Laying Analysis Process
 

All,

When deciding on horses to lay there are 2 ways you can go about the analysis. The first is to compare the horse you want to lay to the field. You are essentially determining the horses overall chances of winning the race.

The other way which I am coming to like is to only analyse 2 (or 3) horses. This reduces the work required and lets face it you are not trying to pick the winner of the race, you are just trying to pick a horse that will lose.

The advantages of doing this are :
1. Concentrate your effort on 2 horses so there is more thorough analysis.
2. Your not confused by the amount of stats you look through with each horse.
3. Saves time.
4. Sometimes you could be wrong and still turn out a winner as something else in the field wins.

The disadvantages are :
1. Which two horses to pick ?
2. Odds could be large if you pick longer prices horses.

If you stick to the prepost favs or at least in the top 4 of the prepost prices then you should be sticking to horses with the acceptable laying odds.

I have started to look at the top 2-3 prepost horses and am working out a beaten lengths difference that I think will occur. I have found I am much more accurate doing this type of analysis then when I was looking at the entire field. Of course if I am trying to find the winner then I will need to look at the whole field.

What are everyone else's thoughts on this process ?

Good Luck.

Hi, Wes,

Interesting what you have to say. While not exactly what you are thinking about, I am continually drawn back to the thoughts of Maria --- the laying heroine. Several times she mentions that her father (who is some sort of maths guru if I remember rightly) said that she should be backing the longer-priced horses, as he does.

Most of us (rightly I believe) fear the longer price animal getting up and so wiping out our bank --- which has to reasonably substantial in the first place to cover the liability on a longer priced selection. But if Maria's Dad can do it there must be a way!

What do people think?

MerriGuy,

I think Marias dad is saying back the loonger priced ones as they are generally offered at overlay prices which means long term you should make a profit.

Looking at a few horses simplifies the process a lot. I have analysed the Ipswich meeting tommorrow below to show how I am going about it.

Please note that I have not analysed the entire field just the first few prepost favs.

Race 1 :
Not Rated as 800m is too short a race where luck can play a major part.

Race 2:
Analysed: Erembourg, Mr Blue Berry, Barok.
Rated Erembourg to win by 1 length on Barok who beats Mr Blue Berry by a nose. Horse to lay is Barok. The reason being that Mr Blue Berry only had 1 start and was hard to assess against the field. He could improve dramtically.

Race 3:
Analysed: Yunus, Pious Pearl, Trinity Heights
Rated Pious Pearl to win by a nose to Yunus beating Trinity Heights by around 2.5 lengths. Horse to lay is Trinity Heights.

Race 4:
Analysed:Main Vein,Miss Devito, Jimeon
Rated Main Vein to win by a nose. Very close race. Jimeon should be at least 1 length behind these two. Lay Jimeon.

Race 5:
Analysed : Princess Of Monaco, General Bonaparte
Princess of Monaco is rated 4 lengths clear of General Bonaparte. Lay General Bonaparte.

Race 6:
Analysed:Muzzio, Wind Gusts, Roman Ace
This will be a close race between Wind Gusts and Muzzio but I think Muzzio will lose by half a length. Roman Ace is going to be a long way back. He is rated at least 6 lengths off the other two. Lay Roman Ace.

Race 7:
Analysed: Sir Clang, Zirconium,
Another tough race but I have rated Zirconium to win by a length over Sir Clang despite the very bad barrier draw.

Race 8 :
Analysed: The Big Easy, Royal Opera
I have rated the big easy a clear 2.5 lengths clear of Royal opera at the finish line.

Race 9:
Analysed:Miss Molly Dolly,Momfasa,
Momfosa is rated at least 3 lengths clear of Miss Molly Dolly at the finish.

Good Lays (at least 2 lengths or worse) would be:
Race 3 : Trinity Heights
Race 5 : General Bonaparte
Race 6 : Roman Ace
Race 8 : Royal Opera
Race 9 : Miss Molly Dolly

Good Luck.

