Each Way Betting. What is Each Way Value?

What really makes a good each way bet?

Firstly lets just re-iterate exactly what an each way bet is. It’s
a bet traditionally offered by UK bookmakers consisting of two separate
bets: a win bet and a place bet. For the win bet to give a return the
selection must win, for the place bet to win the selection must either
win or finish in one of the predetermined places, i.e. 2^nd
or 3^rd. Your stake for an each way bet will be the same on
both parts, so if you bet “£5 each way”, you are betting £5 win
and £5 to place – a total of £10.

Ok so that’s the simple stuff out of the way.

Now let’s talk value.

Betting at value is essentially placing a bet at bigger odds than what
the true chances dictate the odds should be. Of course finding out what
the true chances of something happening are and therefore the relevant
odds isn’t an exact science. Therefore it simply comes down to a matter
of finding “perceived value”.

So with an each way bet we need to evaluate both the win odds AND the
place odds to get an idea of how the prices stack up against our ideas
of a value price.

Opportunities arise with each way betting because the place price offered
against a horse is a fixed fraction (normally 1/5 or ¼) of its win
price, and so may bear little or no relation to its actual chance of
being placed.

There are general misconceptions that
say that betting each way at odds under 5/1 represents a poor bet. And
often horses quoted around 25/1 are touted as great each way bets, on
the basis that the place pays around 5/1.

I’m going to suggest to you that ANY price can represent each way value.

Whether its 10/1 or 10/11.

The calculation that most people do before placing an each way bet is
to work out their returns should the horse only place. So a horse placing
at 4/1 (1/5 place odds) would give a return of £9 from a £5 each way
bet – a loss of £1 overall.

To look at this potential loss in isolation is to look at each way betting
from a narrow and blinkered angle.
This is an entirely wrong perspective in my opinion.

You see lets assume that the horse in question is actually a true 4/1
shot, and therefore it’d win one in every 5 runnings of the same race
on average.

Buts lets also assume that there is very little else other than the
first three in the betting with any real form. And therefore that it
would place on average 80% of the time.

Finding 10 bets like this could easily give the following results from
£5 each way bets:

4/1 unplaced -£10

4/1 3^rd -£1

4/1 2^nd -£1

4/1 Won +£24

4/1 2^nd -£1

4/1 2^nd -£1

4/1 unplaced -£10

4/1 3^rd -£1

4/1 2^nd -£1

4/1 Won +£24

Total P/L +£22

Remember this is a true 4/1 shot, so it would only ever be a break even
situation betting win only. But because of the favourable place terms,
we’ve turned a break even series of bets, into a winning one.

Of course finding horses that have about 80% chance of placing yet can
be backed at 4/1 each way do not come up everyday, but they do come
up more often than you might think.

Two obvious places you might find instances where the place odds make
each way betting favourable are 8 or 9 runner races with an odds-on favourite and 16 runner handicaps.

The principle is the same whatever the race though. It is comparing
the each way place price against the actual chances that will reveal the true value of an each way bet.

Paul Ruffy –

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Paul Ruffy is a respected horse racing advisor
specialising in each way betting on uk horse racing.

Visit his site for more info

Click Here ==> Visit Paul’s Site

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.

The following is a snippet from today’s message from Big Mike.
Big Mike is an ex accountant who know lieks to use his knowledge of numbers to take cash of the bookmakers.

His followers get daily messages with an array of strategic bets on both horse racing & sport.
The following snippet I thought posting up here as it is an educational piece you can learn from showing you how to hedge an each way double.

More from Big Mike at ===> BIG MIKE BETTING

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Hedging An Each Way Double

The best way of showing how to play a hedge is with an actual example.

AWESOME FOURSOME

4 x £4 ew doubles

Tarn Hows 5/2 & Real Milan 8/1 12.05 Uttoxeter
with Remix 7/2 & Lady Lyricist 12/1 350 Wolves

Stakes of £40 at Bet365 ‘Best Odds’

In the first race Real Milan managed to win at 12/1 and Tarn Hows was
placed at 5/2.

So in effect because of the price of the winner in the first race we had
£52 running on the win side of both Lady Lyricist and also Remix.

I emailed all members as we had to protect this vast windfall. Neither of
the two horses were expected to win so we had to retrieve something in
order to live another day.

The first thing to do is to work out how much would be won if either of the
doubles would have landed. At 7/2 the Remix double would have produced app
£180 and if Lady Lyricist had obliged we were talking well over £1,000.

So we had plenty of oil in the tank. My initial suggestion was to retrieve
stakes at least by laying £4 pre start on each horse back to Betfair. I
then suggested placing mines (lays in running) and in fairness to Remix a
good return was made as the horse was laid down to 2.02 on the win site.
Lady Lyricist was last seen in the middle of Wolverhampton at 9pm last
night so nothing back from her save the initial £4 lay.

