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Last night I backed River Proud at 26/1 with a saver on RavensPass at 6/4.
RUK have just made both "negatives" <b>on the exchanges.</b>
Yet River Proud is shorter now than the price I took (at 20/1). And Ravens Pass is just 2% worse at 13/8, big deal.
Surely all that has happened is a usual fluctuation of the market.This is not the first time I’ve backed something at a biggish price, it is quite well backed, into a shorter price than it should be, then gone out a bit. Then made a "negative" even though still being shorter than the price taken.
So what exactly makes a negative or positive?
ATR often have a positive which has only come in 0.5%, say 25/1 to 22/1. Again big deal.
Ginge
Value Is EverythingAm i going mad, or are your maths a bit skewed their Ginger?
22/1 compared to 25/1 ? 22/25 = 88%. Surely thats a 12% difference in returns?
I would suggest that they are dicatated by liability.
PS. My favouroute is the one between the bookies and the chippy.
Clivex,
22/1 is equal to a chance of 4.3%. You need a 4.3% strike rate of your bets at 22/1 to break even (actually 4.34782).
25/1 is equal to a chance of 3.8% You need a 3.8% strike rate at 25/1 (3.84615).Therefore the diference is 0.5% (4.3 – 3.8 = 0.5).
Ginge
Value Is EverythingGinge’s % s are right. Another quick way to work out the price as a percentage of the book is just to divide 100 by the decimal price. ie 100/2.5 for 6/4 or 100/2.625 for 13/8.
I don’t know how RUK do theirs and I would guess there is a lot of variation of approaches. When I’m doing movers for ATR I look for a significant move in price based on the best price available across a range of books. So, if something has moved from 25 to 14/1 with one firm but is still available at 22/1 somewhere else that wouldn’t figure on my radar as a mover at all. As for drifters, I’d agree Ginge you’d be looking for something more substantial. In fairness drifts around a fav are more crucial to a market. and a move of only a few percent for a a favourite that might well account for well over half the turnover on a market is interersting sometimes.
As for bookmakers manipulating favourites that is tough to do in this day and age with the off course and exchange markets so closely related but it’s fair to say that some of the SPs returned about favourites are dubious on ocassions and look to relate more to likely off course shop and multiple liabilities than the ‘real’ price. If a horse was 6/4 I’d be looking for a drift out to 15/8 or bigger probably to include it as a drifter and at prices bigger than 10/1 movement has to be very dramatic indeed + or – to warrant inclusion I reckon. Another interesting drift is when a horse goes out to a more attractive ‘each way’ price in what would otherwise appear to be an attractive each way betting event.Last night I backed River Proud at 26/1 with a saver on RavensPass at 6/4.
RUK have just made both "negatives" on the exchanges.
Yet River Proud is shorter now than the price I took (at 20/1). And Ravens Pass is just 2% worse at 13/8, big deal.
Surely all that has happened is a usual fluctuation of the market.This is not the first time I’ve backed something at a biggish price, it is quite well backed, into a shorter price than it should be, then gone out a bit. Then made a "negative" even though still being shorter than the price taken.
So what exactly makes a negative or positive?
ATR often have a positive which has only come in 0.5%, say 25/1 to 22/1. Again big deal.
Ginge
A horse can be a positive or a negative at any given time ginge. I will use Rakti as an example. You could usually tell what way he was going to run by how he behaved in the preliminaries. Lets say rakti was bang in form leading up to a race and opened at 10s at the start of the day (wouldnt have been tens but lets just say for arguments sake) and people backed him in to 3-1, then he starts acting the goat beforehand and drifts out to 10-3, that is still a negative, despite having opened at a much better price.
If people are queuing up to lay a horse and not as many people are backing it at any given point in time, it is still a negative in the market at that point in time, regardless of whether or not it is a positive overall. And someone sat just watching a betting screen could take that drop back out to be a negative withouit knowing the reasons behind it.
You see it a lot on channel 4s betting screen where one has gone 20,16, 14 12, 10, 8, 9 and it will have a negative sign beside it.
Is this what you meant ginge?
As far as I can tell, ATR missed Mae Cigan the other day. Forecast at 10s, matched at a double-figure price, had nearly half the morning trade on a 16-runner handicap on Betfair and went to about 7/2 at the time the market movers were conveyed to the public. If that wasn’t a "positive" I don’t know what is.
Do ATR consult Betfair’s own market movers, which are freely available late morning and late afternoon (when there is evening racing on)?
Clearly something won’t be a steamer on the exchange and ignored by the High Street.
