A reader suggested the idea for this article quite a while ago. I would like to apologise for the time that it has taken for me to get around to writing this article but I hope that you will be satisfied with the results.
So is headgear something that has a laying potential?
To begin analyzing this information I did a break down of all the runners with headgear worn over the first 6 months of 2009. The results looked like the table below.
|
Profit |
Wins |
Losses |
Runs |
SR |
ROI |
Avg Odds |
Min Odds |
Max Odds |
|
|
Hood |
0.95 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
100% |
95.00% |
16.83 |
16.83 |
16.83 |
|
Visor |
117.11 |
1609 |
162 |
1771 |
91% |
6.61% |
36.28 |
1.34 |
953.80 |
|
Blinkers |
-15.54 |
4341 |
407 |
4748 |
91% |
-0.33% |
36.54 |
1.34 |
986.06 |
|
Eye Shield |
20.87 |
119 |
12 |
131 |
91% |
15.93% |
63.11 |
1.69 |
986.06 |
|
Eye Cover |
-16.76 |
26 |
2 |
28 |
93% |
-59.84% |
40.47 |
3.78 |
268.36 |
|
Cheek Piece |
610.74 |
4570 |
397 |
4967 |
92% |
12.30% |
37.86 |
1.23 |
986.06 |
|
Tack Pacifier |
0.00 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0% |
0.00% |
0.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
|
Tongue Strap |
476.51 |
4358 |
398 |
4756 |
92% |
10.02% |
45.31 |
1.12 |
953.80 |
On first signs this is very promising. Please note that these results have been done to an estimated Betfair Odds. The estimated Betfair odds are not done by simply adding 20%, they are in fact an accurate assessment of the odds that would have been available as Betfair SP.
The other important note is that commission has also been taken account of and all bets are for 1 unit returning 0.95 units when successful.
The initial impression is that these results are incredible! Runners that wore cheek pieces made a profit of over 610 units in 6 months when laying them. Let us take note of a few things before we rush out and start laying these horses.
I hope that the first thing that you noticed was that the max odds bet for almost all of them was very near to 1000. This would require having a bank that was at least 10,000 units. The 610 units profit is now not looking quite so good.
The average odds for all of the runners is between 36 and 63 which means that these lay bets will be placed at very high odds requiring a large bank. Both blinkers and eye covers produced a loss. Blinkers had 4748 runners, which is a large enough sample to remove them confidently from the selections. Eye covers had only 28 selections, which is not enough, however for the purposes of this analysis I shall also remove them. This means that we have removed runners with Blinkers and Eye Covers from our selections from now on. In fact let’s just concentrate on the three most profitable selections, these are runners wearing visors, cheek pieces or tongue straps.
|
Profit |
Wins |
Losses |
Runs |
SR |
ROI |
Avg Odds |
Min Odds |
Max Odds |
|
931.80 |
9936 |
921 |
10857 |
92% |
8.58% |
40.77 |
1.12 |
986.06 |
The profit for these runners is just over 930 units profit. This is slightly less than you might have expected because some of the runners may be wearing more than one piece of headgear, which leads us to our next question. How do runners wearing all 3 pieces of headgear perform?
There are no runners wearing all 3 pieces of headgear but there are some wearing 2.
|
Profit |
Wins |
Losses |
Runs |
SR |
ROI |
Avg Odds |
Min Odds |
Max Odds |
|
272.57 |
601 |
36 |
637 |
94% |
42.79% |
39.57 |
1.56 |
953.80 |
The profit is reduced but the ROI is significantly improved and the strike rate has increased slightly as well but we still have the problem of extremely high odds. Our obvious next stage in looking at this data is to break the information down into odds ranges.
|
Profit |
Wins |
Losses |
Runs |
SR |
ROI |
Avg Odds |
Min Odds |
Max Odds |
|
|
< 2.00 |
0.25 |
2 |
2 |
4 |
50% |
6.35% |
1.76 |
1.56 |
1.82 |
|
2.00 – 5.00 |
21.13 |
47 |
9 |
56 |
84% |
37.74% |
3.70 |
2.23 |
4.44 |
|
5.01 – 10.00 |
51.84 |
137 |
14 |
151 |
91% |
34.33% |
7.54 |
5.05 |
9.90 |
|
10.01 – 20.00 |
62.25 |
128 |
6 |
134 |
96% |
46.46% |
13.78 |
10.89 |
16.83 |
|
20.01 – 30.00 |
40.67 |
83 |
2 |
85 |
98% |
47.84% |
22.15 |
20.09 |
26.26 |
|
30.01 – 50.00 |
-7.13 |
95 |
3 |
98 |
97% |
-7.28% |
34.66 |
30.49 |
47.72 |
|
50.01 – 100.00 |
45.60 |
48 |
0 |
48 |
100% |
95.00% |
60.15 |
56.76 |
71.58 |
|
> 100.00 |
57.95 |
61 |
0 |
61 |
100% |
95.00% |
226.92 |
105.87 |
953.80 |
This break down provides some very useful information. We can see that the only losing bracket was the 30.01-50.00 range and this only made a small loss. Runners with odds of less than 2.00 made a significantly smaller ROI than all the other areas and runners over odds of 30.01 made a significantly higher ROI.
You could stick to laying the runners that have odds of less than 5.00 but you will be significantly cutting down on your selections to around 9 bets per month. Personally I would consider laying all runners up to odds of 30.00 and with minimum odds of 2.00.
|
Profit |
Wins |
Losses |
Runs |
SR |
ROI |
Avg Odds |
Min Odds |
Max Odds |
|
175.89 |
395 |
31 |
426 |
93% |
41.29% |
11.91 |
2.23 |
26.26 |
This would give around 70 bets a month or 2 bets per day and make a good ROI and profit. I know that most of you are probably going to be uncomfortable laying at odds this high and so lets take a moment to look at the bank that you should have when betting on selections with odds this high.
The longest losing run that we can expect in this situation is just 3 bets. We know that our highest odds are going to be 30, which could mean a losing run of 90 units. This is the lowest bank we would want but what happens if we go over this or have a longer losing run?
We should at least double this amount to 180 units, which would be rounded up to 200 units or 0.5% of your bank on each bet. In the six months of our test this would have turned a 100 unit bank into over 234 units with a low point of just 90 units!
Whether you choose to bet these selections or to use this information in your own way I hope that this has revealed the potential profit associated with finding runners that have headgear and looking to lay them.
