Some Laying Advice

dvdfan

i need some advice because I havent got laid in age........im only kidding, i want some advice on choosing laying tipsters. I know in general tipsters arent anything special and dont produce much of a profit over a long term and if they did they probably wouldnt waste their time making 40 euro a month on subscribers. BUT.......ive been looking at www.racing-index.com in the tipster proofing section and a couple in the laying section are coming in with excellent long term profits month on month since december 2005, the most impressive looking is win2win. The backing sections isnt nearly as impressive as the laying.

I just want to know what your advice is regarding laying. Can a decent profit be made following one of these tipsters. Ive tried laying a couple of years ago and got carried away laying 100-200 euro a horse without having the bank to back up 3-4 winners which enivitely happened and i was wiped out. Although i didnt have the advantage of a tried and tested system like win2win Racing.

Do you think with the right discipline, a good staking plan and a quality tipster like win2win that good money can be made???

Im going to limit my price to lay at to 13/2 betfair price proably 5/1 sp and stick to level stakes and not chase losers. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Also im going to start off with a bank of 500 and bet 10 euro level stakes. Is this ratio too conservative?

Cheers

fade2black

Nothing major dvdfan but I've temporarily edited your post. I may fix it back in a little bit. Silax or Wbailey are the perfect people to answer this and they'll be along soon.

dvdfan

Sorry fade didnt realise i couldnt mention names:o

fade2black

It's ok...I just want to sort out something. Back there again for the time being. As I said, those two boys will sort you out.

wb

Hi dvdfan

Regarding the racing index:

When checking any tipster lays on the racing index, you must remember that lays are recorded to sp, so they do not reflect exactly the prices you will be using. On betfair, you will be offering higher prices than sp (otherwise, people would just use a bookie!), so when a winner comes, it will cost you more. For inexperienced layers, the overlay (difference between sp, and the price you get matched at on betfair) can be anywhere up to 15 or even 20%. After some experience, you will be able to judge the market better, and get this overlay down. In the little box up near the top, (Lay Bet % > SP) you can account for this overlay. Try using 15%, and see what each tipster looks like then. Also, don’t forget to enter your commission rate, as a percentage or two can have a huge effect on profit and loss.
On the flip side of what I have just said, some tipsters (win2win included) have advised cut-off points to which you should not lay higher. Unfortunately for the tipster, the racing index will not accept these cut-offs when recording lay results, so the tipster can often have high priced winning horses included in his lays that would not have actually been laid in reality because of the cut-off points.


The first thing to state is that laying is not a quick way to the bank.
It is a long, hard slog, with plenty of ups and downs. I can’t emphasise enough how it should be viewed as very long term, I’m talking years here, not months.
Secondly, you need buckets of discipline. I lost about €1,000 in my first 6 months of using betfair, but I now consider it to be the best money I ever spent, as I have learned so much because of it. Sometimes learning the hard way is the best way, and I certainly wont be making the same mistakes again.

regarding win2win:

I am on a 2 month break from gambling at the moment (due to work) but I have been a member of win2win for about a year and have found it an enjoyable experience. If the truth be told, I blew a couple of banks (my fault) in the first few months by bad staking and not following the strict rules. win2win provides a couple of laying systems, and about a dozen backing systems. I started off doing the ‘system lays‘, but lost money on them. These type of lays were really for the long-term members with very low commission rates. The site boss then introduced ‘method lays’ which have being doing superb. My bank has almost doubled on them in a few months. (these are the ones he records on racing index and advises the newer members to do) Regarding the backing banks, I only do about 4 of them. At the moment, 1 is losing, 1 is breaking even, 1 is doing well, and one is on fire . Of course, this is also long-term, so these go up and down over time.
If you want to get into laying again, have a try of the ‘golden lays’ which are free on the main page. They have provided fantastic profit in the past few months.
When laying, Don’t forget you must get very strict, and record everything you do in a spreadsheet - otherwise you will lose track of what is going on, and end up losing your money.
I don’t mean to sound like an ad or anything, but the other members on win2win were very helpful to me, and I am very grateful to them. Excluding the tips, the members only area of the win2win forum is an absolute mine of information, and I have learned an incredible amount from the other members. Most of the lads are very helpful, and they helped me loads when I was building my All Weather system, which has gone on to show very healthy profits, so the suscriptions were worth it for this alone. The boss of the site is about every day on the forum, so you can get feedback/have a rant/ ask questions as you see fit. Everyone is different, some like to simply follow tips, some people are looking for help with building systems. I can only speak for myself, but I suppose I get a lot out of it because I ask loads of questions when trying to come up with my own systems. There are members who don’t post much, and just follow the systems blindly. Personally, I like to be able to be able to rely on my own stuff also, so system building is a big part of my gambling life. I cant really comment about other tipsters as I don’t subscribe to any.
Hopefully though, you will learn to build your own systems too, so you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. As long as you realise that laying is (very) long term you should be ok. It can be very frustrating, but also very rewarding. I will pm you my msn address if you need to ask any questions.

