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Hello all,
I am a new member on this forum and have been betting on horses regularly for the last 2 years. Before this I only dabbled occasionally.
As I’ve become a regular bettor I’ve tried to understand the picks that tipsters make. They’re not always picking obvious favourites, and quite often the selections win. I would find the horses that they choose and then read up on Racing Post about that horse, trying to gain insight.
My problem is that I don’t have a set system and I don’t know where to begin with trying to piece one together. I appreciate tips, but I would like to form my own system too.
I am interested in betting on horses, but I’m also interested in laying horses too, which is something I am quite new at and this is something which fascinates me the most. I’m not even sure why!
Where does one begin in forming a system for laying a horse? What do you look for in the stats or do you look at the odds?
Advice and guidance will be gratefully received.
Welcome to TRF gr1980….
I’m sure there are systems out there
A lot would depend on your bank and liability’s
I knew someone who was laying longshots who he believe had no chance of winning and built up a decent kitty but one lay failed and at the bigger odds wiped out his profit in one hit.
You can lay the short prices but they will win more races but you liabilities are much lower
I think a judgement call is the best way to do it. Laying short ones where you think they should be a bigger price plus having other horses in the field you think are capable of winningbest of luck
Charles Darwin to conquer the World
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for your comments.
I don’t bet big – maximum of £10. My bank is £100. Most of my bets are £2 – £5. I try to keep it small.
I had thought about laying maybe the 2nd or 3rd favourite in a race, just before the start of the race. I need to look into this more.
Maybe even keeping an eye on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourites during the race and laying in-play?
Kind of thinking out loud here, but I would love to get some input on my thoughts from the more experienced on this forum.
Thanks again Nathan!
You have to be very careful with in-play laying
There are people out there even in offices who back and lay with much faster pictures to the races or if its not behind closed doors live at the track who will possible be 5 seconds or whatever ahead of you.
I’ve watched betfair market where my horse was 1.03 or something like that then all of a sudden go to 1000 and about 5 seconds or so later I watch him take a crashing fall when well clear
Its possible to lay to lower liability again still than the minimum it states
pick a lay and set the price at 1.01 and the backers stake at £2.00
this will come up as unmatched
then add 50p to the backers stake and hit submit
then delete the £2.00 and it will leave the backers stake at 50p
then change the price to the original lay price
just something that might be worth doing if you want a bit of a practise run and want to limited the liabilityCharles Darwin to conquer the World
ADRIAN MASSEYS SITE IS A REASONABLE PLACE TO TEST SYSTEMS,laying is a very hard thing to be a sucess at,if you backed the favourite in every race you would go broke eventually,if you layed the favourite at betfair the higher lay odds plus commission would also make you go broke,it is very hard to find a system even for losers,and at the exta odds plus commission you get on betfair it is poor value,laying in play you will find more winners than losers being matched at the lower odds you are seeking,a lot of people say value bets are the best to make a small profit,betfair lays at the prices you have to take are usually poor value,sorry to be so negative but i have played around with laying for about five years,i have made some reasonable steady profits but when things go wrong losses mount up real quick,2nd or third favourite might be odds of 4.0 and6.0 lay odds probably 4.5 and 7.0. a lot of people would take the lay odds as a value bet,but when commission comes out they are poor lay odds.
Good post Kaiser.
GR, I’d pay heed to a lot of that.
I try to lay about (ball park) 80% of horses I back, but there is no way I could call it a system, there are no set rules, for me anyway.
I just love the thought of a free bet, but others would shudder at the thought, as you’re obviously losing money when they win. I’m in the middle of a brutal run at the moment, but I had two decent Antepost bets in The Nunthorpe, and laid them off before the off. After they got beat, the race felt like a winner, but obviously if they won, I’d have been kicking myself.
There’s a big difference though in laying off one you’ve bet, as opposed to laying one you just don’t fancy. I used to do it quite a lot, laying off one I didn’t fancy, and it went very well for me results wise, but I was doing it more for the principle that the horse was way too short, rather than making any serious money.
I just didn’t have the balls for it, and it was for small amounts. I take my hat off to guys who do it on a large scale, and as Kaiser says, it’s bloody tough going.
Thanks for the replies Kaise and Venture to Cognac.
I had never heard of Adrian Massey’s site before but glad I found it. Lots of good information on there that a lot of sites would charge you a premium for. Thanks for that!
Kaiser, are you not into laying horses so much these days? You are entirely correct when you say the losses do mount up very, very quickly.
Venture to Cognac, do you lay some of the hoses you back as kind of a system to cover any losses which may occur?
Did you have a play with the custom report,if you go onto favourite statistics its at the bottom of the page,ive spent many an hour playing around on there,as for me laying i was doing well last flat season, this year my system has not worked very well,so i am taking a break and re evaluating.
That’s exactly what I do GR, I like the feeling of a free bet, or even better, profit on a loser.
It’s all about how much of potential winnings you want to sacrifice.
This is where it’s impossible to give accurate advice, because everyone’s different.
Hi Kaiser.
I’m just looking at it after reading your post and it looks very interesting. Adrian’s site is really good, thanks for mentioning it.
I didn’t have any bets today myself after some losses yesterday on some horses I’d backed, also the football let me down. I also need to evaluate what I’m doing for both backing and laying!
Venture; I get it, you’re hedging some of your bets. It’s late and it’s just occuring to me now that this is what you’re doing.
When you’re doing this, do you do it all on Betfair, or do you do it across a number of sites? You would want your laying odds to be lower than you’re backing odds though, correct?
