There are certain things that professional punters and bookies know will affect the way a horse performs and its chances of winning a race. These things are simple enough to find out, but they can also be a mystery to those who don’t know what to look for or why they’re important.
In this article series, we will go through some of the most important factors that affect race horses. You’ll then be in a strong position to use this information yourself and have more success in identifying strong horses to back and potential donkeys to lay.
Form (how the horse has performed over the past races):
If the horse has consistently won over competition that is comparable to the animals it is running against on the day you are making your decision, he has a good chance of repeating that again. More on Factors That Affect The Way A Horse Performs (Part 1)
Written by on Nov 17th, 2009. Comment. 
Passed with 5/5 Stars!
- All
By The Book Rating:
Passed with 4.5/5 stars!
- Betfair ATM Rating:
- Bonus Bagging Rating:
- Golden Key Method 2 Rating:
- Layers Of Profit Rating:
- The BetPlan Rating:
When identifying value bets and trades, there’s one thing I’m consistently reminded of — to find the most profitable betting opportunities, it very often pays to be looking beyond the obvious.
Take horse racing, for example…
Your typical losing punter will usually look through a bog-standard race card before deciding which horse to back. Most likely, he’ll then come to a semi-informed decision based on the trainer, jockey and horse’s recent form. While this might be a reasonable starting point, the problem with this approach is that everyone has access to the same information. Finding a winning edge becomes virtually impossible.
To become a successful bettor, it helps to think like a shrewd detective . Ask yourself, ‘what is it that others haven’t spotted, which will guide me to the value bets?’
We can easily improve on a basic race card analysis by taking things a step or two further. For instance, we could take the time to look at the classes of a horse’s previous races.
If the horse has been running well, is it now running in a higher class for the first time? If so, we might have found a good horse to lay — that would require further inspection on the odds, distance, going, draw, quality of other horses (after all, it’s probably not worth laying a horse who doesn’t have much competition for the win) and so forth.
On the flip side, if the horse has been placing in a higher class, is it now dropping to a lower class once again? If so, we might have found a good horse to back — again, it would require further ‘detective work‘.
Regularly, I find horses at long odds with seemingly suspect form and then find the horse is dropping down in class. Sometimes, these horses lead to nothing, but I often follow this approach to find value bets at long odds.
You could take this even further by looking at different, more-unique angles. For instance, perhaps there’s an unfancied horse at long odds and you discover he tends to run well only at left-handed courses… this attention to detail is what can give you edge you need to profit.
The possibilities of angles you can explore are endless. Because of this, I generally recommend that punters SPECIALISE on just a few types of betting approaches that suit them best.
To illustrate my point, here are a couple of real-life examples…
1. One successful punter I’m in contact with specialises in the performance of different trainer/jockey combinations. He typically backs trainer/jockey combinations who often win and lays those who rarely win. Of course, his approach is slightly more complex, but it does pay off for him.
2. Another friend I know has a season ticket to watch Woking Football Club and is particularly knowledgeable about lower league football. Seeing as boomakers don’t spend much time analysing the lower leagues, Greg often finds value bets and, during most months, this betting niche of his earns some nice spending money.
What follows is worth remembering…
To stay competetive, bookmakers HAVE to offer odds on all worthwhile sporting events. As punters, one of our biggest advantages is that we can CHOOSE which sporting events we bet on… and specialising in you’re own betting niche is a great way to maximise that benefit.
And that’s all from me for today. Stay tuned next week and the weeks that follow… I have some great content lined-up for you.
Tipping Services Testing
I’m about to start testing various tipping services to see how well they perform over a period of time and then I’ll report the results back to you on a regular basis.
Initially, I’m going to test the most popular services, which you will decide, so if you’d like a service tested, please add a comment at the bottom of this blog post and I’ll start testing the various services you require over a period of time.
Have a good one,
- Josh.
Written by on Nov 3rd, 2009. 16 Comments.
Passed with 5/5 Stars!
- All
By The Book Rating:
Passed with 4.5/5 stars!
- Betfair ATM Rating:
- Bonus Bagging Rating:
- Golden Key Method 2 Rating:
- Layers Of Profit Rating:
- The BetPlan Rating:
Anyone involved with sports betting will agree with me: it’s rare to find a shrewd, clued-up expert who’s willing to ‘spill the beans’ and reveal their profitable methods.