On the place site it was a different kettle of fish as Remix – at 7/2 – in
effect gave 1.7 return if placed yet was layable at 1.28 before the start.
Similarly Lady Lyricist at 28/1 would be the equivalent of 6.6 on the place
site yet again layable at a considerable advantage at 3.2. At a stroke both
horses could have been laid at least for £26 (Half the gross bet) and the
cost would have been app £7 on Remix and just over £70 on Lady Lyricist. It
may seem a lot to hedge but consider that the place return if successful
from Remix would have been £35+ and on LL the place return at SP would have
been £250+ – so there was much to save.

Always remember that these huge doubles are rarely going to land – so
evasive action is a must.

Horses On Their First Run In A Handicap Race

Punters are often trying to spot a big sting or a planned gamble. A classic perception is that some horses are intentionally run badly in order to give them a very lenient first handicap mark.

The stats show however that betting every horse on it’s first handicap run is a very fast track route to the poor house.

However NOT all first time handicap runners are a bad bet. With some research and number crunching it is possible to identify profitable angles for backers or alternately sources of good lays for Betfair.

Dave Renham has crunched several years of racing history and written it all up in a couple of free to view articles.

Take a look here

Long Distance Handicap Chases by David Renham

In this article I am going to look at long distance handicap chases to see if we can improve our chances of a) picking the winner, but more importantly b) gaining enough value on the winners to make a profit. I have decided that any race 3m2f or longer counts as a long distance chase.

However, what I am not going to do is back track through data and manipulate the stats to some degree. Indeed far too many people do this – they back-fit the results to create a set of rules or a system, that ends up producing a profit. Unfortunately 99 times out of 100 these ‘positive’ findings will not be reflected in future results. My plan to look at a variety of areas in an attempt to find potential starting points – basically these are raw ideas that have the potential to produce winning systems or winning methods. So here goes. The data has been taken from 2007 to October 4^th 2011. All profit/loss figures are calculated to £1 level stakes. SR% stands for strike rate; ROI% stands for return on investment.

Age

When thinking about long distance chasers I think about older horses rather than younger ones. However as the table shows, it is horses aged 6 to 8 that tend to do best in these events:

Combining horses aged 6 to 8 we get 257 wins from 2180 runners (SR 11.8%) for a loss of £232.19 (ROI -10.7%). OK it still makes a loss, but less than 11p in the £, so these horses seem a good group to concentrate on. If we compare their record with horses aged 9 and older we can see it compares favourably – the older group combine for 229 wins from 2796 runners (SR 8.2%) for a loss of £754.48 (ROI -27.0%). So we have losses of 27p in the £, and a lower strike rate to boot.

Position LTO

Recent form is something most punters latch on to, and hence there often is limited value around following a good run last time out. However, let us see the figures for LTO performance in terms of finishing position for our long distance chasers:

LTO winners have actually got a decent record with losses of only 4.5p in the £. Interestingly, horses that finished 6^th or worse LTO have lost only 6.6p in the £ – I would imagine these runners tend to start at better prices than they should due to punters being indifference to their chances. Horses that failed to finish LTO look very poor value and are horses to avoid.

LTO Market Position

Market factors are often used when looking for ideas, angles or systems, but usually it is the actual starting price that is used. The problem with using this as a ‘filter’ is that we don’t know the SP until after the event. We may have a pretty good idea close to the ‘off’ but not many people are able to wait until the very last minute to place their bet. I often look at market factors from previous races. Here, I am looking at their market position LTO. The results are as follows:

The only semi-positive here is the performance of LTO favourites – a decent enough strike rate coupled with losses of around 6p in the £.

Race type LTO

Most long distance handicap chasers race primarily over fences, but there are a few horses that switch back and forth. I thought it was worth looking at whether race type LTO makes any difference:

It looks as if horses that ran over hurdles last time are worth closer scrutiny. They have a better strike rate than those running over fences LTO, and backing all of them actually has made a profit. Now, it is unlikely this profit would be repeated over a subsequent 5-year period, but clearly these runners perform above expectations and probably start at prices that are higher than they should be.

Jockeys

The perception of many is that although claiming/conditional jockeys are able to take weight off the back of a horse, their inexperience means that the claim becomes effectively worthless. The stats for jockeys in these long distance chases makes interesting reading …………

Conditional jockeys claiming 5lb or more have a strike rate virtually identical to professional jockeys, but their losses are significantly less. This is almost certainly down to punters or bookmakers pushing out the prices of horses ridden by conditional jockeys claiming 5lb or more.

Conclusions

I have looked at 5 different angles and the stats have pinpointed some areas that are better than others. So how best can we utilize the stats? Well, the lazy system punter would almost certainly combine the ‘best’ bits of the five areas – so the system would look something like this:

1. won LTO

2. favourite LTO

3. Aged 6 to 8

4. Ridden by conditional jockey claiming 5lb or more

5. Raced in hurdle race LTO

For the record since 2007 this ‘system’ would have produced a strike rate of 66.7% and a return on investment of over 90%. However, before you all start planning your retirement due to this gilt-edged winning system, I should point out that there would have only been 3 selections in the 5 years of study!!! Essentially, this is an example of why back-fitting is not good practice. Too often people use too many rules when creating their systems – this either cuts down the number of bets to ridiculously small amounts, as in this case, or it simply gives a false set of figures even with a decent final sample size.

