i've just been doing a comparison between sp and tote (unitab)prices on sat metro races in sydney, perth, melbourne, adelaide and brisbane...

for the last 2 saturdays there have been 80 winners of which the tab paid better on 48 occasions..

of favourites 24 have saluted of which the tab paid better than sp on 10 occcasions...

interesting to see if the trend continues, it appears the tab might not be the nemesis everyone seems to think it is....

cheers,

noel

Whose SP are you using? The Courier Mail on Fridays are always ridiculous anyway for my liking, so your finding doesn't suprise me at all.

Placegetter

placegetter,
What do you mean by 'whose SP'? There is one SP only and it doesn't matter which paper you read its always the same.
A better comparison might be top fluc against tote and the odds might go the bookies way then.
Also, horses in the first 3 or 4 of betting will generally be better with the books and the longer priced brigade will be better on the tote. Not always but generally.

Noel,

It would be interesting to do a long-term analysis on this but I personally think you are right - the tab divs are nowhere near as bad as everyone makes out, especially if you are not backing short priced favourites. In fact the analysis that I have done (I admit it has not looked at a big enough sample to be conclusive) indicates that if you are backing favorites you are probably better off with SP but if you are backing horses in the $8-$20 range (which I generally do) then you are better off with TAB.

A little bit of maths indicates that the TAB MUST be better for a large number of horses in the field. With the TAB the total of the divs for all horses always adds up to about 117% - with SP they generally add up to around the 130-140% mark (sometimes even more) and then as the bookies adjust the prices the total comes in to around the TAB total. If the favourites are better on average under SP (there is an analysis on this site that suggests this) then the longer odds horses MUST be better on average on the TAB.

mr magic, the bookmaker prices I use never match the paper on Fridays, I guess you might not call them SP, but that is what I was referring to. My mistake.

Placegetter

SP stands for starting price.
How can friday's paper have starting prices?
They are only pre-race odds from Thursday arvo.

Open an account with IAS - they guarantee to beat any win dividend on TAB, SuperTAB and UniTAB for saturday metro meetings. Their place divs are also better than the largest TAB - NSW.

Lets say you make 1000 bets pa.

Avg div variables
10c more = $100
20c more = $200
50c more = $500
$1 more = $1000

makes a big difference, if you get the best div available.

noel, if you click on the flashing banner on the left on http://www.propun.com.au you can open an account with IAS and beat the best tote odds from Qld, NSW and Vic..

As Mr Magic correctly points out, there is one SP only. It's an official figure with no other variations or interpretations.

becareful, from your post it seems you may be confusing SP with opening prices.

I was reading somewhere that stated that the TAB pays more than SP 70% of the time on horse 4/1 & more & bookmakers offer better value on the shorter priced commodities.

Those newspaper prices are referred to as
pre-post odds ,not to be confused as SP(official Starting Price) as of the start of an actual race.
They are usefull to get an approx. idea of market order. E.g. if a horse is shown as a $100 price in the pre-post in the newspaper, you can safely bet that it will run like one.
Another amazing statistic is the majority of horses shown in the pre-post market in the newspaper paying $11.00 & less dominate the winners circal.

Yes horses with pre-post divs of $11 (or $13) or less do dominate the winners circle. That's because these odds are posted by bookies when they frame a market for the w/e. Their assessments for the w/e are usually a better guide than punters who distort the odds on saturday.

Often winning horses will have pre-post odds of $5-$8, but drift out. These markets may be framed at 140%+, so that explains the drift. However, horses in the top half dozen or so in pre-post markets win a lot of races.

I would reckon that the top 6 pre-post favs have a better winning record (and better SP) than top 6 favs on the TAB just before the race.