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A beginners guide to Staking on the all-weather
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The importance of staking for profit .....................................................................................................................................
The following news item is one of many which we publish to our subscribers area - it gives a personal view of the art of staking to create profit, written by one of the members of the Sandform team - 'The Man In The North'.
This article was composed a few days before Christmas - that time of the year where there is a lull in the all-weather action and when a horseplayer traditionally get a bit of a break before the head-on assault of January and February. So in writing this I was forced to consider perhaps one of the most important factors in determining profitability, just before the busiest, and probably the most involving time of the all-weather season.
It has proved to be a salutary reminder of how easy it is to stray from what you believe to be hard held beliefs - and how you need to constantly stick to your gambling principles in a rigid fashion until such time as they are proven wrong.
As with so much in racing, staking is an art which attempts to become a science - and a subject which you must accept is a very personal issue. There are no right and wrongs if you are generating profit, but there are certainly guidelines of which you should be aware. So what you will get in this article is my own staking philosophy - take bits you like and disregard those you don't. Many of the issues I touch on have been covered by many authors before (where do you think I got my ideas from!) so if you are well read in terms of betting books nothing will shock you here.
Readers must also consider that I bet for enjoyment and profit - I also have a day job, so my approach to staking does not depend on making a set living from my betting activities - if this were the case I would probably have a different set of betting and staking criteria.
To begin with there is the question of the betting bank. The standard trotted out by most authors is that you should look to make 10% on turnover - therefore if you stake £10,000 in a year, you will come out with a net profit of £1,000. Under this assumption you would need to be betting about £200,000 per year to make a decent wage - the equivalent of a £20,000 salary. I don't know about you, but when that long losing run comes, I haven't got £50,000 in the bank to soak it up!
So for me, this sort of concept, whilst realistic, is a non-starter. The key to my betting bank is that it represents money which during the course of a year I can afford to lose - no mortgage payments missed, no interest multiplying on my credit cards and enough toys around the Christmas tree to keep the family happy.
In order to stick rigidly to sensible decision making and also record your successes and failures, you have to have your funds in a separate place. This can be quite difficult for many people - especially those who wish to keep their gambling very private, but the way I manage this is to set aside a pot of money each month which physically gets placed in either an internet bookmakers account, or gets added to what I call my 'racing fund'.
I'm lucky enough to get all-weather racing at least once or twice a week - so the 'racing fund' is the cash I have to hand (but kept very separate to my day to day money) for such occasions. Some people would question the placing of cash with an online bookie for any length of time - especially with some high profile internet bookies going bust, but I find that if you stick with the established ones that are part of larger groups (BetDirect, Bet365, Ladbrokes, UKBetting, Totalbet, Betfair etc..) you get a fair standard of service and minimal risk.
Before getting into the mechanics of my staking patterns, its worth re-iterating a couple of the rules I abide by:
I never bet in Amateur events (the best horse rarely wins) I restrict my betting on Saturdays (racing is usually too competitive, however Wolverhampton night meetings are the exception) I never back each-way I never back on a whim (I don't bet on the flat or the jumps, and will not have a bet 'for the sake of an interest') I don't back any horse under 3/1 I don't get involved in any multiple or specialist bets I only bet one horse in a race.
I am perhaps a little strange in that I only back all-weather horses, but I firmly believe you can only profit if you have a better grip of the form and conditions of a race than a bookmaker does - which is why bookmakers employ speed ratings experts and form experts to help them build profitable books. If you specialise, then you have a chance of seeing the value where others don't.
Never backing horses under 3/1 may seem a strange rule, but I have been switched on to this by another member of the Sandform team. He had long held the view that betting horses under 3/1 was unprofitable, and so set out to prove the point by recording and analysing every bet he had at these prices. At the end of the year, he had wagered £2,780 on horses below 3/1 and realised a return of £2,450. His hit rate on these horses was 34% However, he then analysed those horses which he had backed at 3/1 or better and found he had staked £2,340 and realised a return of £3,450 - with a hit rate of only 16%. With a maximum stake per race of £25, he concluded that he would cut out the horses less than 3/1 - and simply not bet in the race.
This same analysis was also run on each-way betting with the result that the place portion of each bet was analysed. I discovered over a period of two months (January and February) If I had bet the entire amount to win, rather than splitting the stake I would have realised an extra 12% return on investment. As you will see later, this has contributed massively to my staking philosophy.