Regards,

Wayne.

silax

hi dvd
well i got banned from win2win so i'm proberbly not the best person to give a view on the site owner.
if you want to start to learn about laying proffesionally thats a good place to start. you can get a lot of good advise from there.
as for the racing index proofing service its very hard to tell from there whats making cash and what isn't you have to also take into account commision that you will pay betfair. it might not seem a lot at the time but if you are following a system like win2wins possibly half the profit show will go in commision. then you have to take into account the sp against betfair price.
the next thing you have to do is take into account the horses that are too high priced to risk laying them.
a lot of systems on there will show good results but look a little closer tick the advised stakes box then start to disgard everything over 9/1
i would say if you want to be reasonably safe use a €2k bank to stake at €10
try starting off at smaller stakes if you have a smaller bank say €4 and a €500 bank if/when the bank doubles raise the stake to €6 if you get to €1500 bank stake €7.50. you have to remember its not a race with laying horses bank building is hard and it takes a special kind of person to do it.
hope this helps

dvdfan

Thanks Wayne & Silax,

Thats very good advice, after filtering in the 20% above sp and 5% betfair commission things dont look so rosy and ive had to call the garage and cancel that ferrari but there is still another tipster that has a very good record over the past 6 months with the 20% & 5% filters(i wont mention the name in case its not allowed) Every month recorded between 8-30 points profit over the 6 month period except for february which took a small loss of 3 points. Over the 6 months they accumulated 100 pts profit.

Im going to go through the 6 months of stats and filter out the sp's above 5/1 to give me a more accurate view but it will take some time and ill get back with the results.

I would be happy to settle for 5-10 pts profit a month with the odd month in small arrears and the odd month above 10pts rather than an erratic tipster with +60 one month and -40 another month although being realistic i think this can happen to any tipster.

Taken your suggestion about compiling my own system, i think it might be a good suggestion to try and find a 2nd or 3rd tipster so that if 1 system has a bad month the other would compensate. I dont have the time to research my own lays and tbh i think you need 3-4 months plus of stats to properly evaluate if its a good system and i dont have that time either. Also would you recommend stopping laying when the jump season starts and give it 1-2 months for form to even out.

Also reducing my stakes to €4 would seem a good idea considering my €500 bank. Because i work full time days most days i will have to place my bets in advance probably as early as 7.30am, do you forsee many problems with this, i know i may lose some value but i may also gain some value, i will just have to go by the racing post prices and early morning betfair prices and hope my price is matched. This is why ill be considering 20% >sp in calculating totals but if things go well i can use one of those automated robots but for now that willhave 2 do.

Thanks for all the help

wb

I would be happy to settle for 5-10 pts profit a month with the odd month in small arrears and the odd month above 10pts rather than an erratic tipster with +60 one month and -40 another month although being realistic i think this can happen to any tipster.

True. Laying can really be a rollercoaster. Bear in mind that you can have a couple of losing months in a row sometimes, and this is where the long term thinking will have to kick in. After a losing month or two, it can get a bit soul destroying, but then a couple of very profitable ones gets things back into perspective.

Im going to go through the 6 months of stats and filter out the sp's above 5/1 to give me a more accurate view but it will take some time and ill get back with the results.

Each tipster is different and will probably advise on cut-offs. Personally, my cut off is 10.5, as the odds on betfair can get crazy after that. 10.5 is about the average for layers who cut-off and works for me anyway.

Taken your suggestion about compiling my own system, i think it might be a good suggestion to try and find a 2nd or 3rd tipster so that if 1 system has a bad month the other would compensate. I dont have the time to research my own lays and tbh i think you need 3-4 months plus of stats to properly evaluate if its a good system and i dont have that time either.

