Anyone making decent profits on place markets?

Compare the Place odds - on Betfair - as a proportion of the Win odds  -
- and you may get a little closer to an answer to your, "betting history."

No decent profits but does reduce losses.

Wins in the Place Markets tend to be steadier. You can stack up plenty of smallish wins if you're careful, so you won't be subject to the same volatility as in the Win markets. If that fits in more with your personality, that would be a good reason for plumping for Place Bets.

However, it isn't any easier to win long-term. The odds are much shorter to reflect the 'insurance/safety net' factor, and unless you're extracting value, you aren't going to be stacking up the cash overall.

Stay away from the shorties as well, as they can get very very short in the Place Markets. Those 1.1-1.2 shots are extremely enticing, but you've got to be phenomenal to make money on them long-term.

It all depends how good you are  reading the form book   ... not following the  market  every day there are false  favs  more so since Betfair ..  few quid on the over night market  can make a false fav

I wouldn't touch the shorties. I'm looking for minimum Even money shots, with a better than 50% strike-rate. Can it be done?  Probably not, not over the long term anyway.

Course it can be done, if you're highly selective.   If you don't believe you can do it though, then you'll almost certainly prove yourself right.  If you don't have a strong framework for picking horses, you probably shouldn't bother until you do have one.

I bet place only most of the time, I always think I can't lose, down a fortune over the last two years, it makes you lazy about studying, I used to do ok betting win only and being selective, but now I bet nearly every race because I think it is too easy to pick a placed horse, doing my nuts lately, especially at meetings like Pontefract, Chepstow, Brighton and Hamilton, and there are more. it's like I am too scared to take a chance now. cheers.

Yeah, that's the trap with place bets. It's very easy to get lulled into that feeling of 'can't see that ending out of the top three', without considering whether you're getting a good price or not.    There's a tendency to think that they're 'easier'. Which, in a sense, they are. But the odds are also much much tighter to reflect that. So you have to be careful.

I would generally be reluctant to back any place bets below 1.7, and aiming for horses in the 2.0-3.0 bracket can be pretty profitable. Just as long as you're highly selective, you can find 2.5-3.0 shots that have a 50/50 chance of placing.

when you say highly selective do you mean only bet maiden races or only h"cap"s,or is it the class of race,what do you like to bet on?

^ "highly selective" - means, or should mean - ALL races from ALL angles.

You  cannot merely 'play the prices' - just because it is a certain type of race.

Every race is different
Every horse's chance is  different - because ...
Every horse's opponents are different

NOBODY can simply automate this game. ... NOBODY.

When I say 'highly selective', all that I mean is that I expect the vast majority of the races to throw up very little in the way of sensible bets. If I'm looking through 10 races (I do US horse racing - 10 would be typical there) then I might find just one race that seemed to throw up a 'good value' 2.0-3.0 shot. There will, of course, be other value shots in other races, but personally, I'm probably only likely to dig up one over the course of a 10-race card.

Most people try to play selections almost every race, and you have got to be amazingly good to be able to find value so regularly. However, if you have some interesting angles, you ought to be able to find a juicy bet or two spread across 10 or 12 races.

Of course, one bet for every 10 races is a ball-park figure. Some days you find two or three good bets across such a selection. Other days you can trawl through 20 races or more without finding a single viable prospect.  However, I think the principle of aiming to find one good bet per 10 races is a pretty effective one. My bread and butter isn't place-bets, but laying favourites, and there I might have a brief look at 30-40 races, and cull those to 2-3 playable bets.

You should only be playing a race where you think your selection has a lot going for it. And you're unlikely to find many races offering up such a selection. Force yourself to restrict yourself to your 'best' race or two per day, and you've got a much better chance of being successful.

thanks joe,makes sense to stick with races with no more than 10 runners

I use place betting when funds are critically low and up is the only way out - works well.  I then recklessly indulge myself and lose it back usually, but thats another matter - and i can adress that if I want.   Especially like the shorties.  Winning ,albeit small amounts, so easily brings its own dangers tho :  the incipient god-complex is always there, biding it's time, to lead me astray in the win market.

just had a couple of ridiculously 'easy' winning bets, a Hannon fav just came 2nd in a nby maiden, and swiss Cross which just won at Epsom (both 1.6-ish).    The winners really mess with your head when place betting only.

