Looking for a good Lay!

I feel compelled to interrupt my little break after a busy schedule to respond to several emails that have taken my last post a little too literally.

Although I made the sweeping statement of ‘laying ALL favourites’  I went on to qualified the statement with ‘to capitalize further we have the tools and data available today to refine this further’ and I had suggested that by using other criteria and a little imagination you could find angles to exploit.  

To take things a little further in the hope I can vindicate what was previously written, it would be reasonable to assume the more competitive the race the more likely we are to get a return. It is commonly accepted that Handicaps are the most competitive race type so focusing our attention there will go a long way in putting the odds in our favour.

Of course there are some non-competitive Handicaps so a rule of thumb way of assessing the competitive

nature of a race can be made from the prices on offer. In a 10 horse race the true odds or chances of any horse should be 9-1. By taking account of the number of horses that fall below that price we can assess how competitive the race is.

Here are a few examples taken at random from today’s Handicaps to get you in the swing:

•         LUDLOW 16:05 8 RUNNERS - 1 HORSE BELOW 7-1 = 8/1
•        LUDLOW 16:40 8 RUNNERS – 5 HORSES BELOW 7-1 = 8/5 this is a competitive race and I would be happy to lay the favourite.
•       NEWMARKET 15:55 13 RUNNERS – 6 HORSES BELOW 12-1 = 13/6 not as competitive as 16:40 LUDLOW and a debatable lay dependant on the price of the favourite and the likely liability!

This is just a simple idea and quick to execute. I would suggest using bookmakers pricing on Oddschecker or similar sites so as not to be continually scanning up and down Betfair as the prices fluctuate in real-time. I emphasise this is just a simple idea and I am sure that with a little imagination there are many more angles you can devise for yourselves when it comes to laying.