Merriguy

That's backers talk not layers talk. :D

In my opinion the sweet spot for laying is in the range roughly 6.00 to 11.00. Betfair account balance agrees too. Michaelg is having quite a bit of success in this area, as I have had for about the last 18 months. My current test lay method in "Pixies Pix" has an average BAT SP of about 7.70. and is showing a nice profit. I don't really understand why some layers shy away from these horses. You will have some accidents, but not anywhere near as many as the shorter priced lays.

Each to their own I guess.

EDIT: Just read Michaels latest "Lay The Fave" post. May take back that statement about his success with the longer priced ones. Tough luck Michael. :(

Hi, Angry Pixie.

Fortunately, yesterday's accident was not a qualifier - it was $15. However, there were 2 qualifiers for Price B, they were both beaten. Since Friday 4 May the price range of $6 to $9.90 (Price B) has had 24 selections for 24 successes.

Hi, Wes. Will be watching with interest. Good luck.

Thanks for the thoughts, Pixie. Once again watchig with interest --- and pleased that you are doing well.

Going back to Maria's Dad, however, I certainly got the impression that he meant further out than $11.00. If I remember rightly she layed them up to about the $11.00 mark.

Yes I will lay out a bit further depending on my assessed price. The "Pixie's Pix" lay selection's are doing better than my bread and butter lay method so I'm looking closely too ;) Hope some others are profiting along the way.

two races changed due to scratchings:

Race 5:
Analysed : Princess Of Monaco, Red Light Bandit, Let There Be Rock
Princess of Monaco is rated 3 lengths clear of Let there be rock and a further 2 lengths to Red Light Bandit.

Race 7:
Analysed: Sir Clang, The Guardian
Interesting that this is still close and I have it at a nose difference with Sir clang winning.

Good Lays (at least 2 lengths or worse) would be:
Race 3 : Trinity Heights
Race 5 : Red Light Bandit and Let There Be Rock
Race 6 : Roman Ace
Race 8 : Royal Opera
Race 9 : Miss Molly Dolly

For those interested:

Race 2 Analysis was for 3 horses. It was rated as follows:

Erembourg to win by 1 length on Barok who beats Mr Blue Berry by a nose. Horse to lay is Barok. The reason being that Mr Blue Berry only had 1 start and was hard to assess against the field. He could improve dramtically.

Anticpated outcome :
Erembourg, Barok, Mr Blueberry with a warning the last 2 could change order.

Race outcome :
Erembourg WIN, Mr Blue Berry came 4th and Barok came 6th.

You could lay Mr Blue Berry at $5.50
You could lay Barok at $8.50

Good Luck.

Race 3 Was rated as follows:

Analysed: Yunus, Pious Pearl, Trinity Heights

Anticipated Outcome:
Pious Pearl to win by a nose to Yunus beating Trinity Heights by around 2.5 lengths. Horse to lay is Trinity Heights.

Race Outcome:
Pious Pearl missed the jump which is a bad sign in a 1100m race.
Finishing Order was Yunus 2nd , Trinity Heights 4th, Pious Pearl 6th.

As I said earlier with laying you only need to rate a few horses and get them right but sometimes you also get lucky and an unrated horse wins.

You could lay Yunus at $3.90
You could lay Trinity Hieghts at $30.00
Good Luck.

Race 4 :

Another race where the top rated had a very poor jump from the gates.

Analysed:Main Vein,Miss Devito, Jimeon

Anticipated Outcome:
Main Vein Scratched. Miss Devito to beat Jimeon by at least 1 length. Lay Jimeon.

Race Outcome:
Miss Debvito jumped bad and Jimeon tried to lead all the way.
Jimeon 2nd, Miss Devito far behind.

Another race where an unrated horse helped us out.

You could lay Jimeon at $8.50

Good Luck.

Race 5:

Analysed : Princess Of Monaco, Red Light Bandit, Let There Be Rock

Anticipated outcome:
Princess of Monaco is rated 3 lengths clear of Let there be rock and a further 2 lengths to Red Light Bandit.