Hi Prufrock. I may well have missed Mae Cigan the other day – who forecast 10/1 by the way? We don’t use exchange moves on ATR and focus instead on prices that have been widely available with a range of books particularly those who are partners of ATR as those firms prices are used on the website and on best price graphics etc. I use betfair myself but the price movements I report are based on those occuring in the off course betting industry sphere. I have to say, that whilst exchange moves can be informative they are a harder thing to pin down. If you take the example of a horse matched at 12 or 13 on BF but which opens with the books at 7 – how much needs to have been matched at 12 or 13 for that to be classed a mover? What’s the difference between a mover and a rick? As you rightly say an exchange mover will not be ignored by bookmakers but often that just makes the exchange activity an extension of the process of tissue compiling.
It’s an inexact science and as I said earlier my guess is that there will be a lot of variation between channels and presenters based on practices, personal preferences and levels of understanding of the various markets. I don’t know how RUK work things but on ATR whoever is presenting Get On will also compile the market moves as well as setting up the interviews for Get On and of course presenting the relvant slots in Racing News and then on Get On. Couple that with the fact that the info needs to be with the graphics op’s in advance of the first racing news programme (can be updated later of course) and you can see how things fall through the gaps.
I’d concede it’s not the most sophisticated or objective process but that’s how it’s done in my experience.Racing Post forecast was 10/1, Betfair forecast was 16. It was backed at all prices from about 12 to about 4 on Betfair.
There was an early non-runner – it was a 16-runner handicap, after all – which possibly meant that the conventional firms were trying to "adjust their books" while the horse was continuing to be caned on Betfair.
If such an incident is ignored simply because Betfair is not a partner of ATR it calls into question the usefulness of the feature, imo.
Marb, I repeat, "it calls into question the usefulness of the feature, imo".
That is not the same as asking ATR to "advertise" Betfair.
At least there seems to be an implicit recognition that the feature is a reflection of the non-transparent cloak-and-dagger tactics of certain favoured bookmakers rather than what is really happening in the marketplace.
I understand the point you’re making Prufrock. As I said the channel uses the markets once formed with bookmakers to quote movers and drifters. It doesn’t in fairness claim to be flagging up exchange positives and negatives. When I first joined the old ATR we used to do both. Often there is a good deal of overlap of course but sometimes scanning exchange activity versus a good tissue price will flag up useful movement – both positive and negative. That process is a lengthy and laborious one mind you. I used to mark up the Michael and Simmonds tissue for every horse in every race and then compare that throughout the morning with the current exchange price – whilst also making value judgements along the way with regard to the turnover of each race and the horses I was watching. There’s no way I’d have the time to do that properly now. Scanning markets for price changes across a range of firms is a much less time consuming process and more objective but clearly lacks the sophistication to flag up the kind of movement you’ve highlighted. It’s a gap alright. The issue with filling that gap is not just the time and labour though it’s also the judgements that are required to do it well. I’m sure people tear their hair out when I miss moves and I am similarly amazed by some of what is said about movers and drifters in some quarters! No two observers would ever come up with identical lists of exchange positives and negatives for reasons Bulwark has mentioned.
ps – I haven’t ever flagged up a move that I don’t believe is clearly a substantial and demonstrable market movement and I wouldn’t.
Pru, you imply that movements on exchanges are "transparent".
Presumably, in as much (paradoxically) as that we can all see them.
Am I the only one who was actually more confident about deciphering the old days of bookie ‘cloak and dagger’, than I am at working out what and who is behind movements on the exchanges?
That old phrase about poker players knowing who they’re sitting down with springs to mind…
Thanks for the reply, Sean. I have had to do something similar myself before now and understand that it is not easy. I tend to think that being aware of the flagged-up market movers on Betfair at least saves missing the obvious.
Tooting, you inferred that, I would claim not to have implied it.
Some aspects of exchange activity are transparent, but not all, obviously. We might know, for instance, that 40% of the matched money on the market has been on the steamer, but we don’t know whose money it is.
Then again, we have absolutely no idea how much money – or whose money – has been taken to halve a horse’s price with a High Street bookmaker. It might not be much (I used to work for one of them, so I do have some experience of this).
You are not the only one who was more confident of deciphering what was going on previously. I have met several people who have claimed the same.
You raise a perfectly good point Prufrock. The movers section on ATR is what it is and the information you mention is of course available to us all elsewhere. You’re quite right of course that we don’t know why a bookmaker is cutting a price and we now have situations where bookmakers will cut prices not because they’ve laid it but because it’s been shortening on the exchange – sometimes merely because someone knows it’s going to be a non runner. More gravy for the bookie who gets a bigger rule 4 without having laid a bean on the ‘steamer’! That’s why I will only flag up movers that I really think are the real deal. It’s an inexact science in an imperfect environment though so there will be mistakes and ommissions. As with everything in this game we all need to sift the available info and come to our own conclusions and as I said, and as we can see from this thread, no two observers will view the markets in exactly the same way.
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