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What I can’t do is back a horse to win just beacuse it is overpriced, when I can’t see how it can win.
Worth considering the logic of that again.
If you can’t see it winning you presumably think it has 0% chance of winning. It is implicit in the word "overpriced" that the horse has a chance of winning. As it is with the word "mispriced" when talking about the win market.
Has anyone around here got a passing acquaintance with the concepts of randomness, uncertainty, chaos and basic probability?
Has anyone around here got a passing acquaintance with the concepts of randomness, uncertainty, chaos and basic probability?
Yes, I’m quite familiar with such concepts .. McSim and all that jazz, why do you ask ??
Punting can be like football, in that, unless you have a shape to your form analysis, you can be at sixes and sevens for years, as I was.
I could never accept his strict interpetation of the last three the form figures even as the cornerstone of a system. Sometimes, of course, to my cost. I just don’t believe in systems. Some will presumably pay off for a time, but they are too limiting, imo.
However, his methodology requiring a balancing of the factors he identifies as crucially significant have helped me ever since, although there were many general tips/words of wisdom in his letters which have also proved invaluable to me.
To mention just a single example from the many he proferred, though he didn’t bet in handicaps himself, he stated that the handicappers tended to favour the better class horse, higher up the weights, where I had always looked to the bottom-weights to pull a fast one.
Grimes
Apologies if I have misunderstood your post, but by the "he" in "he didn’t back in handicaps himself" do you mean VDW? If so, you are quite wrong. Most of the examples VDW gave were from handicaps, including arguably his most famous (the 1988 Old Newton Cup winner, Roushayd), which he described as "happy hunting grounds".
Quote – Your argument is very much as VDW saw things. He once wrote: “People can talk about value bets and all the rest of it but it still boils down to backing more winners than losers. I see no point or satisfaction in backing a 6/1 shot because it is value if it finishes down the field”. If one gets the selections right, the rest largely takes care of itself.
I couldn’t disagree more with this assertion. It betrays a certain naivety that I would find difficult to forgive whatever else the guy has to say!
I’d much, much rather back a 6/1 shot which should be 4/1 and loses than a 6/4 shot which should be 2/1 and wins. Anyone who can’t get their head around that shouldn’t be betting IMO.
It’s not about finding winners it’s about finding VALUE. The age old argument.
If I back 6/1 shots and someone else backs 6/4 shots he’ll have loads more winners than me but that doesn’t mean he’ll be more profitable.
Well, thank you for that information, Hensman.
I am really puzzled by that. I felt sure I had read that, but evidently not. I’d thought he’d said that they were too closely matched by the handicapper, but if we can exploit subjective handicap vagaries, I’m sure he could have and would have, so your post certainly makes more sense.
But I must agree with Cormack on the value business. I don’t believe value will look after itself at all. Naturally, more latitude will be given value-wise by the bookie in terms of the outsiders, because as VDW pointed out, the first three or four in the betting show the lion’s share of the winners, but that doesn’t means it’s prudent to bet on them all, if there is clearly a horse at a shorter price that ought to win decisively. When picking outsiders, you can’t abdicate your judgement and common sense.
Of course, people can argue that the proof is in the pudding, and the bet is only a value bet if it wins, but that is certainly not the case. The statistical probability over time is everything.
Insurance companies make a fat living on it – well, together with organised crime. (What is systematic cheating, when it comes to pay-outs, if not organised crime?)
I’m sure VDW adverted to value and its importance.
Cormack/Grimes
In my view, the fallacy in the value argument lies in the assumption that it is possible to derive the "true" odds on a horse.
Clearly every horse in a race has some chance of winning – the Ayala situation illustrated why. But there is no way of putting a true probability figure on it – only our own subjective (or sometimes pseudo-objective) judgement of the probability.
The beauty of decent class handicaps (and VDW emphasised the importance of betting in decent class races, whether handicaps or non handicaps) is that very few horses go off at very short odds. If one’s selection procedure leads one to the conclusion that one’s horse (or horses as a book) is/contains the probable winner (ie in one’s proven subjective judgement more than 50% likely to win), whether the price of the horse or overall return on the book is 6/4, 6/1 or 16/1 is of no real consequence. Obviously, the higher the return the better, but any win increases one’s bank and, IF one’s judgement about the selection(s) being the probable winner is regularly validated by the reality of results, everything else does, truly, take care of itself.
Hensman, a ball-park assessment (presumably because bookmakers are no more able to arrive at ‘the true’ odds as a cast-iron figure, than the most successful punters) of ‘the true odds’, enables people to make a good living from betting, and is not a subject that they consider an open question, I believe.
It’s an axiom of their occupation. Indeed, it’s the very basis of the bookmaking profession, for that matter. They may get gubbed relatively heavily one day, but they know that ‘if they play their cards right’, and only if they do’ they will prevail in the long run – ‘long’ being an exaggeration. Luck, by way of random chance doesn’t come into it in the long run.
I believe that the top tipster in the RP suggested, about a year ago, that the importance of value was generally overstated, but I think he was making the point about common sense that I made. In fact, many horse are quoted at 50/1 or 100/1, when they might as well be 1000/1, or even a million, while some odds-on shots represent very good value – as VDW pointed out.
Grimes
I’ve amended my earlier post as I had to finish the original in a hurry to make an eBay bid and when reading it through afterwards it wasn’t as clear as I would have wished.