At the beginning of the article I mentioned the fact I would be looking to find potential starting points – this is rather than producing rigid ‘systems’ that have too many rules. It is my belief that a sensible starting point is when you combine two factors only. So that is what I am going to do. I am going to use the same 5 rules in the lazy system example, but will combine them in twos, not in one block of five. Here are the results:

As we can see, only one combination has produced poor returns – ‘the won LTO and ran in hurdle LTO’ one. Of the remaining 9 starting points, 4 showed a profit, the other 5 showed small losses. Now I am not advocating backing all horses in the future that match these starting points, but clearly any runner that does ‘match’ should be given further consideration. Others factors could then be taken into account such as going, trainer, class, fitness, etc.

Author Bio

Dave Renham works at the Racing and Football Outlook newspaper as their Race Trends expert; has worked on The Racing Post as a writer of the spotlight column and has published several books about horse racing research.

On the Web Dave is heavily involved with the respected horse racing websites www.PunterProfits.com and www.RacingTrends.co.uk

First Time Blinkers

With the flat season gathering pace, I have decided to look at horses that are blinkered for the first time. There are numerous ideas why horses are given blinkers to wear.

These include:

-         To try and get the horse to concentrate as some horses get distracted by the other runners in a race;

-         To help the horse break quickly from the stalls. Blinkers often have this effect when worn for the first time;

-         As a last resort to try and improve a horses’ performance.

What one should realise however, is that generally fitting first time blinkers is a negative rather than a positive. The data for this article is taken from the last 6 complete seasons – flat/all weather racing only. All profits are calculated to £1 level stakes at SP. It should be noted that I have included only runners that are wearing blinkers only (for the first time) – I have excluded runners who were wearing tongue ties also. For the record the combination of blinkered first time + tongue tie produce virtually identical strike rates and returns (from a much smaller sample).

Firstly let us look at the results of all runners wearing blinkers for the first time on the flat over the period of study:

Essentially therefore these runners win around once in every fourteen starts (roughly) for losses of just under 28 pence in the £. Not a great starting point from a betting perspective. However, let us break these stats down into different categories to see if we can either find better betting propositions, or ‘gilt-edged’ laying opportunities.

Age

The perception is that blinkers improve younger horses best, especially 2yos. Let us look at the results breakdown when split by age:

As we can see 2yos actually perform below the ‘norm’. Looking at the ages as a whole, there is no discernable pattern, although much older horses (8yo+) have done relatively well from a very small sample.

Digging deeper into the 2yo stats, I have broken down the data by number of career runs:

Two things that seem to stand out here are firstly that 2yos that have raced several times (7 or more), react to first time blinkers relatively well; secondly 2yos that are assigned blinkers on their 2^nd or 3^rd career start do extremely poorly in terms of strike rate. My guess is that there is an over-reaction to a poor debut run and the addition of blinkers actually makes things worse.

Market position

Generally the market is an excellent guide to the chances of each horse. Let us look at first time blinkered horses coupled with their market position:

At first glance the performance of favourites looks OK. However, when we take ALL flat favourites as a whole, the strike rate is around 30-31% with losses of only 6-7%. Hence, horses that start favourite when blinkered for the first time are not good betting propositions.

Race types

Let us break the data down now by specific race types:

Although the data is limited a combination of first time blinkers and an amateur rider looks one to avoid. Indeed of the 55 losers, only 3 got placed. I decided to look back further just to gather a bigger data set. I looked at first time blinkered runners in amateur contests from 1997 to 2004 – they fared poorly once again with just 3 wins from 104.

Maiden races have seen losses of around 42 pence in the £ which above the base figure of 27.6p. Auction maidens have provided the poorest results for first time blinkered runners with just 12 wins from 279 (SR 4.3%) for a loss of £151.06 (ROI -54.1%). Indeed, 2yo maiden Auction races are even worse with just 3 winners from 160 runners (SR 1.9%) for a hefty loss of £129.50 (ROI -80.9%).

Claiming races have seen close to a break-even situation despite a low strike rate of around 9%. Indeed if you exclude maiden claimers the strike rate rises to 9.3% and profits are made; albeit 9 pence profit for every £ wagered. However, it should be noted that these profit figures are essentially down to a few big priced winners and hence it is not an area where the backer can be confident to make a profit in the future.

Race distance

Let us break the data down now by race distance:

In general there does not seem to be any pattern here. I had expected longer races to produce slightly poorer results but this is not the case.

Turf v all weather

Horses wearing blinkers for the first time perform better on the all weather compared with turf. This could be due to the fact all weather racing is less competitive; or generally of lower grade. Whatever the reason, the stats are worth taking note of.

