However you punt Wipeout, if you're trying to make it pay, just play for pennies, or better still, nothing for a couple of years until you get it right. And even then only bet to a small proportion of your bank - never more than 1%. I speak from bitter experience.

yep, tend to focus on Class 2 handicaps with 16 runners plus but sometimes do them for small field Class 1 races based on set criteria to validate (or not!) an opinion based on watching previous races.

Not saying my method is the right one or the only one but I'm comfortable with it - if, or rather when, I am on a losing run I'll re-evaluate the criteria I use for the tissue and maybe tweak them a bit.

ada 28 Aug 12 21:54 Joined: 15 Jan 09 | Topic/replies: 632 | Blogger: ada's blog
Doing your tissue is the best way, I do with greyhounds but would struggle to do a 30 runner handicap. Is better reaseheath if its a handicap as the runners are fully exposed rather than a madien or seller?


Unless it's their first run in a Handicap.

Excellent thread and I hope to add to it with three main points:

1: Value is NOT (in theory at least) in the eye of the beholder. There is a TRUE probability for every possible outcome at the start of the race, it's just that nobody can possibly be good enough as a compiler to know what that is. That's why value to me might not be value to you in reality. And also why you need an edge of a certain percentage to cover yourself when you're wrong (i.e. It's OK to be wrong, as long as you're not wrong by much).

2: Some horses are not running on their merits, so even when you do get their probability of success more or less right with the information you have available, there will be occasions when you get the rough end of the stick through no fault of your own. The key to dodging these bullets is to not be too greedy in my opinion. If you are a 10-1 type of punter and can back one of these at 14s or 16s, good on you. But if I'd done serious work on a race and was fairly confident of my assessment and this horse had drifted all day and could be backed at 20s or more, I'd be wary of backing it.

3: You need to work with percentages, NOT odds. It makes it clearer to see some of the pitfalls. For example, if you back a 4-1 (5.0) shot that you think should be 3-1 (4.0), you are in effect backing a horse that you think has a 25% chance of winning when the odds you nabbed suggest it has a 20% chance of winning. That shows you the margin for error in probability terms of making such a "value" approach work over a long time. However, if you back a 100-1 (101.0) shot that you think should be 50-1 (51.0), you are in effect backing a horse that you think has a 2% chance of winning when the odds you nabbed suggest it has a 1% chance of winning.

This last point shows why so many bigger-priced value seekers tend to fail. IF you were right about the odds it should be all the time, you would be laughing over a large number of bets, but I suggest nobody (without inside info) can be right within a 1% margin of error, especially about big-priced horses that probably have little form for you to work with. So, when you think you are getting value with your 101.0 shot, you might not be. Are you sure you are accurate to 1%?

I have been in the game a long, long time, and do make a modest profit from betting now. But I typically operate in the single figure area of the market as history shows I am more likely to get these prices right (or only slightly wrong) on my tissue, which means I spot the outliers and step in when that is the case. And I know that after all the experience and effort I put in, I couldn't hope to be accurate to less than 5% or so for most races.

Good thread, its a bloody long apprenticeship and one of the 1st things you need to get into your head is that this mythical "Silver Bullet" does not exist, one day you can be a genius and the next day a mug, the truth lays somewhere in between.

A lot of full time and part time punters i speak to on the net agree on one thing, your season usually revolves around 10 or so days of the year, the rest of the time you plod along, not losing much or vice versa, you will have times where you might as well be reading the card in Serbo Croat and other times where everything is crystal clear, its stamina sapping and hard work and we all have our little niches we work on, learn to recognize your own faults and be honest with yourself.

betfair markets are essentially an exchange of value, every time you place a bet someone or people are on the other end also believing they have obtained the value, what makes one right and the other wrong?!

Imo your strike rate is more important if you have a decent strike rate u can get value on your selections if you take early prices

I have to agree with the judge.

It is the difference between the two which I use to define my "edge" and determine value bets. Strike Rate over several hundred bets against theoretical probability (deduced from average BSP over these bets).

I take early prices because they are reduced dramatically usually unless theres no value to start with (in which case i will take sp).I pick my horse without even looking at the prices

Glasgow brian don't gamble. Study form and invest

I agree that price should be a consideration if you know your limitations and likely s/r in order to maximise profit but i work on the premise that every horse i back is going to win. Not the case by btw,lol.

IYO STOOZ

1mil - price is everything and you must realise this before placing another bet .

stoozbet 29 Aug 12 14:52 Joined: 17 Feb 11 | Topic/replies: 49 | Blogger: stoozbet's blog
Not wishing to be critical only1mill but your thinking is flawed. Every horse has it's chance & true odds of wining, you can't possibly pick the winner every time, therefore all that matters is what you get paid when you do win. Hence all that matters is price, the selection you make is actually irrelevant.

Stoozbet, biting my lip here not to sound rude, but that's ridiculous, you say that all that matters is what you get paid, that the price is more important than what horse you select, you cannot win unless you know what is going to help you to win, and that's mainly the horse, the price is certainly not going to do this, looking at some of your posts, you are advising arbing to gain a 30% profit, so this is why price is important to you, good luck to you, but some of us would view 30% as failure, if after 40 yrs backing them the best I could achieve is 30% based on the time and effort I put in, I'd hang up my betting boots.

Agreed, when you're arbing!!

Its refreshing to see that the many good posts on here have not been drowned out by the those that have no idea what they are talking about. If you want to know which catagory you are in take a look at your bank balance.

Oh no mate you've got it twisted i'm not averse to laying a horse , i just know when to lay and when to back

Not to millions of people fortunately.

No stooz it don't it's not about chance for me it's about knowledge

we all know about probability laws of true odds but in this game the only way to know whether you are assessing the true odds well enough is your long run p&l.

this game is not about discipline at all, that statement really bores me to death tbh, the game is about knowing when you are getting a price that is better than the actual chances of the selection.

the theory is very simple, in practice it's extremely difficult.

very few fall down on discipline as opposed to technique and experience.