This week’s blast from the past is a Systems Analysis by Formulator article titled “When to back those short-priced favourites” Andrew Mount delved deep...
The article begins…
“A basic premise for betting is that no potential winner should be passed over simply on the grounds that it will start at short odds”
I’m in total agreement with this. Arguably the best-value bet I ever had was on Ryan Moore be Champion Flat Jockey in 2006. My old boss, bookie Martyn Of Leicester, used to specialise in betting on this event and our first bets were struck at odds of 10-1 (apologies for the after timing). However, the better value was the £200/£1300 I had with Stan James about a week before the end of the season. We worked out that Moore couldn’t get beat at this stage even if he was run over by a bus in Newmarket High Street. Typical gamblers, we even gamed this scenario and came to the conclusion that he was more of a certainty if he did pop his clogs as the other jockeys would cease riding out of respect.
The article continues…
“Far too many good things are missed because the horse concerned is considered “really not worth backing”. There is no denying that a fruitful source of winners are horses quoted at 5-4, 11-8 and 6-4 in non-handicaps. And It is worth noting that a) previous winners are likely to produce the best percentage, and b) close-up seconds in two-year-old events also provide a quote of subsequent winners.”
Let’s examine the part about horses priced between 5-4 and 6-4 in non-handicaps. No doubt this will be a source of plenty of winners, but I have my doubts that it will be profitable. Since the beginning of 2021 there were 6239 runners (favourites or otherwise) in this price range in races run in Britain (Flat and jumps combined) with 2467 (39.54%) winning….
…the WAX score (winners above expected came in positively at 17.15) but we’d have lost £365 by backing them blind at SP (-5.85% on turnover). The loss at Betfair SP (after 2% commission) was much smaller at just £35.54 (-0.57%). The above figures include handicaps and non-handicaps, so let’s split them to see if the non-handicap qualifiers do better…
…that’s not a huge help, with a loss for both groups at SP and Betfair SP.
Now let’s move on to those expected profits from ‘close-up seconds in two-year-old events’. I’ve defined close-up as beaten by three-quarters of a length or less…
…ouch! You’d do your cobblers backing these blind, losing £341.56 to a £1 level stake at SP (-24.61%) and £217.25 at Betfair SP (-15.65%). Laying them all at Betfair SP would have returned a profit of £181.36 (+13.07%) after 2% commission. The turf qualifiers fared much worse than the all-weather ones…
…some of these qualifiers could be having their tenth outing, others might have only had one previous run, so let’s split the turf qualifiers by ‘runs in last 1 year’ to see how each group fared…
…those who finished a close-up second on their debuts (i.e. 1 previous run in the above table) had a superior strike-rate and made a small profit (+£6.66) at Betfair SP. If we eliminate those from out lay system, we get the following results…
To summarise the system rules
Two-year-olds
Two or more previous runs
Finished a close-up second last time out (beaten by 0.75L or less)
Running on turf
This LAY system has made a profit in excess of 28% at Betfair SP (after comm) since 2021.
The same angle in Ireland produced the following results…
…laying them at Betfair SP produced a 13.18% profit after comm.
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