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Thanks daylight. We seem to follow slightly similar ‘value’ avenues.<br>
My strike-rate is also low – fluctuates from season to season between 14 and 19% but the winners can be big. And those losing runs can really hurt – I always have a 20 plus run each season, and even a run of 37 last season.
My stakes are modest, but the bank keeps growing slowly but surely so we must be doing something right with this ‘value nonsense’.
I’m surprised you don’t stake more the bigger the perceived value though.
daylight,
If I had priced Red Striker at 11/1 and could only find 12/1 I may well have not backed it, or certainly only to small stakes.
I think you price to a 90% book? Does this mean you rarely find ‘value’, but when you do you always bet? And what about staking?
Yeah, after a night’s drinking I’m cross with myself at having backed bellator – mind you I’d have only shortened up Whitenzo and had more on that instead.
I wouldn’t have backed LLT at 6/4 as that wouldn’t be ‘value’. I would have had 6 points at 7/4 or 10 points at 2/1 though.<br>
I wouldn’t lay the horse at 6/4 as that was my idea of its true chance. (I’m a ‘value’ punter remember)
I’d have been interested in laying it at Evens or shorter, if I hadn’t have decided to oppose it with two horses instead.
I’m not too unhappy with my book, except I didn’t really take into account bellator’s likley reluctance to race.
Thought John Francome was talking rubbish throughout the commentary – Jim McGrath seemed closer to reality – Looks Like Trouble didn’t impress me greatly, and I guess I’ll carry on pricing him up longer than the bookies.
Here’s a question for value punters – what was Red Striker’s ‘true’ price today?
And did any value punters decide not to back him when he came in to 8/1, on the basis that he wasn’t value any more.
For what its worth I priced him up at 6/1, so even at SP he represented value. Not that I got on at 14/1 though. <br>
Here’s my book, to 100%, for what it’s worth.
Looks Like trouble 6/4<br>Whitenzo 3/1<br>Bellator 4/1<br>Upgrade 9/1<br>Celibate 20/1
I’ve ended up backing Whitenzo 8 points at 5/1 and bellator 5 points at 6/1, plus the forecast. Which makes Looks Like Trouble a certainty!
Major reasons for price discrepancies is the bias I have for in-form trainers, with good course records. I also have Upgrade and Celibate longer, not just on form, but in likelihood of them taking each other on for lead. <br>
Good on you Luke for putting a race up like that
If we worked to 100% book let’s say you were going 4/1 Bellator and Upgrade, using RP odds that would suggest to me a healthy 8 points win on both of them, and I’d throw in the forecast as well.
Of course, I haven’t priced the race up myself yet, but kind of already know I don’t like bellator or Upgrade so my book wouldn’t be the same
Whitenzo – I could imagine making that a value price. Given enough time I’ll post my book tomorrow as well, in fact let’s all us value gurus have a go, and give escorial something to giggle about.
Gosh, I wish my books were 100% accurate.
Value for me is a bit of a holy grail. It’s an approach to gambling that I believe in. But for many years I tootled along successfully beating the bookies pretty much doing as Escorial is doing. I guess the mordin/coton books put me onto value and for a while I actually went backwards hopeless as I was at finding it, but the last few seasons it’s really improved my betting – when I win I win bigger, and I’ve minimised my losses.
But a 100% accurately priced race – I wish.
The two key things in my favour when pricing races are the bookies’ over-round and the fact I don’t actually have to lay any horse we don’t want to.
I view the over-round as my margin of error. I usually price the race to 100%, or a bit less if feeling cautious – (daylight I was interested that you price to 90% – that’s very cautious). In a handicap where the bookies have gone 130% plus, I can be fairly confident that if my horse is at much longer odds with the bookies than in my book, that I am getting value.
I can also oppose horses in my book in a way that bookies can’t. Take Beau – he’s always priced up competitively in these top-class handicaps – but as far as I’m concerned unless he gets his ideal conditions he’s a complete no-hoper – if he was generally priced at 8/1 a bookie couldn’t go 25/1 against him, but I can in my book. It’s the same with Pipe horses, or McCoy and so on – the bookies have to be extra tight on them. We don’t have to.
