Last month we looked at how we could improve profits from place betting on the trots. This month, I thought I’d try the same thing again but this time we’d be looking into the dogs.
I was intrigued to find that the profits were even better.
I’ll just run through the selection rules again to refresh your memory. The dogs to bet on are those that are rated 100 on the UNiTAB website, are the first pick of Radio TAB and are also the Late Mail selection. Put simply, the strategy is to put the proceeds from one bet onto the next.
If there were four races to bet on at a track, then there would be four place bets as follows: Bet one, $1 on ‘A’, proceeds into your pocket. Bet two, $1 on ‘A’, proceeds onto ‘B’, proceeds from here into your pocket. Bet three, $1 on ‘A’, proceeds onto ‘B’, proceeds onto ‘C’, proceeds into your pocket. Bet four, $1 on ‘A’, proceeds onto ‘B’, proceeds onto ‘C’, proceeds onto ‘D’, proceeds into your pocket.
Your initial outlay would have been $4 on ‘A’ and if you were lucky enough to get all four dogs placed and they paid say, $1.30, $1.20, $1.50 and $1.20, then you would have collected $1.30 from the first bet, $1.56 from the second one, $2.34 from the third one and $2.80 from the last one.
This adds up to $8.00, while had you bet just $1 on each dog your collect would have been $5.20. So for the same outlay you would have increased your profit by $2.80 or nearly 54 per cent. Let’s see how the figures stack up for the year so far.
From the beginning of 2008 through to April 25, out of 115 bets there were 100 places struck. This is a strike rate of 87 per cent. The maximum number of bets on any track was six at Geelong on Friday April 18, and they were all successful. This particular series of bets showed a profit of $19.28.
Closer analysis of these six bets at Geelong shows that for an outlay of $6 there was a POT of 321 per cent. That warms the cockles of your heart doesn’t it? It also helps to make up for the times that one of the dogs misses and puts paid to your plans to purchase a new Mercedes from your winnings.
The most bets on any one day were seven. So the maximum outlay on any given day would have been $7.00. The place strike rate of 87 per cent is in line with the result of 86 per cent I found when I first looked at greyhounds back in the May issue of PPM when I covered only the first week of March.
There were 44 days of betting and of those, only nine were losing days. The biggest single day’s loss was $5. I think that is a reasonable risk figure. The best day’s profit was $12.51 on that day at Geelong when all six dogs were placed.
In January, there were 14 betting days with a profit of $7.52. There were four losing days. February only had four betting days with one losing day for a profit of just $1.48. March was better with 15 days with two losing days and $15.56 profit and finally, April had 11 days with two losing and showed a profit of $21.39. The total profit was $52.72.
Comparing that figure with the profit of $27 from betting $1 on each dog, you can see there is an increase in profit of $25.72 or a massive 95 per cent for the same dollar outlay. Putting that another way, for an outlay of $115, we made a POT of 46 per cent as against 23 per cent if we only put $1 place bet on each dog.
From the 115 bets on dog ‘A’, the proceeds of 36 went onto dog ‘B’, from which the proceeds of 15 went onto dog ‘C’, then three onto ‘D’, three onto ‘E’ and finally one onto ‘F’. Looking at those figures another way, of the 36 times that the proceeds from ‘A’ went onto ‘B’, 29 were successful.
Of the 15 times ‘B’ went onto ‘C’, 11 were successful and thereafter, the three times that the proceeds from ‘C’ onto ‘D’ and ‘D’ onto ‘E’, and the one ‘E’ onto ‘F’, were all successful into the bargain. So, it’s a comforting thought that this venture was a profitable one.
I don’t know that there is a lot more I can say about this method of ‘milking’ place bets for the maximum profit. It would appear that this approach is mostly successful if there is a high place strike rate of say, over 75 per cent.
While the trots have proved profitable using this method, sadly the gallops didn‘t oblige.
Good luck.
By Mr MoneyPRACTICAL PUNTING – AUGUST 2008