With no selections today for the Lay Debutants system, I thought that the time may be right to tell you about my Lay Handicaps system.
A Handicap by design is a race where all the runners should finish together IE there should be no winner because they are all handicapped (by weight) to have an equal chance of winning.
What this means for the layer is that if an angle is uncovered that the prices should be more reasonable, because there shouldn't be big outsiders.
In reality there are still runners that the bookies and the betting public deem to have no chance.
And of course they do win.
But when I compare this lay system with the Lay Debutants system the stand out difference is that for the Lay Debutants 49% of the selections start at over 20/1.
With this Handicap Debutants Lay system 29% start at over 20/1.
So What are the rules…
Basically we are just looking for Male horses that are 3 year olds or older who are having their first run in a Handicap.
There are of course some trainers that specialise in winning with their Handicap debutants and we have excluded any trainer that has shown a profit with such horses over the last 10 years.
The headline results are that from just over 8,000 selections in the last 10 years the win strike rate is 2.9% and the win ROI is minus 79%, so even with inflated Betfair prices there is still plenty of margin.
As with the Lay Debutants we are laying these at Betfair SP for a fixed liability.
Here are today's Handicap Lays…
16:20:00 Plumpton 2 Ballyculla (IRE)
17:20:00 Plumpton 10 Macs Grey (IRE)
Today's Selection
4.10 Pontefract Aalim – eachway bet – 6/1 Bet 365, Paddy Power, Bet Victor
Ballyculla was too dangerous a lay, even before it was backed imo! We shall see?
Just win lay or place lay as well?
Ballyculla did look a risky lay, it was 1st or second favourite with about 30 mins to go but it did drift quite a bit in the final minutes before the off so took a punt and it paid off. IIRC it drifted from about 4.5 to 7.7 SP, so picked up a few pennies. Macs Grey was a huge price, the highest price in its race so picked up even fewer pennies on that one. Far too early to tell if this has any mileage but would be interested in knowing the full selection process.