Jockeys

I decided to see if the experience of the jockey made a difference. The table below compares professional jockeys with claiming jockeys:

The figures seem to suggest the less experienced jockeys struggle when horses are blinkered for the first time. Losses close to 44 pence in the £ combined with a strike rate of under 5% means that one should swerve these jockeys under these circumstances.

Trainers

Some trainers have a better understanding of their animals than others so one would expect a real mix of results for first time blinkered runners. I have included all trainers that have saddled at least 30 horses with first time blinkers:

Sir Mark Prescott has excellent figures considering how poor these runners do in general – a better than 1 in 5 strike rate with profits of over 50 pence for every £ wagered. At the other end of the scale, Milton Bradley and Alan Berry have combined to produce 0 winners from 116 runners.

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To conclude, horses blinkered for the first time are essentially poor investments. However, some are much worse than others as this article has hopefully highlighted. If nothing else, I suspect this article may save you from backing certain horses that have a very poor chance of winning. This should help your betting bank balance.

Dave Renham

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Dave Renahm is a regular feature writer in the Racing And Football Outlook newspaper.  If you are more of an investor rather than gambler at your racing, more of his educational research work may be found online at www.PunterProfits.com and at www.racingtrends.co.uk

HINT: Both sites above will on occasion offer a free trial to sports betting blog subscribers. Why not Register Here for Free so you know when such a deal is available.

The below was provided  by Secret Betting Club themselves so its possible more of an advert than a review.

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Looking At Races Differently Can Make A Profit

When reading articles about analyzing horse racing you will always find the writers saying that you ‘mustn’t follow the crowd’ or to ‘do things differently’ or something similar. They then go on to outline a method that is not particularly different to anything else that you have ever read!

What they are saying is correct. You do want to do things differently. It is by doing things differently that you will find your edge and by finding your edge you will also find your profit.

Over the course of this article I want to plant some seeds for ways of analyzing a race that you may have never of thought of before. It is these ideas that will ultimately help you to look at a horse race differently to everyone else betting on it and find your long-term profit.

All races have different conditions and they also have different types of runners. This is what determines how you should analyse them. There is less point focusing on speed in a race that is 3 miles long, you would be better off focusing on pace and stamina (for example).

I would like to focus on sprint races as it is something I have been teaching quite a lot recently and with increasing all-weather racing I feel that it is going to be something that you can use in the future.

With sprint races we can focus on speed as our analysis. This in itself is not different but there are many ways to look at a horse from a speed perspective. Some of these can include:

Speed class based on speed figures of winners in previous races

Projected speed

Speed ratings

Collateral speed form

Speed improvements

These are just a few possibilities and I can guarantee that out of the list above, speed ratings will be the only one that has a lot of people using it and even with this you can look at the actual speed ratings in different ways to other people.

However the perspective I would like to focus on here is Speed Improvements. It stands to reason that a runner that is improving in speed has every chance of improving its speed in the race it is about to run.

All you now need to do is simply to find out if the horse has the required speed to compete in the race to make your final selections, but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me go back a bit and investigate how I do this.

First of all I look at each runners last 8 speed figures. I am looking for horses who have a general trend of improvement. This does not mean that I expect them to increase in every single race but that the overall trend of the last 8 races is upwards.

You are now already ahead of most punters because you are focusing on runners who have shown a recent improvement rather than just narrowing your search down to those with the highest figure. A horse that has shown recent improvement would have every reason to continue this trend.

Speed figures, although normally adjusted for these factors, can change for a runner depending on the distance and going. This makes it better for us just to consider the last 8 races that match a similar distance and going condition as the race we are analyzing.

Already in the last 2 paragraphs you have learned how you can identify runners that are improving over the same conditions as the race you are analyzing in a matter of minutes. This on its own is incredibly powerful and can result in profits on its own. However we want to target our selections even more accurately.

We have a shortlist of runners that are improving in speed over the distance and going of todays race. It makes sense to now look at whether or not these runners are fast enough to win the race. While they may be improving it is no use if they do not have the raw speed to win.

Assessing the raw speed of a horse can be very difficult and, contrary to popular belief, cannot be done by just looking for the runner with the highest speed figure. Just using the highest speed figure or the average speed figures of all runners does not work because no rating is 100% accurate. To get around this we use something called confidence intervals. A confidence interval will allow you to assess, with a 90% confidence, the likelihood of a speed rating being between a high and low figure. The actual figure recorded will sit in the middle of these two numbers.

We calculate this figure by:

1)      Calculate the average of the last 8 speed figures

2)      Calculate the standard deviation for these figures

3)      Calculate the standard error for these figures using the result of step 2

4)      Multiply the standard error from step 3 by 1.397

5)      For the lower confidence level subtract the result of step 4 to each of your eight speed figures

6)      For the upper confidence level add the result of step 4 to each of your eight speed figures

For each of your speed ratings from the last eight races you will now have 3 figures. The lower confidence level, the speed rating and the upper confidence level.

