- Racing tips & predictions Back a winner with today's horse racing tips from The Wolf plus Katelyn Mallyon, Simon Marshall, Jules Vallance, Garry Legg and more! The Sportsbet Blog has expert form analysis for all metropolitan and Group 1 races, plus out wide picks for provincial tracks right around Australia.
- Value Horse Racing Betting Strategy. Whether you bet on a winner or another market, the best strategy to use is Value Horse Racing Betting Strategy. This involves making sure that any bet you decide to make is good value for money. Many people that make bets simply put their money on the favourite.
Racenet's globally recognised experts provide you with the best free horse racing tips and top bets of the week. Be confident in your decision to back a winner for all the TAB meetings including Caulfield, Flemington, Moonee Valley, Rosehill and Randwick. Johnny is a Dublin-based journalist and tipster, who has been working in racing for nearly half of his life. He has worked compiling prices for Timeform and the Racing Post, and also wrote for the Irish Independent, while he is now freelancing for The Times in Ireland, RTE and Newstalk.
Dutching on horse racing
We have covered Dutching before in a number of articles, so read up on those specifics if you want to learn what Dutching is, how to do and how to use the specialist tools in Bet Angel to do perform a dutch bet. So this article is focused on what is the best Dutching strategy. But before we look at that, a quick appraisal on Dutching.
Speaking broadly, Dutching is a viable betting strategy on the betting exchanges now as the book overround is so small. A Dutch bet covers a number of selections in a sports betting market, rather than just one. This will increase your chances because you will win if any of those selections wins.
Bet Angel contains an advanced Dutching calculator. This means not only can you make multiple selections with your dutch bet, but you can also set a profit target, varying the profit not just the stake on each selection. But you can drive your risk and reward by varying the amount staked or the number of selections. So it makes for a good tool and strategy.
I often get questions focused on asking what selections should you make and is there any criteria that you should use? Are there dutching strategies that you can use, any Dutching systems?
The fact is there are there are loads of things that you can do, but it’s really down to exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Is it a question of having your insights into form? Or are you using a purely mechanical system? All those sort of questions can come up because it’s down to what edge you think you can bring to market.
I hope this blog post can clear up some of these questions and help you gain a better understanding of dutching.
Understanding Dutching
Let’s start with something that’s quite simple, today we’re looking at a market which is pictured above. You can see here we’ve got a novice chaser at Ludlow. If I go into the dutching area and click on the favourite we’re going to Dutch for a target profit of £50.
If I click on the favourite, can you see the favourite makes up 33% of the book. So the favourite is one third of the market.
The market thinks the favourite has the 33% chance of winning, do you? If you do, then you should back it! If you don’t think that, you should lay it.
But what happens when you’re dutching? As you can see below, if we just click on that first favourite we’re effectively just backing the favourite. It simply becomes a value judgement.
The first thing that you know and you realise with dutching is if that the price on the favourite is really short, all you’re effectively doing is placing a value back bet. Therefore, you may as well just place a bet, as you don’t really deliver much value on top of dutching.
The only thing I would say is if you use a fixed stake and you use dutching to place your back bet, then you’re effectively backing in a proportion to the stake and the book percentage. So actually if you place a back bet this way rather than using a fixed stake then over time, if you’re achieving value after commission, your bank will expand getting bigger and bigger.
So there is an advantage to using dutching to place a back bet, but essentially you’re trying to avoid just placing a back bet you want to do something a bit cleverer.
So what do you select when Dutching?
In this example I’m using for this blog post, the market is a four runner market. I don’t particularly like four runner markets for trading for anything, to be honest, but let’s have a look at it and see how we can showcase Dutching.
If we click on the second favourite, we can cover 63% of the entire field. What I’m trying to show here is out of the 4 runners, we’ve backed two of them. So we now have covered 50% of the field with a 60% chance of winning.
So your judgement here is asking yourself whether these two runners have a better than 60% chance of winning this race? Because if they do, then you would tend to take this particular position, but you can see here that it’s not a very exciting position.
However, you’re still sort of in the realms of value backing. Effectively, you’re not doing anything particularly clever and it’s just not that interesting. Obviously, it could be the case that the 2:25 at Ludlow could be really exciting! But… we’re just saying from a strategy perspective whether this makes sense.
Is there some logic in the way in which we’ve approached this and a forerunner market covering half the field for a 64% chance, you may find something in there but I suspect that its probably not the best place to look for an edge.
