EW system using Betfair place prices

[slapdash]

I've been posting each-way horse-racing selections on Sports-Punter.com since the beginning of the year with the rather uninformative reasoning "System bet". After a shaky start I've been having some success recently, so I thought I'd post a description of the "system" here. Since I've posted all of these selections on Sports-Punter, I hope this isn't regarded as after-eventing. I'll continue to post them on SP. The basic idea is that when there is a short-priced favourite, the place price on the second or third favourite is likely to be relatively good value. To give an oversimplified and extreme example with no over-round, suppose the favourite will win 75% of the time, and is priced at 1/3, the second favorite will win 20% of the time, and is priced at 4/1, and there are a load of complete rags making up the field, and a rag will win only one time in 20. Then the place odds on the second favourite (assuming 1/5 the odds) are 4/5, but if you assume that since, if the favourite doesn't win, the second favorite beats all the rags four times out of five, he will also beat them four times out of five even when the favorite does win, this means he'll be in the first two at least 80% of the time. And he may be placed third. This makes the 4/5 place odds look attractive. Of course, there's the over-round to take into account, and all sorts of other unwarranted assumptions, plus the fact that the bookies won't let you bet on the place without betting on the win as well, so I doubt this idea will show much profit (if any) as it stands. But I had the idea of looking at the place market on Betfair, and seeing how their place prices compared with the place part of an EW bet with a conventional bookie at early prices, and it varies quite a lot. Sometimes the Betfair price is comparable to the bookie's prices, and sometimes it's significantly worse. This includes much less extreme examples than the one I've given. So the "system" is to back horses EW at the best early price when the Betfair place price is significantly worse (e.g., you can lay the place on Betfair at 1.80, but you can bet EW at 11/2, getting odds of 2.10 on the place at 1/5 the odds for a place, at a bookie). I'm afraid I don't have a precise definition of "significantly". The hope is to roughly break even on the win half of the bets and make a profit on the place half. I've posted 74 selections on SP since the beginning of the year, and the results to date, separated into the win and place halves, assuming a bet of one point each-way on each horse, are: WIN 13 won profit: +3.90 points yield: +5.27% PLACE 42 won or placed profit: +20.52 points yield: +27.73% OVERALL profit: +24.42 points yield: +16.50% I've recently looked at the effect of betting at SP instead of best early prices, and surprisingly it makes little difference. It virtually wiped out the profit on the win halves of the bet, but slightly more than made up for this by increasing the profit on the place halves. OK, now I've posted this, watch my position on the Sports-Punter league table plummet!

[Bruise Pristene]

Re: EW system using Betfair place prices Good idea for a system, I been told before that second and third favouites in a race where the 1st favourite is a very short price often are profitable, but never know enough about racing to try it. Someone I know always goes on about making money this way but never has any figures to back it up. I'll follow your system with interest good luck mate :hope