How does this help us?

This helps us because we now know, with a 90% confidence, that the slowest the horse ran was the lowest figure and the fastest the horse ran is the highest figure. If we work this out for each of our 8 past speed ratings we can begin to see which of our selections actually have the speed to win the race.

You do this by following these rules:

Find the winner with the highest speed figure in the last 8 races.

Record the lower confidence interval for this speed figure.

Make sure that all of our selections have had a race in their last 8 races where the highest confidence interval is above this figure.

That’s it! Just three simple steps and you have made sure that all your runners actually have the speed to win the race.

What have we actually achieved?

By looking at races from a slightly different perspective we have managed to shortlist the runners that have been improving on the current conditions of the race. We have then narrowed our shortlist down into the final selections by only keeping those that have shown they have the speed to win using a statistical approach.

To make this even easier the Race Advisor features RA Graphs which displays all the information you need to find these selections in easy to read graphs provided for racing every single day.

Michael Wilding
www.RaceAdvisor.co.uk

Author Bio

The Race Advisor was started by Michael Wilding and is aimed at the new and semi-experienced bettor.
We are the leading online resource for learning how to bet profitably providing unique features that are
unavailable elsewhere. There are also over 200 articles on the site looking at different sports and how to profit from them.

Having read the articles on this site many of you may be looking to join a subscription tipping service but with so many options available, and so many sharp operators out there, it is difficult to know where to start. Welcome to the Pro Gambler guide to getting started and finding a reliable service that chimes with your tastes and expectations.

When doing your initial research don’t just plump for the tipster with the most persuasive adverts, ring a selection of services to get a feel for what’s on offer out there and don’t be afraid to ask some ‘difficult’ questions about results, projected profits and the kind of selections you can expect to be backing. Remember if you don’t find the reassurance you are looking for move on, cross the said service off your list and call someone else.

Here are a few of the key themes you should use as a checklist when you are making your initial enquiries of any horse racing tipster or sports betting advisory service

1. CONTACT

Contact, accountability and accessibility should be key considerations for anyone looking to join a betting service. If results are poor, or there is something you need clarified, then you need to know that you can you contact someone easily and, that when you do, you’ll get knowledgeable, reassuring answers rather than evasive flannel.

In this respect, the first few conversations you have over the phone are usually very instructive. Do you feel like you’re being given the hard sell or does what you’re being told sound like an honest assessment of what you might expect as a member? If it is difficult to get hold of an accountable person at the outset, whilst you are intending to give them money, imagine what it will be like once you have subscribed and – worst case scenario – things have not panned out as described?

2. PAST RESULTS

Ask for every service’s results record in advance of signing up and also check their list of past winners account prices against both Starting Prices (S.P.) and opening price shows via archives on sites, such as The Racing Post and Sporting Life. If there is a consistently wide variance between the two prices quoted on the advised selections then it is very likely that you will be unable to get the account prices in the future on a sustainable basis. It may also be the case that something is very much amiss in the way your prospective service records its recommended bets. Obviously, unverifiable historical results should be treated with some caution. Past records are not always reliable as a guide to either future profits or the reality of the bets a service actually recommended on any given day, but if you can see discrepancies at this initial enquiry stage, it should ring warning bells for you and you should tread very carefully thereafter.

3. STAKING

Staking is a key issue that ties in specifically with both past results and how a service has created its alleged profits.

The larger the profit claims made by a service then the greater the likelihood that the stakes advised with the bets will be proportionally large too. Firstly, you must decide whether you would be able or are prepared to regularly risk such large amounts of capital or whether you’re ideally looking to operate within a comfort zone of extremely restricted stakes. Once you’ve made that decision you should factor it into your plan so you can firstly, recoup your subscription fees and secondly, create a satisfactory return on your investment. Betting £20 level stakes, for example, you probably won’t recoup the cost of a £1,000 subscription so you should choose your strategy and your service carefully at the outset. You should also consider how difficult it can be to get a big bet accepted when the bookmaker already has sizeable liabilities for the horse/team/player you’re being asked to back. Anyone who has ever tried to get a bet on a Pricewise selection from The Racing Post, for example, will know that they invariably struggle to get the best price advised in the paper and/or will have their stakes restricted on any large bet they make. Ask yourself: is this a likely scenario for you with the service you are looking to join?

If your prospective service’s profits are based on much larger prices that the S.P. and an expansive or arcane staking system, you will have a lot of trouble even getting anywhere close to their projected profit figures. Be sure to ask how the profits are recorded – £100 level stakes is the general industry standard – however, many services’ adverts record profits to £100 per point advised. If that’s the case, you need to know that in advance. Do you have the required betting bank to be backing a series of 5 pt win bets at £100 per bet (ie £500 win singles). If not, can you still make a profit from this service using a more conservative staking plan? It’s worth noting however that an unfamiliar or unusual approach to staking may not necessarily mean that a service is ‘bad’ or duplicitous in its claims, however, it may well mean that this level of complexity or capital exposure is not for you and you should aim to find a service appropriate to both your available investment capital and your personal betting psychology. Think in terms of issues such as strike rate, losing runs and the general prices of the selections you’ll be backing – does what is on offer correspond to what you feel comfortable with?

