Odds-on favourites to win

[Dolus]

Billion wrote

I thought was better with 2 places from a field of 7 rather than 3 from a field of 11

Actually just on field size there is not much in it:

2 divide by 7 = .29 (29%) or in odds 5/2 (3.5)
3 divide by 11 = .27 (27%) or in odds 8/3 (3.66)

[billion]

I realise now all those years at school were wasted when I was chasing the girls and passing love notes when I should have been paying more attention.

Billy's Outback Shack

[Dolus]

Not to mention looking out the window and daydreaming.

[billion]

You have me sussed

Dolus

Just had a look at Thursdays races and can only arrive at SAHARA KINGDOM 1.45 Lingfield but the overnight prices are shocking, however it is a very small field.

It could (for me) be a win bet but not a place.

Billy's Outback Shack

[billion]

This idea still hold my interest and despite Sahara Kingdom being far too short for myself I looked for an alternative to play.

The four shortest is the early markets were Master Lightfoot 5/4

With a couple of losing bets behind me I have doubled my stake from £1 to £2 Betfair minimum and played it on

SONNY MULLEN Haydock 3.40 @ 1.48 (2 places)
Recouped a little of earlier losses with a 2nd place

Billy's Outback Shack

[billion]

Trying to regain the rest of earlier losses today with: –

CHAPEL FLOWERS 1.20 Hexham

£2 @ 1.79 Betfair to place

Billy's Outback Shack

[billion]

My Saturday selection is: –

VALENTINE VIC Wincanton 4.00

3 places with Betfair £2 at 1.22

p.s. I cannot believe I am doing this and taking such small prices!!!

Billy's Outback Shack

[Apprentice]

Hi Billion

The prices may be low but it does seem to be working.

Apprentice

[MrStacky]

I am doing something which in all honesty goes against everything the experienced punters recommend. I have a posting explaining exactly why what i am doing is dangerous. However Im doing ok so far and I know the risk and accept it.
I have two systems in place, one which is a fav/win system and another which is a fav/place system. You can view what i am doing here. http://oi-what-the-heck.blogspot.com/

[Apprentice]

Hi Mr Stacky

Thanks for joining the thread. I read your blog with great interest but it raised a number of questions in my mind.

Firstly, I’m not convinced about the meeting by meeting approach. If you are blindly betting on favourites with an historical strike rate of about 33% you can expect the occasional losing streak of 10, irrespective of which meetings the bets come from. So, you could still follow your staking system with the reset after 8 losers by betting on consecutive favourites in any meetings. By doing that you could exclude some races at some meetings which are less likely to produce a favourite winner, for example, races with big fields of 20 or more runners.

Secondly, I’m not convinced about blindly betting on all favourites without taking any other factors into account. In your blog, you noted that a few times, another horse’s odds shortened into becoming the favourite after you’d placed your bet and then went on to win. If your original horse is the clear favourite by a margin – this should never happen (or at least rarely). By applying some simple filters to the favourites, it should be possible to improve the average strike rate from the 33%, thereby reducing the potential losing streak well below the 10 level.

Thirdly, I’m not convinced about resetting to 1 after your sequence of 8 losers. The chances must be higher of a win within the next two races, when your stakes are at their lowest? Perhaps there’s an argument for holding the stakes level after 8 losers rather than doubling?

Anyway, thanks for your contribution – very interesting.

Apprentice

[MrStacky]

Hi, great questions and very valid.

The very first thing is that i absolutely know what i am doing is horribly flawed on some aspects. Part of my problem is that I know virtually nothing about horse racing and betting although I am slowly learning and I will eventually change what i do once my knowledge increases. I cant spot false favourites etc, I lack the knowledge or experience to make my own picks.

The meeting by meeting approach comes about because of probability and also experience picked up in the early days of mucking around with this.
Because Im blindly going with favourites, if a favourite wins on the first race of a meeting there is a probability that iot may end up being the only favourite to win at that meeting and the staking sytem would end up losing me a lot of money for that meeting. I wouldnt carry on the staking plan from one meeting to another because it might be the 1st race of meeting A (8 races) had the fav win and then the 8th race of meeting B finally a fav would win. that would mean 15 or 16 races where I had to keep doubling and the bet on that would be huge.

Also from all the available data on the betting websites in NZ and Aussie you can see there are some meetings where only 1 fav wins. I have also made the mistake of winning on a first race result and carrying on and losing a bunch of money because no other fav comes through. Its very true that later favourites at a meeting win with much higher dividends but my approach is based more on small steady gains rather than high infrequent results.

Excluding big field races is a good idea and something I will look at closely. What I am doing has evolved quite a bit from the beginning so thanks for that thought.

Same thing with your second point and this all relates to my basic fundamental knowledge or lack of. Its increasing all the time and more logical additions will be added over time.

I am blindly betting on favourites but I have also done a huge amount of research in to this using data from the NZ and Aussie betting sites.

With respect to your third point, the 8 race stop point has come about because of research with historical data. I put at least a years race results and dividends etc into a spreadsheet i made. This was data from both NZ and Australia and as you can possibly imagine thats a huge number of races, it took me 4 days to do. The optimum point for a profit from this came out at 10 races. If the stop point was at 6 races the profit level ended up being very low, 7 races was better and 8 races was healthy and 10 races was even healthier. The problem for me was that the 10th race bet was just too large for me. 1,1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256. The issue here related to my attempt to keep a non fav win meeting loss from being no worse than a 5th or a 6th of my bank. If I had $10,000 spare I would be happy to do this although I would be more inclined to start my betting at $5 in the sequence and stick to the 8th race stop.

I have had some real success with this since August however with the way probability works this might just be down to being on a lucky run, although my research with the data does indicate otherwise.

I originally started with $50, built it up to $1000 over the space of about 6 weeks from memory I then took 4 lots of $100 out, taking $100 out everytime my bank hit $1100. Then I had some bother with my business and a bad debt and emptied my racing account rather than break a term deposit to get through a months bills.

I restarted again on the 29th Oct with a bank of $500 however i changed my betting from the fav win to fav place with a different (and admittedly scary staking plan). My bank is now up to $627 but I am using both the fav win system and the place win system. The place win version was partly a way to address the issue of all those lost betting opportunities if a 1st race fav won and I didnt bet on the rest of a meeting.

The area where I have losses comes more from mistakes I make or interruptions rather than favs not coming through before the 8th race so I now only use the fav system when I know I wont be bothered at all for a meeting. thats only once or twice a week.

The place system also came about through extensive testing of historical data. Also the place system gives me tiny wins, sometimes just 10 cents on a race but if you check the screen shots from the last 3 weeks you will see that I get a high turnover of results even if they are small.

In all honesty I think i have had a lucky run, I absolutely dont recommend what i am doing to anyone but maybe someone out there with some strong race betting knowledge will see that i have had some success and tweak it to make it a lot better. 2 of your suggestions I will be working on right away.

Any other thoughts, ideas, criticisms are very welcome, i wouldnt have got to where i am now with it without other people tearing it to bits and making me think and work at it.

Cheers

[Author]

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