Horse Betting Online

Horse racing permutations are something that can help you to increase your chances of landing a winning double or treble and thereby stand a chance of making a relatively large amount of profit for a relatively small outlay. We have said previously that single bets are superior to horse betting accumulators, but now and again you might want to ignore that advice and go for a double or treble – especially if you have identified a handful of selections that you think have an excellent of winning.

Permutations are groups of selections from a larger group, and the basic idea is that by having a broad range of selections that you think will win, it should be comparatively easy to get a smaller range of selections that actually do win. For example, if you have five horse racing selections that you are confident in, and you labelled these A, B, C, D and E, you could enter 10 doubles as follows:

AB
AC
AD
AE
BC
BD
BE
CD
CE
DE

These ten bets cover every possible combination of selection for a double, so the guarantee here is that if two of your five selections win, you would have one winning double. If more selections were to win, you would have more winning doubles, up to a maximum of 10 doubles for five winning selections.

You could adopt a similar approach for trebles. All you would have to do is enter every possible combination of three horses to guarantee one winning treble if three of your five selections win. Our trebles would therefore be:

ABC
ABD
ABE
ACD
ACE
ADE
BCD
BCE
BDE
CDE

The examples provided so far are for full permutations, which means that every possible combination of horses is included in a bet so that at least one winning double or treble will be obtained if there are two or three winning selections. The problem with full perms is that they are expensive – we need to place ten bets to cover every possible double with five selections and the same for trebles.

The good news is that there is an alternative to full permutations, and that is to enter consecutive selections only. This won’t guarantee a winning double or treble, but it doesn’t require as many bets.

To enter consecutive doubles, label your selections (for example A, B, C, D and E) and then write down every combination of consecutive horses, like this:

AB
BC
CD
DE

For five selections the cost is four bets, and the guarantee here is that if you have at least two consecutive selections that win you will have at least one winning double. The same approach can be taken with trebles, and in that case your bets would be:

ABC
BCD
CDE

Here you would need at least three consecutive selections to win to provide at least one winning treble.

Horse racing permutations won’t appeal to everyone who is involved with horse betting online, but they can be useful to those who like the idea of potentially turning a handful of top-quality selections into one or more winning accumulators.

Betting for value is a trait that belongs to the most experienced and successful horse betting online participants. Whilst many people are quite happy to bet at whatever odds happen to be available, those who bet for value only place a bet if the odds on offer match or exceed their own estimation of what the betting odds should be.

For example, if a value bettor has decided that a particular horse has an even money (1/1) chance of winning a race, he would be happy to bet at odds of 1/1 or greater, because in that situation he would be getting value for money. However, if he could only get odds of less than 1/1, he would avoid betting because those odds would offer no long term value.

To understand how betting for value affects long term profits, consider the scenario where you bet £10 on each of ten horses that have fair value of 1/1, but where you can only obtain odds of 10/11 (poor value). Assuming that 50% of those horses win (which is a fair estimate for horses deserving odds of 1/1) then you would make £45.45 profit from the winners and you would lose £50 on the losers, leaving you with a loss of £4.55. Betting at poor value odds have left you with a loss even though the expected percentage of horses won their races.

On the other hand, if you were able to bet £10 on each of the same horses at odds of 11/10 (which is betting for value), you would make a £55 profit from the winners and you would lose £50 on the losers. This would leave you with an overall profit of £5 because each of your bets were offered at good value odds.

Finding betting for value odds is more an art than a science, but hopefully you should now be able to understand why it is so important for you to shop around for the very best odds on each one of your horse betting online selections.

Our advice is to open accounts with all of the companies featured on our Bookmakers page and get into the habit of betting with the bookmaker that offers the best odds for each of your selections. That might mean placing bets on different horses with different bookmakers, but the minor additional effort that such a betting for value strategy involves should, over the long term, be very well rewarded.

Cover to Win staking is a method of staking used by horse betting online enthusiasts that can, when used properly, help you to make some great profits over the medium to long term. It works by adjusting stakes on each runner so that a winner will produce a specified amount of profit as well as recover any previous losses that have been suffered. Here’s how to use the Cover to Win staking methodology in practice:

Start by defining how much profit you would like to make from every horse racing winner you pick. We will say £10 for example purposes.

Identify the betting odds of your first selection.

Stake enough on the first selection to make a £10 profit if it wins. For example, if the odds for your first horse were 2/1, you would stake £5. This would give you a £10 profit if it wins.