To be honest, rather than paying suscriptions to a number of people, I would try to find a tipster who offers a few systems in the one package. Suscriptions can get costly. I know you dont have much time, but I would seriously think about creating your own system if you want to get serious about laying. Each to their own I suppose, but it is nice to have control over the selections, and it feels great when you show profit from your own work. In the future, if you get some more time on your hands, you may want to look into RSB (Race Systems Builder) It is data mining software that has recorded data about every horse race for the past 15 years or so. you can look up literally hundreds of variables, and it saves you a lot of time paper trading. They do have a free trial available, but it only covers 2 years data. Still, even the trial version will give you plenty of ideas about how to build a system, and because it is free, you should get it. That said, I appreciate that many people simply dont have the time to look into all of this, and will have to rely on other peoples lay selections.

Also would you recommend stopping laying when the jump season starts and give it 1-2 months for form to even out.

Hmmmmmmm... The question of the decade. Personally, my own backing systems seem to suffer from the change-over. Looking through my win2win lay results though, it does not seem to make much difference. win2win advise following their particular system through the changeover. With the backs, they offer seprerate NH and Flat systems. It all depends on your personal viewpoint really. Although the change-overs periods are hard to predict, you must remember that backers are having the same problems picking winners, so layers may be at an advantage in theory...... As you can see, I cant really answer your question, and it really is up to oneself.

Because i work full time days most days i will have to place my bets in advance probably as early as 7.30am, do you forsee many problems with this, i know i may lose some value but i may also gain some value, i will just have to go by the racing post prices and early morning betfair prices and hope my price is matched. This is why ill be considering 20% >sp in calculating totals but if things go well i can use one of those automated robots but for now that willhave 2 do.

This will cause a couple of problems. Firstly, most tipsters post their selections around mid-day on the day of racing, and I doubt that many will have the selections up that early for you. Can you get access to a pc at lunchtime? how about a laptop if you were really serious about it?
Secondly, unless it is a really big meeting, there wont be a lot matched on the race at that hour, so you will have very high overlays. The odd time I have to place my own system bets the night before, and I'd reckon that 8 times out of 10, I get worse value. As I said, the big meetings are not as bad, but a banded race a wolves for example will have fook all matched on it early on. The market has usually evened out a bit by about 12:30 or 1:00 on the day of racing. Anytime after 12:30 should be relatively safe, but in an ideal world, it would be best to watch the market thorough the day, although this is not possible for most of us.

As I said, a good start would be to do the daily 'golden lay' on win2win (free, and doing extremely well) as this will get you used to staking, and recording everything before you had over your hard earned cash to anybody.

I hope some of this helps. Feel free to ask any more questions.

Regards,

Wayne

silax

i've got to agree with just about everything wayne says.
you're biggest problem could be having to lay them at 7:30 unless they are you're own form picks you could be crucified by the overlay.
there are so many factors that could come into it laying at this time in the day i jusr wouldn't recomend it at all.
if there is and it will happen a lot a big gap in the back and lay price how do you know what is a good price do you take a chance and take what cash is available or leave an offer.
unless you can get access to the internet mid-day or sometime between 12 and racetime don't try it you will lose money.

dvdfan

Just to continue this laying discussion. Ive been thinking of seriously laying outsiders. I know this comes with problems, 1) easy to wipe out bank quickly 2) Paying way over the odds on betfair 3) Not having enough money available to make the full lay.

But seriously, im looking at laying horses between 16/1 and 33/1 and i understand that this means paying 20.0 - 40.0+ my limit would be 40.0. Now i think if you just pick any old horse with high odds it wouldnt succeed but if you select the right odds and look into their form then you can really make it stretch before you eventually hit a winner.

So i would estimate and average price of 30/1. If im backing €10 per race, i think i can find 8-10 races a day with a horse that meets my criteria. There are alot of horses at the 16/1-33/1 that have alot of ability but havent shown it in a while, these are the ones id be avoiding but there are plenty that have consistently never looked like winning a race and sometimes are overvalued due to many factors such as dropping in grade etc which can bring their price down to a reasonable lay, these are the types of lays ill be looking for.

So my 3 main possible problems were:
1) Easy to wipe out bank quickly
I think paying careful attention to the form will give me good value and i wont choose a horse because hes 20/1, ill choose the horse because i think hes real odds should be alot higher than 20/1 and in the long run i should make a profit. I think i may be able to get 50 losers on average before i pick a winner, in fact i hope to do alot better say around 70 but ill be conservative on 50. Assuming my average payout odds will be 30/1 then that will be 20 points profit per week on average. I just need to be careful i dont get 3-4 winners early on.

