PSR(1) Greyhound Place Test and Setup

How to find and set up the Greyhound Card Software PSR(1) selections with the Greyhorse bot. This article shows members of the Greyhound Card Software how they can automate the PSR(1) selections with the Greyhorse bot.

I have had a lot of emails about the PSR (1) test and how to find the selections and set them up with the Greyhorse bot.

Let's start with "What is PSR(1)?"

“Place Strike Rate” is a figure I have created by adding up the number of runs a Greyhound has had at the Course, Trap, Distance and Class against the number of place wins.

So, if a Greyhound ran 10 times and “Placed” 5 of them it would have a strike rate of 50%.


This runner has 100% strike rate running in trap 4 at Shefield at 500 meter distance in class A2.

Note: Betfair pay out to 2 places on Greyhounds even if there are non-runners.

The (1) in brackets is how it ranks in against other runners in the same race.

On the Greyhound Card Software, we rank the highest place percentage as “1” and the lowest as “6” so as you can see in the screenshot above 43.75(1) is the highest and 21.43(6) is the lowest.

In many races you will find that one or more runners may have the same rank because they share the same strike rate.

So be aware that you may often find more than one runner sharing the same rank…

…Even rank “(1)”.

The second thing we look for is that this runner is “Favourite” on the “Place” market.

On Betfair, the place market pays out on the first two greyhounds to cross the finishing line.

This means in a 6-runner race you have a 33% chance of picking a runner to cross the line 1st or 2nd.

Greyhound favourites win around 56% of the time on the place market with an average price of 1.78 (BSP).
If you do the calculation 1/1.78 = 56% you can see how efficient this market is.

But in some ways that’s a good thing for us because we just have to find something or some way of tipping the scales in our favour.

We can do this in several ways.

1. Stop at any profit (Something that has worked well for me)

2. Stop at a value like 1 point (or more).

3. Use recovery staking after a loss (I am trying at the moment).

4. Controlling your maximum losses (a must).

One thing you learn when betting on Greyhounds for any amount of time is that they can seem unpredictable.

Often a first corner pile up will change the expected out come of a race.
Sometimes the advantage of one trap over another is just two much for a favourite and so on and so on.

When you look at it from a statistical point of view then these anomalies get ironed out over 100’s if not 1000’s of races.

This to me is the major drawback with Greyhound racing. There are so many races each day that you can get drawn into, thus trying to create a system/method that tries to bet on as many races as you can…

…but then you get caught out by these “Variances” that seem to hurt and take a long time to recover from.

I am not saying you won’t get caught out by them no matter what method you use…

…it’s just easier to control if you limit your exposure to the markets.

Having a predetermined “Stop Loss” is something you really need to think about when it comes to greyhound racing because those variances can be quite expensive if you are not careful.

Anyway more on that in a bit first let us discuss staking.

How to increase your stakes.

One of the main things you try to do as a trader/gambler is to increase your bank and stakes so that you can make more money.

Somewhere there could be a point that you are happy with…

…This could be £5 a day or £10 or it maybe £50 or £100, maybe even more.

At each level you need a bank large enough to cover your losses and make you feel comfortable betting.

Most people argue that your stake should represent about 1% of your bank but you get people suggesting up to 10% depending on what type of betting you are doing.

If you are a pure (and experienced) trader, then you may be prepared to leverage a lot more of your bank but when it comes to actually win/lose betting you want to keep this figure in check.

 If you read my daily email’s then you would have seen me talking about the power of compounding.

This allows you to start with small stakes and gradually increase your stakes based on a percentage increase from your winnings.

So let’s say you started with £1 stakes and you won on the “Place” market at a price of 1.70 (this is the average I am finding with this method at the moment).

If we take into account commission we probably win about 68p.

We now take 8% of that 68p and add it to our stake before placing the next bet.

Our new stake will be 1.05.

Of course, you can be as aggressive as you like this idea but I wouldn’t’ go above 48% because you want to cover any losses.

If we took that we had a constant 0.68% profit and compounded 8% our first month could look like this.

The second month like this.

And after 90 days.

Of course, it is unlikely to happen like that but it does show what could be possible.

