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Does Form Cracker work?

No doubt many people have looked at Form Cracker and thought "It can't possibly work," and no doubt you have heard of, and perhaps tried, betting systems in the past and you have ended up losing money. So does Form Cracker work? Yes it does, but no doubt you have heard this from the authors of other systems. However, in this case it's true, but for the skeptical, I'll show how it works and how I am making money using it.

Run Form Cracker and select Database, Analyse race archive. This examines every race in the archive and compares the predicted result with the actual result. You can see a typical display on the right.

This shows that in 22% of races, the horse predicted to come first actually did come first. Also notice though, that the horse predicted to come second actually came first in 26% of races. Why this should be true isn't clear, but you can use the facts shown on the right to use one of two strategies.

If you were to bet to win on the horse predicted to come second by Form Cracker, you would have won 26% of races. So on average,every four races you will win 1 and lose 3. Therefore if the average odds the bookmaker offers are 3/1 you will break even. For example, betting £1 on four races, you will lose £3 and win one race at 3/1, which returns your £1 stake plus £3 winnings. Now odds of 3/1 aren't very high, so if the the average over the long term is more than this, you will make a profit. You could simply avoid betting on races with odds of less than 3/1 on either the first or second choice horse, or simply bet regardless of the odds and hope the average is 3/1 or better.

The second strategy for winning comes from the fact that the Total in the analysis above is 49%. This means that in half of all races either the horse predicted to come first won or the horse predicted to come second won. Therefore if you bet on both first and second horses, you will win half of all races. So if you bet on two races, you'll win one and lose one. However, this means four bets - two horses in each one - and the net result is that you win 1 bet and lose 3. This means that if the average odds of the winning horses over a long perdiod of time are 3/1 you will break even. If they are higher, you will make a profit.

Below is a typical day at the races. I picked six races and placed £5 to win on the horses predicted by Form Cracker to come first and second. That's two bets per race and a total of £60 was placed. The total return was £81.88, so I made a profit of £21.88. OK, that's not a huge profit, especially considering how much I spent and the number of races, but a profit is a profit and days like this are very common using this strategy and there is more money in by Ladbrokes account now than there was at the start of the month.

Configuring Form Cracker

If you want to set up Form Cracker the way I do, then select Tools, Options and set the Prediction Parameters to:

Form: 90
Weight: 5
Age: 10
Days since last run: 10
Horse prefers this going: 40
Horse rating: 15
Jockey rating: 10
Trainer rating: 10
Effect of draw: 10

The analysis at the top of the page includes races from a couple of months ago when the program wasn't as good as it is today. If just the most recent races are analysed, the results are even better. By just analysing the races from November 1st on (93 races), the figures are:

Horse predicted to come first: 29 (31%)
Horse predicted to come second: 22 (23%)
Total: 51 (54%)

The program is therefore better at predicting winners now than it used to be and it gets it right in nearly a third of all races analysed. Every race I type in and analyse is available for download, so you can see the races, my ratings and predictions. The results will be different if you analyse the race with your own parameters. If you can beat my record (31% of races won in Nov/Dec), then let me know and I'll post the parameters here for everyone to use. If you want to use my parameters, set it up as above and don't alter the horse, jockey, and trainer ratings. It's up to you.

One last thought - just look at the profits made by bookmakers. They make such huge profits because most people lose money. Take care and don't bet more than you can afford to lose.