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If Channel 4 did a piece on ‘the table’ people would be reaching for their remote control before they reached the word ‘over-round’.
Those with the savvy to have any hope of making a profit on horse racing (or any other form of gambling) will acquaint themselves with the mathematics involved within weeks rather than years.
i caught this topic at the start and thought placing and discussing the real concept of ‘value’ on here would be like lecturing Jamie Oliver on battery chickens. It seems it is not.
I can’t understand how anyone with a serious interest in betting on horse racing can’t follow the maths and agree with the theory behind it.
As far as i’m concerned its a prerequisite before betting seriously to know these percentages and would encourage anyone betting to do so.I do agree that anyone who has a concept about TRUE value can find out about the table if they look hard enough on the wibbly wobbly way, looking on TRF or elsewhere, but what about those who do not have access to the internet?
Many experienced racegoers I talk to have not got a clue, and think like Fist, it is nonsence. I believe one of the reasons is that they do not see it mentioned in the trade papers or T.V. Therefore it must be a lie. We see great articles about every aspect of racing, everything that effects who the gambler will bet on. From distance and going to trainer form, right and left handed courses etc. So should they not talk about this one just once? I do not expect it to be drummed in to peoples heads, just mentioned once or twice.
Journalists and presenters leap to the defence of punters on subjects like SP reform. But if they themselves do not tell punters all the relevant information available (possibly for their own selfish reasons), are they any different from those they are trying to defend punters against?Value Is Everythingmansun >>>
I always use Azertyuiop’s chasing debut at Market Rasen. He was something like 30lbs well in using hurdling ratings, and I lumped on at 8/15. I didn’t much care whether anyone one thought the price was value or not. All he had to do was jump soundly, and being ex-French and further schooled by Nicholls, there was a pretty strong chance he would.
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and I say, amen to that.
Well said.
I think some of us refer to such tempting opportunities as "buying money."
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
We see great articles about every aspect of racing, everything that effects who the gambler will bet on. From distance and going to trainer form, right and left handed courses etc. So should they not talk about this one just once? I do not expect it to be drummed in to peoples heads, just mentioned once or twice.
The mathematics involved with odds and betting got several mentions during the short existence of The Sportsman, for what it is worth.
always use Azertyuiop’s chasing debut at Market Rasen. He was something like 30lbs well in using hurdling ratings, and I lumped on at 8/15. I didn’t much care whether anyone one thought the price was value or not. All he had to do was jump soundly, and being ex-French and further schooled by Nicholls, there was a pretty strong chance he would.."
People always seem to think "value" betting excludes them from backing the favourite or an odds on shot. If Azertyuiop was a genuine 1/3 shot then 8/15 was a great value bet.
Didn’t the term "value" really come to the fore when Mark Coton started his Pricewise column in the RP?
It’s possible the term did, but the concept predated the existence of Racing Post by a number of millennia.
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Didn’t the term "value" really come to the fore when Mark Coton started his Pricewise column in the RP?
Aye, and he also went into long and boring detail in his book ‘Value Betting’, (Before he eventually realised it is all meaningless if you can’t pick winners in the first place
).As another thread is exploring, do the exponents of these theories, more latterly Tom Segal, make profits for themselves or are they theorising and living of their journo income?
Yes, and isn’t he another that is discovering that fancy prices mean nothing at all when it comes to facing the landlord on a rent-night?
Maybe the general betting public would gain more from learning to read and understand form than how to make a tissue.
It’s like the "Give a man a fish" proverb, but sending them out with photo’s of fish, instead of educating them in the proper basics.I think the term value certainly did come to the fore when Mark Coton started Pricewise but the original idea then (and largely still is) was to compare the antipost prices being offered and concentrate on the ones out of line with particular regard to horses that Ladbrokes had shorter than their competitors.The value factor is always going to work better in these races because they are usually highly competitive handicaps likely to be won by bigger priced horses thereby allowing a profit from low strike rates plus you have a number of highly skilled odds makers effectively compiling odds lines on your behalf.It’s pretty unlikely that many people are going to come with a more accurate assessment of chances than that. It’s quite interesting how often these original lines prove correct when drastically altered before race day by various rumours and whispers ceased on by the suckers.
One thing Ginge didn’t touch on was the margin of error he uses after all it’s quite likely that his lines will throw up a number of differences in any given race from the actual betting and it’s equally likely that the actual market will be more accurate than his so it’s normal to have an agreed cushion before risking your hard earned say at least a couple of points in hand.From distance and going to trainer form, right and left handed courses etc. So should they not talk about this one just once? I do not expect it to be drummed in to peoples heads, just mentioned once or twice.
