Trading Out in- running

[carvillshill]

I found most of the recent Racing Post "improve your punting" series didn’t reveal much that was new, but I thought it was interesting that a couple of the contributors stated that they regularly put up their good priced selections at short odds in the in-running market to take some profits. I’d be interested to hear what people on here think of this strategy- it seems on the surface that an awful lot of horses trade short and lose, so maybe there’s good logic to this? Particularly interested in CRs view as he seems to be able to dig out fantastic stats from BF.
Do you do it?
What price do you go?
Are you staking enough to recover stakes or to win a certain amount?

[ReasonoverFaith]

I quite often lay in-running, though only on selections bigger than 20 or so. This is due to my refusal to back each-way/place. I’ll often back a horse at a big price and simultaneously put in a ‘lay’ at around 2,3,4 depending on the price and just leave it.

Obviously, I could watch the race and then make a judgement during the contest but I just can’t be bothered playing ‘fastestfingersfirst’ on my mobile/laptop.

[Gerald]

So Marble, you would do that during the race?

Isn’t it easier, as reasonoverfaith writes, to just lay it at 1.5 as soon as you make the original bet, and leave it in play?

[edit: you always of course have the option to cancel your in-play bet if you really DO think your horse is going to win. Presumably it is easier and quicker to cancel a bet, than to make one. You just have to make one click.]

[Mounty]

Consistency is the key – if you’re thinking of doing it make sure you do so with every horse you back and monitor over a period of time.

You’ll also drive yourself potty when it comes to choosing a price to lay. If you opt for 1.5, it’ll trade at 1.51 before finishing third, if you choose 1.23, it’ll touch 1.25 etc. Perhaps put in to recover stake at the back price minus x percent, then put in a few short lays e.g. 1.1, 1.3, 1.5.

One word of warning – if you put in the lays on Betfair pre-race, make sure you select "keep" at in-play not "SP". It’s a bit galling to find you’ve laid a monkey at Betfair SP rather than 1.07.

Good luck

[The Dice Man]

For any bet to be profitable it must have a sound base in theory, Randomly picking a short price to lay a horse that one has already backed seems to have no logic to back it up, and I don’t think it’s a good strategy.

As I remember mentioning in a previous discussion, whether one has already backed a horse has absolutely no effect on whether a lay bet at a shorter price will be a profitable trade. The lay has to be assessed on its own merits.

This translates similarly to arbitrarily picking a price (say 1.5) and laying at that price in-running, putting in the bet just as the race is going off. How can anyone know that a few minutes into the future, laying at 1.5 will be a profitable bet?! The answer is they can’t, and it’s the sort of ‘voodoo’ reasoning whereby the methodology appears sophisticated but has no sound rationale behind it.

One argument I have heard is that horses often trade shorter than they should in-running, so you’re probably laying the horse at a shorter price than he should be.

In that case, punters should be looking to lay every horse in-running in every race. Not just something they’ve backed before. If it’s profitable to put up a lay at 1.5 in-running, it’s profitable for everyone to do so and not just the people who have already backed the same horse pre-race.

The main arguments most often proposed seem to be
a) to protect stake
b) when you can take a profit, do so

Taking a simple example;

If you could get 6/4 on heads on a (fair) coin-toss, you bet it.
Now someone else wants to back heads, and you can lay to them at 11/10. Do you?
Well, obviously not. You can guarantee yourself a profit by trading, but laying at 11/10 is a losing bet and should be avoided.

So you refuse, and then your eager customer says they’ll even back heads at 4/5.
Now you lay, because you have a profitable bet again.

Your initial decision to back at 6/4 has NO effect on your future decisions to lay (or back) in the same market.

You could have protected your stake and guaranteed a profit by laying at 11/10, but it is a losing decision to do so.

In my opinion, people are far too results-oriented and tend to remember the horses they have managed to lay at 1.5 which have got beaten. They very quickly forget the money they have lost by laying at 1.5, simply because they make a profit on the race anyway.

[davidbrady]

If you could get 6/4 on heads on a (fair) coin-toss, you bet it.
Now someone else wants to back heads, and you can lay to them at 11/10. Do you?
Well, obviously not. You can guarantee yourself a profit by trading, but laying at 11/10 is a losing bet and should be avoided.

The answer to this question depends on the time factor IMO

If you could play this "game" until the day you die then I would say let the 6/4 ride and don’t lay at 11/10

But if you could only get 6/4 for, say 100 throws, then I would lay all 100 of them at 11/10 because there is no guarantee that you will be in profit after the 100 throws, even at 6/4 on heads.

[The Dice Man]

If you could get 6/4 on heads on a (fair) coin-toss, you bet it.
Now someone else wants to back heads, and you can lay to them at 11/10. Do you?
Well, obviously not. You can guarantee yourself a profit by trading, but laying at 11/10 is a losing bet and should be avoided.

