Value Horse Finder (VHF)

Your Program needs to be licensed, by sending us your registration code.

1. To use this program you will need the following:

1. A Betfair Account.
2. Either an online bookie account or a means of placing your bets with the bookies in fairly quick time, i.e. an account where you can phone your bets through. The more bookie accounts that you have the more you will be able to shop around for the best prices.
3. You require Internet Explorer 5.0 or later. This does not need to be your default browser, but it must be correctly installed on your computer. Your computer needs a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768.  It is recommended that you have Broadband Internet connection and a 2Ghz PC, with Windows 98 or later.

Open up the program.

2. Now that you have the program open it may look a little daunting at first but it is really very simple. We will go through what each item shows and then put it all together and make a profitable trade.

3. Firstly let me explain exactly what VHF can do for you and how it is achieved. The program is looking at the Win and Place markets on http://www.betfair.com. It is also looking at the odds given by the bookies as displayed on http://www.oddschecker.com where the prices for all the major bookies are displayed. What it then does is make a comparison of the prices to see if there are sufficient discrepancies for you to make one of Seven Bet choices. In fact, these are more like trades because unlike a bet where you stand to lose money if you are wrong, with VHF the worse that can happen is you just don’t win any money.

a. Equal Returns This is a NO risk LOW return bet, this is a bet where if the horse wins, places or loses you are guaranteed a return. The amount of return is very much dependant on the size of the discrepancy between the bookies, Betfair prices on offer and your commission rate. To achieve this bet you need a positive ROI; the bigger the ROI the higher the return. This bet involves laying the horse to win and place on Betfair and then backing it Each Way with the bookies. If VHF has found a big enough discrepancy in the prices between the online exchange and the bookies you will win money regardless of the outcome. Although this is called an Equal Returns bet you will notice that the returns will vary dependant upon the outcome of the race. The reason for this is that if the horse places or loses then you will incur varying commission charges. The figures you see are the returns you get after all commission has been taken. WARNING: Make sure that your lay bets, especially on the place market can be matched first as the liquidity of these markets can occasionally be a little scarce. As a rule of thumb use extreme caution if you intend to place a VHF bet within five minutes of the race time because if it does not get matched and the price moves against you, you may lose money.

b. Max Win Bet This is a NO risk MEDIUM return bet. This bet is for the selection that you believe will win but just in case it does not you will get a small return for a place and no return or loss if the selection neither wins nor places. This effectively is allowing you a free bet on a horse at no risk whatsoever to your betting bank. For this bet to take place you do need a positive ROI. This bet involves laying the horse to win and place on Betfair and backing the horse Each Way with the bookies, very similar to the Equal Returns bet but because the amounts you lay the win and place markets at are changed slightly this will give you a higher return if the selection wins but a much smaller return if it places and no return or loss if the selection loses. . VHF works all the calculations out for you and tells you exactly how much to lay the place and win markets on Betfair. These calculations are worked out from how much you have set as your bookie Each Way bet amount and your commission rate.

c. Max Win And Place This is a NO risk LOW/MEDIUM return bet. This bet is for selections that you believe will either win or at least place. You only win if the horse wins or places but you do not lose anything if the horse loses. This effectively is allowing you a free bet on a horse to win or place at no risk whatsoever to your betting bank. For this bet to take place you do need a positive ROI. This bet involves laying the horse to win and place on Betfair and backing the horse Each Way with the bookies, very similar to the Equal Returns and Max Win Bet but because the amounts you lay the win and place markets at are changed slightly this will give you a return if the horse wins or places but no return or loss if the horse loses. VHF works all the calculations out for you and tells you exactly how much to lay the place and win markets on Betfair. These calculations are worked out from how much you have set as your bookie Each Way bet amount and your commission rate.

