August top 10 tipsters?
The part that got me was “…worth pointing out that Professor Plum’s Plums holds up better than most when his stats are measured against Betfair Start Price (BSP), which is a stumbling block for many high-tariff racing tipsters. Definitely one to keep an eye on.”
It’s true that being able to get the advised odds of horse racing tipsters can be a problem for many followers. By the time you get to it to place a bet the odds have shortened.
But this got me thinking. How about my set of top horse racing tipsters? Do their profits hold up using BSP?
I did a quick check on my list of best horse racing tipsters and Professor Plums Plums right at the end of this post.
The Betfair Starting Price (BSP)
If you use Betfair you’ll know this but for those who don’t here’s a screenshot of where you’ll see the BSP.
The term ‘SP’ is short for ‘Industry Start Price’, which is basically the odds which a horse, team or outcome is priced up at the exact moment the event begins. The SP is an average of prices taken from across the betting industry.
Meanwhile, ‘BSP’ stands for ‘Betfair Start Price’ and this simply refers to the price that a horse, team or outcome is priced up at on the Betfair Exchange at the exact time the event starts. The BSP often differs from the Industry Start Price, and is often higher, thereby proving more beneficial for the punter.
You can find lots more detail about Betfair Start Price here.
Advised stakes versus Level Stakes and Advised Odds versus BSP
For my top horse racing tipsters I recorded four ROI figures from their Overview pages on Tipstrr based on the following:
- using advised stakes with advised odds
- using level stakes with advised odds
- using advised odds with BSP
- using level stakes with BSP
Level Stakes with BSP is where it got really interesting
I found the ROI figures really didn’t change using Level Stakes rather the Advised Stakes. Not suprising – as most tipsters use level stakes anyhow.
But using Level Stakes with BSP threw up a some very interesting things for eight tipsters in my list.
Especially for horse racing tipster TRIED AND TRUSTED whose ROI tripled from 21% to 60% and Horseforacourse whose ROI almost halved from 63% to 37%.
Bet these tipsters and made a shedload of money?
Should I jump on these two tipsters and bet the life out of them on Betfair and make a shed-load of money? I’m not getting banned or restricted on Betfair after all.
Hold on – there’s more to this story.
Here’s how the tipsters different ROI figures panned out.
| Tipster | Adv.Stk +Adv.Odds | Lvl.Stk +Adv.odds |
Adv.stk +BSP |
Lvl.Stk +BSP |
| ROI | ROI | ROI | ROI | |
| Horseforacourse | 63% | 63% | 4% | 37% |
| Won Racing Tip | 46% | 46% | -7% | -7% |
| Off the Bridle Racing | 43% | 43% | 35% | 35% |
| UNDERDOG Racing Tips | 41% | 41% | -1% | -1% |
| Bigoddsvalue | 40% | 38% | 10% | 20% |
| Model Man | 38% | 37% | -3% | -4% |
| 365 TIPS | 33% | 33% | 0% | 0% |
| Flyingboltoriginalone. | 32% | 36% | 10% | 17% |
| smallfieldpunting | 31% | 31% | 1% | 6% |
| On The Money Tips | 24% | 24% | 0% | 0% |
| TheBanker | 23% | 24% | -4% | -8% |
| Statometer | 23% | 33% | 8% | 12% |
| ELITE HORSE TIPS | 23% | 23% | -5% | -5% |
| outsiderspeedpicks | 22% | 22% | 0% | 0% |
| TRIED AND TRUSTED | 21% | 21% | 60% | 60% |
| SVB Tips | 21% | 21% | -2% | -3% |
| KensAllWeather | 21% | 21% | 21% | 23% |
| profitablepicks | 17% | 17% | 1% | 11% |
| SHREWD TIPS | 17% | 17% | -8% | -8% |
| On Target Tips | 16% | 16% | -1% | -1% |
| Each Way Value Tips | 15% | 15% | 0% | 5% |
Best 8 Horse Racing Tipsters
The top eight tipsters whose ROI appears to hold up using BSP look like this.
| Tipster | Adv.Stk +Adv.Odds | Lvl.Stk +BSP |
| ROI | ROI | |
| Tried and Trusted | 21% | 60% |
| Horseforacourse | 63% | 37% |
| Off the Bridle Racing | 43% | 35% |
| KensAllWeather | 21% | 23% |
| Bigoddsvalue | 40% | 20% |
| Flyingboltoriginalone. | 32% | 17% |
| Statometer | 23% | 12% |
| Profitablepicks | 17% | 11% |
Headline figures are all well and good but its maybe a different story when you start to look into the month-by-month details.
More analysis on Tried and Trusted
The graph below compares the month-by-month growth of Tried and Trusted’s betting bank under Advised Stakes and Advised Odds (Adv-bank) compared to performance using Level Stakes and BSP (BSP-bank).
