“You only back favourites”. And..?

Is constantly backing the market leader “bad betting”
 
This article is inspired by a recent email exchange I had with a rather disgruntled member.

His criticism of a particular service was based on his opinion that all the bets advised were “nothing but favourites”.

And this was, in his eyes, a bad thing.

So irrespective of the fact that the bets were showing a profit at the time (still are for that matter), he believed that because “only favourites” were being advised, it was a poor venture.

Right…

The first thing I did, as you might expect, was to seek recourse in the figures. Studying all the bets advised by the service up to this point.

And, no, on closer inspection, not all of them were the market leader – certainly not at the time when advised.

Yes, I agreed with “disgusted from Tunbridge Wells” that one’s perception, if skimming quickly over the P&L sheet, might be that we were always on short shots… but when you went through the bets one by one it was clear that a significant number were not the favourite.

In fact the average price was around the 9/4 mark.

Ok, this means little in isolation.

But in case you’re thinking favourite = even money poke, that’s not the case here. Not at all.

The bets, I argued were at working man’s prices, to coin a phrase (and the reason for this is the service was billed as being a consistent earner, with limited volatility, and low drawdowns – and you’re not going to generate this kind of return by backing a stream of 16/1 shots, are you).

And just in case I didn’t make it clear… the bets were also showing a profit!!

But this exchange got me thinking…

Having worked in this business for the past 30 years, I’m well aware of what “trigger bets” upset the typical member.

And one such example is backing favourites.

More to the point, backing favourites… a lot.

Racing is different to, say, football games, where there’s only three potential outcomes, or in a tennis match, where there’s just the two – and we’ll happily back the jolly time after time with much less kick-back.

… but in a field of 8 or 12 or 16+ runners, with lots of potential bets to be had, continually lumping on the jolly very soon draws negative comment.

The argument being “I could have picked that one myself, Matthew… what am I paying you for”.

Now at one level I can understand why this argument is put forward.

Because when a horse is favourite for a race, most of the heavy lifting is already done for you.

Meaning any would-be tipster or casual raceday punter could argue that the leading horse on the bookmakers list “must have a good chance of winning and is well worth a bet”… because the market’s clearly telling them that.

It wouldn’t be the bl**dy favourite otherwise!!

So to pay money to be told “the bleeding obvious”, as some might put it, I agree, could become a bone of contention.

But only, I would say, on one level.

There’s another side to this argument…

Let’s not forget that, roughly, one-in-three favourites win a horse race.

And so if you backed every market leader in every race…

On the one hand you’d have a respectable 33% strike rate…

At a range of prices, not all of them necessarily short…

But on the other, presuming the bookmakers are doing their job correctly, and framing the market with due diligence, by backing every favourite you will lose money over time.

The layer’s margin, their over-round in the market, will see you inevitably lose some/all of your money.

Point being…

Backing favourites as a singular, all-in strategy does not work.

So is backing the market leader “bad betting”

Well, clearly, if you follow the above strategy… yes it is.

As defined by simple mathematics and the laws of probability, like trying to beat the tables in Vegas, or winning consistently from fruit machines, it is bad. You will not win.

But, and this is where my correspondent was missing the point, we’re not backing every favourite.

(And to further emphasise, we’re not even backing favourites all the time)

So this argument doesn’t apply.

Logically and practically, and more importantly, mathematically, you can back nothing other than favourites, and still make a healthy long-term profit.

You’ve just got to back enough horses which are to be found within that 33% of favourites which do win their races.

To illustrate…

If we take 100 races, with their 100 individual favourites, we know that just 33 favourites (33%) will win… and 67 will lose.

But Mr. Tunbridge Wells, we’re not backing all 100 favourites.

We’re only having, say, 40 bets. Cherry-picking 40 of those favourites. And let’s say we find 15 winners from those 40 bets…

That’s a 38% strike rate…

At an average price, as mentioned above, of 9/4 (3.25).

Which will return 48.75 points to level stakes…

Equating to a 21.88% ROI.

So we can back favourites all the time if we wish… and still make a profit.

See.

The key to successful favourite backing

Well, as you’ve probably worked out by now.

The secret to winning when using this strategy is knowing which favourites to back, and which ones to avoid.

And by hitting on the “good favourites” and avoiding the bad ones, as many times as you possibly can, you can make a profit.

Even better…

You’re also starting with a set of potential bets where you know that one-in-three will win… so look at three races, try and eliminate one bad favourite, and you’ll be on a 50% strike rate before you know it!

Ok, that’s a little simplistic. But you get the point.

But in general terms, this is where experience, knowledge of the form, inside information, market analysis, personal insight… all these factors come into play.

The ability to sort the good bets from the bad.

In other words, it’s why we seek a professional backer, an expert, who can guide us through this minefield of genuine/false favourites. Weeding out the losers (or as many as possible) and pinpointing a higher than average number of winners.

This would ensure that were we only backing favourites (which I repeat we’re not with this particular service) we still could theoretically turn a profit.

So there you go.

Disgruntled member or not, favourite backing shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand even if, for some, it’s mistakenly taken to be a lazy, uninformed or simply unprofitable method of backing horses.

 

OPINION:  Favourites take up a huge amount of attention in any betting market. They are the focal point of almost all analysis – because you’re either trying to decide if the market leader is worth that position, or if not, which other runner is the logical/value alternative. But whether you prefer to lump-up on favourites, or base you’re whole approach on trying to get them beaten, both have their merits. And both can deliver a profit.