2) Paying over the odds
I think at the 50/1+ bracket you will pay way over eg 100/1 for a 50/1 but the 16/1 - 33/1 bracket isnt all that bad. Heres some examples of a few horses i backed using small stakes of 1 euro tonight at the evening meetings:

a) Magic Amigo 21:15 Leicester 16.5 betfair SP 12/1 Touched 14/1 Finished 6 of 8
b) Soviet Promise 19:45 Leicester 27.0 betfair SP 20/1 Finished 8th of 17
c) Green Falcon 19:00 Hamilton 38.0 betfair SP 33/1 opened 28/1 Finished 13th of 13
d) Arfinnit 18:45 Leiceter 36.0 betfair SP 25/1 Finished 9th of 14

3) Not having enough money to make the full lay i.e 3 euro available at 25.0 and the next best odds is 50.0

Didnt have this problem, was paying attention to how much money was available because although i was using 1 euro stakes i do plan to increase to 5 and then 10 euro, but there was plenty of money available on all the horses i backed for the 10 mins previous to the race, maybe i might have lost out on maybe 2pts here or there nothing major.

So all in all i think it may be profitable if i can get a good start before i hit 2 many winners and im fairly confident i can do this. Im thinking i can back 50 selections a week easy so that would be 500 profit for 10 euro stakes. Deduct one winner per week on average leaves 200 profit per week but i think i can do a whole lot better than that and so im using conservative figures. Whats everyones opinions on this strategy???

masterK

The one piece of advise I would give to laying big priced selections is to do a lot of reasearch, data analysis and paper trading before even contemplating doing this. A couple of big priced failiures could wipe out your bank before you even get started.

Alternatively it may suit you if you plan on doing these lays early in the morning or the night before as generally speaking as liquidity increases the prices of horses in the higher bracket that you are considering tend to drift quite a bit as the book percentage close on 100%.

It is not enough to just judge the horses form. It is important to have an idea of what sort of races to avoid and what races to aim for, for instance how often do you see a 33/1 winner of a group 1? Almost never. Conversely how often do you see a 33/1 winner of a class 6 race on a Monday afternoon? A lot more often. Secondly, with flat races there tends to be a lot more outsiders winning when conditions get testing.

Another focus is the draw, if you familiarise yourself with the worst draws in UK racing there are plenty of oppurtuinities to lay outsiders. I mean 14 of 14 in a 5 furlong race at Chester and 1 of 20 in 5F at Beverley are impossible draws.

One further point to contemplate is would you be better off instead of laying a horse at 33/1 backing 6 or 7 horses in the same race (see wbaileys dutching thread)? I mean if you layed a 33/1 horse for €10 you have a liability of €330, it may sense to dutch the top 6 or 7 in the market for €330 even if the odds were as low as 1/20 as this would generate a better profit.

dvdfan

So does anyone know anywhere i can look up stats like you mentioned MasterK to see what races would be the ones to avoid. Also any sites where stats on draws would be handy.

Although youve stated that higher class races have less big winners, i find that these type of races are harder find a lay that represent value at the odds im looking for and you tend to have to pay over the odds. I think ill find more value in the lower class races even though they tend to have more bigger winners however i would be interested in seeing stats on this.

But personally i think that previous form is more important than previous statistics in similar race types, if i can spot a horse that i think is a great candidate for a lay and dosent have a chance and then i find 60% of winners of these types of races have been won by horses over 12/1 then i wouldnt be put off. However if i was just picking any ould horse in the 16/1-33/1 range regardless of their form then the statistics would have more bearing.

wb

Hi Dvdfan. Hope you don't mind me pulling your thread apart, but I just want to give you a few of my thoughts. In short, I would not reccommend it with real money, at least for now.
(Well done for taking an interest in laying by the way, it is not an easy game) I hope I don't come across as rude here, but I want to point out what I reckon the potential problems would be.

From the outset, I want to state that I don't lay above 10.5, so I'm not speaking from much experience regarding high priced lays, but It would concerm me a bit. after 10 or 12 to one, the betfair prices just get ridiculous, and I can't see how anyone makes money out of it. Ask yourself, do you think you could make a decent long-term profit if you were backing horses with prices of 1/30 or 1/40 and the like? This is what you will be trying to do in a way, just the other way round.

