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

There is an interesting article over at PunterProfits describing how contestants

in the hit tv show the apprentice might fare in give a betting system task.

Which betting system creators will lord Sugar point the finger at saying “You’re Fired !”

The article is aimed at educating about the dangers of back fitting a horse racing system and is well worth a read if you ever wish to design a racing system yourself or are prone to buying them of system vendors.

Find the article at this link ==>  Betting System

Most horses tend to exhibit a preference for a certain style of running.

You may for example have heard of horses being referred to as front runners or hold up horses.

Traditionally such thinking is applied more so to flat racing than National Hunt Racing. A classic good bet for example might be a front runner or a horse with proven early pace in a good draw at a highly biased sprint track where the bias is due to a tight bend. ie the horse has the early pace ability to maximise its draw advantage.

Such thinking of pace or running style is not often considered on National Hunt horses however.

Horse Racing Researcher Dave Renham from Racing Trends has put his nose to the grindstone and carried out some research.

Findings may surprise many.

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Pace / Running Styles in National Hunt Racing

Over the past year or two I have explored pace and running styles in much greater depth than I used to. The reason for this is simple – I believe this is an area where hard work and research can still gain you a betting edge over the majority of punters. Let me explain this in more detail:

For this piece I am going to split all the winners of the races studied into three distinct categories – horses that ran from the front early on in the race (front runners); horses that ran close to the pace early in the race (prominent runners); and horses that raced in midfield or at the back early in the race (hold up horses). Essentially, the position a horse takes up early in the race, tends to remain virtually the same for a good proportion of that race. For example, if a horse takes up a prominent position just behind the pace in the first two furlongs of say a 1m2f race, there is a strong chance that the horse will still be in a very similar position after 6-7f. In contrast, you don’t often see a horse lead for 2 furlongs, then drop back to the middle of the pack for 2 furlongs, then race just off the pace for 2 furlongs, then drop back to the middle again, etc, etc. Hence from a research point of view, the fact that a horses’ running style tends to stay consistent for around 75% of the race makes life much easier.

Taking the year 2008 as an example there were just over 6000 races on the flat in this country – the winning splits for the three pace categories were as follows:

Front runners won 20.2% of all races;

Prominent runners won 45% of all races;

Hold up horses won 34.8% of all races.

At first glance, one might be thinking therefore that prominent runners have an advantage. Well they have won more races than every other group right? However, to give more meaning to these figures we need to know what percentage of all the runners were a) front runners; b) prominent runners and c) hold up horses. Here are the percentages:

Front runners accounted for 11% of all runners;

Prominent runners accounted for 39.4% of all runners;

Hold up horses accounted for 49.6% of all runners.

These figures now reveal a powerful statistic – that front runners win nearly twice as many races as they statistically should do. In this particular year, they won 20.2% of all races having provided just 11% of all the total runners. Being more precise, they have won 1.84 times more often than their expected probability – their expected probability being 11%. Hence, taking a very general view, the best value in flat racing in terms of running styles/pace clearly lies with front runners. I could have chosen any year in the last 10 and you would have seen similar results.

Conversely, although hold up horses win nearly 35% of all races, they provide roughly 50% of the total runners. Hence, once again taking a very general view, hold up horses are clearly poor value from a pace/running styles perspective.

When looking in much greater depth at these ideas, one will find that an even greater edge can be found when looking at certain distances, and also at certain courses. All of my research, and hence all of my articles for that matter, have looked at this in flat racing only. However, the main focus for this article is pace/running styles in National hunt racing so let me move onto National Hunt racing.

Let us take the year 2008 again as my example, and as before, let me split all the winners of the races studied into the three distinct categories – front runners; prominent runners; hold up horses. In 2008 there were 3368 National hunt races in this country – the winning splits for the three pace categories were as follows:

Front runners won 17% of all races;

Prominent runners won 45.7% of all races;

Hold up horses won 37.3% of all races.

As before, we need to know what percentage of all the runners were a) front runners; b) prominent runners and c) hold up horses. Here are the percentages:

Front runners accounted for 10.2% of all runners;

Prominent runners accounted for 38% of all runners;

Hold up horses accounted for 51.8% of all runners.

Once again we can see that front runners seem to be the best value – there advantage may not be a strong as it is on the flat but essentially front runners in National hunt racing win 1.67 times more often than they statistically should. In addition, as with their flat counterparts, hold up horses perform relatively poorly when judged from this pace perspective.

For me, these figures open up a new world of possibilities in terms of my National hunt betting. Up to now, as I have already intimated, 99.9% of my pace research has been on the flat. However, although the ‘edge’ looks less strong in National hunt racing, it still looks a strong enough edge to research in considerable depth. Indeed, for the record, if you had managed to predict the front runner in every National hunt race of 2008, you would have made a profit of £35,000 to £100 level stakes to SP. Of course, this would have been impossible, unless you are Mystic Meg … lol, but what if you had bet ‘in running’ on every front runner, placing your bet within the first 10 seconds of each race? My educated guess is that you probably would still have made a profit and my reasoning is thus: although front runners often shorten in price at the beginning of a race, this contraction is offset by the fact that the Betfair price at the off is likely to be 10 to 25% bigger than the eventual SP. Hence even if the price contracts 10 to 25% in the first ten seconds, then you are still effectively getting SP, or near as damn it, on the horse in question. I appreciate that there is commission to be taken into account, and that the contraction in price for each horse will vary in percentage terms, but hopefully you see my point.

