The Search For Value

Value, The Holy Grail of The Bettor. Does it exist or is it a myth promoted by the unscrupulous upon the unwary?

I suppose that since I'm bothering to write this, it is fairly obvious that I that it does.

I searched for it for twenty years and believe that I've found one area in which it exists, horse racing handicaps.

It exists because of the conventional nature of the betting industry in this area. Most punters will, understandably focus on the shorter priced horses, based on experts view of form. Because these experts set great store by the, often relatively miniscule, weights, seen as the reason for why handicaps are so unpredictable, rather than the fact that animals of very similar ability are "thrown" together, which is my personal view for the "unpredictability". As a consequence the longer prices in handicaps are sometimes overlayed (see Six Diamonds yesterday Newmarket 16:00, early priced at 16/1 with Bet Square, returned SP 8/1)

I am going to post horses fitting the criteria of my analysis, on this post and see where things go. The selections should be value if better than 11/1 or better (maybe Betfair, given their self-vaunted view that Betfair prices are on average 20% better than bookmakers and the difference is usually on longer priced animals) can be obtained. The strike rate is about 10%. Obviously with such a low strike rate there will be long losing runs, although there is some potential to trade these selectinos as they frequently reduce significantly in price.

Enough talk, today the interest is around BOLD CROSS 15:30 Bath, currently trading at 12 on Betfair.

P.