A Q and A with Simon Walton of Proform Racing

Simon Walton of Proform Racing

1. Hi Simon and many thanks for joining us this month. Would you start by telling our readers a little about yourself and your background?

Hi everyone.I’m 48 this year and have owned and run Proform since I was 30 but I have been betting since I was 17.Prior to Proform I was a computer programmer and progressed to IT Manager for a car pricing guide for the motor trade and got into programming after starting out on a YTS (Youth Training Scheme) after finishing school with no grades!

Programming just clicked with me (albeit after struggling for the first 6 months) as I have a logical way of thinking, which also helps with horse racing.

2. What attracted you to the world of horse racing and what do you enjoy most about the sport?

Winning money attracted me at the age of 17 and it started well with my first bet being a winning one, it went downhill from there, but me and my mate would spend Saturday afternoons in the bookies every week. The most enjoyable part of horse racing for me is the pre-race analysis of trying to find the winner.

3. How did the idea of ProForm Racing come about?

I was and still am an avid reader of horse racing books and eventually read “Mordin on Time” by Nick Mordin, which if you have not read it was about how he created his speed ratings. He used a card file with one card for each horse and manually calculated his speed figures and noted them all down.

When reading it I just thought using my programming skills and if I could get the results data I could programmatically create the speed figures using the calculations and standard times that Nick Mordin kindly revealed in the said book. (We now have our own standard times which we adjust each season).

So, I set about doing just that and eventually created a small electronic form book product which contained speed figures for all runners and then displayed them on a graph plotting every run for each horse and the speed figure it achieved. It was colour coded and also contained horse form screens and statistics.

This early version of Proform was free and there was quite a lot of people using it back in the late 90’s.

I then got offered a redundancy package and decided it was too good to refuse the chance of setting up a company to try and sell the Proform Horse Racing product. The first year was tough but I managed to make a profit and not eat into my redundancy funds too much and Proform Racing was born!

4. What do you feel ProForm Racing can offer racing enthusiasts and punters?

Proform products have progressed massively since those early days and now encompasses a full database driven formbook, research tool, system builder, alert system and much more and on top of that we have our race guides product, daily stats area and bet, lay and trade finder web app which are online and responsive to mobiles. We have pumped a lot of profits back into development of Proform products and continue to do so with two or three software upgrades due this year.

Tying all the products together are our Power Ratings which are, in the main, incredibly accurate and appear in all products. They are calculated from 1000’s of variables and use a complex statistical method to create a rating and forecast price for every runner in the UK and Ireland each day.

These give punters a massive edge with the top rated being incredibly profitable (over 1000pts profit in 2017 backing all top rated).

5. Do you have a “typical” working day? How would you describe your day to day work?

Yes, pretty much the same every day.

I get up very early (4yo twin boys!) and if I have not complied the results from the day before I do that before 9am, which includes checking all our pace abbreviations for every runner the previous day, compiling the speed ratings, being mindful of any rail movements and eventually creating an upload file for our server so customers can download the results into the Proform database.

I will then catch up on all email admin, paperwork, accounts etc and in the winter, I would then normally be developing new software additions or creating offers, blogs etc. In the summer I might go for a round of golf.

The afternoon work starts from around 2pm which is when we receive the official racing data feed for the next day’s racing.

We process that and create all our ratings and data files and upload to our server which takes around two hours. In the summer we will then move onto the 48-hour flat declarations.

In the evening I will again catch up on email admin and get all my bets on for the following day.

6. Do you bet yourself? If so, what style of approach do you take to your betting on a personal level? What do you think of staking plans, loss retrieval systems etc.?

Yes, I bet everyday using our Power Ratings.

I use systems found in the software to filter them to a manageable number of bets and I bet the night before BOG. It’s very profitable and an awful lot of members are doing the same.

The time-consuming part is keeping bookmaker accounts going once they begin restricting BOG or stakes. It’s an ongoing battle but is doable with a bit of time and effort.

I back level stakes win only, sometimes double stake but I don’t use staking plans and as for retrieval systems, they are the quickest route to the poor house!

7. New and old punters alike often struggle to make a success of their betting. If you could give them one piece of advice to improve their profitability what would it be?

Keep records and don’t chase losses.

Keeping records allows you to look back and see those bad bets or wasted bets when you were just bored. It also will allow you to pinpoint the type of races you do best in.
Chasing losses can be a very tricky mindset to overcome and I admit to having done so myself on numerous occasion in the past. There is always another opportunity around the corner so just put a loss behind you.

8. What do you consider to be a highlight of your racing experience to date? Do you have any personal racing / betting experiences which on reflection brings a smile, or for that matter any which bring a grimace; you can share with our readers?

The best experiences I have had in racing were being at the races twice to see horses I had a share in win.

Nothing beats the exhilaration of cheering home an owned winner and celebrating afterwards.

9. The racing industry is often criticised for having too many races and poor quality meetings with insufficient prize monies to encourage entries etc. Is there anything that you would like to see changed within the horse racing industry and why?

Yes, I would have far fewer race meetings on and then use the extra prize money to boost the pots for the remaining meetings.

On top of this they could then have better quality racing early in the week, Monday to Wednesday.

Also, the quality race meetings on a Saturday should be equally split across to a Sunday. Everyone has free time at the weekends yet the spread of meetings across the two days is strongly biased to a Saturday.

10. What about the gambling industry, is there anything you would like to see changed? Many of the website forums are full of criticism of the bookmakers and their treatment of their customers? Is this something you have an opinion on?

First, I would hope to see the FOBT stakes reduced to the minimum recommendation (it may have already been decided by the time you read this). IMO although it may see some bookmaker shop closures I think there is every chance that it will lead to the money being bet back on the horses rather than the FOBT’s.

Stake restrictions or account closures are the hot topic at present and with good reason. My take on this is it is inevitable that your account will be closed, restricted or BOG removed if you continually beat SP.

The reason being bookmakers offered BOG and evening prices to counteract the money Betfair was taking away from them but if you have any sort of edge then you can beat the bookmaker very easily and they know it, so they close the accounts of the savvy punter.

There are ways around this using multiple accounts, VPN, individual mobile phones and so on and you can keep going (with plenty of friends) for quite a long time.

What’s the solution?

The only viable one IMO would be a minimum pay-out imposed on all bookmakers by law on single bets. That might be £500 or £1k or whatever the level might be set at.

The problem with this if it happened would be the bookmaker removing BOG completely and very likely either not pricing up overnight again or pricing up to no value at all.

11. What do you do to relax and unwind? What interests do you have outside of the world of horse racing?

I play golf and live 150 yards from the first tee of my local golf club so spring to autumn I am often out on the course in a morning, mid-week.

I have a passion for motorsport specifically F1 and recently bought a track day car which I take to various small circuits and have a blast round.

But most of my spare time is with the family. We have 4-year-old twin boys and every weekend from March to November we travel to the east coast where we have a holiday home overlooking the sea.

Find out more about the Proform software and ratings here http://www.proformracing.com/