The answer to this question depends on the time factor IMO

If you could play this "game" until the day you die then I would say let the 6/4 ride and don’t lay at 11/10

But if you could only get 6/4 for, say 100 throws, then I would lay all 100 of them at 11/10 because there is no guarantee that you will be in profit after the 100 throws, even at 6/4 on heads.

Obviously there is no guarantee. But say stakes were £100. I never trade out, you always do.
50% of the time on each bet I lose £100, 50% of the time I win £150.
My expected profit on each toss = (0.5)*(-100) + (0.5)*(150) = £25
My total expected profit = £2,500.

You lay £119.05 at 11/10, so you are guaranteed a £19.05 profit whether it is heads or tails.
(If it’s heads you lose £100 but win £119.05, if it’s tails you win £150 but lose £130.95)
Your total expected profit = £1,905.

So I expect to make £595 more than you do over the duration of the bets (100 coin tosses).

If all I had in the world was £200, then of course laying at 11/10 is better becuase otherwise the risk of ruin is too great, and I might lose my first two bets and so be unable to take advantage of the further 98 profitable betting opportunities.
But once the intial stake is a sensible fraction of bankroll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion, then my approach is far superior.

The person who constantly makes bad bets so as to guarantee a profit will win a lot less than the person who stakes sensibly initially, and doesn’t trade out at any price just for the sake of guaranteeing a profit.

[davidbrady]

I think I would still lay off at 11/10 every time.

Even with getting 6/4 on heads, a split of 53:47 in favour of tails would mean a lower overall profit than laying off.

[The Dice Man]

I think I would still lay off at 11/10 every time.

Even with getting 6/4 on heads, a split of 53:47 in favour of tails would mean a lower overall profit than laying off.

Sure, but what about a split of 53:47 in favour of heads?

If you could predict that it should be 53:47 in favour of tails, then we don’t have a fair coin any more

All we can go on is the information available, and laying off will cost you money

[davidjohnson]

I used to do it but stopped and am happy with that decision. As Mounty says, it’s difficult deciding what price you want to get matched at. Equally by having to put it up beforehand, you are losing control of the situation. If you are offering 2.1 to a 1.6 chance to the fast pics boys, slowly but surely you’ll decrease your profit. Plenty of your losers don’t get matched in-running when laying off, how many of your winners do?

I may have a different strategy if I’m backing a doubtful stayer on a horse I suspect will trade low in-running etc etc, but in the main I avoid it.

[Cav]

Its very difficult to draw conclusions you could bet on by looking at data for the scenario you mention carvills. The problem is Fracsoft the company who provide the data record the lowest price in running for each horse without any minimum volume requirement so for example if a horse at BFSP 5.0 is matched for a fraction of a second at 4.0 for £2 that’s what’s recorded as its lowest in running price, not a very meaningful analysis when its possible the other 99.99% of volume matched inrunning may have been at prices higher than its BFSP of 5.0.

I have a sample of some 22000 runners for inplay markets on UK racing. As an example, of the 1275 horses with a BFSP of between 6.0 and 5.0, 856 traded inrunning at 4.0 or shorter some 67%. Again you need to be careful with that figure as its impossible to know how much was matched at the shorter amounts. I can give you similar figures for different price bands if you want.

Interestingly of the 2155 runners that traded at 1.1 or less inrunning in my sample only 1566 actually won. This of course could just be a stat blip although most of the races in my sample are flat races so you could reasonably conclude that the tighter finishes on the flat makes it more difficult for in running backers.

Inrunning punting turns me right off. I see no edge betting on second hand racing and I’m not convinced Betfairs queuing system is entirely fair either. If your a good judge of value pre race I don’t see how taking a shorter price by laying off inrunning would increase profits over the longer term although the associated shorter losing runs may help on the psychology side of things.

[carvillshill]

Fantastic replies chaps, thanks a million.
I never have laid off in-running (except in cases that DJ mentions where I’m backing a "bridle horse" or one who has been beaten in close finishes before but the Post series made me wonder if I was missing a trick. i don’t think I’ll be changing my strategy. The only logic for doing it seems to be what David alludes to in the coin toss example, in order to smooth returns. That’s the reason I lay off my ante-post bets, another strategy which costs me money every year, so much so that you can usually tell how well I’m doing by how much I’m losing on Betfair! If you truly have the mental fortitude, then laying off of any kind is to be avoided unless, as Dice man says, you consider the laying-off in itself to be value. I’m resolved to phase out laying off altogether (except in the last leg of the Scoop 6!)

[Librettist]

I’ve done it a few times, almost always settinga price pre-race and have lost 99% of the time as a result. As have been mentioned before on this thread, there are too many variables involved, particularly knowing what price to lay at. The only time I would consider it now is with a horse that has bundles of ability but doesn’t want to win, e.g. Geordieland.

[LUKE]

Every single bet I do is laid off at a shorter price on betfair.Two of my bets were mentioned in trading post last year.Chomba Womba at 1.32 in the mares hurdle at the festival and Snowy Morning at 2.3 in the Grand National.

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