Laying on Bet.fair

[Raven]

hi all,

ive just opened a BF account & am considering my wagering options.

to those that have experience laying on BF:

is it hard to lay a horse that are currently $10 or more in the market?

do you have to stick to the top 4 or 5 in the market?

i know it all depends on the markets liquidity, etc, but i just want to get an overall impression. i assume the higher the price, the more likelihood of an unmatched lay.

cheers

[AngryPixie]

Raven

Get a hold of the Betfair Advantage Tool which will allow you to compare historic Betfair prices against the three Australian tote's.

I work in the below $11 (10/1) range with an average Betfair matched price of $7.08. These selections are usually the 3rd, 4th or 5th favourites. You'll get matched on the longies, it's just whether the price you have to offer is representative of the horses chance.

[Raven]

thx Pix, will do

[wesmip1]

Raven,

Depends on how much you want matched.

If your laying more than $50 you probably are only going to be able to get it matched on the top 2 in the market.

Good Luck.

[AngryPixie]

If your laying more than $50 you probably are only going to be able to get it matched on the top 2 in the market.


No you'll get alot more than $50 matched most days on selections othen than the top 2. Even Monday meetings you'll be able to churn away.

[wesmip1]

AngryPixie,

I should rephrase that :

You are not going to get more than $50 matched at "Reasonable odds". For example if the horse is $20 on the tabs you are probably not going to get $50 matched anywhere up to $50 ( for a liability of $2500 ). You may get it matched at $100 which means you have a liability of $5000.

But if you lay at those odds you are asking for trouble....

Good Luck.

[AngryPixie]

Wes yes good point. You need to work the UK markets if your interested in laying selections at those higher prices.

[Bhagwan]

Hi Raven,
Welcome to the world of lay betting.

What you will find , is no matter how good one is, at selecting the horses that should fall over, they will still get up 10-15% of the time.

Even 20/1 shots will get up 1 in 20 times.

I have found its best to try & target runners at $7.00 & less, that way if one gets hit 1 in 8 times , a profit is still to be had.

That's a success rate of 87.5% SR, its very difficult to get much better than this over say 100 bets.

Turn over is pretty much the name of the game because of the low odds one is working with. So the idea is to have heaps of bets if possible.
It is often suggested to bet 1-.50% of bank.

Try not to increase bets after a loss , but halve the bet if the race or prices looks risky.

Halve your normal bet on $11.00 shots
Quarter your bet on $20 shots.
Because when they bite , they bite hard & its a long grinde back up the ladder.
That's just the nature of the beast.

Cheers.

[Chrome Prince]

You'll get matched for whatever amount you want, but the odds will kill you slowly but surely.
In fact it is very hard to eek out a profit on the top end of the market, but it can be done.

Here's a great piece of advice I can give you for nothing...

You must get close to the very best price available to have any hope of beating the higher odds on Betfair. In reality, it really is a backers market.
The bias favours the backers heavily.
The layers face a real uphill battle.

It's easy to pick losers, but when the odds are so far against you, just one mistake (or even a couple) can pretty much wipe out a huge chunk of profit.

Look at it this way, there's almost no hope of laying a 50/1 shot at 50/1, it's more likely to be upwards of 200/1.
If only one of them wins in 100 races (providing a nice profit at SP or TAB prices), @ 200/1 it's wipeout, you just can't get it back by continually laying so far over the odds.

So how is it possible to get within a bull's roar of realistic prices?
This is the million dollar question!

You'll likely find that all but the fancied runners will drift quite a bit.

Here's how I approach it, with a real example recently...

Horse is 40/1 with the bookies.

I lay it for $100 at 85/1 on Betfair.

Horse drifts to 120/1 on Betfair.

I back it for $50.00 @ 120/1.

The nett result, is that I have layed the horse for $50.00 @ 50/1 with no hope of it being matched at that price prior.

I have beaten the huge percentage against me, down to a much smaller and tolerable margin.

O.K. that's pretty good, but what if it firms in further instead of drifting in the market?

You'll find that those at big odds will almost always drift, I don't recommend this strategy on the shorties, as it can go either way.

[Raven]

thx for the interesting responses guys, just the stuff i was after

Chrome, they're exactly the opportunities Im looking for, to back & lay the same horse with the adv in your favour.

the bread & butter will still have to be some form study though, i have an idea of a 'type' of horse to lay when they are in the market.

but this leads me to a new question:

are certain types of races good races to lay in?? think the G1 1400m hcp at Caul on sat, big field, looked an open race on paper (I would have layed Bon Hoffa ftr, I backed Niconero). Big fields, open races

or is it best to lay an individual horse for handicapping reasons? (lacks pace, gets back, ? on pace, not suited at Caul, ? on jock, under odds, etc)

[AngryPixie]

I have found its best to try & target runners at $7.00 & less, that way if one gets hit 1 in 8 times , a profit is still to be had.

That's a success rate of 87.5% SR, its very difficult to get much better than this over say 100 bets.

