Flat Betting Strategy: Profit from Group One racing

Betting Strategy / Wayne Bailey / 07 May 2009 / Leave a Comment

Making money in the top class races can be as simple as backing the best horses writes Wayne Bailey...

Have you ever felt the need to get back to basics?

You'd imagine that picking winners in this day and age is a straightforward business. After all, we've so much information available at the click of a mouse, it's almost getting embarrassing. I've great respect for anyone who was able to hold their head above water in this game back in the days when the Sporting Life paper was about as good as it got.

As well as all the free stuff, some of us have access to Timeform, Raceform and a number of other programmes which cut out a hell of a lot of work. But despite having all this information available, our four legged friends still manage to make fools of us time after time. Every now and then, it's worth stepping back, taking a breather, and stop trying to be too clever.

Before Christmas, I wrote a National Hunt article with a similar theme, and I advised people to simply back the best chasers based on official ratings.

It's pretty basic stuff, and I can hear the sniggers at the back. However, since 2003, it has produced a profit of 28 points and it takes mere seconds to pick the horses. I'm happy to report that 2009 has produced six winners from 21 races and a profit of just under four points.
With the flat season already in full swing, I'd like to share something I tried last year which proved moderately successful. It does what it says on the tin and simply involves backing the top class horses in Group one races.

How do we define top class? That's open for argument, but as you would expect, the higher the rating, the more likely the horse is to win. When I broke down performance based on OR, the win-rate gradually rose along with the rating which shows how good a job the handicappers actually do. But it gets very interesting when we hit 121. Horses rated 120 for example, win 24% of races, but horses rated 121 win 33% of races - so there's definitely a turning point for those that break that barrier. So horses above 121 are the ones I like to focus on.

At the start of last season, I decided to follow such animals in the top flat races to see if it would prove profitable (as it had done in the past). To summarise:

* Flat racing (UK and Ireland)
* Horse is rated 121 or higher
* Group one Races

Below is a table showing progress last season to Betfair SP, assuming commission is 5%:

A lot of the prices are short, but that doesn't scare me so much anymore. In fact, in recent times, I've found myself moving towards the top end of the market as I think the odds have become very accurate on Betfair. I'm going to look into this further, but anecdotal evidence shows that lately, Betfair prices are getting very close to predicting the animal's true chance of winning compared to the old SP system, even a couple of years ago. It's a small sample, but as you can see from above, the longer priced horses were the ones that let me down in the main.

I only went live with real money on this last year, but I've back-tested it since 2003 and it has produced 29 winners from 108 bets (36.88%) and shown a profit of just under 24 points to traditional SP in that period.

Yes, it's pretty basic stuff and the profits are small, but I'm not claiming to have made an earth-shattering breakthrough here. I'm merely getting back to basics, which can be refreshing from time to time. A couple of more losers and it would be in the red. However, with some selectivity this year in relation to the market, I'm confident of improving on 2008. The upside is that there's little to no work involved and you'll have some of the best animals in training running for you. As usual, I'll report back at the end of the season with my profit and loss figures - hopefully those figures will be coloured green!