We have been told that the Betfair market is very accurate, but maybe Maria indicated that it may not necessarily be so?

She did no calculations to determine a price on any of her selections so she would not have been aware if she was getting unders or overs. If the market was accurate then there is every possibility that half of her bets would have been on overs and the other half of her bets would be on unders. As she had so many bets it could be assumed that the overs and the unders would more or less even themselves out - the swings and roundabouts syndrome.

It appears she achieved her huge profit from a somewhat mechanical system, which would indicate that the market may not be entirely accurate particularly for horses whose Betfair price is under $11.00?

As an aside, if she could make a profit from laying horses under $11 then one could wonder if she, using opposite criteria could then make a profit by backing horses over $11?

Just a thought...

Michael, Maria's system was/is obviously based on an angle that most in the market don't include in their workings. She certainly posted enough selections, and to my knowledge nobody claimed to have reverse engineered them. I believe the market is a pretty accurate guide in the long term, and I mean a longer term than Maria's 3000+ lay's over twelve months. Although she alluded to it we don't know how she went in the twelve months prior to her posts and we've no information on how she's gone since. I doubt she'd have had the same success here. The UK Betfair markets are much more sophisticated than the Australian one's and the wieght of money is mind boggling on occasion.

The $11 thing does seem to work here in Australia though. I certainly use it as my tipping point. If you remember when I was posting Pixie's Pix the over $11 selections were making a handsome profit as back selections. I've not bothered keeping the figures up-to-date so I don't know whether the profit has been sustained.

The fundamentalists will disagree but I don't really think any body can prove that an individual selection represents value or not. Ask three tipsters and you'll get three different answers. You can prove it after the race maybe but not before. A series of bets if profitable has certainly achieved value from the market, and that for me is where value lays. The whole greater than the sum. I can't be bothered mucking about with the individual components.

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Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

The market is accurate in that the winning chances correspond to the strike rate almost to 100% +/- 1%
I have just posted another thread which demonstrates how accurate the in-running market is also +/-1% (something which I though was wildly innaccurate).
Within a 100% market, horses will drift or firm, but still adding up to 100%

The market is accurate, but the price of a particular horse may not be.
This is only for one reason or another.

Maria used Sire lines and she had an angle to do with the trainers, but it wasn't black and white, which is why it can't be reverse engineered.

Maybe in Australia, we don't give as much weight to sire form except in first starters.
Some of our best horses come from little known sires.
Her staking plan was merely a payout or liability lay calculation.

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Maria never said she was using a system or formula. Me thinks she is a very astute form student.

Crash, about a year ago, Maria Santonix sent me a PM on another overseas forum, not the one where she posted the lays.

It is definitely a system based on trainers, sires and form, she used the system to turn her initial 1,000 into 3,000 in one year and put up that 3,000 to turn it into 100,000 the following year.

It took her a couple of minutes each day to pick the lays, so it's more mechanical than we are led to believe.

Nobody will ever know the detail of the mechanics, it's her livelihood still these days

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Now with over 413,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
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*RaceCensus now updated to 31/01/2025
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