For example, my preference is for backing selections in a range between 3/1 and 33/1, I don’t like backing hyped favourites at odds on prices and I’m happy to accept that as a consequence, I will inevitably encounter losing runs. Other bettors however, prefer to follow the weight of money in the market assuming that the price offered represents a direct corollary of the horse’s chances of winning on the day, losing runs make them nervous and they want a steady stream of winners – almost regardless of the prices offered. Basically, you have to honestly evaluate what kind of bettor you are and find a service that suits that profile. For example, there is no service anywhere that can demonstrate a long term strike rate of 80%+ backing horses priced at 7/2 and above. It just can’t be done, and if anyone claims they can, swerve them quick-style.

4. GETTING THE BETS

There are a number of service ‘quirks’ that you should investigate in advance and avoid at all costs.

Look out for:

- Expensive call changes. Let’s face it, you’re already being asked to fork out for an expensive subscription, being hit with an expensive list of premium rate call charges too just isn’t on.

- Be wary of repeated daily call backs that will make the membership a millstone over time. It may be fine to make three or four calls per day to ascertain the recommended bets if you work from home but for most people, holding down a job, it is potentially an administrative nightmare and an impractical and frustrating way to enjoy your hobby.

- Make sure and ask what alternatives, if any, the service offers in terms of accessing the daily bets. For example, are they offered by email, a text or on a secure website as an alternative to a daily phonecall. Convenience is a key to getting the most from your betting.

- Be very suspicious of services operating under an umbrella of different services because if you are struggling to recoup your outlays as a member of ‘Joe Bloggs Tipping’s Daily service’, you can rest assured that his Gold Service, Exclusive Service and Senior Service will inevitably be being marketed to all and sundry as ‘going great guns’. Be aware that services with multiple arms and entities may often also play up their big winners in adverts without divulging exactly which service they’ve come from. It’s a good ruse: after all if you operate seven services, offering up 50 tips a week between them, then it stands to reason that you’ll regularly find some big priced winners. Whether you could back all these selections, pay seven lots of fees and still turn a profit, however, is highly unlikely.

- Another common ploy is to advertise that members can expect to back selections at average odds of 5/1 or more. What the adverts won’t tell you, however, is that the average odds figures are maintained by occasionally backing triple figure priced no-hopers to augment the steady flow of short priced favourites. Technically they are telling the truth, of course but, as a legitimate marketing practice, it sucks. See also: services recommending backing short-priced selections each way as a means of boosting strike rate or length of winning run stats. The recording of winning bets at prices that would never have been freely available to ordinary service members betting with mainstream bookmakers is another common bugbear.

FREE TRIAL

Ask for a free trial of some kind. Any service worth their salt should be happy to give you even one day’s access to the service’s selections. This may not sound like much, yet even a day will tell you a lot about the way the service works irrespective of results. You can tell a lot about the integrity of a service from the tone, content and insights of a message. Just because you had a 10/1 winner on your free day or a loser, it does not mean that every day brings 10/1 winners or you will always get losers and you should factor that into your expectations. However, if the message amounts to little more than some inside info ‘hocus pocus’, the name of your selection and the time and meeting it is racing at then beware – especially, if the advised horse is a hotly tipped odds on favourite. The chances are your tipster is picking his selections from his daily paper or following the money on Betfair – just like you would do. Another alternative to a free trial is a nominal first month’s fee when you sign up (£10-£20, say) with an option to cancel your subscription to subsequent month’s at the full terms if you are less than satisfied with results after 30 days.

Remember, above all else it is important that the service suits your requirements. As my end of year essay for The Observer Newspaper Tipster Project illustrates , there are as many services as there are individual bettors temperaments and expectations. Personally speaking, I’d say a good service should allow you to improve your own betting as a result of the knowledge its experts pass on. Such knowledge will stand you well over your long term betting career. Where services give little more than a selection and no reasoning of why the bet is being made it is both very difficult to evaluate the quality of information you are receiving and also be reassured that you’ve made an informed choice. Is your tipster’s winning run simply the result of a lucky streak or conversely, is a losing spell perfectly explainable and likely to be reversed very soon? Only open exposure to a tipster’s methods will allow you to answer that question satisfactorily.

Given a choice between two equally profitable services, I’d personally always opt for the one that will educate me and enhance my enjoyment of my betting rather than simply spoon feed me names of horses without any accompanying rationale. Of the services I’ve personally monitored to date, the impressively friendly forum on The Mathematician’s website www.mathematician-betting.co.uk is an extension of that philosophy based around a community ideal. Alternatively, Steve Lewis Hamilton’s service broadcasts a weekly message that deals with questions arising from subscribers’ enquiries and looks back in detail over the previous week’s bets.

