Backing favs is the quickest way to the poor house.
Long term analysis of SPs has shown they’ve reduced a lot at the top of the market over the last decade or two, as bookies look to cover themselves. The same applies at the other end of the market too. I once had a 100/1 sp winner that I got at Betfair SP at 220.
On average the value tends to lie in the range 3.0 to 7.0 or 8.0
Because you can’t pay the bills with winners, only with money.
Would you rather have tenners on 100 favs at evens that should be 2.25, or on 100 runners at 5.0 that should be 4.0?
Did you play online poker and learn about EV? All gambling is fundamentally the same.
My previous post dipped into bookies SPs and where the value generally lies, and why.
I never bet at odds on and some pro horse bettors don’t bet at less than 3.0 for exactly that reason: the value in a typical horse market book is generally found between 3.0 and about 7.0 or 8.0.
This is why high strike rate horse betting systems are rarely profitable, more’s the pity.
If there’s value in those bets why are the bookies highlighting them to punters?
It’s a variation on the fast one they pull when a horse steams in and they announce it over the tannoy lol. You’ll never profit in the long term by taking bets the bookies want you to take.
The day I lost my 365 account is up there with the death of my childhood mutt. C4 4/1 offer combined with BOG was free money every weekend for so many years.
Pardon my ignorance @Jalfrezi, do you have your own algo that spits out your picks for you?
What I’m presenting as a single system is really amalgamated from seven different systems.
Looks like no bets today.
The real question is: would you have shared your non-sharing had the horse not come in? Nice little earner mind, grats.
I’m having a few problems with the data so no selections today either (normally there are several each day).
Feel free, but would you mind making another thread for it if that’s ok?
I mean, I’ve been doing this successfully and unsuccessfully for a long time, and most of the latter has come from paying far too much attention to other people (yes, I realise that means me in this context lol).
I’m curious as to how you’re identifying value bets, and why your staking system appears to just be a flat level stake on every selection. I’m also puzzled by the volume of selections, especially at low profile meetings.
Pretty much every serious horse racing punter I know (I’m a casual nowadays, but I still keep in touch with a few high stakes pros and I certainly know my way around a racecard) works on a variant of Kelly for staking and focuses almost entirely on major meetings for selections. There’s just too much variance and there are too many unknowns in everyday racing; it’s an insider info fest whereas at the main meetings you have familiar race conditions and clear trends to work with. I could tell you right now who the 3 most likely winners of the 2020 Champion Hurdle are, but I’ve no fucking idea who will even be running in the 3:15 at Beverley next weekend.
So I guess my questions are, how do you arrive at your selections? And is there a bet sizing plan?
I look at historic data and try to find, by race type, factors that aren’t fully priced in. I’m trying to find value, not the likely winners of a race because, you know, horses are often unpredictable (favs win only 30% of races) and an average day’s results will have many wtf moments where the market was way out. I also don’t need to know who’s running in the 3.15 at Beverley, and couldn’t care less. If the race and runner meets the criteria (including price) it’s a bet.
Your high stakes pros sound like race card readers, and it’s an approach that demands a great deal of skill and experience to do successfully long term (often for fairly small margins across a smaller number of selections and therefore high variance in yearly profit), which I don’t have and am not interested in. The race factors you cite as making it easier to shortlist likely winners (major meetings, exposed form etc) also make the market more accurate and decrease a bettor’s edge.
There are also many professional/semi-pro bettors who prefer low grade races where the edge is potentially greater and the volume of bets much bigger which helps to smooth out profit variance. I’m making as many bets as I can which I think are +EV because variance in a low strike rate system is horrible.
Re. staking - it’s a thorny question. If the strike rate was higher, say 25-30%, then I’d be betting a percent of current bank on each runner (probably 2%), recalculated daily, because it’s a very effective way of compounding the bank.
Kelly is suited to games where you’re confident of the actual success %. To beat the market your high stakes bettors are probably able to estimate reasonably accurately their runner’s chance of winning which I cannot (and don’t need to) do, hence Kelly isn’t suitable for me: I don’t have any idea whether an individual runner I’m backing at 5.0 should be 4.0, 3.0, or even 2.0. It’s my belief that many of the latter exist in low grade races, giving them them good betting potential. My set of selections as a whole is expected to represent backing value but within the whole set there will be many backed at bad value and many backed at very good value. I’ll let the chips land where they will.
So that leaves level staking for me.
| Today’s | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Brighton | 15:10 | De Vegas Kid | 6.00 |
| Haydock | 17:00 | Blue Medici | 3.69 |
| Yarmouth | 15:50 | Edge | 8.50 |
| Yarmouth | 16:50 | Your Mothers Eyes | 3.01 |
| Leopardstown | 18:20 | Blairmayne | 9.14 |
| Brighton | 16:10 | Nonios | 7.50 |
| Sandown | 18:10 | Liscahann | 26.00 |
| Newcastle | 19:05 | Diamonique | 3.00 |
| Yarmouth | 16:50 | Your Mothers Eyes | 2.88 |
| Sligo | 19:10 | Theatre World | 3.25 |
Think I’ve finally got formatting tabular data sorted out here.
Today
-8 pts
Grim, but not unusual
| Today’s | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chelmsford City | 21:10 | Heron | 11.00 |
| Thirsk | 14:50 | House Deposit | 3.96 |
| Thirsk | 15:20 | Trouble Shooter | 8.50 |
| Brighton | 14:30 | Miarka | 18.53 |
| Newmarket | 17:25 | East Of Eden | 3.60 |
| Newmarket | 17:25 | Time To Strike | 5.86 |
| Thirsk | 14:20 | Balancing Act | 5.50 |
| Chelmsford City | 20:40 | Miss Gargar | 6.00 |
| Haydock | 20:25 | Potenza | 9.00 |
| Today’s Results | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chelmsford City | 21:10 | Heron | 11.00 | -1 |
| Thirsk | 14:50 | House Deposit | 3.96 | -1 |
| Thirsk | 15:20 | Trouble Shooter | 8.50 | +7.75 |
| Brighton | 14:30 | Miarka | 18.53 | -1 |
| Newmarket | 17:25 | East Of Eden | 3.60 | -1 |
| Newmarket | 17:25 | Time To Strike | 5.86 | -1 |
| Thirsk | 14:20 | Balancing Act | 5.50 | +4.6 |
| Chelmsford City | 20:40 | Miss Gargar | 6.00 | -1 |
| Haydock | 20:25 | Potenza | 9.00 | -1 |
| Today’s | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chelmsford City | 14:45 | Katheefa | 9.68 | |
| Ascot | 14:15 | Koeman | 15.00 | |
| Ayr | 20:25 | Oromo | 11.00 | |
| Haydock | 15:40 | Came From The Dark | 5.00 | |
| Redcar | 15:30 | Equiano Springs | 7.50 | |
| Redcar | 17:05 | Canford Thompson | 9.00 | |
| Haydock | 13:55 | Club Wexford | 8.00 | |
| Lingfield | 19:15 | Come On Girl | 8.50 | |
| Redcar | 13:15 | Calippo | 3.25 | |
| Redcar | 13:15 | Enjoy The Moment | 7.00 | |
| Ascot | 15:25 | Never Do Nothing | 5.00 | |
| Ascot | 16:00 | Barbill | 17.00 | |
| Newmarket | 15:10 | Dubai Legacy | 8.00 | |
| Redcar | 16:05 | Cardano | 6.50 | |
| Kilbeggan | 18:05 | Drumcliff | 7.50 | |
| Kilbeggan | 20:35 | As High Say | 7.38 |
Another very bad day today, -14, with no fewer than 6 second places.
