A perennial pastime of mine.
One I recently ran through was:

Top of SP rank
30 or more career starts
Outside the top 4 average prizemoney earners.
Metrop only.

Resulted in 25/177 winners (half the normal rate of winning favourites) and 51% lot.

This seems a commonsense strategy of which I would hold high expectancy of recurrence, only trouble being only 177 occurences in 2.5 years ie less than 6 per month.

Anyone else have any false favourite spotting scans going?

Tony

Hi Tony

Are you looking to lay these selections or are you just eliminating favourites that unlikely to win? I'm interested in finding consistent losing systems in order to lay the selections but it's actually alot harder than most ppl would think.

Gidday, Dan. Yes I am looking to lay these on the exchanges although, if you could only consistently ID the things, there are of course a hundred ways to skin the cat.
Laying systems, despite what I naivley originally thought, are hard to come by as you say, at least in the layable segment of the market, largely given the overs you've gotta offer. It is the ultimate tease: still can't win and can't quite lose either!
Tell us how you're thinking.

Yep it's the fact that you have to generally offer better prices than the bookies to get matched and also the 5% commission that makes it hard. I think you have to concentrate on the front end of the market, one because that's where most of the liquidity is. And two, you have to offer too high a price on the outsiders to make it worthwhile. And it's easy to wipe out a week's profit with one losing bet on an outsider.

So most of my effort is looking at the front of the market, preferably the favourite. Sometimes with the fave you can actually lay at a lower price than the tab. Laying certainly makes you alot more conscious of price. I think for a laying system to be worthwhile, it needs to be at least negative 40% pot. This is not easy to do if you want more than a few bets a month.

I think it's worth perservering with. I'm sure there's a higher chance of a winning system turning into a losing system than a losing system turning into a winning system. Also the high strike rate of a laying system is psychologically important, you're not going to have very long losing runs.

Here's a couple to try out, tell me what you think. I only have two yrs of data so you can probably do a more thorough test than me.

Race Distance: 1000 - 4000
Race Field Size: 8 - 16
Max No 1st Uppers: 8
Day of Week: 7
Venue: SMA
Barrier Position: 1 - 8
TAB Number: 2 - 12
Days to Last Start: 7 - 999
Place % Rank: 3 - 24
Predicted Posn Rank: 8 - 24
SP Price: 0.0 - 9.0



Race Distance: 800 - 4000
Max No 1st Uppers: 8
Day of Week: 7
Venue: SMBA
Last Start SP: 3.0 - 999
Max Distance Rise-Drop: 2200 - 0
Place % Rank: 2 - 24
Predicted Posn Rank: 10 - 24
SP Price: 0.0 - 11.0

Dan

Dan, I don't think I'll have much more data than you as the market price data available only goes back to July 01 unless I am missing something.

The first system had 11.4% winners (480 bets)for a loss of 41.3%. However most of the loss (or layer's profit) was in the
6.5 - 9.0 price range. A bit long for me,
having recently devised a laying system, successfully "paper traded" it for a couple of months, then loaded up the betfair account one afternoon and sure enough the very first three lays saluted at average odds of 7/1 under, for me at least, unbelievable circumstances. The first two were clearly headed to come again, one due to a dropped whip, and the third one got a freak rails run to blowse those seemingly fighting the race out on the line.
I couldn't back three such winners on the trot at those odds in a month of Sundays.
My substantial account was wiped out in all of a couple of hours and I, forever traumatised by the experience, will never lay that segment of the market again.


System 2 looks better, 7.9% winners (430 bets) for 52.3% lot with about 33% loss on the less than 6.5 shots, 17/118 winners in this range. Not many bets in the shorter price range being the problem.

Will take a closer look when I get a minute.

Tony

Have made a nice profit over time focusing on races where horses ridden by ‘popular’ jockeys have not been rated in my top 3. Almost always get very good overs , whilst maintaining a profitable strike rate, which is the aim of the game IMO

[ This Message was edited by: Unlucky Phil on 2004-05-08 01:21 ]

On 2004-05-08 01:16, Unlucky Phil wrote:
Have made a nice profit over time focusing on races where horses ridden by ‘popular’ jockeys have not been rated in my top 3. Almost always get very good overs , whilst maintaining a profitable strike rate, which is the aim of the game IMO

Hi Phil,

was this backing them or laying them?

Cheers,
Chris.

AC / DC

Backing against them and laying them, the latter being the preferred method.

I only look at laying if a horse is at even money or odds on, I find you don't have to go to far over tab price to lay a bet and losing bets aren't so painful .