Laying Alan Keyte's Tips

One of the longer running threads on the Betfair forum appears to be coming to an end. The original poster, unionjack, started the thread on October 26th 2007 with this:

I am starting a new thread.

I wish to make £2 on every tip of Alan Keyte's by laying them instead of backing and using a Recovery Martingale Staking system to keep on target.

You can see his tips every day on the naps section of the Racing Post.

Most of his tips are very short prices, so this should give interesting reading.

I am paper trading for the time being, using a bank of £1000, but if it works, I shall be going for the Real McCoy, especially with the season changing so soon and turning into good laying weather

Today
Wolverhampton 9.20
BOZ
Lay £2 @1.86 (was 1.77 this morning, so a wee drift looks good)

Well, he was right in that it did make interesting reading. Alan Keyte (Western Mail) was selected because although he picks a fair number of winners, most of them are at short prices so for a laying system this is ideal.

Almost two years later, he’s calling it quits after a tough few days where Alan Keyte just keeps picking winners. Short prices mind you, but with a recovery staking system, stakes can get uncomfortably high rather quickly with a losing run, and the current sequence dates back over two weeks. Starting with a bank of £1,000 he made a profit of £2,967.38 which is a profit not to be sniffed at. I hope someone continues updating the thread with a ‘what-if’ total, because but we’ll see.

The forum is littered with a host of rather pathetic and ill-considered ideas, threads that typically last no longer than a mayfly, but this one was great – a simple idea that attracted almost 4,000 posts. Not many threads can boast that kind of total. Simple, because if a tipster regularly loses money over a season (and most do) then surely the way to a golden future is to lay those selections. Perhaps it’s not quite as easy as it seems but well done unionjack for the idea, for sticking with it, and for knowing when to quit. He could be quite amusing too, which is a pleasant change. It would be interesting to hear Alan Keyte's take on it all too.