Race Result : Princess Of Monaco 2nd, Let There Be Rock 3rd, Red Light Bandit long way back,

You could lay Let There Be Rock at $5.30
You could lay Red Light Bandit at $30.00

Good Luck

For Race 6 we had Roman Ace as a good lay and low and behild he comes out and wins.

You could have layed Roman Ace at $25.00

It shows how with a bit of luck the longer shots can get up. The top 2 horses both were out of contention coming into the final turn.

Good Luck.

Trying to get "an angle" on laying on Betfair (which I have been doing with mixed success) I came across this old thread --- and thought it was worth reviving.

AngryPixie and Michaelg said they have had fair success in the $6.00 to $9.90 band. having a quick look at yesterday's races at four of the centres I came up with in that band:

Sunny Coast -- !7 /17 successful lays
Canberra -- 16/17 ditto
Grafton -- 18/21 ditto
Geelong -- 20/22 ditto

Didn't bother with the other four courses (got tired!); but that is a grand total of 71/77 successful lays --- 92.2%.

Even if all the picks were at $9.90 (I don't think any of them were actually) the loss at $9.90 would have been (laying each for $20.00) $1068.00, whereas the other 71 successful lays would have brought in $1420 (less commission). Something like 24% POT!

For convenience sake I took the figures from the Qld TAB site. The figures on the jump at Betair could, probably would, vary a little from these.

Now applying this thinking to today's two meetings, so far (5.20 p.m.) the results would have been 20/22 (Jeuneyman just won at $6.10).

Seems to be something worth thinking about. Comments!?

Did you just lay everything in that price range, or did you try to rate them as Wesmip did?
My experience with that price range is that you can have a really good run for quite a while, but it always turns eventually and you only need 4 or 5 winners in close succession to bust your bank.

unfortunately you will find the betfair figures often vary a great deal from the closing unitab price, usually higher

its more than common for me to lay a nag paying $7.0 on uni at $10+on betfair simply because i cant get matched otherwise & i have a fair amount of faith in my selection process

No, I did not try to rate them, Salty. I appreciate your observation,

What you say, Stugots is probably true; but remember I only used the UniTab prices for convenience. I guess you simply would not lay the horses that did not come into the range. Remember, too, that the bottom end of the range would likewise "expand" into the band for the same reason. How that would affect the results I do not know. But its a good point that would have to be looked at.

Merriguy, I looked at BAT for today's racing at both venues - it would be expected that this be somehat more accurate than Unitab prices because it shows the final Bet price on Betfair.

There were 26 selections for 24 smiles in the $6.00 to $9.90 range as shown on the BAT site. Below are the results.

The total liability on the two accidents was 11.40 units.

24 smiles X 0.95 (Betfair's takeout) = 22.80 units profit.

By my reckoning that is a total profit of 11.40 units, or exactly a 50% profit. However the actual profit would be slightly less because I've used the Buy price and not the Lay price. Nevertheless, still a very good profit.

Unfortunately nothing is that easy or simple.

Are we using TAB price, Bookie Prices or Betfair prices to gauge the 6-9.90 band? Prices @ close to starting time, 5 minutes out, 10 minutes out? What if we lay one and it firms to less than 6 or drifts to longer than 9.90? What if we don't lay one, and just before they jump it drifts into the lay band, or firms into the lay band?

Good luck whatever you decide.

LAYING
I have found targeting 3 horses a race works better than just targetting 2 horses a race .

Then decide which is the worst, using ones favorite Neural setting, for example.

Think twice if one is going to take the market fav on.
They have an unnerving habit of getting up inspite of what form may suggest

Targeting the price range up to $8.90 works well.

I feel one needs to have at least a 90% success rate to make it profitable if one is targetting the greater price range .

Try & target races with 11+ runners.
That way we have 10+ runners working for us to knock our selection over from winning.

I found the best distance range to target is the 1100-1400m range.
They tend to run truer as form may suggest.