Of course this can be somewhat annoying when the 11/4 shot you would have bet at 3's screams in by ten lengths, but it is also satisfying when that 6/4 shot you think can't get beaten, gets beaten out of sight. I started this at the Wolverhampton Boxing Day meeting in 2001, and as I am writing this I have made more profit on my betting during the last few years than I have ever done before.
The specialist betting rule is another tough one - especially if you have just gone through the card on a cold afternoon just after Christmas - you always wonder what the accumulative odds would have paid. This rule also flies in the face of the wisdom of people like Andrew Beyer and Nick Mordin - both people for which I have a huge amount of respect. My reason is simple - having worked for bookmakers for a large slice of my life I have seen the amounts that are won on multiple bets - but they generate the biggest proportion of profit for a bookmaker. If you hit lucky and get all four up on your yankee, then great, it will pay for many more yankees - but the operative word is lucky. What the bookmakers don't like is the steady punter backing in singles - because the profit margins on such bets is a paltry 4% compared to 16% in Lucky 15's, 40% on correct scores and other football bets and around 30% on Canadians.
On the whole, my staking is relatively straight forward, if the rules outlined above are adhered to. Firstly I will look at a days racing and analyse the races. At this point I do not refer to the stated Forecast SP - I find this clouds my judgement on staking - you begin to be led by the perceived value, rather than the hard form facts. If I find a 'value' bet in a race I will jot down my own idea of the likely SP (after all the SP forecast is only someone else's stab at reading the race result) and only then will I see what the forecast states. This is my first factor in determining stake.
If I believe I have found a betting opportunity, I rank the choice in terms of how far ahead of the field I believe it to be - other people may see this as being 'how much do I fancy the horses chances?'. My ranking is from 1 to 5, and this is the other key factor in determining the stake. From here I then do the following calculation: I add the difference between my SP and the Forecast to my ranking. The result will usually be a number between 1 and 20, but it can get higher in certain circumstances.
Example Gone'N'Dunnett at Southwell in December 2002
My expected SP 4/1 Forecast SP 12/1 Difference 8
My ranking of Gone'N'Dunnett's chance 4
Added together = 12
I then have the following staking matrix:
Result Stake 0-3 1 point 3-10 2 points 10+ 6 points
I only use three staking points, which you can then multiply by the size of your betting fund. Many betting books pontificate about the percentage of you betting fund you should wager - claiming 5% to 12% being the right point. Perhaps because I see my betting as an entertaining distraction rather than a reason for being, I stay with my simple points equalling pounds, regardless of how large or low my profits become.
So in the example above, you can see I had my maximum bet on Gone'N'Dunnett, which won at 10/1 after opening at a whopping 20/1 on-course (I was unfortunately not there and had to take SP, but hats off to another member of the team who swiped the value!).
When using this calculation you have to be strict with yourself. It's too easy to rate everything a huge gap in SP and give your selection a ranking of 5 (nothing can beat it in your eyes). I often make a decision on the SP quickly (remember I don't look at paper forecast prior to this decision), but will argue with myself over whether my selection ranks a 2 or a 3. I rarely give 5's - only half a dozen this last year.
An interesting point here is my 6 point wins - I originally had a straight 1,2 or 3 point matrix, but discovered that if I doubled my stake on the 8+ selections I quadrupled my profit. I adopted this change to staking in March of this year, and am glad to say that there are one or two extra presents around the Christmas tree as a result.
As you will quickly work out, I am now usually staking my maximum bet on a horse which will be 10/1 or above. This would seem to be folly to most telephone tipsters and pundits, especially as I don't back each-way and the strike rate for these types of animals is bound to be low. This was something that concerned me back in March, however with a strike rate of about 1 in 5 for these selections, they are now driving all my profit. The only drawback I have found to this staking method is the gaps between the big payoffs - but if you can be philosophical about the losing runs of the maximum stakes and be rigid with the staking methodology it should work out.
One problem I face is that those dratted SP Forecasts are more often than not wrong - and betting to SP on the internet because I'm at work is sometimes frustrating. But this is only a marginal quibble, and hasn't caused massive problems as the exchanges offer more value.
The only real problem I have encountered, is when you find yourself placing a maximum bet on a massive outsider, or a one point bet on a short priced animal. This is where the psychology of gambling kicks in - you have an expectation of what you like to win on each bet, and also a comfort zone of how much you like to bet in one go. My maximum was always to 3 points - so the first time I struck a bet on a 25/1 shot with six points my nerves were jangling. However, this now makes perfect sense to me, as I have seen the results of this approach. Certainly I tend to pick up lesser amounts more often, but four or five days a year I get a big payday.
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