Mark,
Just some observations - for what it's worth.
I have looked at thousands of races now through an access database of Betfair prices and fluctuations.
If you layed every horse in every race in the final minute before they jump, you'd make a killing. You just need a huge bank to cover the longshot liability.
Laying favourites, you get close to breaking even with a very slight profit.
An interesting observation is that the average price traded on any runner is extremely close to the final price, which surprised me greatly. Especially as I thought the longer priced horses go out to 100/1 and 200/1 in the final minutes, but what is shown is not necessarily what's traded.
If you LAY every horse in the $3.00 to $8.00 range, you make a decent profit also, but if you back favourites over $3.00 you also make a profit.
This is with no other filters and every aussie horse race Betfair have a market on.
One thing stands out massively though, I could not understand how I made a killing laying certain horses, as the database showed almost breakeven with just a smidgen of profit.
The answer lay (forgive the pun) in obtaining better (or worse) than the average traded price or final price.
Being able to weight my bets according to underlay, I made significant profit, and testing this over thousands of races, it solidified my philosophy.
The Golden Goose doesn't lay it's eggs with 5 minutes to go, or as they are loaded, the bird flies in an erratic pattern dropping golden eggs along the way, if you have the will to bring a basket and spend time collecting those eggs, it all adds up to pure gold
