To bet or not to bet, that is the question. In this article, Richard Hartley Jnr tells you all about betting on, favourites, and reveals the traps into which the unwary can fall. It's full of fascinating information on selection and staking.

Many times over the past 20-odd years, I have heard a common thread running through the grumbles of my punting acquaintances. They complain that almost without exception they will have LESS money on a winner than on a loser. I sympathise with them.

As an example, I was with a friend at Randwick recently, and he is usually a $20 punter. At this particular meeting, he was doing rather badly (betting on his own hunches) and got to the point where he was $180 down. His next bet was on an 8/1 chance. He asked me if he should risk another $20. I pointed out that if the horse won he would recoup $160 of his losses, and be only $20 down on the day.

He reasoned that, yes, I was quite correct but if the horse lost he was $200 down. I couldn't argue with that. "I can't risk it," he said. "I'll have $5 on it." Well, naturally, the horse won. He recouped $40 of his losses, but was still $140 down on the day.

Progressive staking is another area where a punter's judgement, and nerve, is tested. It's all very well employing a graded progressive betting method, but will you put on the money when it's required after a series of losses? Most punters will chicken out.

It's the old story of 'do I raise my bet or lower my bet after a loss?'. The general line of thinking is that you should bet more when winning and less when losing. But, if your profits start to exceed reasonable proportions, it may well be time to be rational and voluntarily ease back on the throttle.

For instance, if you had a system that usually returned you a nice 25 per cent on turnover, and suddenly, in a shortish period, it took off and began returning you 100 per cent, you might well be advised to cut back on your bets if they had risen sharply.

You have to be consistent and steady when seeking profits, but you also have to be flexible. This is where a rigid progressive method can lead you into trouble. It's better with this type of progressive method that you build-in a money-management factor; in other words, a safety brake. Tell yourself, before you begin, that a safety-brake clause will be introduced if at anytime you feel the stakes are rising too steeply, too speedily.

The best advice that can be offered to the punter who wants to play a progressive staking method is to choose one that moderately raises the amount of your unit wager as the bank reaches certain goals but, at the same time, allows you to drop back to a comfortable amount when your profits have far exceeded your reasonable expectations.

Another common complaint-if it can be called that-from punters is that they never know whether to bet on the favourite in a race. Is it too short? Is it a false favourite? If I back one favourite, should I really back the one in the next race, too? Can I make money ploughing money into the favourites?

Betting on the favs is a delicate matter. It has been said that professional punters know that one way to stay in the circle of consistent winners is to bet against the public elect. The actual percentage of winning favourites-post and pre-post varies from 20 to 40 per cent, so the public's judgement is wrong between 60 and 80 per cent of the time.

But, as close as can be estimated, the public is wrong 70 per cent of the time and correct 30 per cent (three winning favourites per 10 races). Thus, the punter who bets favourites, overnight picks, tipsters' poll choices and special 'popular' horses can only win 30 per cent of the time--one race in three, approximately.

The average price of the winning horses is a bit under 6/4. In simple terms, then, if we had $10 to win on three races and our only return was a 6/4 winner, our profit/loss ledger would look like this:

Stake: (3 x $10) $30.00
Return: ($10 x 6/4) $25.00
Loss: $5.00.

This is a constant loss factor of 17 per cent. Consider this approach against that of the professional who goes against the public elect. He may, indeed, run into a series of accidents or have a freakish run of losers, and it's most unlikely he will win 70 per cent of his bets-but at least he does not have a 30 per cent ceiling on his winners.

It is POSSIBLE for him to win seven races out of 10, on average. While the public following the favourite is likely to have a top price of 4/1, the professional operating against the favourite can strike winners up to, say, 100/1.

Now, though, to the nitty-gritty. The fact that non-favs win two-thirds of all races doesn't mean that non-favs have twice as good a chance of winning as favs. Until we determine the true value odds of the entire field, and see which horse is probably the best of them all (the favourite, or some other horse), we know nothing about the non-fav except that it is one of a number of non-favs in the race!

Let's take a hypothetical field of nine runners: What do we know about the favourite? We know it wins approximately one race in three. This means that the 'natural' odds against a random non-favourite are 11/1 (this figure being obtained by the statistical process of dividing the number of races thaat the non favourites win, 2/3, by the number of non-favourites, eight).

The obvious conclusion is that it's foolish to reject a horse simply because it's the favourite, or to stab at another horse simply because it isn't the favourite! What the punter has to do is determine the true favourites and get rid of the false favourites.

Now some judges believe that certain kinds of races are more 'true to form' than others. They believe the favs win a substantially higher percentage of one kind of race than of another, thus producing smaller dollar losses. Extensive sampling, though, shows that the percentage of winning favourites remains essentially the same in all types of races (with the possible exception of early 2yos) and that the profit/loss in each particular odds-range does not vary significantly according to the actual quality of a race.

A study of some 10,035 races some years ago showed that a level stakes bet on the favourite showed a loss of 8.4 per cent. A further follow-up study of more than 7000 races came up with a similar figure.

Many selection methods try to convert this eight to nine per cent loss into a profit by applying form-handicapping principles to the past performances of the favourites. (From time to time, we have developed this idea in P.P.M.). They are among the best possible procedures for smaller punters.