The reality is simple in my opinion. If you place back short priced horses you will almost without exception lose in the medium term plus. The reason is simple, there is no value and in general the trades will consist of maidens who hit the frame most times but then miss or debutants who blow out totally. Handicappers who are consistently placed probably offer slight more value as they are more likely to run their race but again little value.

How many times do you see Obrien two year olds at 1.11 eased off due to having lost their winning chance?

There is probably some value in laying 2 and 3 year old maidens at under 1.2 and would be interested if anyone has some data on this.

1.06 beaten at Newbury on yes you guest a maiden with placed form! You need 17 winners at the same price to get in front.

yes i noticed that ultra-shortie, a M Meade/R Hughes failing to place, truly a hiding to nothing backing at those odds

My friends call me the placepot kid cause i get many placepots up the reason in this is because i perm usually 54 72 and 108 bets at 10p or 20p in these perms i always have at least one sometimes two bankers impossible to have a banker place in every race my bankers have a good strike rate of winning so i bet 20% win %80 place on my bankers and i have very nice profit of course i have lost my winnings betting on other silly events darts snooker golf football but my profits on placepots and my bankers speak for themself i could give you 1.5 plus winner 9/10 for a place every day to many meetings to many races not to

best thing to do with place markets is just to keep laying the shorties on a progressive basis

The problem with dismissing place bets as poor value is that, a lot of the time, they aren't. I did the numbers for a year of lower-priced place and win bets, and was amazed at just how close most of the prices were to their long-term win rates. They're accurate to within a few percent. Which is why you can't make money backing them, and why you also can't make money blindly laying them - at least, not if you're paying several percent in commission.

Shorties can be good value or bad value, just as longer priced bets can be. And there are plenty of situations where the prices are driven down by crowd sentiment and other irrelevant factors.  Most horses, though, will be roughly priced where they should be.

Having said that, I think there is a real psychological danger to backing shorties, which is why I try to steer clear of them. Earlier in my betting career, I spent three months trying to find roughly a bet a day where the horse was much faster than his rivals, and where he had no issues over condition/fitness, trip, barn change etc.  These horses didn't have to be short-priced but, unsurprisingly, most of them were - usually around 1.1-1.15 to place. For much of the three months, the system went beautifully. I had the odd frustrating loss, but I built up several runs of 15+ wins in a row, and was very much up.

Then, over the course of just over a week, I suffered four shocking losses. Two horses broke down while well-placed mid-race, another lost his jockey, and the other one got stuck in the gate. I went from being handsomely up to being significantly down over the course of a few days, and I found that very hard to deal with.

Unless you have balls of steel, being in a position where a few bad days (which you'll experience at some point, no matter what system you play) can wipe out months of profits will lead to some extreme swings in emotion. That's primarily why I'd recommend staying away from shorties.   There's also the danger of getting sucked in just because a horse has a short price, and that tends to lead to overbetting, and to placing bets that you regret later - those latter two are generally connected. For those reasons, you'll probably save yourself a lot of tension, frustration and temptation if you make a point of seeking bigger priced horses.

The unplaced Noseda 2yo was up for plenty under 1.2 and beaten, interesting as this looks workable.

^ 3yo ..

It was nearly 3 when it finished

How about laying the fav (short price) and backing in the place market

No point backing at low odds in the place market, if you had 60 bets £50 on each at odds of 1.2, you win 50 and lose 10 you would be -£25 5% commission don't make sense to me

Commission can be a killer with that scenario - winning222.

Two separate Markets - Two sets of Commission.

If the Horse Places - You pay commission on BOTH the Win Lay and also on the Place Back bet.

If the Horse Wins - You pay-out (Lose) on the Win Lay - and pay commission on your often paltry Place Back 'winnings'

If the Horse is Unplaced - You Lose your Place Back - and pay commission on the Win Lay.

There is NOT much mileage/consolation/Saver 'value' in a BACK in the Place Market at less than 1.4 (less commission, aswell) ...

Which then means that you will, have, to be LAYING, at a minimum of, at least, 2.8 (over 7/4) in the Win market.

When i back my selection to place i stick to handicaps no more than 9 runners at odds 3.0+         
When i lay my selection not to place i find best with 7 runners or less so just payout on 2 places but never lay the outsiders because they place more than you think and it hurts made that mistake never again