d. Max Placed and Unplaced This is a NO risk LOW/MEDIUM return bet. This bet is for selections that you believe will either place or lose. You only win if the horse places or loses but you do not lose anything if the horse wins. This effectively is allowing you a free bet on a horse to place or lose at no risk whatsoever to your betting bank. For this bet to take place you do need a positive ROI. This bet involves laying the horse to win and place on Betfair and backing the horse Each Way with the bookies, very similar to the Max Win and Place Bet but because the amounts you lay the win and place markets at are changed slightly this will give you a return if the horse places or loses but no return or loss if the horse wins. VHF works all the calculations out for you and tells you exactly how much to lay the place and win markets on Betfair. These calculations are worked out from how much you have set as your bookie Each Way bet amount and your commission rate.

e. Max Unplaced This is a NO risk MEDIUM return bet. This bet is for selections that you believe will lose. You only win if the horse loses but you do not lose anything if the horse wins or places and sometimes dependant on the ROI and your commission rate you may get a small return on the win. This effectively is allowing you a free bet on a horse to lose at no risk whatsoever to your betting bank. For this bet to take place you do need a positive ROI. This bet involves laying the horse to win and place on Betfair and backing the horse Each Way with the bookies, very similar to the Max Win but because the amounts you lay the win and place markets at are changed slightly this will give you a return if the horse losses but no return or a little return if the horse wins or places. VHF works all the calculations out for you and tells you exactly how much to lay the place and win markets on Betfair. These calculations are worked out from how much you have set as your bookie Each Way bet amount and your commission rate.

f. Lay Win Only This bet is the only one which involves a risk to your betting bank, dependant on the prices and your selection you run a risk of losing money if the horse does not at least place so you need to be very careful with your selection. This bet involves laying the horse to win on Betfair and backing it Each Way with the bookies. Ideally you are looking for a selection where the Betfair probability of it not placing is low.

Here you can see that the Probability of this horse being placed is quite high in comparison to it winning or being unplaced. The winning probability is higher than not placing. So you may decide to take the risk and back this horse with the bookies but take advantage of the Betfair price and lay it to win to reduce your risk should it place only. However you also reduce your return if the horse does win. You will get an equal return should the horse Win or Place but you will lose money if it does neither. You do not need a positive ROI for this selection but the bigger the discrepancy between Betfair and the Bookies the less you risk.

g. Input Your Own Odds and Stakes. This bet can be for you to fine tune what you want from a bet. Let’s say you have an Equal Returns bet but you are quite confident that it will either win or place but you want some return in case you are wrong. You can alter the amount you place on the lay place market. By reducing this figure you will get more for the win or place but less if it is unplaced. Effectively you are placing a bet somewhere between an Equal Returns bet and a Max Win And Place. This is just one example of what you can do but basically it allows you change the values to better suit what you think the selection will do and thus bias your return to that particular outcome.

4. Now that we have seen what VHF is capable of doing let’s get familiar with its layout.

1. First the toolbar which looks like this:

Ø Help, clicking on this opens this help file. When you open the help file you will notice that there is also a bookmakers tab, clicking on this will open a page which has all the major bookmakers and their web addresses, there is also a Go Forward and Go Back button which will switch between the Help file and the bookmakers file. Also displayed here is your licence code and whether the program has been licensed or not. To licence the program please email us your code.

Ø Eachway Terms will open a dialogue box with the Each Way terms in case you are unfamiliar with them. Although VHF will look at the Each Way terms on offer from Oddschecker it is always wise to check as this will affect the ROI.

Ø Go To Website, clicking on this will take you to the VHF website. This will use the Betfair win market window; you will notice a button appears . Click on this to go back the Betfair Win Market.

5. Now we are going to look at the general layout of the VHF software.

Ø First we will look at the top pane:

Here you can see all the abbreviated names of the horses in a particular race. Below each name is the BFWIN, the Betfair win price, BFPL, the Betfair Place price, OCWIN, the Oddschecker win price and finally OCPL, the Oddschecker place price.

Ø Below this is another pane which looks like this:

This pane shows the return or loss if you were to back the horse using the Equal Returns option as depicted by the WIN, PL and UnPL columns. Below this is the ROI in percentage and is calculated from what you have entered as your E/W bets. Below this is how much you would be placing on the Win Lay and Place Lay markets. Do not worry too much about this as this information is also displayed elsewhere and will be covered later on. What is important about this pane is that here you will be given your first indication of a possible trade. A red bar will also appear under the positive ROI indicating that the Target ROI you have set has been exceeded and a possible trade has been found.

