Back at the beginning of the year, when as a newbie on this forum looking for ideas on Laying for a profit, I hung on to the "coat tails" of Speedy and MG, following their every move laying neural longshots. Now the boys did reasonably well, but one thing that was always in the back of my mind, who in their "right mind" is on the opposite side of the Lay bets Backing these 100:1 shots? Surely they're never going to see a profit!
As I got more involved I started to see the blown out dividends the Layers were accepting compared with tote prices. Where's the value, not for the Layer that's for sure! So where is the value, of course on the Backers side of the equation.
Now Beton provided a spreadsheet awhile back of the % chances of winning in order of favourites based on the 1st favourites price. Taking an example of R5 Mackay yesterday. The BF Back prices read: $1.75, $7, $9.20, $11, $14.5, $44, $100. Now if you refer to Beton's chart for a $1.70 favourite the actual long term percentages of each favourite winning are: 50%, 19%, 10%, 7%, 5%, 4%,2%. So as we're looking for longshot value if we exclude the first 4 horses, that represent 84% winning chances, and Back the rest. Well that leaves a 16% probability that one of the last 3 horses will get up and win. If we Dutch Back these 3 horses for a 16% chance of winning what price could we get? $6 is fair value, happy with a $50 profit??
Well for a $100 stake we put $68 on the $14.50 horse, $22 on the next and $10 on the last. The $14.50 horse "Help Me Rhonda" gets up and you help yourself to a $886 profit!!
NOW I know why Backers support the longshot end of the market. Sounds great but could you withstand the run of outs max 43 races?
Cheers RP