EW betting

[fintron]

Re: EW betting I get the value justification on the place bit but still don't understand how backing EW can be justified at those odds in terms of liability. Say you had £50 EW at 4/5 and it finishes second, you lose £40. Isn't it better to risk just £50 by backing the win only and accept only a slightly greater loss by £10 if the horse finishes second? My rationale would be that if a 4/5 shot flops then something probably has gone majorly wrong in order for all that percentage in the market to flop, maybe it didn't get the right pace or simply never travelled (poor temperament etc), and the chances are if it is having a bad day that both the win and place parts will come crashing down together when it will pull up etc? I suppose there isn't a right or wrong answer, just your threshold is just a bit lower than most punters, but each to their own and keep doing whatever works for you :ok

[slapdash]

Re: EW betting

My rationale would be that if a 4/5 shot flops then something probably has gone majorly wrong in order for all that percentage in the market to flop' date=' maybe it didn't get the right pace or simply never travelled (poor temperament etc), and the chances are if it is having a bad day that both the win and place parts will come crashing down together when it will pull up etc?[/quote'] In this case, I don't think that's true. I don't routinely back odds-on shots EW: this is the only time I've done it, I think, and it was a rather special situation. Remember I said there was another horse at 6/4, with the other five at big odds. According to the market, there's not that much difference in their chance: 4/5 translates into about a 56% chance of winning, 6/4 a 40% chance. The most likely way for the 4/5 shot to be beaten was for the 6/4 shot to do a bit better than expected comparatively, in which case the 4/5 shot is still likely to come second. That's doubtless why the Betfair place odds were much shorter than the quarter-the-odds offered by the bookies.

[slapdash]

Re: EW betting

I get the value justification on the place bit but still don't understand how backing EW can be justified at those odds in terms of liability. Say you had £50 EW at 4/5 and it finishes second' date=' you lose £40. Isn't it better to risk just £50 by backing the win only and accept only a slightly greater loss by £10 if the horse finishes second? [/quote'] Let's put some precise numbers on it: Suppose that if you ran the race 36 times, the horse would win 21 times, come second 11 times, and lose 4 times. That would mean a win bet would show a yield of +5%, which is probably about what I was hoping for, and that the fair place odds were 1.125, which is about what the Betfair market suggested. Suppose we each started with £1000 and came across a series of betting opportunities similar to this. Suppose you bet £50 to win each time, and I bet £50 EW each time. I'd bet that not only would I make more money than you on average, but also I'd go broke less often than you. In that sense, I think betting EW is actually more conservative than betting to win.

[fintron]

Re: EW betting

Let's put some precise numbers on it: Suppose that if you ran the race 36 times, the horse would win 21 times, come second 11 times, and lose 4 times. That would mean a win bet would show a yield of +5%, which is probably about what I was hoping for, and that the fair place odds were 1.125, which is about what the Betfair market suggested. Suppose we each started with £1000 and came across a series of betting opportunities similar to this. Suppose you bet £50 to win each time, and I bet £50 EW each time. I'd bet that not only would I make more money than you on average, but also I'd go broke less often than you. In that sense, I think betting EW is actually more conservative than betting to win.

On what basis can you say that though, the 21-11-4 from 36 races were just numbers you made up? I think that the most successful punter of the two would be the one that shows the most discipline, and only backed 4/5 shots when they were confident on their selections and did not feel threatened by the 6/4 shot and feel the need to go each-way for insurance. Obviously in this case you could not dutch the selections because of the short odds on both selections, I suppose I would personally look to lay in running if possible If I felt the need to try recover some of the stake (although I accept some bets are easier to trade in running than others, for example I trade my front runners much easier than the hold ups etc).

[BillyHills]

Re: EW betting Fin, really wouldnt argue with Slap where Maths is concerned, the numbers will be right mate. The difference is you are betting from a 'personal' view on form and Slap is betting purely on figures, with value against mathematical probability.

[fintron]

Re: EW betting

Fin' date=' really wouldnt argue with Slap where Maths is concerned, the numbers will be right mate. The difference is you are betting from a 'personal' view on form and Slap is betting purely on figures, with value against mathematical probability.[/quote'] OK BH. I'm not trying to be awkward or argumentative, but those figures mean nothing as they seem to be purely mythical numbers that he has plucked from thin air to support his argument. Slapdash said himself he barely backs 4/5 shots each way so those 36 races are surely not based on a hard data set he has collected himself. As I said before, I think it is daft to back a 4/5 shot each way doubling liability, if you feel there is a chance of it getting beat, surely it makes sense to swerve the race rather than doubling stake for a paltry ROI, and I still haven't been convinced otherwise but I know plenty of people would disagree with my own approach to betting too and the debate could go on forever, so I'll say no more!

[slapdash]

Re: EW betting I don't think you're being awkward or argumentative (well, no more than I am, anyway!). The figures I gave weren't supposed to be definitive or to prove anything. I was just giving my rough estimate of how much of an edge the win and place parts of the bet had, to give us something to work with. I don't think it makes much difference to my conclusions if you change the figures (within reason). I take your point about doubling my liability. But if we just wanted to minimize our liability, we'd never bet at all. We try to balance the liability with the likely reward. And the mathematical point here is that, for a given yield, very low odds bets (like the place part of this bet) are far safer than higher odds bets from the point of view of balancing reward with liability. To illustrate (and again, I'm not saying there's anything magical about the figures I'm using, it's just an example), suppose I start with 10 units and keep betting 1 unit on 1.20 shots with "true odds" of 1.125. Then my "risk of ruin" (the chance that I'll lose my 10 units) is tiny, around 0.1%. But if I bet on 1.80 shots with the same yield (which translates into true odds of about 1.69) then my risk of ruin is close to 20%. But in the long run, if I don't go broke, I'll make the same from both kinds of bets: the 1.20 bets are far safer for the same reward. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think you appreciate quite how great a bet the place part of the EW bet is (assuming the Betfair market is approximately right). Incidentally, a middle road I could have taken, which is certainly better than the "win only" route, would have been to back the horse EW with the bookie and lay off the place part on Betfair at 1.12 (though I don't remember how much was on offer at that price).