First Look:
Trend Friend

Service Name: Trend Friend

Website: http://www.trendfriend.co.uk/

Trend Friend is a racing service with a twist, in that they advise a number of bets in many of the big field feature races that attract so much attention. They apply key trends to these big races and select a cross-section of bets that they feel offer the best value. All bets are advised to be backed at Betfair SP and results calculated to this price structure.

We have been quietly impressed by their bets since they started proofing in March and you can view their full record below.

Advised Stakes Performance

Calculated to £10 per pt advised and at Betfair SP with 5% commission deducted.

	Races advised	Races Won	Staked	Profit	ROI
March	35	14	£3530	£430	12.20%
April	59	7	£1320	£457	34.6%
May	97	11	£2800	£805	28.8%
June	99	12	£2885	-£206	-7.1%
TOTAL	106	44	£10535	£1485	14.1%

The above table takes into account the profit made per race with 5% commission deducted off the race itself, in line with how Betfair calculates profit and loss. It’s worth noting that their Racing Index proofing record deducts 5% commission off each winner, which is incorrect when dealing with multiple bets in one race.

The Service

Trend Friend pick bets at a wide range of prices, which can be as short as 3.65 or as big as 75 when it comes to Betfair SP, although different amounts are staked on each bet with £100 in total (or 10 pts) staked on each race.

It is worth noting that a large swathe of profit has come from just one bet - Makfi at 75.5 Betfair SP on the 1/5/10. No harm in that at all but without that winner things would look a fair bit different so we will do need to keep monitoring this service for a while yet. There have also been a few other big winners including Berties Dream at 51, Great Endeavour at 26.39 and A New Story at 40, which is a good sign.

It is also noticeable that at SP they make a loss of around -860.15 (-8.14% ROI), which illustrates quite a swing from SP and Betfair SP returns. The big winner Makfi sums this up as the SP was 33/1, whilst the Betfair SP was more than double that.

We have been impressed by the service that Trend Friend operate, with all bets sent through in a clear and easy manner to follow. They supply sensible staking advice and all communication with David from their team has been very professional. For those of you who like to dutch bets or try your hand at forecasts, tricasts and the like, there is also some advice on how best to do that. Trend Friend also include a screengrab of a winning tricast bet they placed with Stan James in 2009 that made them £19,514 from just a 36p stake!

Summary

Due to the type of advice they supply, it does remain a service where we need a larger than usual number of bets before we can pass serious judgement. So far though it has got off to an impressive start and we are keen to see how this continues over a larger period of time – especially over a range of meetings in different conditions.

One area that could be worth exploring further is some of the alternative methods of placing bets other than at Betfair SP. The problem with Betfair SP is that the more people use it, the lower the price a horse is returned as we saw with the likes of Betting For A Living. Therefore by tracking and reporting back on the live Betfair market prices this may help to provide some extra useful analysis on alternative methods of following.