As he says it's tedious. Can't see how it would work logically. If it doesn't work logically I don't bother.

I think you can get a much bigger edge on betfair by using your own judgement, than slavishly sticking to some system or other.

actually on reflection i'm not sure that a horse price is mostly generated by recent form. connections play a huge role as well. for example if a horse is trained by godolphin or hannon, or aiden o brien, then it will start at a much shorter price than if it were trained by an obscure trainer, even if the horse is of the same ability.

someone with a book of stats might say that this horse trained by saeed bin suroor running at yarmouth has a 28 percent chance of winning, lets say, because that's his strike rate at yarmouth. (I don't actually know what his strike rate is i'm using it as an example.)

but everyone else has access to the same information. Its only by studying the horse and the race in detail can you calculate it's true chances, which any amount of statistics will not be able to tell you.

Should read fairly controversial sorry.

top2rated, Sorry but your correct, that particular statement you refer to that i made about novice
chasers was a bad example as having checked it, the system is of little use and hovers around the 100%
mark return so i am sorry for mis-leading you and others, I do have profitable horse racing systems but don't think its wise of me to give them away, all i was doing with my statement is demonstrating that creating an edge is quite easy it just requires some discipline, some hard work in researching
and other actions.

Thanks slicer, its not that easy making an edge but at least on an exchange you have the fairest chance of doing so, good luck to you too in all you do.

Gentlemen,

I told you it works and it does.
Now I don't expect anyone to take my word for it, but if you're not prepared to trial it, or better download the Betfair data and prove me wrong, then how can you claim it's cobblers?

At least go to the Betfair Timeform website and note down each BFSP overround / underround and add it up for at minimum a week.

You'll see that I do know what I'm talking about.

The average lay market is well in excess of 102%

Laying a full book only makes money if your book is more than 100%.

Your average book % is all that counts.

John Cherry,
I run lay the field at SP and those under $10.00 concurrently for commission reasons.
Initially I made nothing out of laying those under 10.00 when my commission was over 4%, but it lowered my overall commission for lay the field.
Now I make a small percentage laying those under 10.00 and a lot more laying the field.

The logic for why it works is in black and white, quite simply check the average BFSP Market Percentage over a week.

Hi BTOR,

Thanks for your persistence with this. I must confess that I didn't even know what BSP before this thread started but your strategy looked too tempting to not investigate further.

I'm using the data available at http://promo.betfair.com/betfairsp/prices/ which covers UK and Ireland. I'm only looking at win results and using the event id to identify a unique race.

From 2nd Sep 2008 the long run average overround is 100.37% in UK and 100.28% in Ireland. Above 100 yes but pretty tight after commission. The monthly averages for 2011 look like this.


Month    UK avg  Ire avg
1    100.41%    100.54%
2    100.42%    100.58%
3    100.19%    100.95%
4    100.31%    100.52%
5    100.38%    100.24%
6    100.36%    100.03%
7    100.18%    99.53%
8    100.12%    99.99%
9    100.24%    99.57%  (up to 17th/18th Sep)

Is there something I'm missing (apart from Aus data)? I don't see where you get 102% from, that's a massive margin.

Given that every single extra £1 on the lay side decreases the overround and eats into your profit you can understand the scepticism at making it public. Especially when there are a few, say 500 or so, users out there who would be very interested in a strategy that only breaks even after commission and they are not short of a bit of cash.

how is the bsp calculated? If a load of people started doing what BTO said, would the edge be killed?

thanks max

Have you got the link to the other forum max?

here you go John_Cherry

http://www.propun.com.au/racing_forums/showthread.php?t=21561

The margins seem too tight for me but i suppose for a plug and play method what would you expect! Even at the lowest SP Payout per race i.e £30 over the course of 1 busy saturday you could easily be 100/200 down quid if alot of favs come in. If you have have a few days like this in a row you will find it very difficult to carry on.

You do the lay the field but your paying out the same amount on each runner so you will end up winning more if a long shot wins and lose if a favourite wins.Here is an example

HORSE A - 6/4
HORSE B - 6/4
HORSE C - 4/1

So for Horse A&B you will recieve £20 in stakes each for a Liability of £30. Horse C will stake £7.50 for a Liabilty of £30.

If A or B win you will LOSE £2.50 and if C wins you will win £10 (Gross Profit)

I've misunderstood. I thought the idea was to lay a book. You'd win and lose 1 or 2% on each race but overall you'd come out with a profit.

John, go back to the start of the thread and read what was written.  Even I was able to make sense of it, so anyone else with moderate intelligence ought to be okay..

Can one lay a book to betfair sp on here, or does it have to be a set liability?

It has to be a book to set liability.
It is simply an unbalanced book but the percentages are in you favour.
If you could lay the book to payout, then everyone would hit it hard with lots of money like the 1.01 layers do.
The fact that it's to liability is a godsend, because of the highs and lows you have to stake your bank properly. After a day or two where it goes against you, most people give up the ghost because they haven't researched it properly.

how is the bsp calculated? If a load of people started doing what BTO said, would the edge be killed?

Very few people will do it and stick with it.
The way BFSP is calculated with money matched in the live markets and then money waiting to be matched at SP, I doubt whether the edge would go. If it did it would certainly self correct, as more punters would start backing at BFSP if they saw the prices were x amount better.
Plus you can't stop the traders or corporates dumping large sums into the market forcing the overround.

Thanks lads. A lot to digest (for my brain) but really appreciate your time and info.

Looking at the stats, with the disclaimer that it is a backtest and so of course biased, it does seem that there is a small edge after commission.

However, as mentioned by a few people above it is a bumpy ride. So much so that I think you'd have to be willing to stomach a negative year to extract the edge in the long run. For this reason I think that the edge will remain because not many people have the capital and the patience to persist.

To help smooth the bad months you could try to find other markets with an overround consistently over 100% and diversify your returns. Of course this strategy is also known as "being a bookie".

but you cant read

Cheers for your insight BTO (still not sure why you would reveal a winning strategy still!)

What % of your bank would you generally use on each race - 1%,2%?.