Miserable Bloody Weather

Even after spending countless hours earlier in the week looking at the antepost markets for Newbury's meeting on Saturday, I refuse to be dejected by the news that the weather has claimed it and we have lost what looked like a fantastic meeting. What can you do?

Rather than sit here  dejected I thought I'd reproduce an article I wrote last week for Daily Punt, which hopefully demonstrates just powerful it can be to ask for a price.

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You Have to Haggle

A successful punter should always be looking for ways to improve his margins, in much the same way that a successful business man will always be looking for ways to cut his overhead and improve his bottom line.

As in the famous (and ludicrous) scene in  Life of Brian, in which stall holder Eric idle is selling Graham Chapman as Brian, a fake beard and manages to haggle himself down from 20 to 16 shekels, you have to haggle!

The advent of betting exchanges changed the face of betting forever and in many ways, none more so than in the facility it gives us to ask for a price rather than just accept what we are being offered.

I never cease to be amazed when I see a punter simply taking a price at the money on Betfair.  If they were buying a second hand car, would they immediately stump up the asking price? No, they would make a prolonged and concerted effort to secure a discount. So why will they simply accept the price when placing a bet?

Always, always, always ask for a price.

Let’s look at a worked example to see just how much of a difference asking for a price can make.

You have a method that has a 30% strike rate and the selections go off at an average price of 4.0. We’ll ignore commission for the sake of simplicity (and because we all pay varying percentages)

Over 100 bets you would see the following returns:

70 points lost on the losing bets

120 points returned, including stakes, on the winning bets

Equates to a net profit of 20 points at 20% ROI

 

Now, over the same series of bets, by successfully  asking for a price of 4.2, you would see the following net results:

70 points lost on the losing bets

126 points returned, including stakes, on the winning bets

Equates to a net profit of 26 points at an ROI of 26%

The same number of bets, the same number of winners but returning 30% more profit.

Now, if you were to have 2000 of those bets a year you’re looking at an extra 120 points clear profit

At £50 a point that’s £6,000

Simply for asking for a price two ticks above the money.

Some bettors are concerned about not getting matched. This is unlikely.

If you ask for your price in the morning, the chances of getting matched at 2 ticks from the money are exceptionally high.  If you’re not matched by 10 minutes before the race – you just take a view as to whether you wish to take the price being offered or let it run.

All of these issues smooth themselves out over a large number of bets, so don’t let concerns about missing a winner make you take the offered price when there is a chance to secure greater value.

Remember, those couple of ticks extra, for almost no extra effort, could easily be the difference between a profit and a loss over the course of a year!

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I was incredibly sad to hear of the death of Josh Gifford. One of the true giants of the jumping game, Mr Gifford trained the horse on which I had my first ever decent win. I was only 12 years old but, like many others, I was caught up in the story surrounding Aldiniti and Bob Champion. I ended up winning close to £100 with a bet placed for me by my uncle - and that was an awful lot of money to a 12 year old boy in 1981. My passion for horse racing was ignited by that one event. It would be no exaggeration then to say that earning my living from racing is down, in no small part, to the training acumen of Mr J Gifford.

Unfortunately, I'm a touch too young too have enjoyed and appreciated Mr Gifford's all conquering days as a jockey in the 60's when he won 4 Champion Jockey titles but I certainly managed to enjoy him to the full as a trainer. He provided me with plenty of decent winners over the years and for that, I will always be grateful.

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Readers waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the Number cruncher, will be pleased to learn that, though he has been delayed by a couple of weeks, he will be posting on this blog daily from Monday next week and hopefully providing us with some decent each way steals!

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Lastly today, a final shout out for a football trading method that I reviewed a couple of months ago. It's called Assured Soccer Profits and it's the brainchild of John Duncan, the inventor of the famous Football Cash Generator System.

Assured Soccer Profits is a very high strike rate football trading method. You can see my full review of it here

I'm only mentioning it again because I've just heard from John that he will be closing the doors to the service in the next few days. If you are at all interested, this could well be your last chance to get on board.

Assured Soccer Profits - Last Chance

That's it for me today

Have a great weekend

Kieran