In view of some of the replies on this thread then I would say that the answer is Yes and this table should be explained and shown in the RP and other racing papers/sitesat least once a month. Punters who are not interested will ignore it as they will do with any other information that they do not require. Other punters including those new to the sport may find it useful with their betting.
Any suggestion that it is impossible for a serious punter to be able to make a long term profit from betting on horse racing without knowledge or use of this table is most definitely untrue. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
Pete
I’ve read numerous articles pertaining to the arithmetic of betting over the years.
Perhaps there should be a sort of gambling test, akin to a driving test, where you aren’t allowed to have a bet unless you illustrate that you possess the necessary grasp of mathematics. A gambling licence.
This table is published weekly in Raceform Update (last week page 21) and from memory I think it also appears in the Weekender.
Yes, I think all of the required tables and theory were also in the "Which book of Gambling" and several other publications.
My belief is that the Media pander mostly to what their researchers think the viewers, listeners, or readers, want.
If the medium is television, then we enter the world of show-bizz. Maybe it’s true that there’s no business like it, but, personally, I’ve learnt not to take the slightest heed of what the frontmen say.When we consider sponsorship and advertising revenue, it seems clear to me that several are not totally free agents. Certainly, the RP is a bookies’ paper in effect. I wouldn’t expect much that would tilt the balance in favour of punters.
Similarly, with TV. I began to do far better on the betting front, when I stopped listening to what the "pundits" said.My answer, therefore, is "no".
Those of us who find the table useful for punting are a minority; long may this continue, say I, even though I regard making the right selections to be of equal importance.Sean Rua.
David Brady
Roulette? that is pure luck, no skill. If you want to make money from a casino then card count.It’s not luck for the casino. My point is that Casinos need to repeat the spin of the roulette wheel thousands upon thousands upon thousands of time to guarantee a profit. A punter does not realistically have the option to trasnlate a miniscule percentile advantage into profit unless they bet in a number of races every single day.
Value is not the holy grail to profit. Nor indeed is backing horses you fancy regardless of price. The holy grail is the ability to read the formbook successfully and then successfully translating the findings to a rough tissue.
Nick Mordin states in one of his books (Betting For A Living?) that he reduces the field to a number of runners and then decides on a price below which he won’t bet. His rough rule of thumb is that if he has narrowed the field to 3 contenders then he won’t accept 3/1 about any of them.
Something along this lines is the way to go IMO.
Good post summarising the basics BTW.
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db
Most of that made sense until you introduced Nick Mordin as some sort of standard on the subject.
I would disagree that it’s six of form reading and half a dozen of value though. How can anybody possibly gauge a ‘value price’ for any race correctly unless they can be certain they have accurately assessed each horse’s form in the first place?
How many can truly do that; not nearly as many as the ‘value disciples’ would have you believe, or there wouldn’t be much of a price discrepancy in the first place.
Surely the ideal in making a profit from betting is to eliminate guesswork as much as possible, and not to add another layer as most ‘value seekers’ seem content to do?I agree with RH. There is no substitute for knowledge of the form book and watching as much racing as possible, forming your own opinions based on what you see. This takes up a lot of time and the art of doing it is a long time in the learning. There are several good books available to guide novices in what to look for when reading races and assessing form. These are available on the RP website. There really are no short cuts to this; no golden rules or formulae that will do the job of hard, time-consuming, form study.
With regard to value, maths and probabilities, the discipline is the same, although the principles can be taught and learned much more easily.
If racing is your bag, I strongly recommend reading(more than once) an excellent book. It is called:’The Art of Legging’ by Charles Sidney, and it will tell you everything there is to know about bookmaking and it is a very interesting read.My point is that everything there is to know about this game can be learned, given time, much like anything else. There are no secrets.
I still find this subject interesting after at least a couple score years of puzzling about it, and I’m grateful to all who have posted some good and sometimes conflicting points.
Perhaps, the nub of the matter is that the future is unknown. and. each and every race to come will have its own unique circumstances.
Almost all selective prediction will come down to opinion – in my opinion, anyway. This is so even if we use the Table, Timeform, RP, TV, or anything, really.Whenever I’ve witnessed a group of self-proclaimed value-seekers make actual "value selections"( in their estimation) I have rarely seen total concensus. They don’t all pick the same horse.
Can they all be wrong? Can they all be right?Personally, I still don’t know the answer, but, as a punter, I make my own decisions, and, if I get it wrong, then, nobody is responsible but myself.
I cannot blame the media; they have their agenda; I have mine.Doesn’t this apply to all of us?
Sean Rua.
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