I ‘d always expected to have more losers than winners when value betting and backing selections that are usually well over evens but it’s recently dawned on me just how significant backing losers in. No fewer than 8 of the top 10 tipsters at BettingTools all have many more losing bets than winning ones. The majority of these have well over double the amount of losers than winners.
This emphasises that the odds you are going to find the most value in is the bigger prices. Nothing new you might think but I’d battled with the what is best shorts prices or long shots for a long while and it’s only now that I feel I have it right in my head.
Obviously any price can be value but the % return does diminish the shorter you back at simply because the prices are much more accurate. Bigger prices are available on unfavourable outcomes because bookies want to balance their books and there’s more competition to take bets on these selections.
This is not to say that you can’t profit from backing short prices but if you have a relatively small bank and I’d say anything under 5,000 (possibly more) then odds on selections are not going to give you a worthwhile return. You are going to have to take much more risk and use a bigger percentage of your overall funds to make a decent profit and it doesn’t makes sense.
For bettors with access to greater funds say in the 10s of thousands, backing short prices not only makes sense but it’s often going to be their only option. Bookies offering the juicy value prices on long shots which are there to attract money are not going to want to take £50,000 on a 5-1 shot that someone else obviously thinks is value. Why should they take it? They will most likely say you can have £2,000 at 5-1 and then reduce the odds significantly for any more you on top.
In addition to this short prices are less work as the losing streaks are short. It therefore is a better use of time for someone who has plenty of cash to invest. For me though and my modest £300+ bank, backing short priced favourites is not a good use of time. I’ve mentioned before just how difficult it is making so many bets from an administration point of view and even an optimistic 3% edge at odds on is not going to give me much of a return.
Just to be clear I’m not taking about 1.8/1.9 shots here but really short odds on favourites say below 1.5. I am now vowing to never back under this price again, well, not until I hit the big time and my bank is in the 100,000s at least.
I really do think that backing big prices at the best available odds or on Betfair (more accurate prices) is the best way to grow a small bank providing you get your staking right and can handle the losing streaks.