This weeks article from Malcolm Pett of http://greyhorsebot.com sheds some light on the topic of value…
People are always talking about value when it comes to horse racing.
But for the average punter in the street it’s a bit of a mystery.
It sounds like one of those weird things that all the experts like to talk about among themselves, while keeping everyone else in the dark about what it actually is.
Well let’s see if we can shed light on the subject.
The obvious explanation for value is:
“A horse’s real chance of winning is better than the odds reflect.”
So a horse may have a current price of 4/1 but according to those in the know it should be 3/1.
All things being equal if you placed a bet on every horse where you found this discrepancy you should make a profit because the horse should win more often than the odds reflect.
But this is where for the average punter the problem lies.
How do you tell if a horse’s current price represents value?
Well that’s where the whole thing gets complicated.
It is really based around opinions and peoples different way’s of deciding if a horse has a better chance of winning, than the general view.
Most people try to work it out early so they can take a better price before the rest of the markets catch on.
Sometimes you can even see a difference between bookies and Betfair (which most people believe to represent a more accurate view of a horse’s true chance of winning).
But it still doesn’t help if you haven’t got a way of looking at each horse and deciding which one has the best chance of winning.
I always look at it from a system development point of view.
If I create a system that has a 25% strike rate then I need to get average winning odds of at least 4.00 to break even.
But I need better odds than that to make money.
But really that is all a system is…
It identifies horses that traditionally have odds higher (or better value) than the strike rate of the system points towards.
That’s why I always tell people…
“Although there are lots of different statistics you can watch and monitor it is the strike rate and average winning odds that dictate if a system is profitable or not.”
So once you developed, purchase or find a system that you want to use, your only priority is to find the best price you can for each selection.
At the end of the day you can not control the strike rate of a system unless you “tweak” it (but then it becomes a new system) so your only chance to make profit is to work on the average winning price.
My own personal experience always leads me to Betfair because even after the 5% commission generally the prices are much better especially when you are not on the favourite.
Anyway I hope that goes some way to showing what value is.
Thank you as always for reading I really do appreciate it.
Malcolm
“The nerd”
http://greyhorsebot.com
Today's Selection
Sandown 7.25 Prince of Stars – win bet – 9/4 Boylesports