With lay betting one has to be mindfull of the liability of the race should our selection win instead of lose, therefore its a very strong idea to bet to the liability of bank percentage ,one feels comfotable exposed to.
Example.
Betting to 5% liability of bank. This allows for 20 outs in a row.
$1000 bank = $50
Now divide the fractional odds of our selection into the above amount to calculated the outlay.
e.g. $3.00 = 2/1 Fractional odds
$50 / 2/1 = $25 O/L
$50 / 7/1 = $7
$50 / 5/1 = $10
$50 / 9/1 = $5.55
$50 / 1/1 = $50
Treat odds on horses as if they are even money (1/1)

This way, ones exposure to risk is always under control & one will have a greater chance of gleaming a profit.

I feel one should use one of the Betfair betting tools to work more easily with Betfair .
Also the programs get around the $6 min bet policy, whereby one can place bets as low as 1 cent if they wish.

These tools range in price & complexity.
Here are just some of them.
Bet Angel (the original) -$600
Bet IE V2.5 - $225
Fairbot -$132
Bet Trader Pro - Free.

Please keep in mind that they all draw on broadband usage so make sure one has an unlimited broadband account otherwise it could be a costly exercise with broadband bills being in excess usage for the monthly allocation..

For those interested in Marias staking plan.
$1.00 - $3.50 Bet 1% of bank.
$3.55- $7.40 Bet 0.6%
$7.60 - $11.00 Bet 0.4%

As one can see from above , she is also betting roughly to liability of bank as to odds.

Cheers.

Yes, there was much talk of her "staking plan", it was simply a liability calculation.

Forgetting about trading, or making books, Betfair is a backers market.
At close to 100% books and deducting 5% commission, backers are 10%-15% better off. Layers are 10% - 15% worse off.
It takes a good deal of ingenuity to beat these percentages.

However, the number of times I'm able to get matched at TAB prices for racing here astounds me, the UK market is far less generous.

Appreciate the comments, guys. That's exactly what I was hoping for. I realise there are many other factors to take into consideration before one has a "system"! However the results I referred to yesterday, the earlier comments of six or eight months back, and the generally supportive comments of you guys, at least give one hope

Specifically:

Michaelg, those figures are most encouraging. Will have to learn more about BAT. Thanks.

Mark, in fact, I just presumed the final Unitab price (going back over the results on that site). I realise decisions have to be made about all the things you mention -- and even then, they are sometimes thrown out by last minute scratchings or other hold ups (to use only one example).

I think I would tend to use the prices on the TAB. As you would realise the Betfair prices are often different. In one sense I don't see that it matters if they drift out or firm. The old "swings and roundabouts" conundrum! But you are right. All these matters have to be addressed.

Bhagwan, appreciate the thoughts you have put down. I agree decisions have to made about the races one follows. In the last at Taree yesterday there were (Unitab) 5 horses out of 11 starters in the band. Not a proposition for me --- and one of them won! (By the way, your typing must be a lot better than mine. This is taking me ages and your reply, generously, was three or four times longer ). Thanks.

And, Chrome, your comments are appreciated. Its just that laying seems more attractive (despite the disadvantages you mention) especially on days that are full of "rubbish" races. I know, I know, one shouldn't bet on such days, but.............Always respect your posts.

Merriguy, I had a look at last Saturday's results because there were Group down to the low class races which were held at country tracks.

For the $6.00 to $9.90 price band using BAT, the results are:

103 smiles = 97.85 units profit.
17 accidents for a loss of 106.32 units.
A loss of 8.47 units.

I also looked at a few factors, such as type of race, distance, amount of selections per race, amount of runners per race, price of the fave, but I could not find any consistency - the accidents seemed random.

Thanks for that, Michael. Some possibilities surely?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned, of course, is that if there is more than one starter in the band (at a guess about 80% of the races) then you do not pay the full "accident" penalty because the other horse(s) lost :)

I don't know about that Chrome. I still do very well on the lay.

In relation to the laying "sweet spot", I don't think anybody was suggesting that you lay all horses in that price bracket. The suggestion was that your selection(s) arrived at by other means should be in that bracket. At least that's what I was talking about. You still need an angle ;)

Merriguy, I included the smiles in races where there were multiple selections when an accident was encountered. For example, if there were 4 selections and an accident of $9.00 occurred, then the liability on the accident was $8.00, but the 3 other horses then reduced the total liability.

