An old boy I know swears this one makes money.

[Wallace]

Unbelievable to hear of Ladbrokes barring a favorite backer. The first commandment of bookmaking is still in use… thou shall not win.

Why does mark not sit at home and use Betfair? Surely the extra margin and less hassle would be a huge bonus.

[Seagull]

Thurs 17 July

ANY FAV
Bauhaus won 4th race of the day @2/1

profit on day £45.00

Bank to c/f £9,228.08

ANY NON HAND TO 9 RUNNERS
Pampas Cat won 2nd race of the day @8/11

profit on day £4.54

Bank to c/f £456.06

[Artemis]

Seagull,

Well done for highlighting this interesting story on the main forum, although the thread was(as usual) hijacked by those who ignored the point of it.

Maybe Ladbrokes are concerned that everyone will follow this system and they will be running a one horse book! (joke)

I was surprised by Barry Dennis’s dismissal of this type of bet. Would he not accept bets from a punter who doubled up on favourites?

I know Mark is doing OK at the moment, but there’s no getting away from the fact that these are single bets on favourites – the stakes or staking plans should be irrelevant to bookmakers accepting bets from the public at large. On any given race on any day, the collective wagering of the public on the favourite must be hundreds of thousands of pounds.

There is only one explanation for the longevity of the present run. It must be the case that the average odds for favourites are much shorter than I had supposed.

[Seagull]

Artemis
For those of us that have followed this since Jan 1st this year it has been interesting.

Mark is actually suprised how well he is doing and he is expecting to have 10 losers in a row very soon as that has been the record in the past.

I dont expect Barry Dennis to comment on the possible valid points of this and the question as to whether he would allow this kind of bet to keep running remains of course un answered.

The method may be doing far better as you say than in past years solely due to the relaible betfair forecasts of the markets. Bookmakers can no longer allow get away with some of the strokes they pulled in the past as the betfair market does not allow it.

For someone who is not up to scratch with computers and exchanges Mark is a little unsure of how it all works and no doubt I will have a few phone calls telling me his P.C has crashed or he cant get on!

This is someone who does not even buy a Racing Post but is content to refer to his Daily Mail for just the time of the 1st race of the day!

[brendanr]

Took a look at this thread after reading about it on the main forum

Sorry if the answer is buried in 25 pages somewhere but does this apply to race meetings only in Britain or is Irish racing included also. Would need to know due to potentially conflicting race times. Thanks in advance.

[moehat]

I thought it meant favourite backing at just one race meeting; am I to assume that it is every race each day starting from the first race of the afternoon and then the next race at another course [looking at a few meetings over the past week or so it seems to work sticking to one meeting as well]. My partner says that many years ago two of his friends used a similar system one summer backing every horse that Lester rode and they made a tidy profit also.

[Seagull]

Brendanr
Mark does English and Irish racing.
The ones I have been doing using two filters of non handicaps and up to 9 runners I have been just doing those races in England.
There have been a few races that have gone off late and some conflict on race times most of the time they have occured after the first fav has won so of little interest.

Moehat
He starts 1st race by the race time 2nd race he would do if 1st fav lost would be next race off.

Note
I have never attempted to inflate any profits and I have been shown to miss out a £1,000 in calculations basically errors on my behalf.
On 17th July the first fav which won was God of Love @9/10
and not Bauhaus in the 4th race. The daily profit therefore was £4.50 for that day.
I have ammended the bank to correct this error.
So on Thursday the bank was £9,187.53 and not £9,228.03

Friday 18th July
ANY FAV
Whispering Angel won 2nd race @13/8
profit on day £11.25

bank £9,198.78

ANY NON HAND TO 9 RUNNERS
Guest Connections won 4th race @1/4
loss on day £50.00

bank now £406.06

[Seagull]

Sat 19 July

ANY FAV
Liberation Spirit won 1st race @5/4
profit on day £6.25

bank £9,205.03

ANY FAV NON HAND TO 9 RUNNERS
Lake Windermere won 1st race @1/2

profit on day £5.00

Bank to c/f £411.06

[Drone]

There is only one explanation for the longevity of the present run. It must be the case that the average odds for favourites are much shorter than I had supposed.

Too dogmatic for my liking

One of two explanations perhaps? The other being the statistical/probabilistic models you and others have employed to test for risk of ruin, losing/winning runs etc are infact flawed, or if not that then can only ever be ‘guesstimates’ as the true sequence of a series of unrelated random events cannot be known for certain, only tweaked using the aforesaid models to produce a forecast more likely (less wrong) than a guess plucked from thin air

I have long thought Probability would be more aptly named Possibility

I do hope Seagull continues this rigourous test of the real v the theoretical for as long as possible, or at least until domesday aka ruin

[Wallace]

Drone you have a fair point in considering possibility to be a more accurate term than probability.

When this thread started I was firmly in the same camp as Artemis that it was certain to fail on a regular basis and go down as another mug punter get rich easy scheme. I then started to consider the goal posts have been moved with so many favourites now being dictated by the mass exchange market rather than the small on-course market. However the real world stats don’t confirm this.

The SR for favs over the last 17 years is as follows;

1991 37%
1992 37%
1993 36%
1994 35%
1995 36%
1996 35%
1997 35%
1998 35%
1999 35%
2000 35%
2001 33%
2002 34%
2003 36%
2004 32%
2005 31%
2006 34%
2007 34%
2008 34%

Obviously the first half of 2008 is spot on the average performance.

[Sean Rua]

Some interesting stats and viewpoints. Thank you all.

