If you find a system or betting method that doesn’t win every time but doesn’t often have long losing runs, you may be keen to use a recovery staking plan that involves increasing your stakes to recover all losses.
You may also want to take yourself down to the doctors at the same time and get your head checked out because as great as it sounds, a recovery staking plan will end up being the nail in the punting coffin for 99% of those who try it out.
The basics are that you start of with a profit aim for each bet, so let us say you want to win £1.50 on each bet that you place and for ease of explanation, the odds are all 3/1.
Looking at the table below, you can see that with a starting bank of £300 and aiming for just £1.50 each race (plus 5% added for Betfair commission), it would only take 13 losing bets to empty out the bank.
Note: Here I am using decimal odds and rounding the actual stakes up to the nearest pound for ease of use and explanation, so 53p rounds up to £1, £2.58 up to £3.00 etc..
| Bet No. | Odds | £1.50 Aim | Losses | Target +5% | Stake | Rounded Up Stake | Bank | |||
| £300.00 | ||||||||||
| 1 | 4.00 | 1.50 | 0.00 | 1.58 | 0.53 | 1.00 | £299.00 | |||
| 2 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 1.00 | 4.15 | 1.38 | 2.00 | £297.00 | |||
| 3 | 4.00 | 4.50 | 3.00 | 7.73 | 2.58 | 3.00 | £294.00 | |||
| 4 | 4.00 | 6.00 | 6.00 | 12.30 | 4.10 | 5.00 | £289.00 | |||
| 5 | 4.00 | 7.50 | 11.00 | 18.88 | 6.29 | 7.00 | £282.00 | |||
| 6 | 4.00 | 9.00 | 18.00 | 27.45 | 9.15 | 10.00 | £272.00 | |||
| 7 | 4.00 | 10.50 | 28.00 | 39.03 | 13.01 | 14.00 | £258.00 | |||
| 8 | 4.00 | 12.00 | 42.00 | 54.60 | 18.20 | 19.00 | £239.00 | |||
| 9 | 4.00 | 13.50 | 61.00 | 75.18 | 25.06 | 26.00 | £213.00 | |||
| 10 | 4.00 | 15.00 | 87.00 | 102.75 | 34.25 | 35.00 | £178.00 | |||
| 11 | 4.00 | 16.50 | 122.00 | 139.33 | 46.44 | 47.00 | £131.00 | |||
| 12 | 4.00 | 18.00 | 169.00 | 187.90 | 62.63 | 63.00 | £68.00 | |||
| 13 | 4.00 | 19.50 | 232.00 | 252.48 | 84.16 | 85.00 | -£17.00 |
You may find a system that consistently has no more than 4 or 5 losers on the trot, your stakes never rise too high and all will seem okay with the world.
But when you consider at odds of around 3/1 there have been times when over 40 or 50 have lost on the trot, losing 13 in a row can easily happen and if you start looking at shorter horses, or just the favourites perhaps, then you will see your stakes increase very rapidly and your bank empty out even quicker.
It may not be for a week, it may not be for a fortnight, but there will come a time when you have a losing run and your stakes will begin to increase dramatically and whilst it may not clean out the bank right away, the nerves will start kicking in for sure.
Take bet 10 above and you can see that a stake of £35 is required to win just £15 and you have already laid out over £85. You also know that if this horse loses you will need to stake another £47 on the next bet, a total of over £160 and you only started off betting £1.00 to win a paltry £1.50 on each race.
Take a look at the next table below where the odds of each horse are all 4/5.
You can see that aiming for just £1.50 each race it will only take five losers to reduce the bank by more than half and just one more after this leaves you £86 plus your starting bank in debt – and this was aiming to win just £9.00!!!
| Bet No. | Approx Odds | £1.50 Aim | Losses | Target +5% | Stake | Rounded Up Stake | Bank | |||
| £300.00 | ||||||||||
| 1 | 1.80 | 1.50 | 0.00 | 1.58 | 1.97 | 2.00 | £298.00 | |||
| 2 | 1.80 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 5.15 | 6.44 | 7.00 | £291.00 | |||
| 3 | 1.80 | 4.50 | 9.00 | 13.73 | 17.16 | 18.00 | £273.00 | |||
| 4 | 1.80 | 6.00 | 27.00 | 33.30 | 41.63 | 42.00 | £231.00 | |||
| 5 | 1.80 | 7.50 | 69.00 | 76.88 | 96.09 | 97.00 | £134.00 | |||
| 6 | 1.80 | 9.00 | 166.00 | 175.45 | 219.31 | 220.00 | -£86.00 |
As I say, you will maybe find a system that picks lots of winners and you will be going along quite steadily and then suddenly you will have a couple of losers and then maybe a couple more and will be required to place quite a large bet next time to win your aim amount and all of your lost stakes.