Some members play a game with systems like this and use 48% of their winnings to see how far they can go, but you must remember that this is a pure gamble and you will gradually lose a much larger % of your bank so make sure it is money you can afford to lose.

A more cautious approach could be compounding 20% of your winnings onto your next stake which looks like this.

You will still get to a stage where your stakes represent a high percentage of your bank. So, as I said this is more of a game than it is a properly thought-out staking plan.

 Manual V Auto.

I get at least one email a month that says something along the lines of…

… “I have to work all day so I want an automated system that will make me x amount of money each day”

I would love to reply to these emails and say…

…“Yeah sure just set up the Greyhorse bot up, click start and then empty the cash each day into your pocket”.

Unfortunately, this is gambling and it doesn't quite work like that.

Every system has highs and lows, all technology has a bad day and markets change and adapt.

Even Betfair themselves have outages where their whole system just goes down and causes mayhem.

Meetings go off late and even your own PC may have a fit and crash.

I am not trying to put a downer on automating betting systems because when they work they can work really well. Our record for the Greyhorse bot was close to 6 months without stopping.

To be honest, so far this system is working well with the Greyhorse bot and although we have had a couple of days where we had delayed races generally they bots have been performing well.

The “Stop at any profit” test has been continually performing since the 29th of February and runs on one of out Windows VPS that we get from simply hosting.

The Greyhorse bot is an extra cost though and one you may not be prepared to pay out for at the start.

So, you could do it manually.

To be honest, there are advantages of betting manually because it allows you to make decisions based on what you see.

If there is a “Delayed” meeting you can miss it, if you don’t like the way the day is going you can stop and come back tomorrow.

If the dog that is meant to be the one you are betting on looks fidgety and/or disinterested then you could give it a miss.

You may even learn things about the method/system that you may not have noticed if you don’t see the daily selections because a bot was handling them.

Of course, the biggest issue with placing the bets manually is “Time” and if you have enough of it to follow the selections.

I suppose it could also be a bit boring sitting around for the next selection that meets the criteria.

Interestingly Looking at the “Stop at Any Profit” bot it has won on the first selection (normally between 10:47am to 11:15 am) 14 out of 19 days.

Remember that the average winning price is 1.70 but often the prices are lower which would have resulted in about 6 points profit just by backing the first runner only and taking whatever it throws at you.

Using the selections with the Greyhound bot.

There are two parts to this idea.

First we need to create a special “Tips Link” using the special Greyhound Racecard Software linking software I developed and then we have to add that link to the Greyhorse Bot to automatically follow the selections.

It’s a lot simpler than it sounds and takes less than 5 to 10 minutes to set up and once it is done you don’t have to set it up again even if you run the bot at home and close it down each day the bot will remember the settings.

Step 1. Greyhound Software linking software

In the bonus section near the bottom of your Greyhound Racecard Software members page you will see.

Click on the link and it will open the software. Set it like this.

There are just two settings to change PSR(Rank) 1 to 1 and Type of Bet “Place Back”.

You must click to update the selections, then save using a name you chose in my case this is “PSR(1)Place”.

Once you save it, reload the save file by the name you saved it with and then the bot link will appear with an ID number at the end.

There must be an ID at the end for the link to work. You will need to copy this link to use in the Greyhorse bot.

Step 2. Greyhorse Bot setup.
Open the bot and make sure it is “Manual Mode” (This is the standard setting for the bot).

Once logged in go to Action>Session>Server Tips

You past the link into the URL Box (make sure there are no leading spaces)

Make sure “Use my option settings” is activated and you can have the timer on “Check Every 30 mins” (Note: The selections do not change once they are created in the morning the bot will just periodically check for non-runners).

Click OK which will close this window.

If you are running the bot on a VPS then once the bot starts running it will access this link automatically every day…

…If you close the bot every night then just open this window before starting the bot to let it know you want to use server tips.

 Action>Options.
There are only 3 tabs you need to look at on the options screen Stop/Profit, Stake settings and Session settings. All other tabs are unused in this scenario.

Stop profit and loss

1. Make sure event type is Greyhounds

2. This is the setup for the “Stop at any profit” bot so I have set it to 0.01 (if it was set to 0.00 the bot would just stop.