Bhagwan, I'll have to disagree with you there. In the next week I'll place my 1000th lay for the year. For most of the year my S/R has been bumping along between 91.5% and 92%. It's 91.7% as we go into todays racing. I don't lay anything over $11.00.


Turn over is pretty much the name of the game because of the low odds one is working with. So the idea is to have heaps of bets if possible.
It is often suggested to bet 1-.50% of bank.

Agreed. Turnover is the name of the game. A stake of around 1% is about right, but I think in terms of liability which I set at just over 12% of bank per lay.

Raven, Chrome is right re getting the best price available but in practice I've found this is pretty hard on the Australian markets. Not alot of business is done in the first 2/3rds of betting time on the selections I like to lay, so I find that in general the best price is available at the jump. I might get a couple of ticks worse than the price quoted in the Betfair Advantage Tool, but I'd much prefer to get completely matched at an ok price than to miss out by hanging on too long for a very slightly better one. Whenever I try to double guess the market I'm inevitably wrong so I just set the bot to shoot off the lay a few seconds after the advertised start time.

There is the occassional exception though. I layed Undue last Saturday quite a bit before the jump and managed to secure $9.60 and I think it eventually started around $13 on Betfair. I'd tipped it as a lay on another forum so wanted to make sure I actually could lay it ;)

Hope that's of some help.

[Chrome Prince]

Sorry to sound like a broken record Raven, but this is exactly how layers go broke.

They try to pick the best races to lay in, the horse with the worst form, the horse rising in class, big fields etc etc.

The only way to profit from directly laying one horse per race is to lay it at a realistic price. No matter what the horse is like,the price has to allow you to make a longterm profit, even if it wins.

"Am I happy to have layed this horse at these odds, if it actually wins"

That's the only question you need to ask.

[AngryPixie]

Go broke? Do you mean what I said or what Raven said?

[Chrome Prince]

AP, I meant the thinking of putting form before price.

There are tipsters all over the joint who will have 19 successful lays in a row, but that 20th lay that wins @ 50/1 will kill them.

[AngryPixie]

Ok with you. I agree. As you know I'm mostly about price and only use form to support the markets opinion. ;)

You've been quiet of late.

[Mark]

What can be done on Betfair is only limited by your imagination.

[Raven]

frankly im a little befuddled by it all atm, thankfully im not betting yet.

i understand your warnings Chrome, you still have to lay at a price that still gives you an edge.

but atm i think the way to start is to spend most of my time on form study, then select my 'lays' (horses i think have less than 10% chances, maybe 1 to 3 a day) & then lay them when the market gives me an edge.

i dont want to jump right in, lay race after race, make mistake after mistake, & deplete my bank.

[Bhagwan]

Hi Raven,

Heres a simple plan that hits plenty of losers.

2Pt Gap Plan.

. Target the pre-post paper Fav. as per newspaper or racingandsports

. Target the favs that have a 2 pt gap or more in its price shown, over the second Fav listed.
e.g. $3.00 1st fav , $5.00 2nd Fav, this becomes a bet.

. No bet in races with an odds on horse.

. No races with duel 1st favs.

These horses are usually over bet & represent good lay betting opportunities,
because the price is usually nice & low which is what we like to try & achieve if possible.

Its amazing how many of these fall over.

If they do manage to win instead of loose , the damage will be minimal.

Cheers.

[Bhagwan]

He is a method of getting the lay price one wishes for .
Submit ones lay price at 10 cents more than the current Back price.
If any someone takes up some of the Back price , you will be the first one taken up within that batch .

One has to try & remember , that when one submits a Pink price it ends up being placed on the Blue side for some one to take up the price on offer.

So if the is $100 available on the Back side & someone only wishes to take up $10 of it, your submitted price that was 10 cents more, will be included rather than being at the rear of the offered batch of $100

Cheers.

[michaelg]

Hi, Bhagwan.

Re your 2 pt gap plan - I have been doing something fairly similar for some time, but the problem is that there is not too much action with my method and consequently I often lose interest.

Excluding Maiden races, I look at pre-post prices where the fave must be between the $2.20 to $3.00 range, then the second-fave must be at least twice the price of the fave. For example there was one such race yesterday which was Bendigo race 6. The p.p. fave was no.8 at $2.50 and the second fave was $5.50 which was scratched. However the third-fave was $7.00, and I more or less accepted that even with the scratching, the fave would not have reduced to less than the minimum price of $2.20 - so it was a qualifying race. There was also one qualifying race on Wednesday - Mackay R7 no.2. - it was unplaced.

As it was, the fave in yesterday's race was also unplaced. The Unitab quinella paid $600, and for the trifecta it paid $10,000. There were 11 runners in the race, so the divvies were exceptional.

I have not considered laying the p.p. fave as I have been more interested in the exotics. However, because of my on-and-off records show a poor strike rate for the fave I will now lay them. And to maintain my interest I will now start a new thread here listing the selections.

[Bhagwan]

That sounds like a good idea Michael.

One surgestion is to only make them a lay bet if a price of $5.50 or less can be acquired, other wise it becomes a no bet race.

Cheers.