Ø To the right of these two panes you have two fields with various values in each.

BookieEachWay This is where you enter the amount you intend to place on your Bookie Each Way bets. All subsequent VHF calculations such as how much you will lay on Betfair are made from this figure, so if you do not want to be laying a large amount or you have a small betting account then keep this figure small until you have a larger account and are more familiar with the program.

Eachway Terms This is the figure that VHF has picked up from Oddschecker. There is no need to enter or change this value as it is automatically done for you. You should however just check the terms on Oddschecker or with your chosen bookie just to make sure that you have the right value entered; if not, you can change the value by simply putting your mouse over the box containing the value and left clicking. It will however change back to what Oddschecker is showing if the Refresh Prices is switched on.

Betfair Comm % This is the commission rate you are currently paying on Betfair. Type in the amount you are currently paying and keep this up to date as you go along.

Target ROI % This is a percentage Return on Investment that you wish to enter. The default is set to 4%. We strongly recommend that you keep to this until you are familiar with the trades. The reason for this is that if you do not get matched on any part of the trade you still have the leeway to either change your stake or odds and still make a profitable trade if the price moves against you. If you are playing very tight at 2% to 3% ROI then you have less leeway. This will all become obvious when we go through the actual trades. The ROI that you set here when exceeded will trigger a possible trade in the lower pane as previously discussed..

Ø Next we have the Refresh prices. With this switched ON all the prices in the top pane will continuously be updated and how often you wish to update them is set via the two tabs below this.

Ø To the right of these is the start button. Once you have all your pages loaded and you want VHF to start monitoring the markets just click on the Start button, but more on this when we actually get down to finding the trades.

6. Now we are going to look at the bottom layout of the VHF software. This consists of four tabs. The first three are linked to browsers and the fourth is where you see the Analysis of the selected race

7. Betfair Win Market In this browser you will be selecting the win only market on Betfair. Simply click on the Betfair Win Market Tab; this will automatically open a browser into Betfair. Log in and select your first race. Below we have selected Wolverhampton 14:55.

8. Betfair Place Market In this browser you will be selecting the place only market on Betfair. Simply click on the Betfair Place Market Tab; this will automatically open a browser into Betfair. Log in and select your first race. Below we have selected Wolverhampton 14:55. It is important that the Place market you select corresponds to the Win you previously selected.

9. Oddschecker In this browser you will simply be selecting the same race as you have for the two Betfair Browsers. Below we have selected Wolverhampton 14:55. It is important that the Oddschecker race you select corresponds to the Win and Place races you previously selected in the Betfair markets. If any market you selected is incorrect you will be given a warning in the top pane. The picture below does not represent the full page but for clarity of illustration we are showing the pertinent aspects, i.e. all the bookmakers prices which VHF uses to find a positive ROI trade. It is important to note that VHF will take the prices of the first fully formed market. This is usually Sporting Odds. You will notice at the bottom of the prices are the Each Way terms for each of the online bookmakers. Take heed of this information, especially when you get non runners as Betfair will continue to give place odds on the original declared runners whereas the bookies will reduce the number of places. VHF will automatically update the Each Way terms if the Refresh is selected to ON.

In the top right hand corner of the Oddschecker page is a selection box where you can choose what type of odds you wish to be displayed. In order for VHF to function you need to select decimal odds. If you do not do this when you go to the Analysis page you will be given an ERROR message in the top pane that you need to change the Oddschecker odds to decimal odds.

10. Analysis This tab is where you will do the analysis of the selected race to see if there are any trades to be made. Now there is a lot of information here but once you know what it all means it is very simple to understand. It looks far more daunting than it actually is. To that end we will break the page down and discuss each item individually.

