STOP: 5 Easy Tweaks You Can Use When Betting Systems Are Confusing You
Getting More Than One Selection In A Race? Here's What To Do...
If you use any kind of betting system, then you’re almost certain to have experienced that moment where different systems are giving you different selections in the same race.
Even worse…
You may have had a moment where most of the horses in the race have been selected by different betting systems.
Or…
One betting system tells you to back a horse to win, and another tells you to lay the horse to lose.
When this happens it can lead to panic and confusion.
After all, what the heck are you supposed to do, clearly you can’t back all the horses as you’ll just make a loss.
Most people just skip the race.
Others place the bet, only to find that one of the two horses they didn’t bet on wins and their bankroll takes a massive hit, but not as big as the psychological bang.
Luckily, there’s a few simple techniques you can use to determine exactly how you should bet.
Some require more work than others, but they all work, and you should simply pick the one that you feel best suits your time available and personality.
Here’s what you do…
(1) IGNORE THE BET
The most obvious, and by far the quickest, thing to do in this situation is to ignore the bet.
But you must make sure that you ignore these bets all the time.
No allowances because it feels right!
This requires no extra work, however it’s not my preferred option.
Why?
Because you may be missing out on the horses which make the majority of the profit for a particular betting system.
If you’re using this method, you should go back through your past results and remove any horses that would also have been ignored, and make sure that the results still stack up.
(2) MAKE THE MOST ROI
The second quickest approach takes a little bit of research, or simply requires you to have the stats to your various betting systems easily to hand.
Choose the selection from the method which generates the biggest ROI over the long-term.
As with the first option, this is quick and simple, and can be decided with no work done prior to the event.
But if you’re prepared to spend a little bit of time, this is much better…
(3) Basic Betting System Re-Analysis
Do a basic betting system re-analysis, but pull out any selections where your betting systems chose different horses in the same race.
When you’ve found these selections, what you do next depends on whether you have two betting systems, or more than two betting systems.
- If you have two betting systems, determine which betting system performs the best in this situation, and use that one for the selections in these situations.
- If you have more than two betting systems, determine which of the systems are profitable if there is more than one selection in the same race, and which aren’t. Only use the ones which are profitable in this situation.
(4) Taking It To The Next Level
If you’re serious about your betting, then you can build on the previous step, and take it even further by breaking the results of your betting systems into odds ranges.
This is only necessary for the races where there’s more than one selection.
The actual odds ranges should be defined by the selection, try to have a minimum of thirty selections in each range, and make the ranges have as similar a number of selections as possible.
You’ll find that the different betting systems will perform differently in this scenario depending on odds ranges. Mark the best ones to follow in each odds range.
Once you’ve done this bit of analysis, you can then create a cheat sheet for yourself so you know which betting system’s selections to use when this happens.
(5) A Bonus For Getting This Far
If you’ve decided to put the time and effort in to go through the three previous steps, then you’re clearly very serious about making a long-term profit from your betting.
And as you’ve got this far, there’s an extra bonus benefit you can get by doing a little bit more.
By now you’ve got all your betting systems broken into odds ranges for races where there are more than one selection per race.
This has given you an overview of which of your betting systems perform the best in this scenario.
Now do this, but do it for all the selections in each of your betting systems.
There’s very few betting systems that have the same performance across all odds ranges. By breaking the selections down into odds ranges, you can significantly improve the results without a huge amount more work.
This is best done when you’ve already got a profitable betting system, rather than to try and make one profitable.
Strike rate, profit and ROI are all important. But most important is the A/E and the Chi Square (Archie Score).
The A/E ratio is going to tell you if you have an edge. Ideally you want more than 1.05 and if using Betfair SP, you’re going to want more than 1.10.
The Chi Square is going to tell you how likely your results are due to chance. You want this to be as low as possible.
With this information, you are very likely to find that each betting system has a sweet spot in the odds, where the majority of its edge and profit comes from.
If there is good profit in an odds range where the A/E is less than above, you should not bet on it. If you have an A/E of less than 1.00, then you will make a loss long-term, and if you have an A/E of less than 1.05 you won’t make a big enough return to make it worthwhile betting on the selections.
There may be short runs and sequences where a lot of profit is made, but we’re not in this for the short runs, we’re in it for the long haul, and that means making decisions that are going to affect our long-term profit.
However tempted you may be to bet on these selections, please don’t if they have an A/E lower than above.
In Summary
Having a lot of selections in the same race, or having the same selection to be bet in an opposing manner, can be frustrating and stressful.
But it doesn’t need to be.
Like everything with horse race, the best route is to take a logical approach that suits you best.
If you don’t have the time to do the analysis, then don’t worry about doing it. Use the simplest method, it’s quick and effective, and will work well enough for most people.
However, if you do have the time, then it’s worth doing one of the more advanced approaches. It will give you a slightly bigger edge, and have the added benefit of helping you get a deeper understanding of where the profit comes from in your betting systems.
I’d love to know whether you will use one of these approaches, or if you have a different technique for making the decision. Please let me know by leaving a message in the comments section below.
Interesting post. My preferred method is to bet both systems at their defined stakes. I know that this a bit perverse, but if you exclude either of the system bets your systems will not show the true position of either system in the long term results.
Absolutely Ian, if you’re going to exclude bets then you need to re-run the process you used to build the system exceeding these bets so you can see if it still makes a profit.
I used two golden rules for backing more than one tip in the same race: If the odds allowed I would dutch them. However, if one of the tips was a lay tip I would forgo the pleasure and simply move on: Easy peasy and more often than not it would pay off in the long run: Not always, but many times one tipster from several would get it right but you would need the odds in your favour to back more than one selection:
Nice and simple, often the simplest approaches are the best 🙂
Hi Michael et all, where one ends up with the situation where on system says “back”, but another says lay, the solution would be to trade, ie, do both. It’s an idea I’ve been looking at since your posts recently on the subject (just paper trading, but about to go “live”), and must say I am increasingly taken by the idea. Just one question on that subject, if I may…your blog posts frequently site commission at 5%, but the adverts on the telly say 2%, so why the differential?
That’s another good way of doing it, look at trading the selection 🙂
I always state 5% as the commission on Betfair as that’s still their standard, however they’re offering 2% to most people at the moment which means you’re in a better position 🙂