About 10 years ago someone on this forum  likened this strategy to "Picking up pennies in front of a moving steam roller".

Lol nice image

i layed front runners on the flat last summer and picked up plenty of wins but one day a 20/1 front runner in Haydock but the horse was full of red bull as he never got caught and the dreaded your depoist box popped up as you have less than 6 quid in your account came up.

I would say though if you studied hard enough you could pick a few a week and leave it at that but no most people keep punting until it goes pete tong

You can find value at any price, however it's generally easier to get value lays at shorter prices. A horse at 20 (decimal) has an implied probability of 5%, so even if it has no chance of winning the most value it can possibly have is 5% - and in reality it will always have less. On the other hand a horse trading at 1.5 has an implied probability of 66% so there's much more room in the price for it to have some value. This is not to say that all short prices have value - not at all, but there is generally more opportunity for layers there.

On average laying a £10 liability at 1.5 on a horse with a 50% chance of winning will return almost 10 times more profit than laying the same liability on a horse at 20 that has already fallen.

On average laying a £10 liability at 1.5 on a horse with a 50% chance of winning will return almost 10 times more profit than laying the same liability on a horse at 20 that has already fallen.


I would say that "profit" in betting is ROI.  If you lay a horse that can't win it doesn't matter what odds it is, the ROI is always 100% and that is the maximum possible for a lay.

I'd say profit is profit. Even when a selection can't win the price still matters as this dictates how much you can put on.

In any case the example is just to make the point - say the 20 shot has a 0.001% chance of winning if you prefer, the maths is the same.

Just to lay it out:
A lay on fallen horse at 20 with a liability of £10 will return £0.52

The same liability on a horse at 1.5 with a 50% chance of winning will return £5 on average. That's a £20 profit when the horse loses and a £10 loss when he wins. You get equal number of wins and losses so your average is half of your win minus half of your loss.

Would you rather have 52p or a fiver?

capital at risk is another issue. 

Yes, the return on capital at risk is far greater on the shorter odds but there will be many more long odds opportunities than short odds ones.

You sure? A horse that can't win trading at 20 is pretty rare, a 2 shot trading at 1.5 happens all the time in running. It's my bread and butter.

Even if you think it's less common - it's ten times more worthwhile so unless it's ten times less common it's more fertile ground.

You invented the 19-1 shot that can't win for the purposes of illustration - in reality someone would be looking for a horse at 20 that would win 2% or less.  Also the discussion was pre-race as liquidity issues affect longer odds horses.

Leaving aside your uncanny talents, there are simply many more long shots than odds on shots.  And not so much care is taken pricing these in comparison to favourites.

I take your point about the discussion being about pre-off, I was just looking for a way to plausibly describe a horse as having no chance at all to keep the maths simple.

The maths remains the same though - in your example (a price of 20 with 3% lay edge i.e 20 for a 50 shot) returns about 32p whereas the same edge at 1.5 (1.5 for a 1.57) returns 90p for the same £10 liability.

Of course there are more long shots, but each has so little of the market that there's very little room for lay value - which was my original point.

Even if you take it as true that longer priced selections are less efficiently priced it still makes more sense to look at them for value backs than for lays. Say you've got a market made up of one horse at 2 which is perfectly priced and 10 others priced at 20 which are inefficiently or 'carelessly' priced (making a 100% book). If there's 3% lay value available on one of the 20s there must be 3% back value available on the others. For the sake of the example it makes sense to assume it all falls on one horse. Backing the back value horse with £10 liability at 20 and 3% edge will return you £6.00 instead of the 32p that you'd get taking the 3% lay value on the other horse.

... I used the words 'value' and 'edge' in a bit of a confusing way there. In every case where I used a percentage I should have used 'edge'. When I said 3% value I should have said 3% edge. Sorry.

22-1 SP winner at Catterick yesterday...........aand it had many FACTORS giving it a chance to win yesterday !

Also a 16-1 SP winner at Plumpton.......was over 30s at BF.........in such a race on the GOING it definitely had a chance to win.

All depends on your judgment as wether a horse has a chance to win or not.....and nobody is "perfect" when laying such higher odds horses.

BACKING when a horse does have a chance to win at the higher odds, especially on BF, makes more sense............as long as you do have good "judgment" when a horse at higher odds has FACTORS in favour of winning.

More liquidity at the "sharp end" of market ( top 5 favourites in a market), so laying at tat end of market, IF YOU HAVE AN "EDGE", is where knowledgeable ones will operate at.

The higher odds ones is more like playing Russian Roulette if laying, especially for someone with no "edge".

I did wonder whether laying golfers at 1000 could be profitable, but after a player traded at 1000 on the US tour last week and won, that doesn't seem a good idea.