3. Decide on your stop loss. Although this is down to you I would probably advise a maximum of 5 points for the “Stop at any profit bot.”

4. I would leave every other setting as it is.

This is going to be down to you and what you feel comfortable with. I do wonder if this would work well with “Stake percentage of bank” but personally I am increasing the stakes manually each day based on the winning profit from the day before.

(Note: If you are going to change the stake manually then do it before you “Start” the bot and the races appear. Changing the stake manually afterwards will not update the stake for selections already appearing in the bot.)

Although I doubt if you will find a favourite trading at much higher than 3.00 on the place market, I have just set it at max range (Do not set under 1.10).

Remember to tick “Must be favourite” well they are the ones I am using.

Session Tab

1. Use session bank and set the bank size to what you want to use. This feature allows you to use a predetermined size bank especially if you want to use “Percentage of bank”.

2. Start betting TTS is the seconds before the advertised off. You can set it to what you want but I would suggest 30 seconds to 10 seconds before the off. Also check your PC or VPS clock is exactly correct as the bot uses this to determine when to start betting.

3. “Sure odds” makes sure your bet has the best chance of being matched by placing your bet into the market lower than the current price. Betfair will match you at the best price possible, but it will not match under the price you ask for when it comes to back bets. By dropping the bet in at below the current price gives it a much better chance of being matched even if the price is dropping quickly which is not unusual on Greyhounds.

Click “Ok” to close and save the options settings.

Now click Start on the bot and the selections for the day will download.

The bot will be idle until your TTS settings have been reached where it will monitor to see if the selection meets your criteria.

Our test results so far

Test 1. Compound Staking (roughly 8%), “Stop at any profit”.

This test was started on the 29/02/2024 (Leap year) with a start stake of 50p.

The idea behind this test was to get the Greyhorse Bot to automatically bet on the selection and to “Stop at any profit”

At the time of writing this (18/03/2024) we have just won on the first selection that came in @1.93.

From the 40 recorded selections we have the following statistics:
1. The average winning price is 1.70.
2. The ROI (Return on investment) is 21.39% (This will be skewed a bit by the stakes increasing after wins).
3. Profit over the 19 days is £8.55 which equates to around 10 points based on an average stake of 0.79p.
4. Today’s stake was £1.22
5. 14 days out of 19 we stopped in profit on the first race.
6. Our worse day took 13 selections to get into profit. We had two losing runs of 3 within those selections but still managed to recover.
7. Late settlements can be an issue and we have had a couple of days where we could have won on the first runner (explained more in bot setup).

Test 2. Recovery and Compound Staking. Stop at 1 points profit.
The second test is a lot more aggressive as I am not only trying to make more profit but also use “1 Up” recovery staking to help recover losses.

When using recovery staking you really need to know what to expect, especially with a bot and this not always perfect at getting the stakes correct because of late settlements.

In this case it looks like this.

£1 stake lost
£2 stake lost
£3 stake lost
£4 stake Win
£1 stake (We always go back to start stake after a win)

On the 13th we went 3 selections without a winner but I had my “Stop at losses” set too low and it stopped when the 3rd selection lost.

I know from my own research that this method often has 3 losers in a row but recovers on the 4th (generally) as it did in this case. So I had one day where I lost a few points but recovered some the next day (Still using recovery staking) and the rest within a couple of days.

Let’s look at some statistics from the start date 07/03/2024  

1. I have made £11.19 since starting with 50p stakes which have now increased to 1.35 (19/03/2024). Based on the average stake value this would be around 14 points profit.

2. There have been 46 selections, and the average winning price has been 1.65.

3. ROI is currently at 24% which is probably a little skewed because of recovery staking.

4. The first day of using this method it took 19 selections to make 1 points profit.

One member using this method emailed me and said they were had decided to go to 4 points profit a day because after researching the results they felt this was feasible.

Finally…

The reason why I run tests like these is to give members of my services something to work with. I wish I could run hundreds of these every day but even as a Betfair Vendor we are restricted on how many accounts we can have and much of the time we are testing features.

This test though is quite interesting especially as we do not have to find outright winners.

I will update this page from time to time with the latest results.

1 point bot

Stop at profit bot

Until Next time
Malcolm