How Dutching can give you the edge
So if we have a look down the market, there are lots of different races on today’s example which you can see in the image above. It is clear that some are better than others. However, if we skip forwards to the 14:50 at Doncaster we can follow the same progress again and see where we end up.
If we look at the favourite on this new race, you can see in the image above that it has got 15% of the book. It’s saying that there’s a 50% chance the favourite is going to win.
So let’s try and get that up to around 60% by dutching and see what happens…
Firstly I’ve checked that we have 13 selections in this market. So, if I back the first six you can see that covering 67% of the implied chance gets a six selections out of a 13 runner a market.
Now if we look down towards the bottom you can see that some of these horse have smaller odds. Overall, can you see that we’re in a good position if 6 horses out of the 13 horses win this race. So we actually give ourselves a much broader mix in terms of the chance of some of these runners going on to win.
Whereas when we looked at the four runner market, we were just basically punting the front two! This gives you a much wider coverage and more interest within the market than narrowing your focus down to those two out of that forerunner field.
Therefore the second example clearly seems like a better proposition overall doesn’t it? Now, obviously some of this will come into the mix in terms of ‘do you think that one of these six is going to win the race?’
Summary
The scope to find a winner in the second example is much better than the first race. Not only is this because of the large number of selections, but those selections are better. Rather than just placing what is effectively a back bet, but we are also covering more selections and account for more variability in the result of the race.
Our focus on multiple runners is more or less what Dutching is all about. If you spread your risk across more selections then the chance of error is reduced and any overround in the book is spread over all those selections. If you just focus on one runner, as we did in our first example, the spread in the market is focused on that one selection, reducing our chances of long term profitability.
So when you focus on your Dutching strategy, find a range of selections to reduce your variability. Or you just end up looking for a value bet on smaller fields and that more or less negates the logic for placing a dutch bet in the first place.
Focus on markets where the outcome is the hardest to spot. That is where the best opporunties lie and where you are most likey to profit in the long term using this particular Betfair trading strategy.
Horse racing is a hugely popular sport to bet on.
It’s also a time consuming exercise for those with the desire to successfully turn a profit.
A wealth of knowledge is needed to pick out high quality horse racing betting tips, and with thousands of horse races taking part annually, it’s easy to accumulate statistics to work from.
This following horse racing betting guide will teach you how to pick out horses with the highest chance of winning the race, or the horse that will provide the best value.
Once you’ve digested the information in this post, you’ll be able to pick horse racing winners often enough to beat the bookies at their own game.
Table of Contents
The Basics
Make sure you have the basics down – basics that we won’t be covering in this guide.
These are simple things like understanding horse racing jargon and knowing how to read a race card.
It may also be a worthwhile investment to understanding how horse handicapping works.
Once you’ve got these things down, along with knowing how to place a bet, we’re ready to move on to analysing the field.
The most important tip of them all is that none of the tips below actually matter without this one simple rule:
If you don’t find the right bet at the right price then it will be -EV and won’t return a profit long-term.
Betting On Horses Strategy
Let’s move on with looking at some of the things you can consider.
Jockeys and Trainers
Best Horse Betting Tips
Particular trainers are very familiar with their stables and are therefore an exceptional source of information.
Learn which trainers or stables are performing well and look at their jockey selection to see how much they believe in their horse’s ability.
Jockeys can be a good source of information too.
They may offer a public opinion of their horse’s likely chances in a race, or they may have ridden the horse previously. If they’ve ridden it previously, it means they have experience and knowledge that they may be able to use to their advantage.
If a trainer or stable has several horses in the race, yet there is a star jockey racing one of them, you can be sure that the jockey has probably hand-picked the horse. This gives further indication of its likely chances.
Finally, jockeys often travel to more than one meet on a given day.
If they’ve raced multiple times in the afternoon, but then travel a long way to race just one horse in the early-evening, you know that horse must be worth consideration – with jockeys often having to cover their own transport costs.
Jockeying requires extreme skill and the best in the world are in-demand, with lucrative contracts up for grabs.
Jockey/trainer combinations are an excellent way to start basing your selections upon. However, in high-profile meets this can end up being most of the field, so you have to look deeper into your statistics.
One interesting market that is offered by bookmakers at a meet is the ‘leading jockey’ market, with 3 points behind awarded for a win, 2 for a runner-up finish, and 1 for third. If you have a favoured jockey that you think will perform well at a meet, this can be a way to pick up some value at higher odds.
Trial and Previous Form
Form refers to previous races that the horse has ran in, including barrier trials. Barrier trials are often used as warm-ups, and they can be a key factor when deciding which horse to bet on in smaller races.
