The horse racing markets on Betfair offer a lot of opportunities.
At first glance, these markets can seem very complex with different horse races having different trading characteristics. However, in today’s article, we are going to look through a very simple edge in the horse racing market. That when applied properly can be very profitable.
Jockey Trainer Gambles In Horse Racing
Horse racing markets on Betfair have a few attributes that make it a different sport to trade than everything else. One of those attributes is the influence that on-course bookmakers and online bookmakers can have on the market. This can be especially prevalent at the big horse racing festivals where there is a large amount of turnover.
Big bets get placed and in an effort to reduce their risk bookmakers often offset some of their liability by backing the same horse on Betfair.
When a popular or in-form jockey-trainer combo has multiple horses running on the same day. Punters often group these selections in doubles, trebles and accumulator bets.
Frankie Dettori’s Magnificient Seven
Perhaps the most extreme example of this was when Frankie Dettori had seven winners on the same day at Ascot. After winning six races in a row. Dettori’s final horse “Fujiyama Crest” which in the morning had been priced at odds of 21.00 was back in all the way to odds of 3.0.
Due mainly to two factors:
Bookmakers offsetting their liabilities.
Punters getting caught up in the momentum of what was happening.
Frankie Dettori’s Magnificent Seven happened back in 1997 however the market still behaves this way in 2023. If you look at the big festivals and see popular jockeys such as Ryan Moore, Rachel Blackmore or Hollie Doyle with favoured horses in the early races.
A great strategy is to look at backing their horses in later races. In anticipation of a few early winners causing these prices to significantly shorten. Watching the races live can enable you to strike a bet if you see one of the more popular jockeys take a strong lead or you may just want to wait till the horse crosses the finish line.
Just by being aware of how the market is likely to react can give you a solid pre race horse racing edge.
Jockey Trainer Combinations: Using Information To Trade
Let’s take a look at trading a notable jockey trainer combination using some well-known information.
We will use an example from the pre-race trading guide to illustrate this…
In this race, we have the horse “Mystic Jade”, which has the jockey Richard Hughes and is trained by Richard Hannon. This is a maiden race and it is pretty well known to those that watch horse racing, that Hughes and Hannon have a great record when it comes to producing strong 2-year-old runners.
Knowing this information, the trading focus was heavily on this horse.
If money started to come in for “Mystic Jade” it was likely that it would continue given the track record of Hughes and Hannon. However, if there didn’t seem to be much support in the 5 minutes leading up to the race (when most money enters the market) then it was a fairly good indicator that this horse would not be strong in the market.
In this race, the second scenario ended up happening. There wasn’t much support for the horse “Mystic Jade” and it ended up drifting from odds of 6.8 to 8.4 by the start of the race. Using that little bit of horse racing knowledge enabled a profit of £21.20 to be made.
If you want to learn more about trading horse racing successfully on Betfair. We suggest reading the article below.