Betting Strategy / Wayne Bailey / 30 September 2008 / 1 Comments

Following the favourite blindly is a quick way to the poorhouse - however at certain courses under certain conditions, backing the 'jolly' can pay its way...

In the dark old days before betting exchanges, most of us racing fans invariably spent a lot of time in a smoke filled bookie shop trying to keep up-to-date with the day's events.

Every bookie shop I've been to in Ireland or Britain all contain the same sort of characters. You'll have the addicts betting on b.a.g.s. and virtual racing (or cartoons as I call it), the old and lonely who are looking for company, the boasters and after-timers who annoy anyone in earshot with their amazing feats, and the 25p Yankee crowd who collectively put millions into the industry each year. Indeed, back in college, a friend of mine completed a major sociological study of bookie shop characters and their behavioural traits. Us college students spent a lot of time in the bookies back then, but at least he had an excuse!

It's not very nice to sneer, but I must admit I used to do just that to one type of bookie shop punter - those that scribble 'un-named favourite' on their docket and go ahead and back the jolly for no other reason than the fact that it is favourite. However, after doing some research last year, I found myself doing just that - backing favourites, and what's more it has proved profitable albeit under strict conditions.

As unpopular as it may be within certain racing circles, the fact of the matter is that the favourite performs consistently better at certain tracks than others - and can sometimes pay its way. There are a number of reasons why certain courses perform worse than others, but that's a topic for another day perhaps. So basically, following the favourite at certain courses can reap rewards.

Some months back, I proposed this idea as the flat season got underway. I wrote two separate articles on the subject, one for Irish flat racing and one for UK flat racing. In keeping with the theme of reporting profit and loss, the Irish article has had 63 winners from 174 bets, and shown a profit of £61.30 to SP (using £10 as the stake each time). My own records however, show that the profit to Betfair prices was almost double this figure. Read that article here:

The UK article has had 27 winners from 71 bets, and shows a small loss to SP, but shows a tiny profit to Betfair prices. Read that article here:

I received some positive emails and comments following those articles, so I thought I'd revisit the strategy, this time using national hunt. Can such a strategy prove profitable over sticks and fences? Nothing is certain in racing, but I believe it can.

The first thing to do was find out where the favourite performs best in the UK and Ireland. Naturally, handicap races show a lower favourite win rate, so I've excluded those races. I only wanted courses that had a high strike rate of winning favs, so any showing less than 40% were scrapped.

Out of those that were left, 12 showed a profit since 2003. But I needed to take it a step further. From the 12, I weeded out the inconsistent courses, and those that did not show a reasonably stable strike rate year-on-year were dropped.

So after all that, I was left with six courses - namely Doncaster, Fakenham, Haydock, Navan, Sandown and Worcester.

Had you backed the favourite in non-handicap national hunt races at those courses, the results would be as follows:

Year ..... Bets ..... Wins ..... Profit to £10 stakes ..... Strike Rate
2008 ..... 132 ..... 58 ..... £27.50 ..... 43.94%
2007 ..... 150 ..... 81 ..... £111.00 ..... 54%
2006 ..... 208 ..... 97 ..... £127.60 ..... 46.63%
2005 ..... 219 ..... 92 ..... £22.70 ..... 42.01%
2004 ..... 196 ..... 89 ..... £69.20 ..... 45.41%
2003 ..... 209 ..... 106 ..... £335.20 ..... 50.72%
(Results are broken down by year rather than season)

Will the above strategy prove profitable in the future? Well, no-one can say for certain - we are dealing with four legged animals after all. However, as with all my articles I'll be placing my own money on the selections, so here's hoping!