How Often Do Odds-On Horses Lose?

I was asked this question recently:

“How often do odds-on horses lose, and how much?”

And I thought, what better way than to investigate!

So, I got all the data from 2013 for odds-on horses and began to dig in.

There were 2054 runners who had an SP of less than 2.00, and 1208 of these won. That gives odds-on runners a strike rate of 59%.

But… you would have made a loss of -114 units at SP. That’s a 6% loss on the amount you bet.

If we look at the selections to Betfair SP, the profit is -12 units before commission. After commission a loss of -52 would have been achieved.

Whatever way you look at it, Betfair SP would have produced significantly better results.

But is there a way make a profit from these odds-on runners?

After all, a 59% strike rate is what dreams are made of. But it’s no use to us if it’s going to make a loss.

Let’s take a look at the results if we break them down by class:

What we see here is that Classes 3 and 6 are both profitable with Class 6 being the most profitable.

Alright, 14.15 units (5% ROI) per year isn’t going to make you rich but a 5% ROI isn’t bad considering that we’ve done no kind of analysis except to focus on selections who are odds-on in Class 6.

Now let’s look at the different race types:

All race types have made a loss except Hurdle Turf and Hunter Chase, although there isn’t really enough data in Hunter Chase races to be accurate.

Still not as good as the Class break down.

So far we’ve used no ratings or data that can’t be obtained by the majority of the betting market!

Let’s take a step back.

We know that…

• Odds-on selections in 2013 won 59% of the time
• Odds-on selections in 2013 made a loss of -52 units to Betfair SP
• Odds-on selections in 2013 in Class 6 races made a profit of 14.15 units to Betfair SP
• Odds-on selections in 2013 racing on Hurdle Turf made a profit of 4.58 units to Betfair SP

From this information we can assume one thing:

It’s going to be pretty hard to find any value in odds-on selections with standard market data

That doesn’t mean we couldn’t find a very small sub-niche where we do make a profit. But, it’s going to be tough.

What happens if we add in data that can’t be found easily. For example the number of days since a horse last won.

It makes sense that if we’re placing bets on horses that are odds-on, we want them to have won recently. Some odds-on horses haven’t won a race in over a year, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to bet on them

Sixty days seems like a good starting point to expect an odds-on horse to have won in. This produces the following results:

Now that we’re using information that is not easily available we see an instant improvement. Although you would need to be betting with very large stakes to make the profits worthwhile and you would only be making a 3.49% ROI.

So what is the final answer to the question:

“How often do odds-on horses lose, and how much?”

We’ve discovered that these horses lose 41% of the time and make a 2.5% loss to Betfair SP.

Using information that’s easily available to the market, such as race Class, this can be improved to generate a small profit of 14 units. Using information that’s not easily available to the market, such as Days Since Last Won, can improve this profit further.

But at the end of the day, you will never make a lot of profit betting on odds-on selections. They’ve been too well accounted for in the market and the odds do not offer enough value. The time spent building a profitable strategy for these selections is almost certainly not going to be worth it.