Four

Feb 12, 2018 -- 9:24AM, dave1357 wrote:

On average laying a £10 liability at 1.5 on a horse with a 50% chance of winning will return almost 10 times more profit than laying the same liability on a horse at 20 that has already fallen.I would say that "profit" in betting is ROI.  If you lay a horse that can't win it doesn't matter what odds it is, the ROI is always 100% and that is the maximum possible for a lay.

this is key.
this is why backing will always give you a better roi than laying.

the only way you can beat the book is to devise a system which gives you a reliable indicator of the percentage of something happening, and then only betting on that occurring if you are getting "value". over time if your system is correct you'll make money. that's all bookmakers do. overround. they make  a few % roi over the long-term because they've built that in. to beat it you must have your own system that works in a similar way.

Even assuming you've devised some means of calculating value, laying at high odds requires balls of steel. You'll get long periods where every bet is making you money. Then, out of nowhere, you'll get a string of 20-something bets winning, and you'll suddenly feel absolutely dreadful.  I ran a system like this once, and was significantly up over a period of several months. Then, in the space of eight days, four big-priced lays romped home, and I had lost all of the money that I had amassed.

Every system will have bad runs, and when you have those in a system like this one, they tend to result in a large part of your betting bank going south very quickly. And that's extremely hard to take.

There is something very comforting about laying at high odds or backing at odds on in that you will have long winning runs which makes you feel good and give you the feeling that you are a smart successful gambler.

This makes the inevitable bad run all the more hard to believe and you have the tendency to convince yourself that it was just bad luck so you carry on...until it happens again and the reality of your self delusion sinks in.

If you had been laying every 20/1 horse on Betfair for the last 12 months you would be 152pts up now, after 5% com. should have started a year ago as that does not happen every year.

And the 2nd day of the next year sees a 160/1 winner. So back to square one.

Feb 13, 2018 -- 1:57PM, Owmybrainhurtz wrote:

I did wonder whether laying golfers at 1000 could be profitable, but after a player traded at 1000 on the US tour last week and won, that doesn't seem a good idea.

I saw a lay of 1000 come in on a south American football game just before Xmas. Laying long shots is just Russian roulette and the road to the poor house eventually and suspect the long term value is backing them rather than laying for small stakes

the moral of the story, is stay away from it all. Bet a small stake to try win a nice amount and leave it at that. Leave the laying to those who have proven systems ad a bank to deal with setbacks. I used to win a few quid on here backing at big prices and its only when i wandered into the treacherous world of laying on football and horses that it went very wrong. You might as suggested above have many lay bet wins but you ultimately will pay out more than you win.

Mar 17, 2018 -- 11:25PM, betting_masta wrote:

the only way you can beat the book is to devise a system which gives you a reliable indicator of the percentage of something happening, and then only betting on that occurring if you are getting "value". over time if your system is correct you'll make money. that's all bookmakers do. overround. they make

I think I messed up there. I see the quote but not my comment.

I shall post again.

I think for something like this to work I'd be taking a good look at the races of those 20/1 winners. I'd be wondering straight off how many of them were handicaps.

Not sure if you mean the years worth of 20/1 horses? but the year from today is now a profit of £115, looks like a couple of the winners have slipped out side the year.
The figure for all races, handicaps only shows £135 profit for same period.

What I was getting at is trying to find a connection with those 20/1 winners hoping to eliminate/avoid  certain races but if those profit amounts are to a £1 stake, well that isn't so bad. Is it?

1: Take a sample of bets you might have placed (but didn't).
2: Delete the ones that would have lost.
3: Crack open the bubbly, you've found a winning system!

Yeah,
that could just be the sum of it.

Yes as you say that is to a 1pt stake, 152 pts up over 650 bets from memory, but take other years over the last 10 and you get a different story.

The reason I ran it through the 20/1 horses was I expected that if I separated the winners from the losers then took the average of the bookies odds compared to Betfair I would see a smaller gap between Bookies and Betfair odds on the winners, I was supprissed to see that the gap was almost identical on winners or losers.

I am not suggesting  a system of backing or laying 20/1 horses but think the following shows how accurate Betfair odds are too a horses true chance of winning. Only using 20/1 because that is what the thread started with and wondered if a profit could be made around those odds, but if you take those odds and add one extra condition to it you can make 76 pts profit over the last 10 years, 224 races.

You could say that that is back fitting because we don,t know which horses are going to start at 20/1? so lets take every horse between 20/1 and 30/1 with that one condition added and you get 625.02 pts profit from from 6326 races over the last 10 years.

