Let's suppose you've framed your market and you know that you'll take a particular horse if you can get a price of say, $4.00 or above. Because price fluctuations can be quite large, how do you guys ensure that the end price you get is $4.00 or more?

To guarantee you get the odds you want you need bet with a bookie so you secure the odds at the time.

If betting with TAB then you need to bet at the last possible moment (bet on Internet rather than by phone) and have access to a live update of the odds (Sky Racing is pretty good as long as your horse is in the top 8 - I do not have Teletext access but I believe the odds there are also fairly regularly updated). The odds shown on the various Internet sites are always a bit behind the Sky update. In my experience the NSW/QLD are better than than Tabcorp. Generally speaking if the TAB releases an update it appears on Sky within a few seconds and about 5-10 seconds later on NSW/Qld web sites - Tabcorp can take 15-25 seconds to update their web site.

If you want to bet into Tabcorp pool I recommend you have a look at the WA TAB site (ozbet.com.au) - the big advantage being you have up to a minute after your bet to cancel it (if race hasn't jumped). This can be good if there is a race delay (eg. horse breaks through barrier) and you want to review your bet or if they update the odds just before the jump and your horse has plunged it below your threshold.

Basically you can't unless you get fixed odds. However, you can tilt things in your favour by betting when the win pools are large..E.G. Saturday's, Wednesday's.

Also look at the trends, often in the last 5 minutes horses that are in the top three or four betting wise will have a good chance of trimming up and others drifting in price.

One way of further ensuring you get the right price is betting with a bookmaker who will give you top fluctuation.

If you are only betting on the tote, then look up the prices in the state pool of the race.
For example..If you have a bet in Perth, go to the Perth tab website and look at the price there. Chances are if there's a big difference in that price and your State price, it will go close to the home state price...but not always.
It's just a guide.

__________________
Treat your selection and staking methods not with optimism, nor with pessimism, but with realism.

becareful, you beat me again!

:grin:

EI - You're still beating me in the number of posts count though :grin:

With your point on the home TAB it pays to remember that Supertab is really the "home" TAB for races in Vic, WA, Tas & ACT. Unitab is "home" for SA, Qld & NT. With Supertab the way the odds are worked out is:
1. Tabcorp computer sends request to other TAB's computers for a "collation update"
2. Other TABs computers send the collation totals (total value of win and place bets on each horse and value of Quinella bets on each combination) to TABCORP
3. TABCORP computer adds these collations to their own totals then calculates the odds for each runner.
4. Odds are released to Agencies, SKY, Teletext, Website (eventually!), etc, and also sent back to the Other TABS who then must update their own displays, websites, etc.

This all takes a little time so probably explains why Supertab is slower than the others at doing these updates.

Point taken becareful. It may be useful when backing on Supertab to look at Unitab and NSWtab though when getting prices.

WA was a bad example.

The only other option I suppose is to factor in a buffer. If $4.00 is your minimum expectation look for a price of $4.50 before taking the bet. Not always easy and perhaps you already do this anyway.
The dogs are the worst - its like being on a roller-coaster.

Thanks for the replies it's what I had suspected. So how do you guys place your bets? Do you wait for the last few minutes before a race or do you get fixed prices at a bookmaker? Do different bookmakers have significantly different prices? I.e. is it worthwhile having half a dozen or so different accounts?

At the moment I do all my betting with the TAB's (my current system backs longer odds horses that generally pay better with TAB than bookies). I have accounts with NSW, WA & Qld (most betting is with NSW and WA) and place the bet with the TAB offering the best odds on the horse in question.

I always place my bet within about 20 seconds of the jump and only if the price on TAB exceeds my bet margin by a threshold amount as Debug indicated - you need to vary this threshold a bit depending on the amount in the pool but about 10% of the price is a good guide.

Thanks becareful. In your experience does this method generally get you the best odds compared to say, some of the exotic offers from darwin all sport such as divi plus, top fluctuation, guaranteed betting than SP etc?

[ This Message was edited by: dngu047 on 2002-07-19 18:57 ]