Lastly, there is one particular option that you’d be well advised to avoid at all costs. That is unsolicited glossy mailshots that come your way via direct mail campaigns.

In this instance, the tipsters’ jazzy brochures will offer up all sorts of inducements from access to the most privileged stable intelligence to entry into every kind of sting, coup and scam imaginable – all for a never to be repeated cut price fee. In general, these offers, emanating from tipsters nobody has ever heard off, are little more than fishing expeditions hoping to snare a £100 or so from a constituency of desperate punters looking to transform their fortunes on the cheap. These scamsters enter into their campaign full in the knowledge that no-one will stay with them long enough to require re-subscription at their advertised full fee rates. These services are fly by night, superficial and unprofitable and over a period of time you’ll see the same offers and claims played out over a number of different mailshot formats as the conmen reinvent themselves under a succession of aliases. Another dubious tactic of the mail-shot brigade, especially if they’ve just tipped a winning selection, is to make follow up calls to their clients asking for additional fees to join an inner circle of members with access to ‘a stream of guaranteed winners’ or a hush hush coup that skirts the bounds of legality. These slick skilled operators will adopt all the boiler room tactics of hardselling and manipulation that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the movie Glengarry Glenross. My advice, if you’ve just joined a service and you get that call, is put the phone down and don’t entertain them, however much you’re tempted by the sales pitch.

Greg Gordon

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Greg Gordon undertook a year long investigation into horse racing and sports betting services for the Guardian / Observer Newspaper. He continues to monitor many such services with updates about what’s good posted on his own Pro Gambler website. To visit his site click here ==> Tipster Proofing

Know Your All Weather Race Types by David Renham

This is the second article in a series of three all weather articles – the first being on southwell Sires In this piece I am going to look at specific race types in attempt to help you, the reader, gain that important edge over “the crowd”. Many punters are put off the all weather due to the general standard of racing – low grade handicaps, claimers and sellers are regular events on the all weather circuit, but there are plenty of positive and negative angles that once appreciated can improve your chances of making a profit. The focus of this article is these lower grade contests.

The data for this article is taken from last six years; ROI stands for return on investment; SR stands for strike rate and LTO stands for last time out. Unless otherwise stated, all profit and losses are quoted to industry starting price.

Claiming races

Market – the top three in the betting have provided just under 74% of the winners. Favourites have an especially good record in all weather claimers scoring 35.6% of the time. Indeed backing all favourites “blind” would have yielded very small losses of 4%. Indeed backing all favourites since the inception of Betfair SP would have seen you break even and that is taking commission into account. Longer priced horses have a poor record and runners priced 16/1 or bigger show significant losses. Their record reads 73 wins from 3570 qualifiers (SR 2%) showing losses of £1473.00 to (ROI -41.3%). At the completely rank outsider stage – horses priced 80/1 or bigger have produced 425 consecutive losers with just 8 of them managing a place.

Last time out – horses that won LTO go on to win again just over 25% of the time in claimers, and backing all such runners would have produced losses of around 11%. Horses that won on the all weather LTO are much better betting propositions that horses that won on the turf LTO – strike rates of 26% against 15% confirm this. Indeed, regardless of LTO position, it is an advantage to have raced on the all weather LTO rather than on the turf LTO.

Age – interestingly older horses have a better strike rate than younger ones in all age claimers. Horses aged 3 to 5 have a combined strike rate of 8.7%, whereas horses aged 6 or older have a combined strike rate of 14.4%.

Sex of horse – In claimers colts, geldings and horses are 1.62 times more likely to win than fillies and mares.

Miscellaneous stats:

1. Horses that are racing for a new stable in all weather claiming races score around 9% of the time, but backing all runners would have lost you about 46% (46p for every £1 wagered);

2. Maiden runners have a poor record in claimers scoring just 6% of the time and losing around 37%;

3. Horses that have recorded 2 or more course successes have a decent strike rate of 17% and backing all runners would have yielded very small losses of 2.2%;

4. Horses having their first ever racecourse outing are worth avoiding with only 7 wins from 229 qualifiers (SR 3.1%). Backing all debutants would have produced significant losses of £149.50 (ROI -65.3%);

5. Horses that raced in a claiming race last time have a strike rate of 15%; compare this to horses that raced in a selling race last time whose strike rate is under 8%;

6. The following trainers secured a strike rate of 20% or better during the 6-year study (from at least 60 runners) – Tom Dascombe, Dandy Nicholls, Kevin Ryan, Jim Boyle, Jack Pearce, Gary Moore.

Selling races

Market – the top three in the betting have provided 71.7% of the winners with favourites winning a third of all races. Backing all selling favourites would have yielded a loss of 6.8%. There are two favourite stats worth noting; firstly horses priced 8/11 or shorter have scored over 70% of the time and backing them all would have produced a profit of 10%; secondly favourites returning to the track less than 10 days since their last run have provided 89 winners from 227 (SR 39.2%) for a profit of £19.55 (ROI +8.6%). Runners priced 25/1 or bigger have an extremely poor record – just 20 wins from 1887 qualifiers (SR 1.1%) showing huge losses of £1164.00 to (ROI -61.7%). Horses priced 50/1 or bigger have produced just 3 winners from 890 runners for losses of over 81%.