You can also look back to the trainers for information on lesser-ridden horses, and ask yourself questions like:
- Has this horse come from a good stable?
- Has the horse been purchased for a significant fee?
- Does it have good relatives?
With regards to the final question, being the foal or blood relative of a previously successful horse can often lead to further success in the family.
For more experienced horses, you can look at their previous form – the majority of horses will race at least several times a year.
It’s not just wins that count, look for good finishes in races where they came up against extremely good opposition. If they’re against weaker opposition this time round, they may be able to claim victory.
In contrast to this, if a horse has won recently, be sure to look at who the horse has beaten. If it hasn’t beaten anyone good, then it could potentially be a one-off result.
Finding or creating a reliable, detailed form guide is tough – but that’s where you’ll make your money. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and bookmakers would no longer be in business.
Finally when considering form, you’ll want to look at the class of the race and purses on offer. If it’s won a huge race for a big payday, these are rarely complete flukes.
Also look at the type of location its won at, did it win a rural event and is now competing in a metropolitan area? How about provincial areas?
Not all horses are able to make the adjustment to subtle changes in climate and atmosphere.
Conditions and Track Formation
Weather conditions play a crucial role in horse racing, perhaps more so than any other sport.
Some horses prefer to race on sticky, wet surfaces whereas others prefer hard, fast tracks. If the going gets tough (or soft), stick to horses that you know have had success on similar ground in the past. Heavier horses will also typically find it tougher on softer, wetter ground, because running on this type of surface consumes more energy.
It’s recommended that you know the going of a track before placing your bets.
Whilst you can get better odds betting antepost or a couple of days in advance, it’s not worth taking the risk whilst you’re still starting out – you’re not a pro that’s going to be investing thousands in Betfair horse racing trading just yet!
To find the ground, or the ‘going’, of a track, you can simply Google the course name + the word going and you should find plenty of up-to-date results for the day’s races.
Remember: some tracks are ‘all-weather’. Ground conditions on all-weather tracks stay consistent regardless of what mother nature throws at it.
You also need to look at track formation: is there a sharp incline at the end of the race? Is there a sharp bend half way through? Do the turns bear right, or bear left?
These are all things you need to be considering, and weighing up against each potential horse you want to bet on – how will each particular horse be affected?
Finally, you will also need to consider whether you’re betting on flat races or jump races, and learn the intricacies that each discipline requires.
Types of Betting Markets
There are several types of betting markets that are popular amongst horse bettors.
The most popular market with professional horse bettors is the outright victory market. Backing horses to win – when they offer value – is the best way to secure long-term profits in this game.
Also popular is each-way betting, whereby you’re sacrificing your odds, usually by a quarter, but sometimes by a third or a fifth, to cover more than one place – usually the top four.
Each-way betting is only really effective when picking horses that are significantly higher odds, such as 16/1 and above.
This is because you end up risking too much money to essentially break even in the result of them placing.
Remember: you should always choose to back your horse at the odds on offer, don’t risk taking the ‘Starting Price (SP)’ odds. Long-term, this will lose you money, especially as many bookmakers offer Best Odds Guaranteed promotions, meaning you get paid out at higher odds if the odds do increase before the race starts anyway.
You also have the option to add some excitement to the mix, although these are significantly riskier and are more like challenge bets than they are solid horse racing tips style bets, with multi-bets such as trebles, Lucky 15s, Yankees and more.
Rather than typical accumulators, these style of bets don’t require you to win every single race for a return. However, if two or three horses do win, you should turn a profit.
Uk Betting Tips
If they all win, you could just hit the jackpot – although initial stakes can be quite costly, and the chances of hitting these are minimal. Still, if you’re confident in your selections…why not?
Analysis and Conclusion
Piecing together the critical statistics and traces of information is a formidable task. There’s no denying that.
However, it can be done, with commitment and the desire to learn and improve.
Horse racing is simply a case of the numbers game, and it’s on you to figure out what those numbers are at a given time. If you can work out a horse’s perceived chances of winning, and the odds on offer are significantly good value in comparison, then you’re onto a very profitable career in horse race betting.
When looking at how to bet on horse racing profitably, take all of the horses in a race and try to map out their recent successes and failures. Why did things go the way they did in their recent races?
Look at jockeys and stables for subtle hints at a horse’s chances of winning. If a top jockey is willing to invest his own time travelling for a single race hundreds of miles from home, the horse must be in with a shot.
You will need luck, but you will need a whole lot more skill to make a profit in this industry.
Good luck to you!