With that in mind, I am pleased to introduce a genuine betting enthusiast, Joshua Jacobs, who’s going to be teaming-up with LTO by providing fr.ee, high-quality betting advice on a weekly basis.
The lessons Josh teaches are good ones… and this first contribution from him is no exception.
So, without further ado… put your hands together and give a rousing Lay The Odds welcome to our latest addition, Joshua Jacobs.
Take it away, Josh…
===============================================================
What Derren Brown Can Teach Us About Making Money From Sports Betting.
===============================================================
Derren Brown has been getting major publicity in recent weeks. In his latest stunt, he (supposedly) predicted all six numbers of the national lottery.
Naturally, he refrained from revealing how he predicted these numbers… but during the programme, Derren did mention a ‘psychic phenomenon‘ that can help us make money from sports betting.
What is this ‘psychic phenomenon’ I’m talking about?
It’s a theory developed in the 19th century by Francis Galton — a theory called ‘the Wisdom of Crowds‘.
Simply put, ‘the Wisdom of Crowds‘ suggests that the collective wisdom of a crowd will generally lead to very accurate, almost-exact predictions.
As the story goes, Galton was shocked to find that a county fair crowd had accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox’s true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts).
That example was no one-off, either….
Think about the show ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?‘, for instance: how often are the contestants given the right answer when they choose to ‘ask the audience’? Virtually every time, of course!
How does this relate to betting? Good question — the answer lies with betting exchanges…
You see, if nothing else, betting exchanges are simply a massive crown of people collectively predicting a team, player, or horse’s chance of winning.
The odds on Betfair are driven by the supply and demand of many punters with a strong interest in backing or laying a particular event.
Studies that span over thousands of sporting events have confirmed that the odds on Betfair have an accuracy of over 99% in representing the true probability of that outcome happening.
In other words, the odds on Betfair have shown to be a very reliable indication of what the true odds of an outcome should be. When you combine this with the commission deductions, contrary to popular belief, Betfair can be tricky to profit from (like with most rules, there are exceptions, which is why some laying systems can produce consistent profits — why these exceptions exist and how to identify them will be a topic for another time).
For this reason, I only now use Betfair for laying and trading.
When it comes to backing, I find it’s more profitable to accept that the odds on Betfair are generally spot-on and compare those odds with the odds of the bookies to find value bets.
You can take advantage of this by finding opportunities where bookmakers offer odds on horses that are significantly higher than the odds available on Betfair. These opportunities present themselves on a daily basis and I’m speaking from personal experience when I say this method works.
… And that’s what Derren Brown can teach us about profitable sports betting. 
==========================================================
Betting System Test Results
==========================================================
Alongside my weekly articles, I also want to update you with live test results of betting systems and tipsters.
I’m currently searching for a variety of systems/tipsters to start testing on a daily basis over a 4-week and will be revealing the results to you each week (the good AND the bad) once testing begins.
In the meantime, I have a generous and exclusive offer for you — an offer that I’m only making to you and other members of this newsletter.
Let me ‘splain…
When I launched the Betting Profits Formula last year, I had a certain number of copies that I was looking to release and, afterwards, I closed the site down to protect the methods for existing customers.
Since the site was closed down, I have refused to sell any further copies (this is even despite some people pleading with me via email)… until today.
You see, to celebrate the first of (hopefully) many of my weekly newsletters I have decided to make the Betting Profits Formula available to you… and at a huge discount.
Previously, the Betting Profits Formula sold for $197 (£120), but as a member of this newsletter, I’m going to slash the price dramatically and sell it for just £37.
This is simply a goodwill gesture on my part to mark my first of these weekly newsletters.
If you’re not interested, then that’s absolutely fine with me — this is only a gesture (definitely NOT a hard-sell) and the copies that are available will be grabbed quickly anyway.
On the other hand, if you are interested in taking advantage of this bargain, simply visit the link below to find out more…
… And that’s all from me for today — stay tuned next week and the weeks that follow… I have some great content lined-up for you.
Have a good one,
- Joshua Jacobs.
PS. If you have any comments, experience or feedback about the wisdom of crowds theory, just click on the comments button and add your feedback.
Written by on Oct 27th, 2009. 3 Comments.
Passed with 5/5 Stars!
- All
By The Book Rating:
Passed with 4.5/5 stars!
- Betfair ATM Rating:
- Bonus Bagging Rating:
- Golden Key Method 2 Rating:
- Layers Of Profit Rating:
- The BetPlan Rating:
Latest Discussion