Ø List of Runners This box contains the names of all the runners from the selected race. When a trade is found it is here where you select the horse’s name simply by clicking on the name. All subsequent analysis will be for the horse whose name appears in the Chosen Horse tab. To change to another horse simply click on the horse’s name. If for some reason the horses names do not appear from your selected race there is a Reset button which when pressed will update the horse’s names from the selected race.

Ø Stakes and Odds These two boxes show you how much is to be staked dependant upon your choice of bet. If you select Equal Return it will give you one set of figures and another if you want a Max Unplaced bet. With the BF UpDate ticked the odds will continually be updated by the amount of time that you have set in the Refresh box next to the Start button. The same also applies to OC UpDate. There will be occasions when you do not want these boxes to update, for example, when you have found a trade. Oddschecker may be giving you odds for a particular horse but when you go to your bookie you find that you have a slightly different price. You will then un tick the OC UpDate box, enter in the odds you are being offered by your particular bookie, then press the manual update button to the bottom right of the page and VHF will recalculate the stakes and you will be able to see if you can still make a profitable trade at the price you are being offered.

Ø Betfair and Bookie Probability This is an extremely useful tool to aid you in your bet selection process. If all the probability is weighted to the horse being placed and unplaced you may decide to go with the Max Place and Unplaced option giving you more return if the horse does not win. In the example below there is a very high probability that the horse will be unplaced so you may decide to go with the Max Unplaced option in this case.

Ø Bet Return This pane shows a breakdown of the returns and losses of the three possible outcomes of your trade. To the right are the returns you will get dependant upon how your selection fairs. In this instance we have a Max Unplaced bet and as you can see if the horse wins, we get a little back, nothing if it places and the full bias of our trade is on the selection not placing. Because of the two possible commission charges it is impossible to have one set of stakes to cover both of them; to that end you will get a small amount back if the horse wins. The return amounts are what you will receive back after commission and are calculated from the commission rate that you have entered.

Ø Bet Option This we have already covered and it is where you make your particular bet selection dependant upon what you think the selection will do safe in the knowledge that even if you get it wrong you will not lose any money.

Ø Return On Investment Per 100 Bets This tab illustrates the kind of returns that you would get if you were to place the selected same bet 100 times. It will tell you the profits of all the possible outcomes, how much profit you would have made and what commission charges you would pay. This is purely for information purposes only

Ø Submit Betfair Win Lay and Place Lay Because sometimes you have to move fast to ensure a successful trade, VHF will, when you press either the Win Lay or Place lay buttons, place the bet for you with Betfair at the odds and stakes which are shown in the Stakes and Odds tab. If you have Verify bets switched off in Betfair the bet will automatically be placed, otherwise all you have to do is confirm the bet when asked in Betfair. When you press either the Win Lay or Place Lay button VHF switches to the particular browser to place the bet.

IMPORTANT You will also notice next to the Lay Place button is Bookie Plce and Betfair Plcs. It is essential that both these figures are the same prior to making a trade. The reason for this is that Betfair will not reduce the number of places for non runners whereas the bookies will. If you make a trade and you lay the Win and Place and there are 3 places available on Betfair but due to non runners there are only 2 places with the bookies if the horse comes in third you will lose the Place Lay and have no funds to offset this with the bookies as they are only paying for two places. Before you even contemplate making a trade always look at this first. If the numbers do not match then leave the race alone however good the ROI is.

Ø Manual Update and Analysis Update This tab allows you to have VHF continuously updating the analysis fields or you can un tick the box and manually update the analysis fields by clicking on the Manual Calc button.

11. Finding and Making a Trade Now that you are familiar with what all the tabs, fields and browsers are showing you we are going to find and make a trade. Before we do though we strongly recommend that you spend some time paper trading, i.e. go through the motions of finding and trading a bet but do not commit any monies until you are totally confident that you know exactly what you are doing. One safety net you can employ is to not login on Betfair, that way when you press the Lay Win Bet or the Lay Place Bet button it will take you through the motions but not actually make the trade.

Ø Recommendations These are purely our recommendations based upon our trading experience and are provided as guidelines until you find your own comfort levels and develop your own trading strategy.

