#1 Lay Back Calculator
#2 Racing Authorities Plotting How To Shaft
Punters
#3 Northumberland Plate Analysis
#1 Lay Back Calculator
Last Saturday was a good one for full members
who had been following Guy's future betting
angles section.
Four legs on an ante post accumulator had
already won
over the past month and Crystal Ocean at Royal
Ascot
was the final leg.
The accumulator was to pay out at about 20/1
but only if Crystal Ocean won.
On the day Guy advised that any full members
on the bet should consider laying Crystal
Ocean.
Whilst in the accumulator at 9/4, odds on the
day
were much shorter. Betfair SP was in fact 1.58
The idea of laying back was to guarantee
no loss to the original stake even if Crystal
Ocean lost.
I had a few members unaccustomed to doing such
stuff
whom I had to help with the maths.
To assist them and others in future I knocked
up a simple online calculator that does the
sums for you.
It is up on our little used blog site at
If we use the figures from Guy's bet and assume
a £25 original stake
at odds of 20/1, then also assume it was laid
at 1.58 you can play around with
the "Laying Back - What Stake To Lay Item and
see the possible outcomes.
Laying back £26.4 is in effect the sum to lay
to guarantee zero loss
if Crystal Ocean lost. That would have resulted
in a payout
of circa £485 when it won.
Note how you can move potential profit about
by increasing or decreasing the stake you
choose to lay back.
In this example had one laid £343 that would
have changed the
possible outcomes to approximately
£300 profit if Crystal Ocean Won
£300 profit had Crystal Ocean Lost.
The race may have been a bit of a yawn to watch
however
had you engineered that situation for yourself.
Anyhow you may find it a useful tool to help
with such
calcs in future.
It will be up at the link above if you ever
want it.
#2 Racing Authorities Plotting How To Shaft
Punters
An article in the RacingPost caught my eye the
other day.
Racehorse Owners Association president Nicholas
Cooper said:
"There has
been some early discussion about the
possibility of creating a minimum betting
margin
in an attempt
to close the loophole that often occurs when
bookmakers,
using racing
purely as a marketing tool, bet to a near-zero
margin,
thereby
producing virtually nothing for the levy."
So how do you as
a racing punter feel about that.
The big idea is
that the ROA think it good that bookies should
be forced to
offer worse odds on racing than they do now.
I hope that is a
brainstorm idea that quickly bites the dust.
Racing has to
compete against soccer, golf, tennis etc for
punter attraction.
If the Racing
Authorities conjure up rules that racing has to
offer the worst
margin odds
compared to other sports how will that help
racing long term?
If it does go
ahead then there will be lots of grey areas to
police.
Say there was an
enforced bookie margin of 25% on racing odds.
How would that
rule apply to Ladbrokes and Corals who are now
in effect
owned by the
same crowd. What if picking best odds across
both
produced a 10%
over round.
I think instead
racing authorities need to go back a step and
ask did they
make a mistake
jumping into bed with the bookies on a share of
profits basis.
At the time I
emailed the BHA suggesting that this would
be wrong because
A - Just like
multi national companies run rings around
government
corporation tax collectors, the bookies would
use every trick
in the book to decrease what they pay out in
levy.
B - Racing
Authorities would be tarred with the same bad PR
brush as bookies
when it came to
issues such as barring punters and severe stake
limitations.
I even said to a
few people at the time
"What about a
site model that was a 0% commission betting
exchange
that used its 0%
rate to lure in traffic to its casino and poker
sections.
That would pay
zero levy to racing if so.
Is profit share
levy model not idiotic for racing?"
Such stuff
should have been obvious to the BHA them at the
time.
My proposal at
the time was that they instead follow the Irish
example
of a super
simple levy on turnover. That would have been
much easier to police
and Racing would
have removed itself from the issue of being
super concerned
that grubby
bookmakers made a profit from racing punters.
My own selfish
upside would have been a racing authority having
primary
concern that us
punters can get a stake on as bookie
restrictions
on stakes would
be hurting their levy.
But sadly I did
not have the schmoozing budget of the big
bookies
and the bookies
schmoozed the racing authorities into siding
with a few big
bookies instead of the tens of thousands of
punters.
So much for
democracy.
As for these
recent terrible utterances from Cooper at the
ROA
about minimum
bookmaker margins the
cynic in may says there
may be some
small element of BritBet thinking
behind them.
BritBet in
effect is a new pool due to launch in July now
that
BredFred's Tote
has lost its
monopoly status.
Whilst I do
indeed applaud the core concept of a racing
operator
that puts cash
directly back into racing I will not be very
keen to use it
if their
offering is just a rehash of the old terrible
tote model
that took huge
significant % take outs out from pools before
paying out to
punters.
Racing should be
introducing a highly competitive
value to punters model.
Why not run a
tote at 3% take out or the likes instead of 25%.
That may be a
pool that actually has some appeal to punters.
Daily stake
volumes could be huge and not the piddly volumes
of the historic
tote.
My worry is
Britbet will turn out to be a terrible deal for
punters.
Time will tell
there.
It could be so
bad punters will see little logic in it.
Instead of
making their product better
Racing
Authorities will instead seek to make the
products
of others worse
in order that their
own seems less bad when compared.
That would be
shameful and a total swindle of all
you good punters
out there who want better value racing not
worse.
But it appears
that ROA mouthpiece Mr Cooper is already
trying to
engineer this future for you.
To be fair to
him he is stuck in a landscape engineered
between the bookies and the BHA.
#3 Northumberland Plate Analysis
Today Guy sent full members a bit of early work
he had carried out
for Saturday's Northumberland Plate.
He has more thinking to do before he declares
his final judgements
but those of you who like to pick your own may
find some extra inspiration
in his early work below.
No doubt he will be finishing off this race and
it and several others
will be included in Saturday message. See the
big yellow box below
for our Saturday Day Pass if it interests you
to join us for the single day.
========================
Saturday Newcastle 2.05
Northumberland Plate
7/2 Withhold 7/1 Amazing Red
9/1 Higher Power 10/1 Lagostovegas 12/1 Natural
Scenery
14/1 Lord George 16/1 Time To Study 16/1 Byron
Flyer
16/1 Prince of Arran 16/1 Nakeeta 20/1 Island
Brave
20/1 Curbyourenthusiasm 20/1 Top Tug, Sir
Chauvelin
25/1 Watersmeet 25/1 On To Victory 25/1 Arch
Villain
33/1 Soldier In Action 33/1 Clever Cookie 33/1
Cayirli
Class 2 Handicap over 2m
Rarely done this race in recent years
Partly because it underwent chances
In 2016 it moved from Grass to Sand
Which undermined all my statistics
Look at the last 11 winners
9 on Grass and 2 on the Sand
WITHOLD is the market leader
He has a 259 day absence
He looks a very progressive stayer
He won the Cesarevitch last Autumn
Interesting owned by Tony Bloom
That is a horrible absence to face
The last 20 winners of this ran
All ran within the previous 52 days
WITHOLD therefore is not my bet
Since 2007
The last 11 winners
All had the following in common
1) Males aged 4-5-6-7
2) They ran 11-58 days ago
3) Beaten under 10 lengths last time
4) Ran over 1m 3f or more last time
5) Had at least 8 career starts
6) The winners aged 4
All ran within 6 weeks
All had 10-17 career starts
7)The winners aged 5 +
All had 2 + runs that season
The following share this profile
HIGHEST POWER
TIME TO STUDY
PRINCE OF ARRAN
CURBYOURENTHUSIAM
SOLDIER IN ACTION
AMAZING RED
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