My own research has been into the price-ranges of the favourites and other runners. For instance, I set out many years ago to try to find how many winners came from the various price ranges on the tote. The absolute conclusion from my survey, and those of other experts, is that the lower the odds the greater the chance the horse will win.

This is not earth-shattering news, I know, but it is important when you are seeking out an avenue on which to launch an attack. Another point emanating from research is that the shortest-priced horse on the list earned a very, very small profit when they were all bet (a bet on any horse in the price-range).

Look at the following points:

  1. The largest single group of horses on the list totalled 25,044, and they went off at odds of $21 or more. A bet on each of these longshots would have meant a heavy loss of 54 per cent, even though there were 340 winning bets!
  2. The odds-range below 5/2 (tote odds below $3.50) yielded a loss of around six per cent of the wagered dollar.
  3. On horses at 5/1 and higher, the percentage losses were more than 17 cents in the dollar.
  4. These results were obtained upon uncritical betting, without any recourse to form analysis. The sole basis for a bet was the odds at which a horse was sent to the post.

So this is where we come to the point of answering the question, 'To bet or not to bet' and the important factor is this: A punter who took the time to learn all he could about form and weights, could begin to make money by backing 'selected' horses in the odds-range of 2/1 and below.

It would be no use betting on all horses in this range, because you'd be looking at a potential seven per cent loss-but eliminate the 'false favourites' in this price-range and you could very easily turn that loss into a handy profit.

You could become seriously selective about horses in this 'pet' price-range. The long-term test of your ability would be to see if you could turn around that seven per cent loss by eliminating the 'false' favourites, those horses which clutter up the price-range and don't belong there.

Research shows that horses paying up to $1.55 (for $l) win 73 per cent of the time. Those between $1.60 and $1.75 win 55.3 per cent, those between $1.80 and $1.95 win 51.3 per cent, while horses at $2.00 to $2.15 win 47 percent of the time.

These are very important statistics. Weed out the 'no-hopers' from these pnce-ranges and you could settle into a steady profit-making situation.

But how can you discover the false favs? Aha, I knew you'd ask that. There is no easy answer. Mat you could do is put the favourites to the test of: (a) consistency; (b) form; (c) jockey and trainer; (d) barrier draw; and (e) weight. This would, at least, be a start.

In other words, subject the favourite to a painstaking form appraisal, eventually eliminating those that just do not measure up as safe and sure conveyances in the 2/1 and under price-range. You may discard a winner or two, but it's much more likely you will discard a great many losers.

Now, a few thoughts on the financial implications of your betting. Someone telephoned me recently to ask if he should bet on a system that was supposed to make 50 per cent profit on horses at an average price of 7/2.

I told him that to earn a profit of 40 cents on the wagered dollar a punter would have to win 30 per cent of his bets at average odds exceeding 7/2. The following figures are most interesting:

(a) Win half of all his bets at average odds not lower than 7/5; or
(b) Win 40 per cent of his bets, at average odds of 2/1; or
(c) Win a third of his bets, at average odds of 13/5;, or
(d) Win 30 per cent of his bets, at average odds of 3/1.

(a) Win half of all his bets, at average odds of 9/5; or
(b) Win 40 per cent of all his bets, at average odds of 5/2; or
(c) Win 30 per cent of his bets, at average odds exceeding 7/2.

Have a good look at the figures-then compare the performance required with your own. But now think of them in the context of what I have been telling you about those price-range bets around the 2/1 mark.

To make 20 per cent, you'd have to win four times out of 10 with horses at the average of 2/1. Can you do it? The statistics indicate you could-if you could eliminate the 'false' favourites from that price-range.

So that is the task you must set yourself, if this is the way you want to bet.

No matter what method you use, you should always keep a number of pertinent points firmly in mind when you are betting. Never bet unless you are really sure in your own mind that you are fully satisfied with your choice; never bet just for the sake of having a bet; be very careful of increasing your bets when you are losing; if you employ staking methods then ensure they are conservative ones; stick with level stakes betting if you have any doubts about other staking approaches; if you want to know how much to bet, work on a small percentage of your bank (say 2, 3, 4 or 5 per cent), thus allowing for long losing runs.

The percentage of bank approach is very sensible. With win betting, such an approach can keep everything neat under control. You always bet the same percentage of your total bank, so if it drops you bet the same, but if it climbs then your bets, go up accordingly.

If you had a $500 bank, you could bet two per cent, and your initial bet would be $10. If it fell to, say, $330, you would still bet $10, but if it rose, say, to $760, you would be betting the same two per cent, or $15.20. You would need a long string of losers to wipe out your bank, and frankly, if you got that many losers you shouldn't be betting.

Betting at two per cent would need a run of 50 losers to wipe out your bank. You could maintain this two per cent of the original bank approach until you had doubled the bank, then begin betting the same percentage of the larger bank.

If, say, you doubled your $500 bank to $1,000, you could then bet two per cent of that larger bank, increasing your bet unit from $10 to $20. Alternatively, you could declare yourself a $250 profit, leaving the new bank at $750, and bet two per cent of that, $15.

By Richard Hartley Jnr