Dave Renham

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Dave Renham is a leading researcher into uk horse racing.

His RacingTrends service attracts thinking punters who can see the benefit of knowing more about horse racing cold hard facts and figures than the general crowds populating the betting Exchanges.

ROI In Horse Racing

I received a question from someone new to betting on horses.

They had seen me refer to ROI and wondered what that meant.

Quite simply ROI stands for Return on Investment.

It is a way to measure the profitability of a set of betting selections
whether they be your personal picks, system selections or a tipsters tips.

A complete mad gambler is unlikely to care about such things.
If however you have a more investor style attitude to your betting
ROI figures give you a very good measure as to whether a method is worth following or not.

Let’s do a few quick examples.

Example 1:

Assume you place 100 bets of £100 each

The total you have invested is 100 * £100 = £10,000

For arguments sake let’s say your bets do well and the total return to you is £12,000

( ie £10,000 original stake and £2000 profit )

Your Return on Investment ( ROI ) is therefore £12000 / £10000 = 1.2

Normally this is expressed as a percentage

As a percentage 1.2 is 120%

Example 2:

This time let us assume the betting has not been so good and has lost some money.

Again we have 100 bets of £100 each for a total investment of £10,000

The return this time is less than staked.

We only get £7000 back.

So ROI = £7000/£10000 = 0.7

Or expressed as a percentage 70%

From the above you can see that the breakeven mark is at the line of 1.0 or 100%

ROI above 100% is good
Below it is bad

Profit on Turnover

POT or Profit on Turnover is an alternate measure of betting profitability.

Here we look at net profits as opposed to net return   ( return includes original stake )

Using the same data from the two examples above

1 – POT = £2000 / £10000 = 0.2 or 20%

2 – POT = -£3000 / £10000 = -0.3 or -30%

Note how when using POT 0% is the line of breakeven.
Also note that POT can be positive or negative.

Tote Exacta and CSF Bets

Dave Renham made an interesting post the other day on his blog analysing the pros and cons of The Tote Exacta and the bookmaker equivalent the computer straight forcast bet.

These bets are roughly the same in that you are trying to predict the first two home in a race.

A question worth asking however is whether the Tote version or the bookmaker version is likely to pay you more cash winnings.

Dave’s research into this question is worth a read.

Click Here ==> Exacta and CSF Bets

In flat racing the horses start the race from metal starting stalls.
The draw refers to a horse’s placing / position in the starting stalls.
Draw 1 is on the left, while the highest number is on the right.
On left handed round courses the lowest draw is drawn next to the inside rail;
on right handed courses the highest draw is drawn next to the inside rail.

The draw can be very important at certain courses over certain distances.

This is due to a number of factors – it could be that some horses have an
advantage because they are drawn on the inside and are hence able to
take the shortest route round the bend.
Picture I guess the 400m in athletics and the advantage you would
have on the inside track if starting positions were not staggered.

Another factor that can induce draw bias is the ground.
It could be that the ground close to one of the rails is quicker than the
rest of the course and hence those horse drawn in the right position can
take best advantage of the better ground.

To give you an idea of how strong draw biases can be ponder Chester over
5 furlongs. 5f at Chester is a classic case of a draw bias resulting from track configuration.

Since 1997 horses drawn 1 (on the inside) have won 43 of 205
races which is better than winning 1 race in every five.

You would have made a profit backing all horses drawn 1 over that period.
Compare this to horses drawn 10 or higher who have combined to win just 1 race from 276 runners!

Knowledge of where Draw Bias is likely to occur is very important to have.

Draw Bias stats can be used in a variety of ways.

Well drawn horses should be given much more consideration when analyzing a race for example.
Conversely poorly drawn horses have a severe negative to overcome and
you should be wary if you wish to back them. You may use the draw to
eliminate all the weaker drawn horses in order to make the race easier.

Clearly occasionally these poorer drawn horses will win but overall the stats
will be in your favour. At some courses backing the best drawn horse or best
two drawn horses has made a long term profit – this is a rather simplistic way
of using the draw but it can be profitable.

Indeed you may want to consider backing the best drawn horses in forecasts and tricasts.
For example, looking at Thirsk over 5 furlongs – from 2005 to 2008 in 10+ runner handicaps
(the best races to use draw bias) if you had permed the highest four draws in twenty four
£1 straight tricasts in every race would have yielded a profit of £1265.24 (ROI +175.7%).
If you had permed the highest four draws in twelve £1 straight forecasts in every race would
have yielded a profit of £206.90 (ROI +57.5%).
This bet would have been landed in 12 of the 30 races (40% of races).
These types of forecast / tricast bet offer big returns for a relatively small outlay.

A further way to use Draw Bias information is to look for horses that run well
despite being hampered by a very serious draw bias against it.

A horse that comes 4th for example when very badly drawn could do much better
in a future race if on an equal draw or favourorable draw footing.

Dave Renham

Author Bio:

Dave Renham is a uk horse racing researcher who specialises
in cold hard facts and figures that can be used to open your eyes
to more informed betting propositions.

Draw Bias relative to each days racing is one area he covers in his excellent daily racing stats service.  For more info on this click here ==> Draw Bias