Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:37 am Post subject: Percentage squeeze
I would like to propose a new thread to maintain between now and the festival, and if somebody offers me a little bit of help up front I will do the work myself.
I reckon if you look at the markets for the big festival races now, there may be the odd bit of value lying around. The problem is we don't KNOW what horse that value is.
As winners happen the bookies will crash the odds of those that run well, but they will only marginally push out those thaat unexpectedly lose.
Sunday's hurdle at Kempton is a prime example. Katchit got beat, didn't change in price. Snap Tie won, halved in price.
What I plan to do is to keep track of the top say 10 in the betting for each of the big races, and watch as the value gets squeezed out of the market as we progress towards March. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so!
All I need is somebody to remind me how to calculate the percentage book (jackane did it once but I've forgotten) and I will keep the figures.
I think we'll be stunned how much the bookies squeeze out of each market.
Advice / thoughts welcomed.
Good idea, Dunfie, old boy. I have the figures at home, in a book somewhere (I'll try to find it tonight and post them up tomorrow), which equates the odds to the percentage chance of each horse actually winning.
I was actually thinking about the ante-post odds recently and read over the weekend, I think in an article by Tom Segal, about the relative weakness of the ante-post market compared to the market on the actual morning of the race (not SP as the bookies invariably trim a point or two off most runners near the off). He quoted Katchit's price for the 2008 Champion Hurdle which was at its biggest for 6 months on the morning of the race.
I think these days you obviously have to identify value before the horse makes it big leap up the betting (Snap Tie being a recent example). This would result in you having more bets on more riskier propositions but if it means come the Festival you are sat with vouchers of 33/1 rather than 16/1 on a beast surely it has to be worth it.
Consequently, my Cheltenham festival staking plan may have to be amended drastically.
If you think that's the right thing to do Jo? I can't confess to knowing what "a sticky" is I'm afraid.
I tried to put a poll on the message, is that what you mean?
cheers barney! I'm sure there's a formulae involving dividing the two parts of the price and then using the sum of those parts but your table looks much easier to work with!!
Will try to post the current status after weekend action each week...
Thinking about this more, I think there are two things going on in my head and I'm not sure how best to describe/display the message I actually want to get across.
What I want to show is the way the value gets squeezed from the markets as we move towards March.
But if I pick the top 10 horses as mentioned earlier, I think that may not show it properly.
I think what might be better is to pick a ceiling price and add up the percentages of all horses below that ceiling.
But maybe this isnt fair either. Any thoughts?
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