ROI As mentioned earlier the default level for the ROI is set at 4%, we strongly recommend that you do not go below this figure and in fact for your first trades we would recommend setting it to 5% or higher.

Each Way Terms Already mentioned but worthy of another mention, NEVER trade on a race where the Betfair and Bookies number of places differ. If you see a really juicy ROI it is usually down to this discrepancy. It is just not worth the risk; remember this system was developed to reduce your risk to as near zero as possible.

Which Bet to place First? This is a difficult one as the prices on Betfair can move very quickly. We do however recommend that you always place the Bookie bet first, the reason for this is that Oddschecker can be a little slow in its updates. With regard to the bookies prices, you may see a nice trade, place the Betfair Lays, only to find the Bookies price has shortened considerably.

Timing We feel that due to the wild price movements on Betfair it is prudent never to place a bet on a race within five minutes of the race time. The earlier you place a trade the better. For one, if the price moves against you, you have time to recalculate a slightly lesser return or zero loss, especially if the ROI is high as this will give you much more leeway. However, there are many good trades to be found within the last five minutes of a race and when you are comfortable with the software you may wish to trade within this period of time.

Stakes This is purely a personal thing but do keep the stakes as low as possible in the early days just in case you make a mistake or two. There will always be plenty of trades to be had so be patient, get confident first, then go for the higher returns.

Distractions When you find a trade you will need to move quickly. You need to be clear where you are going, what you are doing and in what order. You cannot afford to be distracted at any point whilst making the trade. You also have to be extremely organised, have the bookies websites open and logged in with the race you are going to bet on already open and ready for your bet if you are going to use online bookies or your phone at hand with a speed dial setup ready to make that phone call.

Practice Go through the motions of making a trade even if a trade is not their just to get used to the procedure so that it becomes second nature and you know exactly what you are going to do, when you are going to do it and most importantly what you are going to do if things go wrong, i.e. a price goes against you.

12. Making a Successful Trade This is a real example of a successful trade. The first details we need to enter into the program is how much you are going to be placing on the Bookies E/W bets, next your commission rate and then your preferred ROI.

Ø Once you open up VHF it will always open the Oddschecker browser first, select Horse Racing and the meeting you are interested in looking at. Before you go any further select Decimal Odds in the top right hand corner of the page. If you do not do this then when you press Start you will get an Error message telling you that you need to do this.

Ø Next select your race

Ø Now go to the Betfair browser. Personally I move from right to left so I select the Betfair Place Market. If I have not already logged in then I do so now, unless you want to paper trade first in which case do not log in.

Ø Now do the same for the Betfair Lay Win market browser. In order for VHF to analyse the race you MUST have the same race selected for all three browsers. If any of them are different when you press Start you will be given an Error message telling you to check the markets.

Ø Once you have done this tick the Refresh price to ON and click on the START button. If you have set the browsers up correctly the top two panes will fill with information.

Ø As you can see from the snapshot above “silve” (Silver Prophet) is showing a positive ROI of 4.22%, it is also telling me that I will be laying £50 on the win and £62.92 on the place. You may also notice that the red bar indicating a positive ROI is missing this is purely because this addition was added at a later stage to help easy recognition of a trade.

Ø I then selected Silver Prophet in the list of runners tab so that VHF could do the calculations as to how much I am going to place on the lays.

Ø Having found a trade, the very next thing that we do is look down at the Bet buttons to see if the places agree and that VHF has the correct Each Way terms.

Ø As you can see from the above example, both Oddschecker and VHF are in agreement.

Ø Next look at the probabilities tab; both are showing a higher probability that it will either place or lose.

Ø I now have to make a choice, Equal Returns, Max Place and Unplaced or Max Unplaced, I decide to put the bias on the selection either placing or un-placing so I tick the Max Place and UnPlaced box. Of course there are other choices. You can place all trades to Max Win in the knowledge that no matter what the outcome you will not lose any money. If you pursue this route, however, you may not win any either. The choice is always yours.

