Laying Bets - All Weather Laying!
Laying is a new phenomenon for punters. Whilst many have jumped in and say it is the only way to make money at horseracing (you never see a poor bookmaker), the majority of punters can not quite grasp the concept of picking a loser rather than a winner.If the majority of punters were honest with themselves they would see that they do indeed have the knack of picking losers. If a punter is losing 10 of his money each year, then by doing the opposite, i.e. laying his selection, then he should make a 10 profit.The same reason can be applied to laying all runners in a race. If you were to put a level bet on every runner in a race, because of the overround (bookies built in margin), you would lose about 20 depending on the type of race. So it would seem a good idea to lay every runner not back, and thus make 20 per race.But these examples are just punters fallacies. The theories seems good in practice, in reality it would just not work.The reason why the single bet punter is losing is most probably because he is not betting when his selection is value. There is nothing wrong with his selection method, just his betting method. He is not restricting his bets to just backing value bets.Trying to lay every runner in a race would be not easy. The majority of backers on the exchanges would be betting on the market leaders. You would have difficulty in finding backers for the outsiders unless you were prepared to offer odds much greater than available by traditional bookies.So Why Bother Laying? Bookies have to offer a price for every runner in the race. In the betting ring the bookie is constantly adjusting his prices to ensure that his book is balanced and he can maintain a guaranteed profit level whatever the outcome of the race.The punter at home does not have to do that. He can decide to lay just one horse. He can decide what price to offer punters and he can decide not to lay at all if he wishes.This selective approach is much more appealing than juggling the prices to try and lay all of the field.Which Horses Are The Best To Lay? In our article on all weather favourites we found that, for backers, the favourite offered the best value if nothing else is known about the horse. Outsiders offered the worst value. So by doing the opposite we should be looking for outsiders to lay.But we then go back to the problem of finding takers to take the bait - we would have to offer odds much more than available at the bookies. Whilst you will find that you can get some real long winning streaks, all it would take is 1 50/1 winner and that would wipe out your last 50 bets (to level stakes). More on this later in the article...The most money is going to be on the favourites. Favourites are the most popular bet in the race and yet they lose 2 out of every 3 races. If you can identify favourites who are likely to perform worse than this, or are well overbet such that their odds do not reflect their true odds of winning, then you should not fail to find value in laying.On the flatstats homepage the scrolling message box lists the 'worst' race for favourites for the day. This feature is derived from looking at the fate of the favourites for each race type. The race with the lowest favourites strike rate is the selection. This very simple method is currently hitting an 80 success rate. We are identifying 8 out of 10 favourites that are losing.You also need to look at value. If you are laying favourites at 2-1 then you need to be right 33 of the time just to break even. If you are offering higher odds then you are going to make a loss. There is also commission charges to take into consideration. Why Favourites Lose Favourites do not win the majority of races. They win about 1 race in 3, and lose 2 in 3.When Barry Dennis started his 'Bismark' feature on The Morning Line punters were impressed that he was correct 66 of the time. But that is easy, anyone can be right 66 of the time just by picking the favourite as the Bismark. His trick of Bismarking favourites is an illusion. There is nothing special in it at all.Punters often cry foul when a favourite loses, especially those that are odds on. They will 'boo' the jockey in the unsaddling enclosure if they think he rode incorrectly; they will blame the stewards for not calling an enquiry when their runner was nudged by another; they will accuse another trainer of cheating if their horse is beaten into second place by a 33-1 shot; they will never blame themselves in choosing the wrong horse, or for betting at poor value.The majority of favourites who lose when they should not have are just bad luck stories. Racing is a great uncertainty. There are too many random elements to make it an exact science. You can choose the best horse in the race but the wrong one goes onto win. The rest of the time the punters are themselves betting on the wrong horse.Below are just some examples of the many reasons why a favourite loses but who is still bet by punters:They are backing a horse because he has the best form - but do not realise his form cycle