Horse Racing -  Trading Tips and Resources

Introduction

Firstly I have to admit I know next to nothing about horse racing. However that hasn't stopped me making some nice profits betting on it over the years using Betfair.

This is because for me betting on horse racing is just one big numbers game. I have a very simple system but it seems to work more often than not. Thanks to Betfair I don't need to try and find a winner of a race. I could try and find a loser and lay a horse, but as I know very little about horse racing this would be asking for trouble. Instead I try and look for trading opportunites to back and lay or vice versa in order to lock in a profit.

Trading Strategy

When I first started out I used to trade the horse racing every Saturday morning, because it was a good low-risk way of building up my bank. In the morning, I would basically load up the oddschecker site for odds comparisons, the Sporting Life / Racing Post website (either will do) for a general guide to the morning prices, and my Betfair page for not only placing bets, but also for the excellent charting facility which allows you to see previous prices matched and potential overbought/oversold points. That's really all you need.

I essentially used similar methods to those outlined in the trading section of my football betting page to compare bookmakers' prices to Betfair's prices, and trade any major discrepancies. My aim was to find prices on Betfair that differed significantly from those offered by the bookmakers, take the Betfair price quoted and wait for the correction to take place before laying the bet off for a guaranteed profit.  Conversely, if the Betfair price was too low and was similar to the bookmakers' prices, then I would look to lay the Betfair price and back it later at a higher price. This is because we know that Betfair's prices are higher than bookies' prices because of the lower overrounds.

Note all my trading occurred on the morning of a race when the prices are still quite stagnant, from about 10.00 to 1.00. Also I always ensured that all bets were closed, even if I had to take a loss, well before any of the races started when the betting really gets going and prices change quickly. 

These strategies are not exactly ingenious, but they are profitable. However, because I haven't traded the horse racing for about a year or so, I thought I'd better take a morning off from my other commitments, and check that these methods are still profitable. I decided to use a Monday for my trading experiment as these are notoriously quiet racing days. I figured if I could still make profits when there is less money in the markets, then there's every chance that they are still profitable for the busier racing days as well.

From my analysis and odds comparisons on this particular day and at various times of the morning I identified two excellent trading opportunities, and three borderline cases where I would only look for a slight price change in my favour. All selections were from different races, and most of these races didn't throw up any good opportunities at all. I used a £100 stake for each selection for demonstration purposes, although normally I would stake a lot more than this. Here are my results:

TOP PICKS:

Ameeq:   Guide price (from SL/RP):           4.0

             Odds comparison range:             3.5-4.0

             Betfair back/lay price £100@:      5.0 (back)

             Betfair back/lay price £108.70@:  4.6 (lay)

             Guaranteed profit (average):       £8.70       

Bold Pheonix:   Guide price (from SL/RP):         3.25 

                     Odds comparison range:           3.5-4.5

                     Betfair back/lay price £100@:    5.5 (back)

                     Betfair back/lay price £110@:    5.0 (lay)

                     Guaranteed profit (average):     £10.00          

PROMISING PICKS:

District County:   Guide price (from SL/RP):           13.0

                        Odds comparison range:             11.0-13.0

                        Betfair back/lay price £100@:      13.5 (lay)

                        Betfair back/lay price £87.10@:   15.5 (back)

                        Guaranteed profit (average):       £12.92

Red Sail:    Guide price (from SL/RP):            8.0

                Odds comparison range:             5.5-6.0

                Betfair back/lay price £100@:      6.2 (lay)

                Betfair back/lay price £93.94@:   6.6 (back)

                Guaranteed profit (average):       £6.06

Mine The Balance:   Guide price (from SL/RP):           11.0

                           Odds comparison range:             8.0-9.0

                           Betfair back/lay price £100@:      9.2 (lay)

                           Betfair back/lay price £95.83@:    9.6(back)

                           Guaranteed profit (average):       £4.15

Total profit from the morning's trading session:   £41.83  

That's a pretty good return for just a couple of hour's work, especially considering the relatively low stakes. Clearly there's still plenty of good trading opportunities out there.

If you have a good knowledge of horse racing, unlike me, you could potentially increase your earnings further by waiting for the live betting shows later in the afternoon and identifying horses that will drift or come in in the betting and profit from this knowledge. Corals is a good site for live odds.

I wish you all the best with your trading.

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