I agree a lot of punters talk about value and bet in accordance with what they believe it is. But it is important not to lose sight of the underlying reality. By "value" they mean one of two things. First, what they, subjectively, believe the individual horse’s chance of winning is compared with the available odds. Or, second, what they take as the objective probability generated by some formula or other which, when explored, always turns out to be someone’s (or the market’s) systematisation of subjective judgements.
And this repercusses in the following way. If one thinks that one really can assign "true" probability figures to horses’ chances of winning (in the way that one can assign a true probability figure to "heads" with a properly balanced and fairly tossed coin) one can believe that it doesn’t matter if this 20% shot loses because if one backs 100 like that twenty will win, and provided one is on at better than 4/1 one will make a profit.
With truly objective probability – as with the coin tossing example – that is indeed the case. Over an extended run the number of "heads" results will approach 50%, and obviously if one could find someone prepared to give one better than evens over an extended run of tosses one would be assured of a profit. But racing isn’t like that. Only if one’s judgement is so good as to be able to discriminate what, say, a 20% chance horse looks like (good here meaning validated by results, long term) and back only those where the odds are better than 4/1 is a profit guaranteed. Few, I suspect, have that kind of discriminating judgement.
The problem I have with value punting is that it is all subjective and arriving at a price the differs significantly from the market usually indicates that you have made a mistake.
Pru,
Perhaps I didn’t word the posting very well. I could see a horse that stood a very good chance of winning the race, the only reason I wouldn’t back it was I didn’t think the price was acceptable. You seem to be suggesting I should back the horse that I considered a danger because the price of that horse is inflated (in my view). On what basis an I backing this other horse? Am I hoping the unexpected happens, and for some reason my first selection runs a stinker? Perhaps I should be thinking I have cocked up on my analysis of the race? If I had backed this other horse I would have been on a loser, a game value for money loser. Sorry but I can’t see the value in that, backing against a horse I think will win, that I won’t back because it is not value. Now it just maybe me but that I do think is illogical.
I’m the first to admit I don’t understand theories, chaos, randomness, etc. Ok sh1t happens and I live with it, I can’t see how you can bet on it happening though. Before I place my bet I try to work out what can go wrong, lack of pace, running style, draw etc. and then a horse has an unlucky run and it loses. Are you really saying you would back another horse in the hopes it may happen, AND BE UNLUCKY?
Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I rely on the form book and a bit of common sense. I think the racing at the level I work at is straight and the horse/trainer are trying to win.
Cormack,
I don’t for one moment think VDW ignored value. I think it was more a warning not to take value out of context, don’t back a horse JUST because it looks better value. If you have a horse you think stands a 50% of winning, and don’t think it is running at a realistic price do you really back a horse you think only has a 20/15% chance of winning? Aren’t the two %’s interconnected?
Be Lucky
Quote from Dave Jay – “The problem I have with value punting is that it is all subjective and arriving at a price the differs significantly from the market usually indicates that you have made a mistake.”
Alas that is the key difficulty with the search for value – you’re up against a very astute and, over the piece, very accurate market. In order to ‘beat’ the market you need to find a factor(s) which it (the market) has overlooked in arriving at it’s probability of the horse winning. Not impossible but, admittedly, very difficult.
Some people develop an instinct, borne of experience and study, of when a horse is the ‘wrong’ price. They’re the lucky ones.
Corm .. you need to look at the market and understand how it is formed in the way it is in the first place IMO, before you can start to work on having value bets. The value thing is a killer, most of the good value punters are arb players and traders in racing, very few actually make it pay by purely betting, it’s too hard.
I agree with you Hensman that very few people relative to the size of the population would be able to make a good living from betting on horses, sports generally. But that doesn’t invalidate the point about value being crucial.
There are relatively few actuaries working for insurance companies, but their understatnding of the mathematics generally ensures that the insurance company they work for continue to prosper.
Imo, assessing value in racing is more difficult than actuarial work or stockbroking – though I only passed ‘O’ Maths on my second attempt. There are so many factors to take into account, (including imponderables), and so much to learn. Unlike the actuary, as VDW stated, the punter can never stop learning.
I’ve just been for a walk, and it occurred to me, Hensman, that I must have given the impression that I was claiming to be one of that fortunate few.
I feel pretty sure, though, that if I raised my stakes, far from winning more, I’d win less and couldn’t pay our household bills.The value thing is a killer, most of the good value punters are arb players and traders in racing, very few actually make it pay by purely betting, it’s too hard.
Really?
It’s seldom wise to rationalise supposition as fact
Proof please
IMO, VDW is a good starting point for punters .. it is stated in all of the literature that it is a method and not a pure system with hard and fast rules.
That the enigmatic Dutchman has once again produced heated debate amongst the learned (as he has done innumerable times over the last thirty years) seems reasonable grounds to suppose that his methods are patently NOT an ideal starting point for the beginner wishing to get to grips with the vagaries of unravelling a race.
Clive Holt’s Fineform Formula which appeared in its original guise but a few years after the unleashing of VDW has always struck me as the better alternative for the novice to develop a simple, sound rating method as it goes straight to the heart of those crucial, if basic, tenets of race analysis: Form, Course and Distance. And – like VDW – once mastered best employed as a quick rating method on which to append your own filters and most definitely not employed as a ‘blind back’ system.
As for VDW, I’m not in a postion to eulogise or criticise having never tried practising what he preached.
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