If the first horse wins, start the process all over again with the next selection.

If a horse loses, add your lost stake to your profit goal and stake enough on the next horse to win that amount. For example, if your first horse lost you £5 you would be looking for a profit of £15 on the next selection. So, if the next selection had odds of 1/1, you would stake £15.

Continue staking in this way, adding up all previous losses and your profit goal and staking accordingly, until you hit a winner. When a winner occurs, start over.

By taking this approach, every winner you have will give you £10 profit (or whatever you decide at the outset) and all of your losses will be recovered. So if you were to place 20 bets in a week and get 10 winners, you would make a profit of £100. Not bad for a simple horse betting online hobby!

The Cover to Win staking method is a great money management strategy, but it does involve staking increasing amounts of money during a losing run. If you don’t like that approach, you should use another money management plan instead. Even if you think that you will be happy to use the Cover to Win idea, it is sensible to paper trade for a few weeks so that you can see how stakes escalate according to the odds of your horse betting online selections and the number of losing selections that you have.

The Simple Form Ratings System is a method by which horse betting online enthusiasts can convert the recent racing form of each runner in a race into a form rating. Having a numerical form rating for each runner will enable you to see at a glance which horse has the best recent form, and allow you to bet (or not) accordingly.

Before you can use the Simple Form Ratings System you must of course be able to interpret racing form, so if you haven’t done so already you should study our article on Reading Horse Racing Form. That done, you can start generating simple form ratings by taking any race and applying the following rules to each of the runners:

• Look at the last two races of the horse and award 10 points for each win, 7 points for each 2nd place, 4 points for each 3rd place and 1 point for each 4th place.

• If the horse is a course winner, award 2 points.

• If the horse is a distance winner, award 4 points.

• If the horse last ran no more than 21 days ago, award 2 points.

Now look at the betting forecast (or you can visit one of our recommended Bookmakers for actual markets) and award additional points as follows:

• If the horse is first in the betting forecast (and therefore the favourite) award 5 points.

• If the horse is second in the betting forecast/market, award 4 points.

• If the horse is third in the betting forecast/market, award 3 points.

• If the horse is fourth in the betting forecast/market, award 2 points.

• If the horse is fifth in the betting forecast/market, award 1 point.

The most points that can be awarded to any horse is 33 points. This would be the rating of a horse that won both of its last two races, has previously achieved wins over both the course and distance, ran no more than 21 days ago and is first in the betting forecast.

When you have rated all of the horses in a race, the horse with the highest rating is the one with the best form according to the Simple Form Ratings System. You could bet on the top-rated horse on its own or – if the odds allow – you could bet on the two or three horses with the best ratings using the Dutching System.

Betting in running is something that you can do with a growing number of bookmakers, and involves betting after a horse race has already started. You could place a bet just after the off, just before the horses reach the finish line or anywhere in-between. But what is the value of betting in running? Read on and we’ll tell you…

To start with, betting in running allows you to wait and see if you can obtain betting odds that you have decided make it worthwhile for you to place a bet. For example, if you have decided that a certain horse would be worth betting on at 3/1, and the price is 11/4 just before the off, you could wait until the race gets underway to see if the 3/1 becomes available. The odds available about each horse change as the race unfolds, so such an outcome is perfectly possible. Of course, whether the horse in question wins or not is another matter entirely.

Another advantage of betting in running is that it allows you to see if a certain horse looks comfortable in the early stages of the race. This is particularly useful if the horse has recovered from an injury or illness, and you aren’t 100% sure if it is yet back to its old self. Watching the horse run the first few furlongs could be enough to put your mind at rest, in which case you might strike a bet, or confirm your doubts, in which case you would probably refrain from betting altogether.

If you bet with an exchange such as Betfair, you can lay in running as well as bet in running, and this makes it possible to both open and close a position before the race has finished. For example, you could bet £20 on a 2/1 shot just after the off and then lay the same horse for £20 at odds of 1/2 as the race approaches its conclusion. This would give you a break-even situation if that horse lost, but £30 profit if it wins (£40 profit from the bet minus £10 loss from the lay).

Those of you who are interested in betting in running would do well to begin with minimum stakes, and that’s because betting in running takes some time to get used to. The betting market changes very quickly when betting in running, and you need to learn how to respond to such changes effectively to make the most of opportunities as they come along.

Betfair has a great demo of betting in running (which is referred to there as the In-Play Bet) so it would be well worth checking out if you are thinking about pursuing this form of betting further. Visit Betfair now to take a look.