There have been plenty of occasions where 5, 6, 7 or more odds on shots have all got beaten on the trot so this could be a reality and it is worth taking a good hard look at the figures and the quick losses that occur.
Looking at the table above, even on the fourth bet you would be staking £42 which is the equivalent of 28 previous winning bets at £1.50 that you have already had. And the effort taken to win 27 bets could all be lost on the next bet and will be even worse if the following one loses too.
There are plenty of staking plans that seem to offer the chance of recouping your losses after a losing bet, take the Martingale for example, but you need a super healthy betting bank and absolute balls of steel to continue betting £97 to win just £7.50, or even worse £220 to win just £9. Ouch!
By seeing this aim of just £1.50 shows what would happen if you aim for £5 or £10 a race and how quickly you can wipe out a month or two months of betting success using a recovery staking plan in an day or two or even quicker.
Going for bigger priced horses will ease the heavy stakes of course but then you are looking at longer and longer losing runs and you will eventually end up broke.
So how can you try to profit from this type of betting?
Well, I started trying out a few ideas a while ago looking at systems and recouping my losses and it suddenly occurred to me that if I, or someone else who was betting in such a way was losing all of this money, then there must be someone else who is winning it, be it the Bookmaker or other Betting Exchange users, after all it has to go somewhere.
So, if you are aiming to win £1.50 a race and recouping losses, after five losing bets on the first table betting at 3/1, you will have staked and lost £18.
If on the other hand you had laid those bets you would be up to the tune of £18, (this would not be exactly £18 because of the different lay prices and commission etc, but overall you can see what I mean I hope) and you would be risking just £1.50 per race, a total of £7.50 overall.
Further more, after bet number five on the second table, someone will have staked and lost a total of £166 whilst aiming to win just £7.50. Turn that around and you could be the one winning the £166 and at a low risk to you of just £7.50.
To start out you need to find a system or way of betting that will give you quite a few losing runs of 5, 6, 7, maybe even 10 and then decide how much risk you wish to place on each bet. You then need to decide how many losing races you are going to stop at.
For example, in the second table you could have stopped after three losing bets, (winning bets to you) and you would have won £27 whilst risking just £4.50. You may want to go on one more bet or not and this is up to you.
Deciding at what point to exit the run is the most important part of betting this way and being greedy will win you more as a lump sum win on occasions, but will give you less winning bets and getting the balance right is key.
You start out by choosing your ‘losing stake amount’.
So to get this clear, you are betting here at some point expecting to lose a certain amount per race but aiming to stop each run before a winner occurs
Let us start with £1.50 and the first bet you are laying is at odds of 2/1.
Divide 1.50 by 2 and you get 0.75 or 75p so you place a 75p lay bet on the horse at odds of 2/1
Note: whilst placing bets below £2 is not possible on Betfair, you can do so with software such as Fairbot and you can get a 15 day trial of this before you buy it if you want to give it a go.
If not, then you will need to stake a minimum of £2 which means you will need to increase your losing stake of choice.
On the table below I am taking a £1,000 bank and aiming to lose £5 per bet on each bet. The odds shown are from an actual system test I used reecntly using generally short priced horses and these are shown in decimal odds.
| Bet No. | Odds | Loss Per Bet | Gains | Total To Lose | Stake | Bank | ||||
| £1,000.00 | ||||||||||
| 1 | 3.13 | 5.00 | 0.00 | 5.00 | 2.35 | |||||
| 2 | 4.24 | 10.00 | 2.35 | 12.35 | 3.81 | |||||
| 3 | 1.98 | 15.00 | 6.16 | 21.16 | 21.59 | |||||
| 4 | 2.34 | 20.00 | 27.75 | 47.75 | 35.63 | |||||
| 5 | 2.31 | 25.00 | 63.38 | 88.38 | 67.47 | |||||
| 6 | 2.66 | 30.00 | 130.85 | 160.85 | 96.90 | |||||
| 7 | 6.03 | 35.00 | 227.75 | 262.75 | 52.24 | |||||
| 8 | 2.55 | 40.00 | 279.98 | 319.98 | 206.44 | |||||
The loss per bet is £5, plus any gains from a winning lay bet, so the first bet is a lay of £2.35 at odds of 3.13 to lose £5.
