Handicapping sheet - using my brain and R&S Brief PDF
 

I have for the last two days tried something radical. Well radical to me. I disowned my database and trialled handicapping the good old fashioned way using the oldest computer i had (my brain).

I decided I would search for horses to lay rather then win. I decided I would find the horses in each race which really had less then 1% chance of winning. If there was any reason the horse might pull out a hail mary and win the race then I excluded it.

To do this I used the breif PDF from R&S form site. You can find this by clicking on the meeting. It is essentually my ********** sheet and gives me all the info I need for a race and the horses in a few pages.

My first meeting wasn't a success. I had 8 selections but one of them won at 9.20 on betfair. hmmm. I reassessed why this one had won and continued to analyse the meetings. Keep in mind I did this retropectively last night without knowing the results. For the other 4 meetings yesterday i had 28 selections. I had two horses which ran in third and 25 which didn't hit a top four position. I checked why the two horses ran in third and found a couple more reasons to check before making a selection.

So all up the first day was 1 winner and 2 thirds from 36 selections. The expectged winners according to Chrome Princes calcualtion was 1.52 so it was mathematically possible I was just lucky. Some of these selections went off above 100 so in real life I would not lay them. So looking at only those under 100 there were 23 seelctions for 1.47 expected winners. If I had layed these to a fixed liability I would have been up 29.39 on a $100 liability.

So not to be disheartened by the winner yesterday this morning I did todays meetings. Overall I had 34 selections for a return of 75.95 after the 5% commission. There was again 2 placings but no winners. I have looked at why those 2 placings occurred and again found a couple of things to check. Sticking to those under $100 the day finished with 25 selections and a profit of 72.52.

So all up my record for two days for under $100 is 48 selections for 1 winner and a profit of 101.91 after the 5% commission. The expected winners over this period was 2.23 winners.

Im going to continue to see how this goes on paper and see if I can get the winning amount up to at least 10 winners difference (1000 units profit). If that works I may actually start to use this method as I felt a lot more secure in my selections and I really expected them to lose.

Although slightly more time consuming then an automated appraoch to making selections, I can still find the lays within about 10mins per meeting as its easy to disregard horses for many reasons which may give them a slight chance to win.

Has anyone tried handicapping to find lays which they think have less then 1% chance ? Have you been successful ?

I feel I have a better understanding of the things to keep an eye out for from looking at my computer analysis many times. Its almost easy to see why horses have a chance (although I can't tell you the % chance they have) and those which will really struggle and really will be floundering at the back of the pack as they approach the line.

I'll let you know how I continue to go. Unfortunately I can't do the UK markets as I don't understand them enough so will stick with the AUS races for now.

Between May & Aug, i ran some systems to find lay bets and made an 18% profit on these selections. But in the back of my mind was sometimes i knew i was laying very good winning chances, sometimes i felt i was laying horses over their true odds.

So between Aug & Nov, carnival time when I have more motivated to study form, i came up with 53 form-based lays & only 4 won. Profit was 67.5%. Expected winners were 8.85. Obviously too short an example to run a meaninful chi test score.

Bottom line is though your confidence is higher when you think you have a legitimate reason for laying a horse when its under the odds, as opposed to mechanical selections. I personally prefer this method. Dare I say it, i still like to 'study the form', even if certain people here question its validity.

Beats mechanical selections hands down, just as you said, time consuming!

I think I learnt a lot from the mechanical/automated selections that greatly helped me in doing the handicapping the last few days. I don't mind putting in the work if I feel I will eventually be paid for it. If this continues to work for me I may start doing this with real money and actually lay a bit higher then my automated systems do ( I might lay to lose $2 lol I know its not much but higher then my 10c for automated selections). If I spend an hour doing form and eventually generate $10 a day on my own skill I will be very happy. Because once I know I can do it then it is me against other punters and I will have proven to myself I can do it and from there I can start to raise the amount I am laying. I think phycologically this might be something I need. Mind you I won't give up on mechanical systems yet, I am just going to parrallel them with my own handicapping selections and see which does better.

As a little treat here are two of my selections for Canterbury tommorrow.

These are lay selections.

Race 3 - Smash hit
Race 6 - Sheazali

I don't want to post all my selections but this is a small subset of those that I will be wathcing tommorrow as genunine lay chances that should not even place. I have no idea on odds ranges yet for R6 but R3 fixed odds are up and Smash hit is $15 at Iasbet. based on this I hope it goes for less then $50 on betfair.

Anyway if you look up those horses you will see the types of horses I am choosing to lay.

Hardest thing to do.........consistently win backing one horse per race.
Second hardest thing to do......consistently win laying one horse per race.

My opinion only.

Good luck.

Im laying more then 1 horse in some races but not all races. For instance in Ipswich tomorrow race 7 I have 5 selections and race 6 has 4 selections. I guess it depends on the horses in the race on how many I will lay.

Every animal in every Race has Odds of winning a Race.
If you are simply dismissing an animal as having zero chance based on certain criteria , then you will learn that this is erroneous thinking.
It may be today or it may be tomorrow or it may be next week , but you will find one of your dismissed animals will actually salute.

You must have an idea of an animals Chances of winning , and only Lay it at odds less than what you consider.
The difference between what you consider the right Odds , and what you actually lay it at , is called your perceived edge.
If you don't have an edge , then you don't have anything.
And if your perceived edge is wrong , you still have nothing.

Well done UB,

What I have found in the past with such cunning methods of laying at high odds, is that they seem to always at some stage, have a lucky day where a couple of them getting up to win at high prices , instead of falling over for us.

It hurts when 2 in a row bite us.

They seem at times , to win by accident.

I feel its important that the whole field has a transparent form line.
We dont need to compete with first uppers & resumers for this exercise,
because thats how a punter can gits himself bit real good and can leave a sour taste in our mouth.

If betting to liability (Dividing by odds) or better still, bet to Price.
Betting to Price is a bit more economical way to lay.prices.
e.g. 9.00 / 100.00 = O/L 11.00

Allow for 20+ goes and it should be fun.

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I believe the real art in Laying , is going for the <=4.00 shots.
This can be hard to do .
But the liability is way less.

One approach that can work, is target all the <=3.50 Favs in the pre-post market.
Try & find a weak fav from this lot.
The idea is to find one false Fav per venue.
5 venues = 5 selections
Only Lay them if the live price is <=4.00 (Important )

It can be straight forward if you don't mind doing the form.
And many punters actually enjoying doing the form & some become very accurate at it.

The problem is that invariably these weak favs go off at much higher prices than the strong favs.
The art is in getting the lay price right.

Weak faves don't necessarily have to be drifting faves.

Whats a weak fave anyway? Your idea may be completely different from mine. But thats why i love this game.