Good Horsey
Hello and welcome!
I've had no time to post on the blog over the past days as I've been extremely busy. Sometimes life gets in the way...
I've had several people contacting me about setting up some form of email notification (a simple system to send emails to those who want to be updated everytime I create a new post). I'm working on it and looking at the logisistics. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to achieve this, afterall, we're punters not programmers and I'm not convinced the majority of people would have the knowledge to use RSS feeds and the coding it requires. Still, I'm woring on it and will try to keep you all updated.
England? Le'ts not go there. Please, for the love of God, let's not go there! I told you the internationals were nothing but trouble!
Now, I've had emails from people requesting some more content on horse racing. This blog is cenered around football and I can't see myself changing themes, but for you horse punters, I came up with a topic to write on for tonight. Enjoy...
In a normal horse racing season, if you backed solely favourites, you could expect to one winner for every three bets. At 33%, it's a pretty respectable strike rate - a strike rate that no national press tipster could ever hope to achieve. Despite this, you'd end up broke come the season's end, all the same. I remember reading somewhere that, "for every pound that you staked on the favourite you would be lucky to average a return of ninety pence."
Favourites are just so tempting to back, though.. They generally have the best form, a great trainer and respected jockey. When you open the paper, it practically shouts at you in the face and will almost alwasy have strong support from newspaper tipsters. If you ever go to the race, you'll notice favourites always look fit, too. On top of this, if there is any horse in a race with smoking speed figures, the greatest rankings and favourable reports, it's almost always going to be the favourite. It simply can’t lose... you'd think! Unfortunately, it does lose and becomes another statistic to add to the majoritry ot favourites who fall short. (Perhaps, this time, but all evidence suggests you'll still end up with a loss, over the course of a horse racing season).
Now, I rarely ever bet on horses anymore. Actually, that's not entirely true, there are a few systrems I follow when I have time to identify bets (it's a myth that all systems are junk - perhaps in another blog post, I'll discuss those that make me money). I should say, I rarely ever bet on favourites anymore (in fact, if anything, I'm likely to be laying them). However, I have previously loved betting on favourites, or a particular type of favourite anyway. When I'd glance at the horses and their riders for the day's races in the paper and I find the initials B.F after the name of the horse (for those who are unaware, B.F. stands for beaten favourite), I instantly became interested in backing the horse to win. Why? 'Coz I knew beaten favourites had a high strike rate and a money could be made, assuming they fulfilled certain criteria. I'll come back to this...
The theory behind backing beaten favourites:
The theory behind backing BFs is fairly selfexplanatory. For a horse to be sent off the
market favourite it has to have attracted lots of cash in betting circles. This
means the horse was considered by other punters to be a good horse the last
time it ran. In all likihood, it demonstrated a strong performance previously, had the right
connections and had good fitness.There was, possibly, even money from the pros on the horse in question. This could have come from the horse’s connections that may have known the animal was extremely fit, and that it'd been working particularly well with the
stable's top horses. The fact that the horse started as the favourite and lost may have
simply been a result of poor luck in running. In retrospect, perhaps, the distance of the
race or the going was unsuitable for the horse. The key fact though is that the horse was talented enough to attract great support from the market.
I said I'd come back to the criteria needed to make a profit from backing BF. Below are five recommended filters...
1- The horse, in question is not wearing blinkers or visors
2- Haven't changed trainer since they were a BF.
3- The race is restriced to two year olds only
4- We not gelded recented
5- Starting race a favourite or co-favourite.
As I mentioned previously, it was a while since I backed BFs. For some reason or another I stopped. However, I see no reason why it won't still be profitable or produce a strike rate of 40%+
Have a good one,
Josh.