Our Rated Price is what we have assessed the horse’s true probability of winning the Race. For example, if a horse is rated as a $2.00 chance then our analysis has that horse winning 50% of the time. A horse rated $10 will win the race 10% of the time.
The best Strategy to use with Ratings is to bet “Overlays”.
Overlays occur when the Odds offered by a Bookmaker are better (bigger) than our Rated Price.
For example, we may rate a horse at $5.00 but $7.50 could be available with one of the Bookmakers. The horse is considered an Overlay as the price available ($7.50) is better than our Rated Price ($5.00) and therefore a good betting proposition.
There are many variations of Overlays that successful punters can use:
Standard – as already illustrated
Double – where the Odds available are at least double the Rated Price
Bankers – take the Overlay selection as a banker in Quinellas or other Exotics
Top Rated – where you only focus on the top-rated horse if it is an Overlay (this will reduce your number of bets)
Laying Underlays – where the rated price of a horse is much larger than the Odds available then these can be excellent Laying propositions. For example the Speed Plus rating is $12 and it can be layed at $4.
Which strategy (or strategies) you use will depend on your betting bank, appetite for risk and potential for losing runs.
The main premise of betting Overlays is that you are continually taking “Value” from the bookmakers and putting the odds in your favour to win over the long-term. Over the short-term variances can come into play where it’s not unusual to suffer a run of outs.
We also recommend that you implement a staking plan that will suit your betting bank and we highly recommend you have at least a 200-unit bank available. 1 unit is 0.5% of your total betting bank.
A popular staking strategy used by several professionals is to use 5 units as a base and divide by the Rated Price of an Overlay.
For example to stake a horse rated $3.30, the calculation would be (5/3.30) = 1.51 units.
Your Bet would then be 1.51 units on the horse with a view to collecting a theoretical 5 units at the Rated price. In reality though, you are likely to collect more than 5 units as you are betting Overlays and the odds available for the horse are at least equal to but more likely to be greater than the Rated Price
It’s possible that more than one horse in each race will be an Overlay and it’s up to you how you treat this race for betting purposes. On occasion you may need to limit your outlay so that you don’t risk too much of your bank on one single race. We generally bet horses rated under 10.00 and try to limit our exposure to around 3 units per race.
*** At no stage do we recommend Betting on our top-rated horse if it’s Rated Price is bigger than the Odds available – it’s a long-term LOSING strategy ***
