Laying at evens in running

I reckon you will win about half the time.

Was looking for the stats. Its not a gurantee of future trends but was just working on a system which may be profitable

I tried this and many other strategies when I was playing on the dreaded geegees, sometimes I could lay 3 or 4 at evens in one race. Some people lay at 1.8 1.9, and some lay at 3.05 etc.

Another simple strategy I tried which showed the greatest success, was laying the field in short 5 and 6f races, simply to identify a back i.e. the first nag to catch your lay is the one you then quickly back. I was gob smacked at the amount of times 4 or 5 winners in a row would occur, but long term I didn't show a profit, although if I was forced to return to the nags that is the method I would use.

Ps. I gave up horse betting, and that was the best move I ever made!

I mostly do soccer but would love a consistent strategy for the horses. What do you mostly bet on

Barry is right.When viewed as a whole IR markets show quite remarkable efficiency, in this circumstance there is a basic principle of probability that defines how short horses go- it goes like this:

Let's say a horse is trading at 10 (decimal) before the off, the chances of that horse trading at 1 (I.E. winning) are 0.1 (or 10% if you prefer), you get that by the calculation 1/odds. So far so easy. The relevant question is how likely is that horse to trade at 2- well that's just as easy, it's 2/odds- in this case that's 0.2 (20%). Now, take any race you like, calculate the probability of each horse trading at 2, add them all together and hey presto- the answer is always 2, which means that if you place keep bets on every horse at 2 and then run that race over and over again, on average you will match 2 bets per race and therefore break even.

The horses are very appealing, being prime time sociable hours and tons of liquidity - millions changing hands every hour. I tried full time for 9 months to find someway of grabbing some of that money, but eventually had to admit defeat.

I now do mainly football, which allows much more thinking time as the markets move at a sensible pace, not manic like the nags! The drawback is there isn't that many in-play matches during week day normal hours.

Thanks for the reply robot. but what im working on is a little different and i cant post it here. I suppose i should have made the question clearer and what im looking for is the horses who hit evens first and then end up loosing .

Sorry- are you essentially asking whether the first horse to hit evens is more or less likely to loose than a second or third horse that hits evens?

yes exactly. the stats on that would be helpful.

i would imagine the first horse to be matched at evens would win more often than not - given the track boys and fast pic thieves wont take evs unless it's probably a 1.7 shot, might be wrong though

The 1st horse to be matched @2.0 is less likely to win than the 2nd + 3rd i'd say , but there are just too many races where the only one matched will be the winner .

So you would need good filters to avoid just losing to commission .Certain types of tracks/ going /distances and particular horses/jockeys , but i wouldn't be suprised if all those things were pretty well factored in, so it sounds like a struggle to me.

I dimly recall looking at things like this some time ago, although I don't have stats I recall that my data upheld what the theory would suggest- which is that any horse that hits 2 has a 50% chance of winning. The problem is that for there to be a "first" horse to trade at 2 there has to be a second, otherwise the first is really the "only". Clearly if only 1 horse trades at 2 then the chances of that horse winning are 100%, so the issue of how likely it is that 2 horses will trade at 2 is pretty critical.
Assuming that 2 horses do trade at 2, the second is more likely to win than the first, but that's because by the time the 2nd horse is trading at 2 the first should no longer be (in theory if not always in practice). The problem is that you can't wait for a second horse to trade at 2 before betting on the first- and if you bet on the first before the second does come along you may well be laying an "only" rather than a "first". Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for all the helpful replies. I will work on it to small stakes and seee what it brings and post back in time

I did this for a few dozen races , trying to match everything @1.60 i think it was, in one race there were 4 horses backed @1.35 or lower :) , but overall i finished level .

my idea would involve laying

yeah thats what i was doing :)

I tried backing the first to hit evens, it doesn't work, unsuprisingly. I tried many many theories on the nags, if you have any more post them up and I may be able to save you some time.

I came to the conclusion that the punters who win on the nags are truly dedicated horse racing lovers, and are winning in-running by being damned good at reading horses as the race progresses, for instance the likes of Koo.

I also discovered that laying the field at 1.03 / 1.04 did actually pay a profit if you just lay on Friday afternoons and evenings, and Saturday afternoons not evenings. Sounds silly I know, but it appears to be that more mug money is available at those times, what with it being the end of the working week for many people, so perhaps a few more in the fast pic trading shops.

watching the horse markets this week, was wondering, surely the reguar in running boys must have made a killing. seemed very friendly markets. i'm sure its not like this normally, lots of amateur money around.

Lay every horse in-running when it touches evens. You get at least 2 each race, on average 4 or 5, do the maths, keep it to yourself though, join me in barbados next week for a beer ;-)

Betfair, Ive sh it um :-) and yes, it can be done

could you post your mail address trevh and ill send you on the theory.

There are no "click and win systems on betfair."

gstreetblue, you can reach me on deeps37 at aol dot com.

sent you a mail trevh

ok, not much time at mo, will get back to you tomorrow morning :)