Last time out – horses that won LTO are not good propositions in selling races. They win roughly 1 time in 5 but backing all runners would have yielded losses of around 19%. One area worth noting is that horses that ran LTO in 3yo or all age maidens have a dreadful strike rate – they have provided just 14 winners from 317 qualifiers (SR 4.4%).

Age – as with claiming races, older horses have a better strike rate than younger ones in all age claimers. However, the bias is less pronounced. Horses aged 3 to 5 have a combined strike rate of 9%, whereas horses aged 6 or older have a combined strike rate of 12.2%.

Sex of horse – in sellers once again colts, geldings and horses have an edge over fillies and mares. However, it is not quite as clear cut as it was in claimers with the male to female success ratio in sellers standing at 1.4.

Miscellaneous stats:

1. Horses upped in class have won just 4.5% of the time; horses racing in the same class as LTO have won 10.3% of the time; horses dropping in class have won 11.4% of the time;

2. Trainers Peter Evans, Jim Boyle, Gary Moore and George Baker are trainers who have good records in selling races on the all weather;

3. Horses carrying high weights in sellers have a better strike rate than those carrying low weights. Horses carrying 9st or more have a strike rate of 12.6%; horses carrying under 9st have a strike rate of 8.8%;

4. For “in running” punters it should be noted that the early leader of a 5f seller goes on to win over 25% of the time.

Handicap races (class 6 or lower)

Market – the top three in the betting have provided just over 54% of the winners. Favourites win around 1 race in 4 (26% to be precise) for losses of under 7%. The most successful favourites in handicaps have been in 2yo nurseries – a strike rate of 30.4% and profits of 6%. 3yo only handicaps see favourites perform solidly thanks to a strike rate of 30.9% with losses amounting to less than 2%. Lingfield has been most successful track for low grade handicap favourites producing a break even situation to SP.

Last time out – LTO winners score 16.6% of the time, with losses standing at 19%. However, if the LTO winners return to the track within 7 days their strike rate increases to 24%. These quick returns score 37% of the time and reach a break even situation if they start favourite. However, beware of LTO winners that start 10/1 or bigger in the betting – they have won just 4.4% of the time with steep losses of 38%.

Horses that ran in handicaps LTO are better betting propositions that horses that ran in non handicaps LTO – strike rates of 9% against 6.5% confirm this. The returns for each category though do not totally mirror the strike rates with losses of 21% for runners that ran in handicaps LTO, compared with losses of 25% for runners who ran LTO in non handicaps.

Sex of horse – the male to female success ratio is 1.3 in low grade handicaps open to both sexes. Percentage losses for male runners stand at only 17% compared with 28% for females. It is also should be noted that female runners have really struggled at Lingfield – their strike rate at the Surrey track is just 5.6% and losses are over 40%. Male runners have a definite advantage over female runners in these handicaps.

Miscellaneous stats:

1. Female runners returning to the track after a break of 57 or more days have a poor record – just 92 wins from 1967 runners (SR 4.7%) for a loss of £788.17 (ROI -40.1%);

2. Colts when starting favourites have been fairly rare (around 40 per year). However, of the 225 qualifiers over the past 6 seasons, 86 have won (SR 38.2%) for a profit of £50.05 (ROI +22.2%);

3. Runners priced 25/1 or bigger have won 2.1% of the time for losses to SP of 25%. However, since Betfair Starting Price was introduced in 2008 you could have made a profit by backing them all at BSP. Despite having only 70 winners from 3717 runners, you would have made a profit of £730.88 (ROI +19.7%).

I hope this article has shown you that the all weather offers betting opportunities in all race types – you just need to do some digging!

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Dave Renham is a leading researcher into uk horse racing.

His site at www.PunterProfits.com contains a lot more of his research work. Some is free and some is member only. It’s a good site for racing realists who believe that knowing your stats is a likely root to success.

The private boards there contain many interesting and highly past profitable threads maintained by members of punterprofits who obvioulsy have learnt a trick or two from all Dave’s horse racing research teachings.

National Hunt Favourites who failed to finish – how do they perform next time out?

It’s an interesting question.

There is some logic to thinking that a horse who was favourite last time out must have some significant positive attributes.

If he failed to finish in his last race would that big blot on his most recent record put too many people off him next time and thus possibly present a value betting opportunity?

I am sure we could all scratch our chins, ponder and even waffle a load of hot air on the matter.

One way to provide a serious answer to such questions however is to get stuck into the stats and come up with an accurate truth.

A smarter way however is to let someone else do all that boring research work and you can then just examine the findings.

If you think that’s a good idea take a look here ==> National Hunt Favourite Stats