The BSP profits underperformed the Advised Odds profits from May’20 when the service started until May’23. Then in June ’23 the BSP profits sky-rocketed over the Advised Odds profits . This was due to that month’s phenomenal profit from a staggering ROI of 151% under Advised Odds compared to the averge profitable month ROI of 47%. Since then things look to have settled back to the norm again.
So the 62% ROI shown at the start of this post using BSP is mathematically correct but it is very misleading.
You would only have benefitted from the BSP odds – producing an astounding 404% ROI – during that one month in June 2023.
| TRIED AND TRUSTED | Adv.Stk +Adv.Odds |
Lvl.Stk +BSP |
| ROI | ROI | |
| Oct-23 | -44.4% | -79.7% |
| Sep-23 | 14.40% | 24.40% |
| Aug-23 | -9.1% | -7.0% |
| Jul-23 | 16.90% | 35.60% |
| Jun-23 | 151.50% | 404.00% |
| May-23 | -28.9% | -32.9% |
The conclusion here is, that for Tried and Trusted at least, the hope of easy betting and great profits at BSP in the longer term does not hold up.
Horse for a Course
OK. So Tried and Trusted turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. What about our next prospect – Horseforacourse?
In the Tipstrr headline figures for Horseforacourse the ROI using BSP drops to about half that of Advised odds. But at 37% its still a very good ROI.
Maybe with Horseforacourse, we can do easy bets on Betfair at BSP and make loads of money?
Sadly its a similar picture for Horseforacourse as Tried and Trusted.
BSP odds profit underperforms the Advised Odds. That is until March 2023.
Since the service started in June 2020, the headline ROI of Horseforacourse has been around 60%.
You can notice a sharp rise in profits during the first three months which was an impressive start to these tips.
But in the month of Mar’23 the ROI jumped to 106%. And its that one month that catapults the profits under BSP over the Advised Odds profits.
That said however if you considered the performance from Jan’22 you might make a case that profits under BSP odds has outperformed the Advised odds profits.
Maybe there was some change made starting in Jan’23 that affected theses results?
Average odds stayed much the same over the two different periods. But Win Rate from Jan’23 to Sep’23 averaged 16% compared to an average 13% up to that point.
But reading anything into that is just speculation at this point in time.
The conclusion therefore for Horseforacourse is that its a “maybe” that betting level-stakes at BSP would work.
Off the Bridle Racing
Next on our hit list – Off the Bridle Racing.
Off the Bridle has only been tipping consistenly for 7 months since Mar’23. And you can see while the BSP has underperformed the Advised Odds it has tracked pretty closely.
The Advised Odds bank at end-Sep’23 was £5,300. The BSP Odds bank was £4,400.
All of which bears out the fact the Ad.Odds ROI of 43% and BSP Odds ROI of 35% are reasonably close – an 8 percentage points difference which equates to an 18% difference.
The conclusion for Off the Bridle Racing is it looks to have potential for betting level-stakes at BSP but more months results are needed.
Ken’s All Weather
KensAllWeather has been a been a bit of an eratic tipping service since it “started” in Oct 2018.
There were no tips provided for 7 months between Feb’22 and Aug’22. And previous to that there were a fair few months with less than 10 tips.
But the service appears to be back on track now since Sep’22 with a full unbroken 13 months of tips averaging 30 tips a month.
Looking at the all-months picture from Dec’19 to Sep’23 you can see the BSP profits has tracked Advised Odds profits closely on a month-by-months basis.
And over the last 13 months of solid tipping the BSP profits has both tracked and out-performed the Advised odds profits.
Based on the past 13 months of KensAllWeather tips it appears using Level Stakes and betting on Betfair at BSP is the way to go to get 23% ROI with no-hassle betting.
Analysis of the remaining horse racing tipsters
You can now probably interpret the performance graphs for the remaining horse racing tipsters yourself.
Bigoddsvalue and Flyingboltoriginalone are “maybes” for BSP betting considering the past year / 18-months results.
Statometer is a no-no when it comes to BSP odds barely making any profit at all and BSP for Profitablepicks turns it into a real roller-coaster of a tipping service.
Professor Plum’s Plums
And the horse racing tipster that started this whole investigation Professor Plums Plums looks like this.
It only started in June’23 so there’s just 4 completed months of results. But as of 9Oct’23 you can see that BSP was initially outperforming Advised odds but has now converged to be on par.
So maybe this one really is one to watch.
CONCLUSION:
Betting on a betting exchange such as Betfair removes the age-old bookmaker problem of your account being limited or closed when you start to make money.
Being able to place your bet on Betfair exchange at close to the advised odds of your tipster means you can make similar profits to the tipster.
But being able to make substantial profits using BSP odds on Betfair makes for hassle-free betting. No rushing to get your bet on before the odds drop.
From my analysis here’s a summary of how I would rate the 9 horse racing tipsters in this investigation for betting at Betfair BSP.
| YES | NO | MAYBE |
| KensAllWeather | Statometer Profitablepicks Tried and Trusted |
Bigoddsvalue Flyingboltoriginalone. Off the Bridle Racing Horseforacourse Professor Plums Plums |
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