Question about how much can bet without driving down the price too far
 

I'd like to ask the learned folks here a question re how much money can you bet on a horse or the place and how much it will knock down the price. I remember a poster here some time ago called Kenchar whose posts I followed with great interest and he was talking about betting half a weeks wages for the place but was concentrating on the first or second favourite I think from memory

I've also been looking at a place method. Unfortunately the bets are few and far between so to make it all worthwhile, (after further testing to see if it works at all over the long term) the amount bet needs to be fairly large, say $100 minimum.

Was looking at Unitab on Tuesday 1st May and saw a possible selection, race 4 Townsville horse 1. It actually won paying $25.00 and $5.90 for the place. After looking at the place pool I'm thinking that a place bet of $100 would knock the price down a bit.

Forgive me if my maths are not correct but I figured it something like this. Place pool was $9823, take out 16% which leaves $8251. Divide the $8251 by $5.90 and this shows $1398 bet for the place on this horse?? Don't know if my reasoning is corect here.

Anyway, if $100 was bet on this horse it would increase the pool to $8351, new amount bet on horse no1 would be $1491. $8351 divided by $1491 would give the new place price of $5.57, rounded down to $5.50.

First of all is my maths and reasoning correct and would a bet of this size affect the didvident so much?

Thing is, the whole thing depends on getting the right price so if a bet drove the price down too much it would make the whole excersise pointless. I realise that the shorter priced nags wouldn't be as affected by a largish bet but sometimes it's the longer priced ones that contribute to the overall profit.

Sorry about the long winded question and if it all seems like Double Dutch......(am I allowed to say that in these P.C times?)
Thanks in advance for any replies.

Anyone ?

It would work that way for win bets but place bets are different as there are 3 payout options and there would be know way of know how much was bet on your selections.

If you used to above example you could state that this would be the maximum amount the price would drop because you are using the whole pool amount not the pool amount on that horse.

I also think you need to remove 18% from the pool before calculations.

Thanks for the reply Shaun. Yes, I wasn't sure about including the 16/17% into the calculation or whether it had already been taken out of the pool.

Now you've pointed it out the fact that three place dividends are paid makes it hard to work out.

I'm still wondering if a bet of $100 for the place on a horse paying $25.00/5.90 would destroy the dividend too much? It was actually paying something like $6.80 to place with 1 minute to jump.