A bookmaker's price is only an opinion — which is where framing your own betting market in Australian horse racing starts. Denton Jardine wrote this one for Practical Punting in August 1995, and he is blunt about the belief that the bookie knows something you don't: he calls it a myth, because the price setters bookmakers employ are offering an opinion too. What follows is a beginner's guide to drawing up your own reliable set of prices, so you can bet the overlays with the bookies or on the tote.
📘 FREE e-book — "Bet Your Own Prices Part 1": download it free and keep the full method beside you every race day 👉
https://pp.practicalpunting.com.au/bet-your-own-prices/
What you'll learn:
- What "over round" actually means and why it is not a mystery: round is 100 per cent, over round is the figure the bookie sets his prices to in a bid to make a profit, so at 120 per cent he takes in $120 and pays out $100 — though he is grateful, the article says, to get away with 6 to 10 per cent on a regular basis
- What an overlay is worth, on the author's own sum: 30 winners in every 100 bets, priced at 5/2 and achieved, returns 105 units for 100 staked — a small 5 per cent profit; secure an overlay average of 7/2 about those same 30 and the return is 135
- Method one, worked end to end — six main chances put through ten questions, a tick for every positive answer, the ticks divided into 120; a total of 35 ticks makes each tick worth 3.42, so a horse with 7 of them is 24 per cent
- Method two, the Xs and Os much used by bookmakers for generations — the total number of Xs divided into 115, and one third of the value of X deducted for each O in front of it, worked through a sample race the same way
📘 FREE e-book — "Bet Your Own Prices Part 1": download it free and keep the full method beside you every race day 👉
https://pp.practicalpunting.com.au/bet-your-own-prices/