Last week I spoke about going against the grain and a little method of using the SP forecasts to look for any drifters. Of course inside information is another way of going against the grain as long as that information isn’t plastered across the media which it often can be.
I thought I’d talk about the journey between the start of the information to the end of it and help you to understand how it works. The information I’m receiving isn’t the best at the moment I must admit and it has been one of the most difficult few months of my betting career however I’m confident this will turn around and come good as it always has done before. Anyway I digress.
I have mentioned in the past how it is possible with a little homework to spot potential dark horses or gambles going down but of course the problem with this is we don’t really know if the horse is race fit without the trainer’s say so. The journey begins! Either the trainer or one of their staff usually the head lad will know that the horse is race fit and ready to take on a race at its best. Now the majority of stable staff do alright out of their jobs and I’m not here to tell you about how they live but of course it’s the nature of the beast so to speak that they can profit from the inside knowledge that they have.
So runners like myself wait by the phone every morning or the more ambitious will do their research of the cards looking for something to stand out and then make the call themselves. “Is this one a live one” or “I have a live one from the yard today” is muttered down the phone and the first piece of information is exchanged.
I obviously can’t name anyone but let’s say you are a well known hand at a stable. Ringing up to place your bets can prove a tad difficult if the bookie knows his onions as this will set alarm bells ringing and the price collapses and they fall over themselves to either hedge up or hang a massive over-round over it. This just ruins the market and false prices galore start to happen and any long term value is shot to pieces for everyone involved in the industry.
Instead then they have a few contacts who can start to drip feed the money into the market. The important thing here is that no money ever passes hands for this information which is frowned upon massively. It’s more about shifting money about as the word comes through. The most important thing is to get the price that is available on the morning of the race without alerting the bookie to its increased chances.
Let’s say the horse opens up at 4/1 (denoting that it has a 20% chance of winning the race) which is based on the opinions of the bookies looking at its form and how well the yard is doing. Of course the market changes as they rely on thousands of people to then express their opinions on the chances of each horse by betting on them. Anyway this 4/1 shot has a much better chance than 4/1 or 20% as you now know that it is working better than its last race etc and should be closer to a 15/8 shot (34.7% chance). This is information that the bookies don’t have and you don’t want them to have until you’ve got your money down.
So the first part of the information is exchanged and it’s now up to the runners to get the money down in lots of small sums so as to not alert the bookie. I’ll instruct small £25 bets to be placed all over different shops and on-line accounts. Many bookies rely on a “weight of money” system but if you can execute lots of bets all at roughly the same time this bypasses the weight of money system and you’ve secured a large sum at the bigger price.
Of course being the honest gentleman that I am once the money’s down I’ll out of courtesy ring a few bookies and place my bets and the market immediately collapses and I’m able to either hedge my position or lay off for no risk at all.
Once the race has finished then the original information is obsolete and money can now exchange hands and all parties involved are simply shifting money back up the chain. This keeps everyone happy and the whole process starts again the next day!
That’s it from me this week, I’ll be back next week with more insights into the industry and I may even let you in on another industry secret…
MATR
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