Ø Now quickly look at the Lay markets to make sure there is sufficient money there to meet our lays.

Ø As you can see we need £51.17 on the Win market and £62.92 on the place market. In this case there is plenty of money at these prices. A very important point to note here is you MUST check to make sure that you have sufficient funds in your Betfair account to place the Lay bets. This can quickly be done by looking at the Lay losses in Total loss if the horse wins. As you can see below I need at least £687.45p. It is always wise to have a bit more than this in your account.

Ø Now we go to the bookies to check that the back price is still 12.0. It is, so I place a £50 Each Way bet on Silver Prophet.

Ø Once the bet is confirmed at the bookies we immediately go to VHF, quickly check that we still have a positive ROI and press the Lay Win Bet. The Betfair Lay Win browser will open, the horse, odds and stake will automatically be filled in for you. If Betfair verify bets is ticked all you will need to do is confirm the bet. If it is un-ticked then the bet will automatically be placed for you straight away. Do the same for the Lay Place Bet.

Ø Now check to see if all bets are matched. Do not do this until both bets have been made; remember time is of the essence.

Ø As you can see all bets are matched. Now we can look at our returns.

Ø As you can see from the above example no matter what the outcome of the race is we cannot lose any money. If the horse were to win then we would still make a 5p profit but because of the Probabilities of the race all the bias is on Silver Prophet either placing or being unplaced. Ideally for the maximum profit we would like the horse to place.

Ø In this particular case Silver Prophet was unplaced.

Ø Because Silver Prophet was unplaced I know that I have lost the £50 Each Way bet with the bookies, so that account is now -£100.

Ø I then check my Betfair account to make sure that those losses have been offset and are showing a profit.

Ø As you can see from the above statement I have made a profit of £109.25p; offset this against the Bookie loss of £100 and that shows a clear profit of £9.25p. Now this is slightly more than VHF showed which was £9.18p, but this is because I had the commission rate set at 4.3% and as you can see I was only charged 4.24%. The reason for this is that Betfair commission tends up go up and down with a mind of its own so I always set it to a figure above that to which I know I am going to be charged. Now this may not seem a huge amount to win but at the end of the day it was a guaranteed non loss trade. Once I had successfully made the trade there was no way I could lose any money. Now if you were to do this with larger sums and throughout the racing day your bank will only go one way and that is up. Had the horse won the race then from the bookies after our stake was taken out we would have made £687.50, offset this against our lay losses of -£562.87 for the win lay and -£124.58 for the place lay giving a total of -£687.45 thus giving us a profit of £0.05, but remember because of the probabilities I chose to bias my return on the horse either placing or losing so even if I had got it totally wrong and the horse won then I would have still not been out of pocket.

Ø Over time you will need to switch money from one account to the other to ensure that you have sufficient funds to make the trades once you see them. There is nothing worse than seeing a really nice trade only to find that you do not have enough funds in your Betfair account to take the Lay part of the trade.

Ø Now you have seen how to make a successful trade. Sometimes it will not always go so smoothly. What happens if when you get to the bookies the price has gone down? You need to un-tick OC update, manually input the price on offer and see if there is still a positive ROI.

Ø Another problem is that when you have placed the bookies bet the Betfair price has gone against you. In this case un-tick BF update and select the Input your own odds and stakes, put in the prices on offer, press manual update and then place that bet. Now if you have a big enough ROI to start with you should still make a profit. Another option is if you have placed the bet early enough you can wait a while but quickly use the manual option to work out your cut off point before you start losing money.

Ø As with all things the more you practice the faster and better you will become.

Ø A final word of warning! DO NOT JUMP STRAIGHT IN! Practice doing many dummy trades until you are completely familiar with the software, how you are going to make the trade and especially important what you are going to do if a trade starts going against you. If you keep your head you could still get out with a small profit or at worse break even. Do not trade on Low ROI’s. The bigger the better!

Ø VHF wishes you all the best with your trades using this software. We are always interested to hear what ingenious methods you have come up with based on using VHF.