If this loses you then add the £2.35 to the next bet and loss which is £10 (2 x £5) at odds of 4.24 meaning a lay stake of £3.81. At this point you either go on to the next bet or take your winnings and start again.
For example you could go for five winning lays and take out a total of £130.85 that you have staked, less any commission of course.
In my experience so far, five is around the point you want to exit a run depending on your stakes and average odds of course but I suggest you do some research into your chosen system or method and then make a decision.
If you had gone on and laid eight in a row you would have won £486.42 at a risk of just £40.
Another way to use this reverse staking.
Instead of risking an amount per race, you could just risk just one amount overall. This will mean less profit but much less risk and maybe a better way to go when starting out.
Below I have set it for a loss of £10 on the whole run, so in this case you would have won less at £368.10 but only risking £10 instead of £40.
| Bet No. | Odds | Loss Per Bet | Gains | Total To Lose | Stake | Bank | ||||
| £1,000.00 | ||||||||||
| 1 | 3.13 | 10.00 | 0.00 | 10.00 | 4.69 | |||||
| 2 | 4.24 | 10.00 | 4.69 | 14.69 | 4.54 | |||||
| 3 | 1.98 | 10.00 | 9.23 | 19.23 | 19.62 | |||||
| 4 | 2.34 | 10.00 | 28.85 | 38.85 | 28.99 | |||||
| 5 | 2.31 | 10.00 | 57.85 | 67.85 | 51.79 | |||||
| 6 | 2.66 | 10.00 | 109.64 | 119.64 | 72.07 | |||||
| 7 | 6.03 | 10.00 | 181.71 | 191.71 | 38.11 | |||||
| 8 | 2.55 | 10.00 | 219.83 | 229.83 | 148.27 |
You do need to allow for commission on these figures above but hopefully you can see how you can increase your winnings by reversing the usual recovery staking method, as long as you get out before a winner comes along.
Stopping after four or five in a row at short odds will allow you to make decent gains and the odd losing bet won’t affect things too much.
I am currently testing a number of system ideas to use with this format and a couple are looking quite promising, as well as creating a spreadsheet that works out all of the bets.
I have used Inform Racing for the best of 6 months and developed a strategy, which I would say is very unlikely to be copied and has yielded over 1300 bets with an ROI that currently stands at 19%. Needless to say I am delighted with the performance and the danger with any returns such as this is the temptation to increase stakes My caveat is the danger of having accounts closed and the fact that it could under perform at certain times in the season.
I’m not a fan of recovery betting but instead my strategy is that with an ROI that can drop and then increase – the lowest has been 12% and the highest 24% – I increase stakes when the ROI drops 6 points and maintain that staking until it has risen 6 points. Obviously the key is to keep a record of all bets and to acknowledge that any horse racing return can be inflated by the odd big priced winner.
Hope this helps.
THAT SSOUNDS SOME SYSTEM WELL DONE,I SEEM TO UNEARTH SOMETHING THEN IT ALL GOES TITS UP,BUT DO LIKE THE RATINGS
SORRY BOUT CAPS
An interesting take on recovery staking, Andrew. I assume that you are confident enough in your strategy to expect it to continue to perform as it has so far – and 1300 bets looks a pretty good test of its efficacy. Like you, I am not a fan of recovery staking but I am always looking for ways to improve my profit. I can see that you have settled on 6 points below your mean ROI to determine when to increase stakes – by how much do you increase them? When the ROI has increased 6 points do you revert to your original stake? It is, I suppose, a form of ratchet staking, but have you found that it improves your profit significantly compared to level stakes?
I have never tried such staking before and in the past have always waited until I double my bank before increasing my stake by 50%. These days, I don’t even do that and stick to level stakes and at a level that I hope goes “under the radar” and won’t bring about account closures and restrictions. I guess I have given up the unequal struggle to beat the book in any significant way! Well done with your strategy.