The key difference in approach for me is that I’m not looking for a horse – I’m looking to exploit the difference between my book and the bookies.
Today for example I priced up the 2:20 at Taunton. In the old days Atavistic would have looked a good bet to me – a lot going for it, and I would have backed it. But pricing the race up for myself made me look at it in a different way.
Lordberniebouffant looked one to oppose (I’d gone 8/1, bookies 3/1) but Sir Frosty looked tempting (I’d gone 10/1, Sporting Odds went 33/1). OK, so I’ve chosen a nice, some would say lucky, example as Sir Frosty duly won me a season’s profit, but my point is making a book led me to the bet, and told me to bet fairly big.
<br>That’s my thing with you escorial – I really think you could be winning even more.<br>
Ali, I do look at form when assessing each horse’s chances.
I then price them up as best I can, and then I compare my book to the bookies.
And if I see ‘value’ (yes, a Holy Grail I know), then I bet accordingly. That does mean I often back horses that I don’t have a very strong opinion of.
Let me give you an example from Saturday.
(My prices first, then bookies’ prices)
Ascot 2:20<br>Orsuno 5/1 3/1<br>benbyas 5/1 3/1<br>regal exit 5/1 4/1<br>Rooster Booster 10/1 7/1<br>Got One Too 6/1 10/1<br>Lisaan 8/1 10/1<br>Moving on Up 8/1 14/1<br>Plus 3 runners making up ‘The field’ – horses I believe really won’t win in today’s conditions. I gave them 15% of the book.<br> <br>Basically my take on the race was that the front three were priced up far too short. Rooster Booster is an habitual loser, but the next three in the betting all seemed to be too long, and so were possible ‘value’ bets.
I ended up doing Moving on Up to win, and combination forecasts on the three of them.
Obviously I chose this race as it was a nice winner with a 121/1 forecast pay-out on Got One Too and Lisaan.<br>My point is, I had no strong feelings about the merits of any of these horses – if you’d asked me the likeliest winner I would probably have said Benbyas.
I hope that explains what I mean a bit better.<br>
Escorial, me again.
I still think the prices the bookies are offering should be of interest to you.
As you say, you think your horse is the ‘favourite’. Surely you want more money on the horse the more you think the bookies are being generous.
If I was in your shoes and in two pretty much identical races one of my ‘maximums’ was at 7/2 and the other one was 7/1, I’d want to put much more on the 7/1 shot. (In fact, if I had priced both horses up at 2/1 I’d be putting 14 points on at 7/2 and 24 points on at 7/1.) It seems to me you could be even more successful than you obviously are.
Also, you seem to be saying ‘value’ punters are making a mistake in not backing horses they think will win, if they aren’t value. The thing is I don’t ever really think about races in that way. I just price up the race and then look at the bookies’ prices to see if they’re way out of line to me. I rarely have an opinion that says ‘this horse is the one’. So, for me, the game is more a mathematical puzzle than a picking horses puzzle.
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Escorial, fascinated by your stance on this.
You bet when you are as certain as you can be that the horse you have chosen will win – your ‘near maximum’s last week for example.
If you actually tried to express that certainty in percentage terms you would almost certainly find you are loking at a ‘value’ bet anyway – if you’re opinion is that strong, the horse will almost certainly be shorter in your book than in the bookies’.
I don’t know what your staking strategy is but I would want to make a book on a race to decide how stuck-in I should be getting. Take your 7/2 bet and your 6/1 bet last week. If you had priced them both up as 2/1 shots say, surely you would want to be staking a lot more on the 6/1 shot than on the 7/2 shot?
Personally I always do a book (or a part book on major contenders plus the field), and use a version of the Kelly Criterion to show me how much ‘value’ I believe I have.
My profits have risen considerably since I adopted this method a few years ago.