has peaked. The horse ran his fastest ever race last time - and he may bounce today. There is a national gamble going on - instigated by foolish tipsters and the fools that follow them. Sire stats are all wrong - the race is a maiden and punters are backing 'Prescott' and 'Duffield' without knowing that the sire stats indicate the trip is not right. The trainer's bad planning - trainers are not perfect, they too make mistakes. They may be overconfident in their recent winner and place him in a race out of his depth. They may choose to put up an inexperienced apprentice. They may return their runner too quickly without knowing the Sire stats. The race is just too competitive - some races suffer from the great racing uncertainty effect. All weather sprints are a classic example. If you ran the same race 10 times, you could get 10 different winners. Which Favourites Should We Lay? First lets look at laying all favourites on the all weather without any commission and at SP.laying favourites at SP, no commission Lays Wins Win £1 Win ROI 8084 5565 68.8 £957.78 5.3 If you could find a site with zero commission, and if you could get matched 100 at SP then these figures are the best you could ever achieve by laying the favourite. But being more realistic we will assume that the exchange is taking 5 commission and we will offer a price 25 more than the SP.laying favourites 25 above SP, 5 commission Lays Wins Win £1 Win ROI 8084 5565 68.8 £-476.03 -2.1 No profit to be made here. This is because the exchange is taking a 5 cut from your winning bets, and because you have to offer 15-8 for a 6-4 shot and 5-2 for 2-1. In the earlier articles we found that fillies are bad bets so it would make sense to lay fillies who are favourite. When fillies are favourite we should be able to be able to catch some good bets as punters are not aware how disadvantaged the females horses are. And they are sure to be riding some false hope as listed in the points above.laying filly favourites Lays Wins Win £1 Win ROI 1690 1215 71.9 £92.16 2.0 This is looking more like it. We could lay all fillies who are favourite, and even with the 5 commission and 25 overpricing we make a 2.0 profit. But our article also found that fillies do even worse when there is a colt in the field, especially in handicaps.laying filly favourites in handicaps when at least 1 colt in the field Lays Wins Win £1 Win ROI 412 333 80.8 £80.22 5.7 This is a comfortable level which should stand the test of time. You will find about 50 bets a year using this method. If your commission level is lower than 5 and if you can get closer to the SP as possible then you could make a tidy profit from laying.The only problem with this method is ensuring the filly is favourite at the 'off'. If you wait until the horses start loading, look at the price of the favourite if a filly, and then grab the lowest prices you can as long as it is not 25 more than what the betting forecast is showing.At Southwell 05-Feb-02, Miss Damask opened 13-8 favourite, she drifted out to 2-1 at the off but so did second favourite Aberkeen so there was no danger of Miss Damask not being the outright favourite. The filly got beaten 11 lengths into 7th place. You could have mopped up any 5-2 that was being asked for.Later on the card, Miss Glory Be opened at 4-1 and toggled a bit and ended up at 7-2. The 2nd fav was 11-2 but it did not look like that the filly would not be the favourite. At the off you could have taken any price at less than 9-2 for the favourite and stayed within this systems rules. Again, the filly was beaten.Note:The ROI (return on investment) is calculated by dividing the profit by the sum of the lay odds offered.Outsiders If favourites are too risky for you and you would prefer a better strike rate then you could look at non favourites. Some knowledgeable punters on the exchanges like to lay prices upto 10-1 and have achieved continuous winning streaks of 30, 40, 50 What we are going to demonstrate here though is that going even further, and just laying outsiders can achieve phenomenal strike rates.If you say to punters 'just lay the outsiders' they would be horrified. Their superstitions stops them from laying a 50-1 horse because the day they lay it, the day it will win and they will blow all their betting bank.But how often do big priced runners actually win? If you bet on one 33-1 in a race, how many times out of a hundred would you win?The novice would assume it is 1 in every 33 races. The more knowledgeable punter who understands bookies have an overround may say 1 in every 50 races. The figure is actually 1 in 87 races.We picked 881 33-1 shots at random on the all weather since 1993. We ensured that only one 33-1 was selected in each race so that the strike rate would be fair (only one horse can win the race). Of those 881 only 33 won. That means that the true chance of the 33-1 shot winning was 33/881=1.14. To put it another way the 'Double Carpet' horse won 1 in every 87 races. This is much higher than the expected 1 in every 33 races. SP Runs Wins Win True Chance 20-1 836 21 2.5 40-1 33-1 881 33 1.1 87-1 40-1 130 0 0.0 ?? 