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Originally Posted by Mark
Chrome, I can't agree that weight of money will indicate the winner. I know what you're getting at re value, but if this was true most winners would shorten on the tote, bookies, and Betfair. This just does not happen. Having said that, I have no proof.
You also stated that the price on other runners is not necessarily influenced by movements on one particular runner. If only this were true. Unfortunately the bots see to it that the market is immediately brought back into the 99% - 101% range, which makes it very hard to make a book.
As for arbing, there are still opportunties around. There was a Cummings first starter on Saturday that I though had some chance. (it ran last!!) The official prices were 17, 31, 51. I backed it at 65 and laid off at 38, so had it going for nothing, just the way I like it.
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Hi Mark,
I did some extensive research regarding prices versus winners.
This research was only on favourites.
My conclusion is based on value and not number of winners.
Let me explain entirely why I hold this point of view.
I did an exercise in the thousands of manually comparing the movements of TAB IAS and Betfair on favourites. I also tried two approaches in real time over a thousand bets (at the start of this thread).
What got me started was the Betfair Advantage Tool, and realising that the price comparison was to a degree flawed, I wanted to compare the best and worst prices and the actual fluctuations rather than just the final price available on Betfair.
As this data is not available in Betfair's historical data, I had to do it all manually (ugh).
But I did only record various prices, not every price (that would be near impossible).
I recorded favourites or joint favourites on IAS.
Backing every one on IAS at opening quote returned only -1.43% POT.
That surprised me greatly.
Backing every one at final tote price returned 0.87% POT.
That astounded me.
It would seem that IAS are a better judge than tote punters - I had held this belief for many years anyway.
Now what about Betfair?
Well the final available price meant nothing in the scheme of things - even though it showed a profit, so I set about throwing (small) real money at various percentages over and under the IAS opening price to back and lay.
Surely if you got 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% better than IAS - you'd kill them!
Surely if you layed in the same increments shorter than IAS - you'd brain them as well.
Here's what happened....
I lost $1300 - but it was well worth it for the learning experience.
This happened because over time a pattern emerged, when my "overlays" were matched I made a huge loss, and when my lay bets were matched I also made a huge loss.
The pattern was clear enough to me, that although weight of money didn't necessarily indicate a winner for this particular race, as a long term proposition as far as value or profit goes, it certainly was a very strong indicator.
Note these bets were left floating in the market for at least 30 minutes.
Determined to make a bit of cash to pay for my expensive exercise, I decided to fly with taking advantage of this knowledge.
So I reversed my situation and put my a lay and back bet into the market at a few cents over and a few cents under the IAS price. This was more of a "watching" alert as I was trading on almost every horse race in Australia at that point.
When the lay price was matched, if the horse kept firming to a pattern I backed the horse for a greater amount, because it was firming. What I was doing was getting one of the best prices available at the time on firmers.
When the back price was matched, if it kept drifting I would lay it for a greater amount.
I didn't do anything silly like lay it at huge prices over, just close to the set price.
I made $3,450.52 clear profit.
I may have made a boo boo somewhere, I may have encountered luck or been unlucky, but after recording a thousand races manually and watching the movements and seeing the impact on profit/loss, I am convinced that my hypothesis is true.
Now it certainly may be well off the mark as far as others in the market go, but it's certainly true with favourites. The movement that is, not the actual price.
As further confirmation, I did another independant test in real time as outlined in Post #1 in this thread which further reinforces my findings.
I have also done the same test on U.K. races using the openers of 5 fixed priced U.K. bookies.
Exactly the same pattern emerged.