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by Neil Dawkins
The advent of
betting exchanges at turn of the century has seen a complete change to betting
patterns and potential for profit. For those people who still use traditional
bookmakers, I have one plea – START USING THE EXCHANGES!!
This is just
a brief overview to help explain for those readers who have never used the
exchanges, on how they work. For those of you who already use and understand
the exchanges, it is probably worth skipping this section.
The exchanges
give us, the punter, four main choices :
1. we can back a horse to win; in a similar way
to a traditional bookmaker.
2. we can lay a horse NOT to win. In other words
we can play the role of bookmaker and let someone bet against us. If the horse
loses, as we hope, then we retain the “stake” money. If the horse wins, then
we pay out the amount a bookmaker would and amount will depend on the price
of the horse. For example, £10 stake at 4.0 (which is 3-1) would see you lose
£30. (If the horse lost you would win £10 – the “stake” money).
3. we can back a horse to place in a similar way
to betting on the Tote at racecourses. It is a place bet, NOT an each way
bet.
4. we can lay a horse not be placed.
As you can see
we immediately have several more options than with a traditional bookmaker.
If you are a punter who continually loses, and generally lose a lot, you might
want to consider “laying” your selections, rather than “backing” them. A drastic
step, and not a totally serious idea, but for some punters, laying
is a viable option because the chances are stacked much more in your favour
of winning individual bets. Of course, the liability on each bet is greater
and hence “hurts” more when the bet is unsuccessful (eg. horse wins rather
than loses).
I have already touched on one reason for using the exchanges – the fact that
as a punter you have more options. However, for most people, win betting is
where the real edge lies on the exchanges. The reason for this is that in
most races you get bigger prices about your horse than with a traditional
bookmaker. The margin fluctuates, but in general you can average out at a
20% bigger price. Normally the bigger the price, the bigger the margin; the
shorter the price, the smaller the margin.
With this 20% edge on your side, seasons that traditionally have been losing
ones, can be turned into winning ones.
For example, imagine this scenario when backing with a bookmaker :
Bets 300
Wins 60
Profit – 30 points.
That is basically setting the parameters thus : all bets at 7-2, with 1 win
every 5 bets.
Using the exchanges and seeing a 20% improvement on the 7-2 prices, the figures
would now read :
Bets 300
Wins 60
Profit + 12 points.
So a losing sequence of bets is turned into a winning sequence.
For some time know I have been a member of the racing analysis service www.Drawn2Win.co.uk
The service is run by Dave Renham a known expert on the Effect of the Draw.
During the winter the service focuses on the All Weather Racing. Dave highlights
selections he terms “best chance of the day” – this is for punters who want
fairly regular selections. Despite the name however Dave is prepared to advise
no bet on many days if there is nothing of value noted. I
decided to use these “All Weather Best Chance” selections in an experiment
to see the worth of using the exchanges over SP. The exchange I used was the
biggest and probably the best – BETFAIR (www.BetFair.com ).
I started the experiment when the all weather winter season began in November.
Since then there have been 34 “best chance bets” given out with 9 winning
bets. The winning bets are listed below, with the SPs and the prices I obtained
on www.BetFair.com
:
| Date |
Horse |
S.P.
(decimal odds) |
Profit
at SP |
Betfair
price taken |
Profits
on Betfair |
| 09-Nov |
He's a Rocket |
5.00 |
+
4.00 |
6.60 |
+
5.60 |
| 14-Nov |
Magic Amour |
3.75 |
+
2.75 |
4.00 |
+
3.00 |
| 02-Dec |
Willheconquertoo |
11.00 |
+
10.00 |
15.00 |
+ 14.00 |
| 16-Dec |
Will He Wish |
7.50 |
+
6.50 |
8.60 |
+
7.60 |
| 10-Jan |
The Lord |
8.00 |
+
7.00 |
11.50 |
+
10.50 |
| 17-Jan |
Henry Tun |
5.00 |
+
4.00 |
5.40 |
+
4.40 |
| 27-Jan |
Times Review |
12.00 |
+
11.00 |
17.00 |
+
16.00 |
| 3-Feb |
Desert Light |
5.50 |
+
4.50 |
8.00 |
+
7.00 |
| 6-Feb |
Canadian Danehill |
3.25 |
+
2.25 |
4.70 |
+
3.70 |
These figures make interesting reading. Here is a breakdown of all the “best
chance” results using SP :
| Bets |
Wins |
Losses |
Profit |
%
profit |
| 34 |
9 |
25 |
+27
points |
79.4% |
Here is a breakdown of results using Betfair prices :
| Bets |
Wins |
Losses |
Profit |
%
profit |
| 34 |
9 |
25 |
+46.80
points |
137.6% |
Quite a difference! Profit increases by nearly 20 points which equates to
improvement on this series of bets of around 70% by using Betfair against
SP. I must at this juncture mention that Betfair does take a commission
of up to 5% on any winning bet. The more you bet with them, the lower this
figure becomes. However, for the purposes of this experiment, I will use the
maximum 5% figure in order to recalculate the Betfair profits from this series
of bets. The table now reads :
| Bets |
Wins |
Losses |
Profit
(after 5% commission) |
% profit |
| 34 |
9 |
25 |
+44.46 points |
130.8% |
Profit has slipped by 2.34 points, but we are still over 17 points better
off using Betfair compared with SP.
I stated earlier, that in general you can expect to obtain 20% better prices
on Betfair than at SP.
Clearly, the key to improving upon that is getting the right price at the
right time. This does involve some luck, but with practice one can generally
beat even the well advertised 20% improvement.
As of 8th Feb 2006, I am nearly 45 points in profit, and
at £10 per bet that equates to £445. That is £175 more than if I had been
using SP.
There is a final advantage to the knowledgeable punter in terms of the exchanges.
You are able to “back” or “lay” horses “in running”. That means you are able
to strike a bet when a race is in progress. This is an area I believe the
most money can be made. That however is the subject of a different article,
for those of you interested, you can read it on the punter profits website
– www.PunterProfits.com – in the
member’s area.
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