However, I did make an error in my calcs for these races. I reduced the total liability by 0.95 units per smile and not by 1.00 units. According to my revised calcs an extra 2.75 units should be added to my original results which makes it 100.60 units, but unfortunately it shows an overall loss of 5.71 units.

Ta, Michael.

Agreed. Each to his own I guess.

I'm not saying that you can't win laying horses, I'm just saying it's twice as tough as backing.

If you are going to target a price range you have to lay as close to Tab price as you can.
We now backing all horses paying $6 on the Tab results in about 10 to 20% loss (guess), so you would have to lay within that % range to come out in front.

The problem is that more often than not you can't lay at anywhere near $6.00, probably $7.00 to $7.50 or more, which means that all advantage is lost.
Coupled with that are the horses you can get set @ $6.00 means the horse has probably firmed from $6 to $5.50 or $5.00 and you are still over the odds.

Complicated game this.

Take the $6.00 win scenario, the correct(?) price is $7.20 @ 20% takeout.
$6.90 is the breakeven point less commission, so you have to lay at LESS than $6.90 to make any money at all.

Very hard to get set at that price for a $6.00 horse.

so chrome doesnt it all come down to selection method?

we are all told over & over that one can only win on the punt by "finding value"

so surely this also applies when laying a nag - if you can lay $7.5 abt a horse you rate at $8.5 or more then the jobs 1/2 done no?

so i have to disagree entirely with your comment "I'm not saying that you can't win laying horses, I'm just saying it's twice as tough as backing"

making a $ laying certainly isnt any easier but twice as hard? no

Surely if the takeout of TABS is 14.50% and the takeout of Betfair is 5% (effectively), you are 9.5% better off backing using Betfair and 9.5% worse off laying using Betfair, which is why I say it's twice as hard, but actually it's 19% harder.
To win, your ratings have to outperform the market either way, but have to outperform the market by more than 19% laying.

Hi Chrome

Just to complicate things more, I've laid horses, not the whole field, at say, 70%, and cleaned up when they all get beaten. And at the other end of the spectrum I've laid horses, again not the whole field at say, 105%, and lost because I've laid the winner for more than the rest.

Also, as you know, I lay every day..........and have made profits from day 1, and I don't mean UK races where I can lay the lot over 100%.

Plus it is possible to lay shorter than TAB odds. An extreme example happened just yesterday. A mate of mine laid a horse @ 4.10, it opened 50/1 on IAS and he was able to back it back @ 85 !!! People take strange prices every day.

Some of todays lays, ie the price I took, and the Unitab price.

MR1 9, me 7.60, UTB 8.80
10, me 5.55, UTB 4.70
11, me 9.80, UTB 12.40

MR2 3, me 3.95, UTB 3.90
6, me 8.80, UTB 11.40
10, me 9.80, UTB 12.20

MR3 12, me 3.30, UTB 3.40..............and I backed it @ 4.50

MR4 3, me 9.80, UTB 9.80
5, me 9.80, UTB 9.90

MR5, 7, me 3.62, UTB 3.70

I honestly didn't think there would be this many, as I don't usually do a post mortem and check the TAB prices.

Yes, there are many opportunites to manipulate the odds in your favour and many prices offered to be taken advantage of, what I'm talking about is the starting point.
There is far more opportunity in Australian markets to get under TAB price.

Here's a nice example of the bias;)

R1 Kenilworth Oceans Away

SA TAB $1.20

My price to back
$1.45 matched
$1.48 matched
$1.52 matched
$1.57 matched
$1.61 matched
$1.65 matched
$1.69 matched

Average odds $1.61 on a $1.20 shot

34% better less 5% commission 29% better.
Overall loss at TAB prices 10%
Overall profit at Betfair prices 19%

Minimum traded price $1.38

;)

So that was you taking all my tiny bets !!!!!

I did lay others and won.