I don’t suppose Mark has started doing this on betfair yet, but I do hope Seagull continues to provide us with the results.

Do betfair favs fare much the same as RSP favs? Will Mark be using betfair SP to identify the favs?

Personally, I’d expect any success using a Martingale -type staking method to be totally dependent on the punter having a big enough bank.

The fact that most punters probably lack both the funds and the courage required is why, imo, the bookies are able to use the market ( roughly 2 out of 3 favs lose) favourably.

Obviously, Mark is rich enough to be able to defy this ratio and is prepared to wait for that minority winning fav, which he will be on with a sufficient lump.
I’d say that one thing the books cannot tolerate is an organised punter who is able to use the market against them , hence the ban.

Things may be different on the Exchanges, imo.

[Seagull]

Just seen more comments when posting up the ew double results.

An interesting afternoon yesterday with Mark as it was the first time he had seen a betfair market operate.

We used my account in a cyber cafe.
I have the betfair download on my mobile phone which allows me to see live markets on the exchange which was something he thought was amazing.

I got him 2.78 (just over 7/4 before commision) on the 5/4 winner so he was happy and paid for a nice lunch after.

He was staggered to see the sums involved and on how many markets there was to bet on.

He did say for those with any gambling problem it could be very dangerous as no one can see apart from the bettor how much they are losing and that there was always something to bet on far more than the betting shops
and on markets he never knew existed.

He was amazed how much money people bet on at 1.01.

He thought that the bets were settled very quickly and that he would be better off on there once he got the hang of it as it would mean no dashes to a bank to withdraw funds and also more safe.

He thought that if someone had at least £100 on deposit all the time then they should receive some sort of interest or begiven some free commision points per week to conpensate loss of interest on money on deposit.

He was concerned how easy it could be to click on to lay something instead of backing but I have customised my betfair pages to show lays in yellow this would help him I feel.

I will give him a conversion chart which shows fractional prices to decimal again that will help.

His questions were how many times is the betting shop sole favourite not the sole favourite on the live shows?
I suspect around 99.99% of the time but does anyone have a figure on this?

I have advised him to get Virgin media to install his broadband in his lounge so he can see the live shows from the television to make him more at ease. He is going to order RUK on Monday he has atr already.

Since Ladbrokes banned him he said he has been looking for other betting shops close to high street banks and he said whilst many High Street banks have closed there are more and more betting shops but they tend to be in secondary trading positions where as the banks used to be in the major trading positions.

(He was told by his bank manager when he had a clothes shop years ago to find a premises close to bank and post office, near traffic lights and on the sunny side of the street.)

However he has found a Corals and another Ladbrokes a few steps from a bank no more in Brighton though.

He is no guru and what he does will go against what most punters do but he thinks the discipline he has ( like yesterday having just the one bet and walking away) is a major advantage.

He thinks that is why he got banned not because of what he has won.

I have told him of the interest on this horse racing site and told him he could soon join but he said he has no real interest in actual horses, jockeys or trainers he thinks most get too involved and need to take a detached view.
He could well be right!

He is suprised he has not had 10 losers in a row this year yet and he is expecting it soon.

I will of course keep posting the results in the same format ie starting prices at s.p.

No reply to his letter to Ladbrokes yet. He gave them his telephone number.

[Seagull]

Sun 20 July
ANY FAV
Courageous won1st race @15/8

profit on day £9.37

bank £9,214.40

ANY FAV NON HAND TO 9 RUNNERS
Archduke Ferdiand won 2nd race @6/5

profit on day £14.00

bank to c/f £425.06

[Sean Rua]

Thank you very much for the update, Seagull.
It’s refreshing to see something based on real-life situations ( incuding the workaday problems).

I wish you and Mark the best of good fortune!

[Artemis]

Drone,

Yes, I agree that it is too dogmatic to rely on probabilty theory in the case of horse racing, which is subjective as opposed to dice and cards, which are objective.

It seems, Ladbrokes are somewhat less dogmatic, otherwise they would gladly accept all bets on favourites regardless of who was putting them on or what staking plans they were using.

Wallace’s figures for favourites suggest average odds of about 7/4(36%) which is a figure I mentioned as typical in my posts much earlier on this thread. Given such a figure, and assuming(as I did) that long odds on chances(1/3 or more) occur quite randomly in the sequence of favourites throughout the day, I am bound to say that probabilty theory would suggest that Mark’s present sequence couldn’t happen. But Seagull has shown us that it has occurred and I have to admit that I am at a loss to explain it. If much shorter prices were more prevalent in the earlier races, it might help to explain it because this would reduce the average price of the favourites in early races. Beyond that, I’m stumped.

[Drone]

He is no guru and what he does will go against what most punters do but he thinks the discipline he has ( like yesterday having just the one bet and walking away) is a major advantage.

He thinks that is why he got banned not because of what he has won.

I have told him of the interest on this horse racing site and told him he could soon join but he said he has no real interest in actual horses, jockeys or trainers he thinks most get too involved and need to take a detached view.
He could well be right!

"discipline" and "a detached view"
Damn right!

[Seagull]

Mon 21th July

ANY FAV
Coutageous won 1st race @15/8
profit on day £9.37

bank £9223.77

ANY FAV NON HAND TO 9 RUNNERS
River Dee won 2nd race@1/2

profit on day levels

bank stays @425.06

Tues 22 July

ANY FAV
Global city won 1st race @1/3
profit on day £1.66
bank £9,225.43

ANY FAV NON HAND TO 9 RUNNERS
Global City won 1st race @1/3
profit on day £3.33

bank £428.39

[Author]

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