I just wanted to put a post here about a new lay product available, called Laying Seven.

You may very well have seen an email about it. I bought a copy with the intention of trialling it on the blog over the next week or so, but I am afraid it will not even make the cut.

The ’system’ comprises of six steps. Luckily for us, all of the variables can be researched with my software, so I interrogated it to find out past performance.

Between 1991 and 1997, the horses in question actually made decent profits, meaning that a layer would have lost even before the inflated odds you need to lay on betfair.

Since 1998, you’d have a strike rate of 82.25% (not bad at all), but - after betfair odds on average 16% higher, and paying 5% commission on correct lays, you’d have lost £150!

So, not big losses but certainly not a system I’m going to bother with.

Incidentally, if you used a rolling 5% of your bank per lay, and started with 20 points, you’d have been out of cash pretty quickly.

What narked me still further about this system was the post script:

“Improving Strike Rate

The Second Favourite Laying System should generate
between 80 and 90 % Strike Rate or, stated another way,
80 to 90 of every 100 of your Lay Bets should have a
successful outcome, ie. the horse will lose the event.
If this is not the case, you will have to tighten your
selection criteria along the following lines:

1. Introduce further selection limitations on the “Last Run”
criteria. This may be in terms of an increase to 14 or even
21 days as the time period in which the horse has not had
an outing.

2. Tighten up the “Previous Results” specification to ensure
that the horse has not attained first or second place in three
or more previous outings. Alternatively, specify that it
must not have been placed in the specified number of past
races, ie. 1st, 2nd or 3rd, so a 1, 2 or 3 should not appear in
the Form list for the most recent outings.

The alteration of these criteria should ensure an increase in
Strike Rate but remember that by tightening the criteria
your number of potential selections will reduce
accordingly. Some Laying Systems produce very few
selections, in some cases only a handful every week, but
their Strike Rate is very good, which is the most important
aspect of any Laying System.”

Now I don’t know about you, but for me a system should not require tweaking. It either works or it doesn’t work. Saying, “If this is not the case you will need to tighten your selection criteria” is preposterous. What will the author be doing? Is he suggesting that the system doesn’t work himself with this statement?

I have to concede to a belief that the writer of this product, and a number of other (very) similar products, is a fly by night. It’s hard to get hold of him, and he uses some fairly sharp practices as well.

There are a number of ‘experts’ quoted on the sales letter, and at least one of them I am surprised to see associated with this.

My advice is don’t buy this - there are much better products available, such as the Racing Secrets [Exposed] system which was reviewed on these pages.

If you’ve already bought a copy of Laying Seven, you do of course retain the option to request a refund, if you so wish.

I won’t be reviewing this product and I will be requesting a refund. Not for me or for the pages of Nag3.

Matt

Hello dear reader, and welcome to another Tuesday in my little ethereal punting paradise. First up, a quick bit of admin.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!

Right, now I’ve got that off my chest (I don’t talk to my mum, and I haven’t sent her a card, but she can’t say I wasn’t thinking of her!), on with the show…

As promised yesterday, I plan to bring you a few snippets from Alan Potts’ brilliant and seminal punting text, “The Inside Track”.

Although the book was written in 1997, much of its content is as relevant today as it was a decade ago.

Today, I want to look at claiming races and, particularly, some common sense that we should apply to our betting in such races.

Potts begins by making the point that claimers are the staple of American racing. A majority of races Stateside provide the opportunity for the winner to be ‘claimed’ (i.e. bought for his advertised price) by anyone with the cash available.

Just to complete the understanding for people who may not appreciate what a claiming race is, each horse is allocated weight according to the value that it is in to be claimed (i.e. bought) for.

So, for instance, a race may have the following criteria:

Weights: colts and geldings 9st 5lb; fillies and mares 9st.
Allowances: For each £500 below the maximum advertised claiming price, -1lb

This would mean that if the maximum price was, say, £10,000, and Colt A was advertised at £6,000, he would have 8st 11lb to carry (i.e. 8lbs (for 8 x £500 below the advertised maximum) less than the 9st 5lb).

Filly B who was in for £8,000 would carry 8st 10lb (i.e. 4lbs (for 4 x £500 below the advertised maximum) less than the 9st).

I hope that made a modicum of sense…

Anyway, when you start to think about races in terms of the conditions for horses to run in them, you get more of an indication of the trainers’ rationale and should be better placed to strike a wager.

It follows that if a horse is in for £2,000, although it has less weight, the connections clearly don’t think much of it to let it go for such a (relatively) measly price. Conversely, if a horse with apparently no form is in for £10,000 (or whatever the maximum is), it may be that the horse is considered a good deal better than it has recently shown.

The point to all of this is that the owners and trainers are acting like the handicappers in the race, by allocating what they consider to be the right balance between horse value and chance of winning.

Potts states, “The assumption… is that weight can bring together horses worth £2,000 with those worth £10,000.

“That is a false assumption, and punters can benefit by concentrating on the higher priced, and therefore higher weighted, horses, in claiming races.”

Potts suggests the following three rules to help you with finding claiming winners.

1) Concentrate on horses within £5,000 of the maximum advertised claiming value
2) Give preference to previous form in claiming races over maiden or handicap form
3) Be wary of apparently higher class handicap horses dropping into a claimer - they probably have a problem, which is why connections are trying to get rid…

I messed around with this information in Racing Systems Builder, to test the theory about weight in claimers. The results were in line with Potts’ observations, and I derived a lucrative little system as follows:

Claiming Races
2nd Favourite
4yo+
Carrying 9st+
Finished 1st or 2nd in at least one of last six starts
Beaten 6 lengths+ last time

YEAR WINS RUNS STRIKE% LSP LSP% VSP%

2002 8 26 30.77 22.00 84.62 46.72
2003 10 33 30.30 14.25 43.18 34.03
2004 14 36 38.89 22.26 61.83 60.37
2005 10 24 41.67 18.00 75.00 71.70
2006 12 25 48.00 27.91 111.64 112.29
_____________________________________

54 144 37.50 104.42 72.51 63.17

As you can see, although there aren’t too many qualifiers (there aren’t that many claiming races!), a strike rate of 3 out of 8 and a level stakes profit of £2,088.40 for £20 stakes, makes this worth tracking.

Incidentally, 2 and 3 year olds performed much less well against these criteria. I suspect this is due to their relative lack of exposure.

Racing today is more a literal damp squib than a metaphorical one, with only two meetings surviving the monsoons.

Brighton is a good place to lay favourites, and I’m trying to get Shaheer beaten in - funnily enough - the claiming race there.

I don’t really fancy much, so it’ll be a day of focusing on other work stuff.

Just before I close, another quick plug for Trainer Flat Stats whose sole runner yesterday was a winner, albeit at the skinny price of 10/11. More info is available here.

Ciao pronto
Matt