Almost there

Hey All,

Thought I'd drop in and throw an idea around as the big day is getting closer.

After punting for over half my life, I've picked up a few things - haven't actually made them pay yet - but that's about to change.

Here's one of my favourites :)

The market - i.e. the betting market - everywhere I've looked, today and in the past, in Australia and overseas - around 1 in 3 favourites win. That's pretty impressive when you think about it, year in year out - as soon as the number of races considered gets big enough - favourite punters get it right around 1 out of every 3 bets. Not a bad effort really - a 33% strike rate or there abouts.

The problem of course is favourites don't pay an average of more than $3.33 when they do win, if they did - we'd all be rich :) We could just sit back and back every favourite and win year in year out. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.

A guy named Don Beggs wrote a book called "Walk away a winner" in the 90's. It's a pretty good read, complex - full of numbers but worthwhile even if I doubt very much I, or he, could make it pay - so I never tried. There are some very interesting figures in there though, some I have looked at many times over the years. Don spent hours in the TAB and kept stats on every race for a couple of years 94/95 and 96/97. On his figures, if you had $1 to win on every favourite in 94/95 you would have only lost $39, in 96/97 you would have lost $47. In both years the sample was around 3800 races. There was actually a small profit at SP prices in both years but not big or reliable enough to make pay.

He did similar figures on second favourites with the results being a loss of $355 in 94/95 and $394 in 97/98. So the figures fall away a bit with second favourites - bigger prices on average but a worse strike rate of around 17% means you end up further behind. Still not terrible though, I would've been a lot better off if I only lost $394 in the last 12 months :(

If you put these two together though - the first and second favourite - you're looking at the winner of around 50% of races - yep, that's right - punters are on the money with the first and second horse in the market in around half of all races. That's a pretty good effort for mine. Not bad at all.

The question then becomes, why look much wider??? Sure everyone loves backing winners at $10's, $20's even $50's - they are about, and every now and then one stands out - if it does, have a crack. Bread and butter though, as a punter, should you really worry about looking at every horse in every race when you could get half the winners by just considering the first and second favourite??? I'm not saying don't look at the other runners at all, but focus on the the top two in the market - pick the standouts and surely there is money to be made.

That's what I'll be focusing on when I start up on Thursday - the top 2 in the market, normally the favourite - sure they'll be short but my strike rate will hopefully be high and if I get it right, the profits should flow.

We're almost there - 2 more sleeps - would love to hear what you think

Cheers