One stat that makes the basis for a good laying system is that around 1/3rd of all odds on favs don’t win. In theory if you double your stake every time one wins, you cannot lose. Beware though the longest winning streak for odds on favorites I have seen is 14, thats a lot of double ups, even if you started with a 10p stake, you would be laying £819.20 on the 14th horse, having already outlaid somewhere between £600 and £800 depending on the prices you had laid.
So really to do this you want a starting bank of close to £1,500 and most days you are going to be netting less than a quid. So while it is guaranteed to make money, its probably just not worth it unless you have VERY deep pockets. In which case its probably not worth it anyway!!
I do think its a good stat for the start of a laying system though.
I have a spread sheet where I input certain stats, and I get a predicted chance and price for each horse in the race. I typically use this to find value to back horses, but have also used it to lay horses I think are way to short.
As has been said though, you need to be right a lot of the time to make money laying horses.
I followed two pretty good laying system – on another well known site – a few years ago; the gist was finding unfancied RP favourites, posted as, “Binchys-Lays”:
Basically, if the horse was fav, but had less than 2 tipsters ( 1 or 0 ) from the RP tipping that selection, it then went on a list. However, if the 1 selection is a * or a nb, they are wiped off the list. The next step is to check the price, which needs to be 7 or below to limit any losses. Stakes are in units of £10 depending on the price but we will never risk more than £60. So, for example, if the price on betfair is 7, we will lay £10. If the price is 4, we will lay £20. If the price is 3, we will lay £30 etc.
The other system, is as follows:
We are looking at Handicaps with 12 or more runners (I use Sporting Life website for this as it is set out in an easy way). You may find 2-5 races a day that fit the criteria.
Use Betfair to identify the favourite for the race.
We then use the Racing Post to have a look at the selections RPR (Racing Post Rating) and the ratings of the rest of the horses in race (you can use the RP website to sort the horses in order of highest to lowest RPR). If the favourite does not appear within the first five top RPR’s, then we have a selection.
“What do you look for in the stats or do you look at the odds”?
Odds are key.
Any successful “system” must either take in to account the odds; or find an aspect of form that the market methodically underestimates.I myself don’t use a “system” as such. Instead looking through form in a methodical way. Working out the percentage chance I believe each horse has of winning (to a 100% book), converting those percentages into odds and then backing any horse I can get a better price than my odds… Allowing a small margin of error.
eg In a 4 horse race where I believe each horse has:
Horse A 40% (fair 6/4)
Horse B 30% (fair 9/4 well near enough)
Horse C 20% (fair 4/1)
Horse D 10% (fair 9/1)
40 + 30 + 20 + 10 = 100% bookMy margin for error is one price up from my 100% book.
So for horse A (the one thought a fair 6/4) I would not back unless 7/4 or better was available.
Horse B (the one I thought a fair 9/4) would only be backed at 11/4 or better.
Horse C (the fair 4/1 shot) 5/1 or better.
D (the fair 9/1) 11/1 or better.I don’t do many lay bets, but it would be the same method.
Although not a “system”, I’ve found over the many years of doing this two aspects of form extremely important in which horses end up “value”/good bets… My own Trainer Form ratings and exploring Pace In The Race ie Where each horse is likely to be during a race, what the pace is likely to be (strong, good, fair, steady or slow) and who it is likely to suit…
However, in recent times this “edge” seems to be less effective… since Timeform started their Trainer Form stats and Simon Rowlands brought everyone’s attention to the importance of sectional times. May be I am losing my edge.
Hope that helps gr1980.
Value Is EverythingIts tricky to find value in laying as the prices on the exchange are most of the time bigger and then you have commission.
Charles Darwin to conquer the World
Hey GR hope you’re well. I started a ‘lay system’ on here MANY years ago called Mug Punter. The concept is, that you ‘create’ a fictional mug punter & then lay his/her picks. So – let’s suppose your MP decides to back every odds on fav and with increasing stakes (a typical MP mistake), you would simply lay the same. It can be tricky to get your head around because you increase stakes when you have WON ie when your MP has lost.
So create a backing system that has no chance of success & lay it. Good luck!Market allows for a horse with a big chance of winning and a big chance of losing and all the others in between. So looking for horses a “mug punter” would back won’t work in the long run. Any horse can be a good or bad price no matter how big or short the horse is.
Only way of creating a successful way of laying is to lay horses that are a smaller price than they should be.
Study the form, evaluate form into chance, and Lay anything shorter than you believe its actual price (allowing a margin for error).
If BELIEVING a horse to have an equal chance of winning and losing then the percentages are 50% for winning and 50% for losing. Fair odds of Evens. Then you can add a margin for error, say 5%, making it 50 + 5 = 55%.
55% is equal to fair odds of 5/6. Therefore a good Lay bet for this horse is 5/6 or shorter.Once it gets to 4/1 I’d have a smaller margin for error, around 3%.
If BELIEVING a horse has a 20% chance of winning (a 80% chance of losing) the fair odds are 4/1. Adding a 3% margin for error 20 + 3 = 23%.
23% is equal to fair odds of 100/30. Therefore a good Lay bet for this horse is 100/30 or shorter.Once it gets to 12/1 I’d have the margin for error around 2%.
If BELIEVING a horse has a 6% chance of winning (94% chance of losing) the fair odds are 16/1. Adding 2% margin for error 6 + 2 = 8%.
8% is equal to fair odds of around 11/1. Therefore a good Lay bet for this horse is 11/1 or shorter.etc etc.
Novice punters could use a greater margin for error.
Please note I say above about “BELIEVING” a horse to be X% chance. Nobody knows for definite what percentage a horse has of winning. That percentage can only be an opinion. However – as always – only punters who are good at both reading form AND evaluating that form into (percentage) chance will make a profit.
Value Is Everything
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