Hello Dr, how many times have I said that in the last week?, thanks to all for your concerns, I'm now back & ready to cause havoc.

When I first discoverd B/F, my thoughts were, why didn't I think of this, and you beauty at last I can be a bookie again. Alas, B/F has really deviated from what it first set out to be, a person to person way of betting. It has now become battle of the bots (robots, automated betting etc), with victory going to the person who has the smartest, quickest bot setup.

To see what I mean, go to UK races, pick any horse, put up a lay at the next increment & I guarantee it will be topped within seconds. This can be used to your advantage (risky), the other day a horse was $8 back, & $13 lay, so I put up $8.2, the bot went $8.4, so I went $8.6, the bot $8.8 etc. I pushed it all the way up to $12.50 and backed it myself. As soon as I took away all the other prices the bot took away its as well. I managed to lay the same horse later on at $7.8, which put a few % in my favour.

As far as making risk free books (mainly UK races) is concerned my t/o has more than halved & profits have dropped to around 20% of last years. I guess I now regard the bots & their masters in the same way that the TABS & Bookies regard B/F. Dr, I don't have a way of picking which way a price will move, or make my own markets, I simply assess what is available at what price and start laying IF I think I may be able to lay everything at more than 100%. I get it right probably 99 times out of 100, but am now making peanuts compared to last year, for the same amount of effort mind you.

To me the trading graphs are almost useless, except when you see that a horse has been substantially backed, & the lay % is good, I try to lay them in the hope that the money will dry up, and they will either drift and/or others will then come in which boosts the lay %.

You could do worse than just laying Michael g's selections in up, up & up. So long as they are in the market, it is profitable to lay them all to lose the same amount.

Cheers & good luck
Mark

ps Michael, love your work!
pps If anyone is interested I can email the books I made on last weeks BMW & GS, to give an idea of what can be done.