Do Always Back The Top Of The Betting Market
Do You Always Back The Top Of The Horse Racing Betting Market?
High Class Races
Do you ever look at a race card especially for UK non-handicap horse races and I mean a class 1 race or higher and do not know where to look beyond favoured horses in the horse racing betting market or do you keep following the crowd?
Mark Horrocks BSc (Hons) Computer Science
+44 07973-786657
Email: vanderwheil6@gmail.com
Let us look at a typical scenario.
Joe the punter sits down with his cup of tea and starts analysing the 1m race at Newmarket and starts with the top 2 or 3 in the betting market.
This is the key driving factor for most punters looking at the top of the market and prices and then add in a bit of market hype to cement their convictions.
Now I am not saying this is wrong we all analyse races differently and everybody has an opinion. But let us look into this a bit further the market forces have priced this race up and money follows money.
There will be some slight deviations in prices, but you won’t see a 6/4 shot priced up by another firm at 5/1 I wish they did!
Let us look at our 1m race.
We will look at horses A B and C at the top of the market.
A 6/4
B 5/2
C 6/1
Joe looks at horse A and is now unsure because he looks at horse B and thinks this looks tricky due to the price similarity and doubts come into his conviction on the horse A he has already formed an opinion on.
Joe is an above average punter and has a soft spot for horse A, as he has collected on it in the past as it was progressing through the race class ranks and has made a few quid on it when it was 8/1 or bigger.
But Joe is not deterred, takes a deep breath and ignores horse B and does not bother reading the form of horse B. Joe puts the money down on horse A and just makes a cautionary glance at horse B’s jockey and trainer as a final qualifier, decides that won’t win Joe says with evidence to back it up. What evidence?
During Joe’s thought processes and emotions horse A starts to steam in and the media has been touting horse A all week and Joe sits back thinks great stuff they all must be right so must I.
Joe has now finished for the day, and the wonderful pay day is to arrive later t, I think we have all been there! some time in our lives.
Now let us look at horse B’s credentials, the horse has a powerful stable behind it and it’s the only ride for a foreign raider jockey from another country today which does happen. But Joe thinks a popular jockey is on my horse A and he/she has won on it before, and they have a full book of rides, and the championship is on their agenda.
I am being a tad sarcastic here and I am not having a dig at Joe’s horse form analysis or approach, and it is up to punters what they do with their money.
Now let’s look at another approach Joe could have took and there are many.
This is an easy approach but unconventional for the busy punter on a Saturday or Sunday.
I have done this many times and it does work and you can gain a great deal of satisfaction from this.
1. Look at the race card for this race and do not dismiss any horses on the first pass. Look beyond the top 5 in the horse racing betting market.
2. Look for foreign raider jockeys making a long distance to the race in the UK as this is a £90K race penalty value. These are foreign raiders who race mainly in another country, like France, Italy, Japan and many more.
3. Make a note of these horses identified in 2 above and their decimal odds or price.
4. View the horse racing betting market for this class of race as two halves as follows, the top 5 in the betting market as the (top half) and will throw up more winners than the second half of the market. The second half being the remaining horses at the bottom of the market.
5. Now look at the second half of the market for these foreign raiders we have identified earlier.
6. These foreign raiders have costs, flights, hotels to get to the meeting and they are probably sacrificing other rides in their native country. Now you will lose more than you win as their decimal odds will reflect this.
7. Now here is the exit position for this approach, use a betting exchange like Betfair and place your bets in the Betfair place market only. You might just obtain a price nearing or better than the price at the top half of the Betfair win market i.e. top 3 in the betting for 3 or 4 places in the place market. We see horse A and B getting beaten in this scenario all the time.
We see this scenario week in week out the market goes crazy for the top 2 in the betting with normally a combined book value of 60% or more. The clash of the titans we hear on the media!
Do not get me wrong I love a good horse race between top rated horses in the market, but I do not like losing money. I think a race should be looked at in its entirety.
The match of the season whose turn is it to win today can horse A get its revenge over horse B over the added extra furlong is a typical quote!
Yes, there is some merit in this when both horses are rated well clear of the rest of the field. But we have all been there before and horse A and B have a private duel with both jockey’s eye balling each other and adopting their own race tactics. Horse F comes with a late acceleration burst and game over, the race is won
Good luck!