How To Profit From Laying Favourites at Individual Racecourses

I wrote a post called How To Profit From Backing Favourites at Individual Racecourses, so I thought it would be worth doing the opposite with the same stats and seeing if we can profit from any tracks that favourites run absolutely crap at, and no surprise we have a few.

As with the earlier post I have published results for the last 3 years, but filtered them by including 5 years for comparison and those with low ROI, although in this case we accept anything above 1% as that is basically what the bookmakers make in the long term.We do have a lot more qualifying tracks, although that isn’t a surprise as far more favourites lose than win, around 68% overall.

Free Horseracing System Rules:
Lay all the favourites, or joint favourites at the tracks below.

Course Runners Winners Win S/R Lay P/L Exc Lay ROI Exc
Downpatrick 210 59 28.1 £39.98 19.04
Nottingham 411 109 26.52 £35.43 8.62
Yarmouth 568 169 29.75 £32.88 5.79
Chepstow 529 149 28.17 £31.47 5.95
Thurles 213 59 27.7 £30.98 14.55
Epsom 287 80 27.87 £25.78 8.98
Roscommon 207 53 25.6 £23.17 11.19
Ffos Las 529 177 33.46 £17.73 3.35
Sedgefield 340 112 32.94 £15.39 4.53
Curragh 441 125 28.34 £13.52 3.07
Wexford 232 65 28.02 £10.40 4.48
Laytown 24 4 16.67 £9.52 39.68
Dundalk 675 178 26.37 £8.86 1.31
Worcester 390 120 30.77 £7.74 1.98
Market Rasen 399 123 30.83 £4.99 1.25
Taunton 239 82 34.31 £4.37 1.83
£312.21

 *All exchange prices include 5% commission deducted.

How To Profit From Backing Favourites at Individual Racecourses

Backing favourites at racetracks is normal betting practise for Joe Public, but doing so randomly will result in long term losses, and quite considerable ones at that.

So is it possible to profit from backing favourites?

By being very selective it is possible to profit, and the table below clearly shows the racecourses over the last 3 years that have done so.

Course Runners Winners Win S/R P/L Exc ROI Exc P/L to SP ROI to SP
Musselburgh 495 169 34.14 £46.21 9.33 £20.26 4.09
Limerick 366 131 35.79 £37.30 10.19 £9.80 2.68
Haydock 655 214 32.67 £35.57 5.43 £3.23 0.49
Leicester 562 196 34.88 £31.55 5.61 £4.32 0.77
Redcar 407 134 32.92 £28.23 6.94 £5.07 1.24
Ripon 338 111 32.84 £26.36 7.8 £8.34 2.47
Cartmel 160 59 36.88 £25.00 15.62 £16.40 10.25
Listowel 227 76 33.48 £14.62 6.44 £6.25 2.76
Ludlow 258 103 39.92 £13.29 5.15 £6.03 2.34
Kilbeggan 178 58 32.58 £13.24 7.44 £7.58 4.26
Totals £271.37 £87.28

 *All Betfair prices include 5% commission deducted.

You can see that after I have filtered out the losing data, very few tracks are actually left. All races include joint favourites, handicaps, NH, Flat and AW. I filtered out the racecourses that show losses at betting exchange SP, SP, those with exchange ROI%’s less than 3%, and finally those that showed no profit over 5 years of data.

Surprisingly to me the list contains 3 Irish tracks as racing in the Emerald Isle tends to be more competitive with bigger fields. Musselburgh is top of the list, another surprise as the track can have big swings in going throughout a season.

It is very clear that using an exchange SP shows more than 3X the profit over the long term.

Free Horseracing System Rules:
Back all the favourites, or joint favourites at the tracks mentioned above.

Finding Profitable Bets for Cheltenham

With the jumps season upon us now I thought I would take a look to see how the favourites have ran over the last 3 years. And no surprise that backing all of them would have resulted in you losing a pretty big wedge. But I’m not here to tell you about how to lose, I just want you to make a few quid. Learn how to make lots of ‘few quids’ and it mounts up into a big wad!

Having looked at a few things like type of race, age, sex, etc nothing stood out, all showed either break even, losses or for some a very small profit, but not worth the risk.

Eventually the magic Holy Grail wand landed on horses with a recent run, and the trend splits it straight in two which is a positive thing that it is not a quirk in the data. The same trend also holds up if I run it for the last 5 years but I’ll just show you the last 3 years of data here.

DSLR Ranges Ran Won SR PL Exc
 PL SP
0-7 12 3 25 -1.32 -1.5
8-14 16 6 37.5 2.55 2.25
15-21 47 20 42.55 31.27 26.38
22-28 60 23 38.33 16.18 12.89
29-42 70 10 14.29 -38.31 -39.23
43-56 31 9 29.03 1.93 0.46
57-90 27 6 22.22 -2.88 -5.44
91-150 16 3 18.75 -4.99 -5.5
150+ 49 15 30.61 -6.15 -7.07

You can clearly see that backing a favourite at Cheltenham that last ran 28 days or less ago shows a decent profit. As usual betting on the exchanges shows a higher profit than using a normal bookmaker. The SR is good as well at over 38%.

Rules:
Back all Favourites at Cheltenham (including joints) as long as they last raced 28 days ago or less, whether that be under NH rules or on the flat.