Be a Winning Punter

How often, as the horses are moving into the barriers for their race have we heard the race caller say something like:

"There's been a big go here on course. It's heavily backed on track. The biggest go all day, there's no doubt."

Sometimes we find the heavily backed horse on track, let us say it was plunged from $4.50 to start a short priced $2.60 favourite, has comfortably won the race. More often than not the horse has failed to perform.

But when the heavily plunged horse occasionally wins we've heard comments from race callers congratulating themselves, like:

"Have a look at the totes. $2.80, $2.70 and $2.60. Now that was $3.40 when we last updated and I got that message hopefully in time for some of you to follow the course money. That was a very, very big go and it won like a good thing."

Note:
Sensible punters who win money long term don't wait until the horses are about to jump to make a rushed phone call to their TAB account to follow the betting ring money or quickly place a bet online. Winning punters know that at $4.50 you only need a 22% strike rate to break even. Winning punters also know that at the short odds of $2.60 you need over a 38% strike rate to break even. (Simply divide 100 by the dollar odds.)

Winning punters do not back plunged betting ring horses on the tote at dollars below the odds that were available in the bookmaker betting ring.

Suppose those selections win 30% of the time. At $2.60, your tote punter will be showing a 22% loss on turnover. But your smart punter who got the $4.50 bookmaker betting ring odds will be returning an excellent profit of 35% on turnover.

Remember all the hype about shares leading into the 1987 crash? Remember how internet stocks, at massively inflated prices, were meant to be such good buying at the peak of the internet stock boom in 2000 before they crashed?

Horses' odds are no different. Taking the shortest odds about plunged horses is just like buying shares at the peak of a boom.

In our opinion the correct advice race callers should give their listeners is:

"There's been a very big go on this horse at the track. There's absolutely no point now rushing to place a bet. You have missed the best odds and will get big unders."