Overs & Unders
 

While trying to find underlays to Lay, I found that the Prices as produced by the ratings are not directly compatible with the Prices of the horses on your live screen. That's because different rating systems produce different $ figures against a horse but this should not be compared directly with the $ on offer on a horse on Betfair say. What I should be doing is converting the Ratings $ prices to an order of favouritism as in 1,2,3,.... Then compare that order with the order of favouritism of the live SP $ prices.
For example say Horse # is rated at $12 and it's SP is $8. You think Underlay, I'm going to Lay it, but if you converted the Rated $ and SP $ prices to a 1,2,3... order you might find that Horse # is 6th favourite in both columns and therefore not an underlay. When doing this method we are looking for horses with opposing orders. Horse * in position 1 in the Rated $ column but in position 3 in the SP $ column is an Overlay. Conversely horse # in position 4 in the rating $ column but in position 1 in the SP $ column is an Underlay.
So take the prices you see in the Tele as only an indication of the ORDER of favouritism only! This might be common sense to some but maybe I've helped some newbie from losing some money?
Cheers RP

Of all the racing myths i have come across this is the one that every one says you need to get right.

But the truth is that overs and unders are only what you make of them, everyone has there own ideas on this subject but at the end of the day what indicates a true overlay or underlay?

Your own personal punting will decide, in my years i have backed plenty over runners at 20-1 plus that everyone would consider an underlay yet when it wins it is just considered a winner on the day.

If i have rated a runner @ $10 and i see it going off at $8 i will still back it because i work more on strike rates at average prices and if my average is $5 then i would still consider this an overlay because it is above my average, it is impossible to get every thing right so i do prefer to work on averages rather than individual runners.

Yes Shaun, I guess unders and overs are only as good as the rated price initially. I layed every underlay, based on default neurals as a rating, today but still only broke even. Certainly no gems there!
When you read the extents, man power and money involved that betting syndicates in Hong Kong, employ to produce ratings and still only squeeze a couple of per cent out of utilising every possible combination of betting, it's certainly daunting. And they're in an environment with only two tracks and limited number of horses to rate.
Cheers RP

I am thinking that if all we did was stop looking at making a killing on all or most races and focus(specialize?) on a specific opportunity = race type / venue / bet type etc etc, we could do better by way of %POT than the big boys in HK or 'Tasmanian Devils' of this world.

Wasn't this Don Scott's basic premise? i.e. the educated / disciplined punter can beat the bookie or the tote because these 2 have to put up their prices for every race whereas we can pick and choose!

Rant over.

LG

I'll toss you LG, for Kangaroo Island!! LOL
Or maybe the NZ North Island. I know where you're coming from, just specialise in a local region. I must admit, that when I had shares in horses, my local trainer at Queanbeyan was a fountain of info on the likely hood of a local horse performing and seldom wrong. It's that stable knowledge you can't find in the form guides.
Cheers RP

Shaun is right on the money!

Unless you can say with 100% confidence your $2.00 rated horse will win 50% of the races long-term you can't predict an underlay or overs.

Something interesting and sorry a little off topic, is if the prizemoney pool like on a Saturday is around $1Million on a particular race. This normally is contributed by many thousand punters. Basically the starting price is very close to its true value.

But if you can use a ratings appraoch and find value in the old country races or mid-week maidens with a smaller pool and maybe a specific angle you have that may not of be considered by others, good luck to you. A little more challenging but where there is some value.