SP system – a little 'noise'

[cormack15]

http://www.racingpost.com/news/live.sd?event_id=6019424&category=0

Given the amounts of money at stake and the ease with which anyone with half a mind could influence starting price it is surely time the system was brought into the 21st century.

One immediate thing which could be done, that I keep harping on about, would be to standardise returns to fixed % over-rounds dependent on number of runners. That way a punter on racing would have the same information regarding the % take he was up against that machine players currently have by virtue of law.

It wouldn’t solve all the ills but it’d be a step forward.

[kasparov]

I agree. Also the article raises more questions in my view. For example it says the SP can be notably shorter than the final show. I didn’t think this was possible as surely the final show is the basis for the SP.

Also the article refers to hedging. I doubt if the sums of money involved justify a betting office laying just to reduce risk. They can easily tolerate profit swings of say £250,000 on an individual race and I doubt if they get big amounts of SP money on races at Wolves. Hence their only rational motive is to reduce the SP on favourites. I believe this can be done with quite small amounts of money, and if this happens in the last few minutes there is no chance for punters to take advantage of other prices adjusting upwards.

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