Hi James,
An interesting take but surely this must be doomed to failure in the real world?
If one could predict when a backing system is going to throw out a losing selection why not just back the ones that are going to win?
My gut feeling is that method will at best restrict the rate at which ones loses money rather than make a profit.
AR
Hi Ar, I think the point is that you can’t predict this but can take a calculated risk on the number of winning bets and if you find a method that has the odd winner but enough losing streaks of 5, 6 or 7, then you should be able to profit from this.
I am just trying to say that someone gets all the losses when you eventually fail with a recovery plan and this could be a way of using it in reverse.
James, I disagree with the way you have set out Lay Bet Tables.
In the 1st Table your Potential Loss is £5.00. Your Potential Winnings are £2.35 less commission. Therefore your Bank after the 1st bet will be £1002.35 (less commission) or £995.00 (If the horse wins the race) and so on.
Also, it would be better to risk your biggest Potential Loss from your Betting Bank in the early bets, thus reducing the potential losses from the Betting Bank as the series of bets goes on. The Potential Profits are bigger this way.
If, after say 4 bets, you only bet with winnings and, after 5 bets, you start taking a percentage of any new winnings when a loser occurs you will still have made a profit from that series of bets.
Sorry Rod, you are correct and I have removed the bank balances from the lay tables now. I had copied these over from a recovery spread sheet and hadn’t re calculated on losing bets, thanks.
If you go your way with the risk, don’t you then have to decide exactly how many bets you are going to stop at first?
Hi James.
I’ve never made a lay bet but it is something I’m going to look into now.
I think there are a few different ways to use the idea.
The methods in your article work, as you have shown.
Another is to start with the the highest potential stake and reduce the stake whilst still adding the winnings: e.g. 1st bet lay to lose £40; 2nd bet lay to lose £35 plus winnings from 1st bet; 3rd bet lay to lose £30 plus winnings from first two bets; etc. As you can see, this makes an extra £566 profit.
Bet Odds Potential Add £ Lay Potential
Loss Winnings Winnings Bank
£1,000.00
1 3.13 40.00 0.00 40.00 18.78 £1018.78
2 4.24 35.00 15.00 50.00 15.43 £1034.21
3 1.98 30.00 30.00 60.00 58.80 £1093.01
4 2.34 25.00 90.00 115.00 85.82 £1178.83
5 2.31 20.00 175.00 195.00 148.85 £1327.68
6 2.66 15.00 325.00 340.00 204.82 £1532.50
7 6.03 10.00 530.00 540.00 107.36 £1639.86
8 2.55 5.00 635.00 640.00 412.90 £2052.76
Profit £1052.76
A method which guarantees a profit without needing to complete the series is shown below.
As soon as the profits in your bank reach the amount you started with – In this case £40.00 – stop using your initial stake and start to take out some of the profits for yourself (Either a fixed amount; a percentage; or an amount that suits you – as below). After this you can play the series for as long as you like and be guaranteed a winning series.
Bet Odds Potential Add £ Lay Potential Take Out Accum
Loss Winnings Winnings Bank Some Profit
Profit
£1,000.00
1 3.13 40.00 0.00 40.00 18.78 £1018.78
2 4.24 40.00 5.00 55.00 16.97 £1035.75
3 1.98 40.00 35.00 75.00 76.53 £1075.00 £37.28 £37.28
4 2.34 75.00 75.00 55.97 £1100.00 £30.97 £68.25
5 2.31 100.00 100.00 76.34 £1150.00 £26.34 £94.59
6 2.66 150.00 150.00 90.36 £1200.00 £40.36 £134.95
7 6.03 200.00 200.00 39.76 £1225.00 £14.76 £149.71
8 2.55 225.00 225.00 145.16 £1300.00 £70.16 £219.87
Profit
£300.00 + £219.87
In the series above you would be guaranteed a profit after 3 bets. If the 6th bet lost, for instance, your profit would be £94.59.
A series of bets can obviously be as long or short as you want unless you lose, in which case you would start a new series.
Thank you for the article James, I really enjoyed it
I hope my calculations are correct and the tables format okay.
I obviously haven’t taken commission into account.
Best wishes.
Thanks for the explanation Rod and some interesting ideas I will be taking a detailed look at.