Opposeing the favorite - longshot bias on Betfair??

[Guest cjamars]

I know I should wait for the book to come out but as I plan on getting it anyway (honest Joe ;) ) I wonder what his feelings on using Betfair’s traditionally higher odds on long shots to oppose the favorite-longshot bias. The thrust of Joe’s argument (to me) seems to me that in the long run backing favorites generally is a better policy of which there seems general acceptance. One of the reasons for this seems to be that the bookmakers margin in favorites is a lot lower than on longshots again a theory that seems to have general acceptance. What I am wondering about is whether there is any value on betting selected long shots (selected on some value basis) for either straight wins or draw/win bets on Betfair given that prices there can be so much bigger than with the fixed odds bookies. Recent matches shuch as the Scotland-Holland home match and Latvia away at Turkey spring to mind. I’m not just having selective memory on there as I backed both Scotland and Latvia not to lose in those matches on the basis the prices available were. Last night I backed Ascoli at Piacenza (just over 9s for the win and 3.4 for the draw) on both football grounds but also price grounds (backing on the exchanges returned 21% more than the Bet 365 odds). Factors to look out for in opposing teams I feel are strong favorites who tend not to score a lot of goals (“The Sunderland factorâ€) or two teams close in the bottom of the table where one is a strong favorite (Hodgey doing work on this). My question in % terms really is when does backing longshots on the exchanges become better value (i.e overcome the favorite longshot bias).

[Osesame]

Re: Opposeing the favorite - longshot bias on Betfair?? There may be something in what you say.If you look at the pricing competiton where the aim is to show true value in each contestants opinion for a 100% book, the current leader oddsfellow says that he is surprised how close his predictions made early in the week correspond to betfair final prices. The favorite price on the exchanges is unlikely to be much higher than the best bookie prices as obviously anything too high will just be snapped up. The value is more likely to occur in the X/Longshot when the betfair price for the fav. is lower than the major bookies. Again with all these things it comes down to how good you are at assessing the true odds.