Some of the potential problems that you pointed out yourself:

1) Easy to wipe out bank quickly

If you want to make a long term profit, you cannot take high risk gambles and keep hoping for the best forever. You must set up a staking plan. I would reccommend that you use around 5% of the bank as your liability per lay in case you hit a bad run (which you will). The liability could be adjusted up or down daily (using 5%), depending on your new totals. Bear in mind that if you are using €10 per lay, ONE winner @ 30/1 will cost you €300. you would then need 30 successful lays to regain your losses. If, (highly possible) you hit another winner before you have recouped your losses, you will be down about €600. Therefore I think a fixed % of the bank per lay would be the way to go, instead of fixed €10 stakes.

I think i may be able to get 50 losers on average before i pick a winner, in fact i hope to do alot better say around 70 but ill be conservative on 50.

No offence, but I think that this is way too hopeful. A quick look at todays curragh results show show a 16/1, 12/1, 2 X 10/1 and a 9/1. From memory (I could be wrong) the 16/1 shot was trading between 25 -30 on betfair. the 12/1 shot would have been anywhere up to 16's. Are you sure you would not have had any of these?

2) Paying over the odds
I think at the 50/1+ bracket you will pay way over eg 100/1 for a 50/1 but the 16/1 - 33/1 bracket isnt all that bad.

After 10 or 11 to one, most of the prices on betfair get way higher than the bookie. What you should try to do is price the horses up yourself, and then look for some value lays.

3) Not having enough money to make the full lay i.e 3 euro available at 25.0 and the next best odds is 50.0

I presume that this is because you are betting early. You could always leave an order, but it is best to bet after 12:00 on the day of racing if at all possible. (bloody work always getting in the way eh? )


As masterk says, you can't just bet on random races. You MUST specialise. My 'main' laying system only covers All Weather, and may only produce one or two selections per day, but thats ok because I know who's who on the AW scene. Remember the phrase.."Jack of All trades, Master of None"...... Don't let this be you.

Master K:

One further point to contemplate is would you be better off instead of laying a horse at 33/1 backing 6 or 7 horses in the same race (see wbaileys dutching thread)? I mean if you layed a 33/1 horse for €10 you have a liability of €330, it may sense to dutch the top 6 or 7 in the market for €330 even if the odds were as low as 1/20 as this would generate a better profit.

You should really look into whether this would be more profitable. This is what I am doing in my thread, and so far it is showing a slight profit, but I still have some way to go before I can prove this properly.

So does anyone know anywhere i can look up stats like you mentioned MasterK to see what races would be the ones to avoid.

The only commercially available data mining software that I know of is RSB (race systems builder - see my earlier post) You will still need to paper trade this though. If I were you, I would focus on Non-Handicaps first, so you don't have to worry about the weights. RSB data shows that (in the past 15 years) the top 3 in the betting in Non-Handicaps have won around 65% of races. This figure rises to over 70% if you include odds of under 2/1 on the fav. These are the type of things you will have to think about, and pick and choose races carefully.


I really don't mean to put a damper on this, But you really should paper trade this first. Laying is a rollercoaster. Some people are not cut-out for it, and will pack it in when the bank goes into decline, others will pick up the pieces and carry on. You will soon find out what type you are after you hit 2 or 3 winners in a row. Any lay system must have a few hundred selections under it's belt before it can be discarded. I would reccommend that you post the system on the forum. I have found that when other people are watching, it makes you more diciplined. I hope it works out. Keep up posted of your progress

masterK

dvdfan wrote:

So does anyone know anywhere i can look up stats like you mentioned MasterK to see what races would be the ones to avoid. Also any sites where stats on draws would be handy.

For Draw advantage the two main sites to check are www.startingstalls.co.uk and www.adrianmassey.com.

I don't know how good your IT technical skills are, but if you have any sort of a notion of databases then download http://www.racingsense.com/download.htm. Don't mind the actual software what you are interested in is the database that's included. If you have knowledge of MS Access you'll be able to write queries to find data on prices in different races class, going etc.

One interesting stat to get you started is in class 4 and up 8% of the races are won by horses priced 20/1 or greater, while in class 5 and lower almost 12% of races are won by horses priced 20/1 or greater.

dvdfan

Thanks MasterK, Great info, im pretty familar with access queries so this should be very helpful.