Dear Investors, First of all there will be no selections on Monday as nothing in particular caught my attention. There is a possibility of one or two recommendations for Tuesday but they would need a couple of horses to pull out to be of interest. My intention from now on, is to send you a monthly Newsletter at the end of each month via the private message facility, this being the first one! It will contain what I hope will be useful information for those of you that are interested in Horse racing, it will contain further recommendations for those of you that like outside bets from what is given via the account, some thoughts on racing and the workings of a professional backer of horses, the psychology involved and some past methods that use to work and explaining why they no longer do, a summary of how each month has gone and plans for the future. I hope some of you will find what I write informative. First of all a breakdown of the weekly figures are as follows to recommend stakes and prices for the month of January. Week 1 1/1/12 to 7/1/12 = +1796 Week 2 8/1/12 to 14/1/12 = +792 Week 3 15/1/12 to 21/1/12= + 1172 Week 4 22/1/12 to 29/1/12= +1030 (Includes Sundays results) All of which gives a profit total of +4790 to date, which I hope that most of you will agree is a good return and I am confident it will be repeated often throughout the year, especially as my historical records indicate we haven’t reached what are usually my best months yet. Now it is my job to generate as much profit as possible for you all and I am acutely aware that some of you may not have been able to obtain some of the prices advised due to the odds collapsing quickly and there may have been instances where it might not have been convenient at the time for you to place your bets at some of the times of my postings. As most of you will know, it’s imperative to obtain the best prices to making worthwhile profits and the best time to do this, is the evening before or before 9:30am on the day in question. However, given the number of subscriptions to this service, it’s clear that not everyone will be accommodated the evening before because there are only a handful of bookmakers pricing up the races, except for racing taking place on a Saturday or major races during the week. All I can do is to monitor the situation as we go long and see what can be rectified to make your life as easy as possible and try my best to get you on the best prices available. I had previously suggested that I would provide my postings at 15 minute intervals, however having observed certain situations it has become apparent this can be detrimental to you all because we are working with very fast moving markets and other professional backers in certain situations will have come to the same conclusions and they will certainly not wait for anyone. However, any professional backer must always think of new ways of operating as what can work one day may not necessarily work in the future because the process has been adopted by more people which in turn means any edge that could be obtained gets eroded with time. So we will need to abandon the idea of the 15 minute interval but keep the time scale to a shorter window from 8:45 to 9:15am on the day the selection(s) are running and if there are any slight delays then I apologise in advance as this would only be due to the fact I am waiting for more bookmakers to price up the race and if I am posting them early but within the timescale where there are some bookmakers failing to price up the race, then this is because there will be signs that the odds are about to shorten and we certainly want to avoid that scenario as much as possible, of course these selections will only be sent out on the proviso there are still a sufficient number of bookmakers offering odds. Please read the information that accommodates the selection as if there is another tip from the first one provided it will tell you when this will be sent to you, as you will know there are some instances where there are not enough bookmakers pricing up certain races which will involve a little patience from all of us. I will now only post selections the night before (6pm to 8pm) racing that takes place on the Saturday and major race meetings but you will be given advance notice when this occurs. In your best interest, I am repeating the fact that you should have the site www.oddschecker.com already open for easy access to all the bookmakers by clicking on the relevant icon and of course to see where else you can obtain similar prices. Please try not to use winning accounts too often and switch where possible as winning on a regular basis can lead to getting your account closed before long, I know because I can’t place any bets for a reasonable amount with most firms but thankfully I have a different arrangement with an independent bookmaker who uses his agents to place bets on my behalf but that’s a story for another day! I thought for the first Newsletter I would provide my brief thoughts about the psychology of a professional backer of horses, obviously from my perspective and touch on why getting the right price about a selection is paramount to making money. Psychology of a professional punter and why prices are so important. The one thing to keep in mind is that the objective is always the same which is to make profits, which does not equate to backing winners. You may say does not backing winners make you profits? Well the answer is dependent on price. Having a 60% strike rate where six winners arrived from ten bets may look good but it wouldn’t provide a profitable return if they were all priced up at 1.57 or 4-7. Now take a look at one winner from 10 bets at 13.00, this provides you with 90% of losers but yet provides you a profit. Now that is all very obvious, but how many people keep this in mind, not many. To that end, it tells me to constantly think in terms of profits, that way the mind develops the right thought processes where backing losers does not come under consideration nor is it a concern because the ambition is profit driven. Now that is not too say we should be backing horses at 13.00 all the time and except a 90% strike rate of losers. It is a fact that value can be found at all prices it just depends on your strike rate at those prices. As an example, let’s look at all horses that were priced exactly at 3.00 or 2-1 in the UK in 2011. 989 horses were sent off at odds of 3.00 of which there were 302 winners (30.54% strike rate) which means if you had bet every single horse at that price you would have lost £83 to a £1 stake on each selection, so £830 for £10 staked and £8300 to £100 staked on each selection at that exact price. Now we can see why prices are important because let’s say theoretically someone had backed all those 302 winners from 989 bets but managed to obtain 4.00 instead of 3.00, that would mean they would make a profit of £219 to a £1 stake, £2190 to £10 stake and £21,900 by the end of the year to a £100 stake per selection. So we can see why prices are so important. In the past, friends who do not know much about betting would ask when I‘ve backed a loser and how come I didn’t spot the winner? Well in most instances I have, as it would have been identified from a list of contenders that I believe can win but I’ve ignored it because it has fallen under the example I have provided, in that it’s priced up at 3.00 (for example) and that I believe those odds to reflect it’s chances, therefore if I keep backing those type of horses where their price is what I believe it ought to be than I know I cannot win in the long run as given in the above example, the criteria for every selection has to be that it’s price does not reflect the chance it holds, ie; it has a better chance than it’s price suggests. That includes situations where if a horse is already priced up by what could be considered fairly short but yet has been tipped up, then that would be due to the fact I believe it should be trading even shorter. Most of you will know those recommendations will happen very rarely, the simple reason is due to tight margins which makes it difficult in identifying value. I’m no expert in identifying a situation where odds of 2.00 only becomes value at 2.10, and with those kind of margins, I’m quite content to leave those short prices to those that can work out the difference, personally profits form such tight margins is of no interest. If you’re going to work hard for it you might as well get rewarded for the effort. I apologise to those of you that know all of this already, the intention is to explain part of the method in identifying the selection process for those that didn’t or were interested. In next month’s Newsletter, I will explain a little about how it all started for me, the pitfalls, what turned it around, some noticeable wins as well as the ones that went wrong and what I learnt from it all. With Cheltenham around the corner, I will be making some recommendations on the ante post front as well. On a final note there has been a lot of background work which will assist in generating even further profits during the proper flat season from April onwards, so there is plenty to look forward to. Best wishes Aiden.