50-1 378 1 0.3 383-1 66-1 94 0 0.0 ?? 100-1 46 0 0.0 ?? The reason why these long shots do not win as expected is because the bookies are not being generous with the prices. Punters overbet long shots and underbet favourites; bookies give less value to outsiders than to shorter priced horses.We have a tremendous opportunity here for finding extreme value lays. Bookies are effectively 'capping' prices for us. They are offering 40-1 about a horse, we could offer 66-1, the true chance of the horse winning is well into treble figures.laying all horses with SP 40-1 or more, 25 above SP, 5 commission Lays Wins Win £1 Win ROI 4894 4878 99.7 £3746.60 1.11 Since 1993 on the all weather there were 4894 horses that started 40-1 or higher. Of those, only 16 won. That is a win strike rate of 0.33, or to put it another way, a shock result appeared 1 in every 306 bets. The longest winning streak was 1450 bets!For some, the 1.11 return on total stakes offered may seem too low. The system is similar to betting 1/50 shots. But unlike betting at extreme odds on, the chance of a single bet winning is very high, and rather than seeing a 1/50 shot once every year, this system is finding 2 or 3 bets per race. Businesses class this as a "high turnover, low margin opportunity - stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap".There is only one problem with this laying system - finding backers. If you go on the exchanges you may have difficulty in getting punters to take your bait. But the demise of Flutter, and the elevation of Betfair to a dominant position (estimated to control over 95 of the exchange market) means that there are one hell of a lot of backers in one place.The more punters you can get in the same room, the more chance that there will be punters who do not have a clue about value and will take any price. These will include mug punters who bet on horses because of the name, and system backers who back whatever the price.It does not take a genius to realise that the true chance of these outsiders winning is over 300-1 and yet we could get away with laying 50, 66, or even 100-1.In the example above we are going 25 overprice, but even if you were to offer double the bookie price (80-1 about a 40-1 shot) you would still have made £3214 profit.The best advice is to wait until the horses are loading. Look at the bookies prices and identify the contenders who are 40-1 and higher. If you are brave, you can offer double the odds and sweep up the small change.If you are going to follow this laying system it is probably a good idea to avoid Amateur races. 3 of the 16 big priced winners were in Amateur races, and yet Amateur races supplied only 278 of the 4894 contenders. These races offer the most chance of a shock result.Summary For the cautious layer, you should stick with favourites as you will not have to pay out too much if you get it wrong. Using Barry Dennis's method of Bismarking favourites means that you will be right 66 of the time. But because of commission and the fact that you have to offer more than the market to tempt backers means you will make a 5 loss laying all favourites.But fillies offer an excellent laying opportunity on the all weather. Punters are not going to change their ways and are going to still bet favourite fillies even if you tell them that fillies are at a very big disadvantage. They will continue to back them because they have the best form, the best speed rating, are tipped by the most newspapers, or tipped by a dodgy voice down the end of the phone.The more adventurous can try laying the extreme outsiders. Whilst to some this may seem a high risk method, you can not ignore that fact that only 16 winners went off at 40-1 or higher from 4894 runners during the past 9 years on the all weather.The bookies create the situation where backers are being robbed of the true worth of the outsider they fancy. The exchanges create the situation where all those punters appear in one room at the same time. For as long as the number of backers is vastly greater than the number of layers then there will always be punters out there who will take the bait.Bookies do not get rich by laying favourites - they need outsiders to bring in small change when the jolly obliges. When an outsider wins, they swig champagne because they know any punter that wins with them, has not been paid the true price. They are serving the punter Tizer, for the price of Krug.Compared to bookies, we have a distinct advantage. We can choose to lay just one horse, they have to lay the field.Note: Laying outsiders is risky. Murphy's law dictates that as soon as you read this article and lay your first outsider it will win. Freak results can happen. Bet at your own risk. Alternatively, do not lay outsiders at all, leave us to lay the bait and clean up the sucker pounds.Good luck!Amazing Lay ProfitsLearn how to make a lot of money using Betfair/Betting Exchanges! http://www.amazing-lay-profits.co.uk
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