What is an Overlay and Underlay?
Use your own rules
with our summarised information or find value with our prices we
provide you. Finding value is relatively easy. Firstly you need to
understand overlays and underlays.
The easiest way to describe an overlay is by way of example.
Consider the analogy
of coin tossing. In a hypothetical situation, lets consider that a
newspaper is full of tips on a coin tossing event and the public
money weighs towards "heads" and "heads" ends up on
the NSW TAB at $1.80 and "tails" $2.20 (assuming no
TAB margin). You are probably thinking,
"tails" is now looking great value! Lets consider why you
think this.
1. You subconsciously gauged that the probability of each situation winning, ie
"heads" and "tails" were both 50:50.
2. You then converted each probability into a price, ie 50% =
(1/50%)
= $2.00.
3. You then considered that the odds on offer for "heads" was under the
probability of winning, ie $1.80 is less than $2.00.
4. You then considered that the odds on offer for "tails" was over the
probability of winning - great value ie $2.20 is better than $2.00.
5. You then considered that the "tails" bet was an overlay at
1.1x ($2.20/$2.00). (Top marks if got this one right!)
You have just passed the first level of understanding overlays.
Underlays are just the opposite, for example "tails" is
a bad overlay but a good underlay. Underlays are used for
laying.
How do we work out our Market Prices?
Firstly you
need to note that we provide market prices not ratings. Ratings
are very different to prices. Ratings do not show you the
probability of the horse's chance of winning, prices do. For
example a 100 points rater, does not indicate its chances
of winning, however, a $2.00 priced horse has a predicted 50%
chance of winning. Our prices are
based on our strike rate over many years of data. We check
things like a horse's speed, class, jockey, trainer, running
position, barrier, weight, track performance, distance performance, going
performance, tenacity, strike rate, risk and so
on. So a horse we price at $2.00 means exactly that, 50% of all
horses won in our database under the same scenario. Historically
speaking, we are 100% accurate, but in reality there will be an
error.
This
is an important factor to remember:- Even if we were 100%
accurate, our prices are the minimum prices to accept just to
break even. So betting on a $2.80 horse that we rate $2.80 is ludicrous.
This is because even if we were 100% accurate, you'd only break
even. Also or prices
include the bookie margin to reflect what to expect with TAB's and
Bookies. Therefore the bare minimum
overlay level would need to be 1.2x, just to break even.
Betting on our top raters that are underlays is no different than the
misguided public taking "heads" in our coin tossing analogy - they can only
lose in the long run.
What do you need to do?
Following on with the
analogy, we provide steps 1 & 2 by working out the chances a horse has
to win and then the prices. Your role is to complete the remaining steps
3-5. You need to look for odds greater than our market estimates for
the same reason why you would take "tails" in our analogy
above, we provide the probability of a horse winning, you look for where
the value is. That can be with the bookies or any of the TABs around the country.
With TABs though, you need to bet near jump time to ensure that the same
overlay will occur at jump time. There are
also great services on the web that offer the best price from all 3 TAB
services. Check your jurisdiction though as some offshore betting may be illegal.
The Basic Rules
1.
Discipline and patience is virtue. If you are the type that needs
to bet every race then this approach will not work. If you are the
type that changes his/her betting plan to suit the mood, this
approach will not work. You must remain diligent to your plan and
be prepared to wait for the opportunities to arise.
2. Determine the overlay
value to run and stick with. The actual correct way to work it out is as
follows.
OVERLAY
PRICE = PRICE-1*OVERLAY_RATIO+1
UNDERLAY PRICE=PRICE-1/UNDERLAY_RATIO+1
For example, a 1.5x overlay on our rating of $4.00 would be OVERLAY PRICE
= $4-1*1.5+1=$5.5
For beginners, we recommend OVERLAY
PRICE = PRICE*OVERLAY_RATIO, but you should consider the correct way once
you are confident.
3. Determine what
quality racing you want to follow. We recommend for starters to follow Metropolitan
Saturday racing. By definition, these races are on Saturdays
only and at city tracks. You can find these races by a code. The (M7) on
the top line of the Easy Form shows you this is a Metro Saturday race. You
really need to be able to master city racing first before attempting lower
grade tracks.
4. Determine the horses
you want to follow ie TOP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. We recommend either the TOP 1
(top selection only) or all TOP 4 selections, but the final approach needs
to be determined by you (we can not make too many recommendations because
we can't have all members following the same plan).
5
It may also be profitable to follow profitable tracks and avoid
low-performance tracks. Please check
here for past performance results. These tables also include
the rules, exclude Heavy tracks, Insufficient Form Races and Races
with Race data 5 or less.
6. Have the
right mindset. You are no longer the market follower but the market leader
- the "sheep" at the track are waiting for your move!
Helpful Hints
If you are at the track, it is better not to wait for betting fluctuations
to determine what the professionals are betting on. Our market prices in conjunction
with our Confidence Factor ratings provides you with the best
information at hand, and it's your move that the followers at the
track are waiting for! If you plan to bet the top horses in the market,
and our Confidence Factor is high and the overlays are there, take the bookie overlay whilst you can, the odds typically come in as
a result of your bet along with the other professionals. This will become more evident
as you use the system, especially at the track.