224 races is a tiny eg, I ran through an entire season of French football laying the draw ( that old duck) in the second tier this season and found over 50 points profit. Using the same system the season before provides a similar tally loss so you need thousands of races/ games to test something which is why when laying longs odds it could literally takes years to get enough bets in order to ascertain if there is an " edge". I remember a couple of idiots last year claiming they had found value backing 1.02 shots on Icelandic football with the proof being 3 winning bets.

Laying 20-1 shots , all it would take is a freak week of 3 coming in and you need 60 plus lays just to claw back losses

Mar 25, 2018 -- 7:42PM, wolf3011 wrote:

224 races is a tiny eg, I ran through an entire season of French football laying the draw ( that old duck) in the second tier this season and found over 50 points profit. Using the same system the season before provides a similar tally loss so you need thousands of races/ games to test something which is why when laying longs odds it could literally takes years to get enough bets in order to ascertain if there is an " edge". I remember a couple of idiots last year claiming they had found value backing 1.02 shots on Icelandic football with the proof being 3 winning bets.Laying 20-1 shots , all it would take is a freak week of 3 coming in and you need 60 plus lays just to claw back losses

I don't know why but reading your post made me think of Towcester and that steep uphill finish. I would think there must be ways of avoiding some 20/1 winners without affecting profits but I simply don't have the time, so I keep tinkering around with the football for now.
Also, I don't want to be placing so many bets.

When you say 20-1 shots..............DO YOU MEAN 20 SP  ????

If so, then obviously BF SP odds are far higher than 20-1 SP....... etc etc etc

If you lay a 20-1 SP horse on BF and lay IR at 20-1 SP (21 BF), then you will lay the winners now and then.....and more likely not catch the lays on "losers", as their odds IR will be up to 1001.

Please clarify what you mean.

Mar 26, 2018 -- 3:24AM, DFCIRONMAN wrote:

When you say 20-1 shots..............DO YOU MEAN 20 SP  ????If so, then obviously BF SP odds are far higher than 20-1 SP....... etc etc etcIf you lay a 20-1 SP horse on BF and lay IR at 20-1 SP (21 BF), then you will lay the winners now and then.....and more likely not catch the lays on "losers", as their odds IR will be up to 1001.Please clarify what you mean.

That's a very good point DFC,

The markets don't stop do they.
What if you lay a 20 and the price tumbles at the off? Or vice versa.
Maybe best to watch for 20s on the slide.
This interesting stuff guys.

Keep it coming.

Hi DFCIRONMAN, all of them are horses that started at 21 on Betfair, odds vary from 3 that started at 7/1 up to 9 that started at 20/1 at ISP, there are no IR prices included at all.
A couple of other figures to go with the 115.85 pts profit from laying, over the same period you would have lost 170.80 pts backing these same horses on Betfair, and lost 305 pts at ISP.

Laying 20/1 shots will be profitable if they should really be a higher price. You can have all the systems in the world , handicaps , flat racing , this meeting , 20/1 shots etc etc but it all boils down to beating the price.

If you are getting value , long term ( and I mean long term ) you will be up , otherwise it's just pot luck as to how long you last before you are in negative territory

Mar 26, 2018 -- 4:58AM, trebor wrote:

Hi DFCIRONMAN, all of them are horses that started at 21 on Betfair, odds vary from 3 that started at 7/1 up to 9 that started at 20/1 at ISP, there are no IR prices included at all.A couple of other figures to go with the 115.85 pts profit from laying, over the same period you would have lost 170.80 pts backing these same horses on Betfair, and lost 305 pts at ISP.

115 points profit equates to just 6 of those 20-1 shots coming in which over a random time could well occur, not that impressive avoiding 6 winners really is it as in a bad year you could have over ten meaning your banks wiped out

Which is pretty much what I said by advising that the last year of lays was not the norm, there was 2 winning years for layers in the last 10, and heavily down in total.

Might it be worth looking at laying odds between say 12 to 24/5. Every one layed makes laying the winner a little less painful and surely, on the basis that there Must be a lot of winners at lower odds, well?

Just a thought.

And maybe that just means more but less expensive losers.

Any horse,can win any race.(or nearly)

8.10 Newcastle

Primos Comet 136.31 £25.17  £3,405.73

Mar 27, 2018 -- 9:47AM, ericster wrote:

Might it be worth looking at laying odds between say 12 to 24/5. Every one layed makes laying the winner a little less painful and surely, on the basis that there Must be a lot of winners at lower odds, well?Just a thought.

If the odds are accurate and statistically they are on betfair, whats it matter whether you lay at 12, 20 or 200? If you have no edge its completely irrelevant .

You need an edge , or edges, plus a way to identify VALUE, whether it is to lay or back.

wolf3011 is spot on re having an edge.

You are playing Russian Roulette otherwise.......and a BLACK SWAN day will happen playing RR.