If you are in the habit of
reading or listening to media tips - we suggest you avoid them. The tipsters confidence
will cloud your decision. Even worse, you might miss an overlay bet and bet on a losing tipsters tip!
We have looked at many main stream tipsters best bets and they should be called
"Best strike rate - Worst Profit". Think about it, there is always
going to be too much public money on these horses and the returns are just going
to be poor. Bookies know that people will want to bet on them at lower
odds, so they are more than likely going to try to give the lowest odds possible.
If you have the discipline, access the media
to gain a further advantage. Look for
tipsters information that affect the market and may justify why the weight of
money is on a particular horse. This is what you want to find, weighted money on one horse
which opens up overlays on others. Start by checking the 2KY tips, Late Mail and
Skychannel, these three tipping sources that guide most of the market. The
other horses will increase in value and you should be well informed to wotk out
what is value and what is not. An alternative is to avoid the race or if
you are more aggressive, lay the horse - the probability is on your side to make
a profit if you can get similar TAB odds. Some of our internal laying strategies
rely on how many public tipsters pick a horse, the more the
better!
If a horse is under our market, then look on. This
follows our bet for investment philosophy. Sometimes however, it is hard to pass
or bet against the top-rater, especially a very popular one. So use your
own discretion, especially if you bet for pleasure, but make sure it does follow
some objective rules. For example, take unders only if it is a distance star
(+++) and has a jockey rating less than 10 (this is an adhoc example
only).
Don't spend time on analysing
raw form - we have done this hard work for you. Maximise your efforts in
checking barrier trials, horse fitness, last
start video runs, debut horses etc. This may allow you to eliminate some of your bets. If
you need to set up a form filter, we suggest that you use the Easy Form data.
This information is not subjective, so you can be assured that the information
has no bias and consistent each week.
Start thinking that all horse's have
a chance of winning. Each
horse's chance of winning can be
expressed in terms of odds. Our odds statistically indicate these chances.
A $2.00 horse has a 50% chance of winning. A $4.00 horse has a 25% chance of
winning and a 75% chance of losing. Once again we have not included the TAB
margin in these examples. Don't despair if your overlay bet doesn't win in
one race - this is a numbers game - long term you should win. We are openly
showing you that our $4.00 pick will only win 1 in every 4 races or cynically
lose 3 in every 4 races - think like this and it will be easier to understand
why an overlay is so important and not every horse will win.
Be careful
with place betting
and exotic betting. You must try to get overlays with these as well. Websites
such as Betfair offer fixed place betting, so do some bookies. Look for the
overlays! With Exotic punting, it is a lot harder, but we provide links to
follow overlays on quinellas and exactas (but these are not fixed odds so be
careful of the market fluctuations). You will find that our top 5
selections will win a lot of trifectas. However, you will lose long term
boxing the top 5. One alternative is to use the Exacta combinations we list and
box the remaining of the Top 5 for 3rd. This has not been tested it is only an
example. The secret to most exotic punting is limiting your
combinations and surviving on low strike rate high returns.
For the casual
punter who does not want to consider overlays etc but wants to dabble in the
exotics market, we suggest standing out the top 2 selections for first and
selections 3 & 4 for second on a quinella card. For example, 1/2, 3/4 for $4
(1 unit). For trifectas, consider two cards, 1, 2/3,
2/3/4/5 for $6 (1 unit) and 2/3, 1, 2/3/4/5 for $6 (1 unit) for
races with 7-12 starters.
If our framed market for
a horse is
well under the bookie or TAB odds and the horse starts to shorten quickly in the market, it
may represent a "good thing". The place market is a good
indicator of this in the TAB market. Once again, if the win market
shortens quickly and the place pool lags behind considerably, we have
found that the horse is well in the betting.
Exotics without
favourites pay extremely well. So if we consider a short-priced favourite
to be a great underlay (Lay) - why not take a quinella without this favourite? If you can ride the losses, a big one
awaits!
Comparing the tips of
other main-stream services is a good option.
However, the market price usually reflects this widely known position and
typically offers poor value. Sometimes tipsters tips run at good overlays
and these are definitely worth taking, but you might have a hard time
trying to find double or higher overlays so stick with something that's
realistic like 1.5x. Many of our existing subscribers also use their
own final selection process with excellent success. At the least, you will be more
comfortable with your bet if you know we have also rated your selection a good
chance.
Use Easy Form
to create your own filters. Your additional effort should make it more rewarding
for you when a horse wins. Some things to look for
are front runners at leaders tracks. Very light horses or simple
combinations such as betting on the top tip that is also the top class and lowest
risk etc.
Another
helpful approach is to set an upper limit on the HRT price you will consider a
horse at. This ensures that you
maintain a good win strike rate. For example, you may decide to only bet on horses that we
frame at $2.50 or less but are still considered an overlay.
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