Eddie [another professional punter] was someone I though I could learn from, and he told me how he operated. He produced a “tissue” for each race, pricing up every horse based on his view of each horse’s chance of winning. It was his own version of the forecast odds for races that newspapers produced, but without the bookmakers profit margin built in. Eddie then compared his prices with the ones available from bookmakers in the betting ring, and backed the horses that were being offered at significantly longer prices in the ring. They were the ones Eddie believed represented that elusive concept, “value”.
“A Bloody Good Winner” (Dave Nevison – Professional Punter)
After reading the above excerpt from Dave’s book, at the beginning of this year I was motivated to reinstate odds compilation into my handicapping. So far I have made some bloody good howlers!
1. My old nemesis, the favourite-longshot bias. I’ve fallen ino the trap of kidding myself that I could find hidden nuggets in longshot past performances. I thought the crowd had over looked something so I typically priced the so called outsiders lower in my tissue than the market which made them artificial overlays. As predicted they ran like their pre race price predicted.
2. Garbage In/Garbage Out. Errors in pre race handicapping are amplified when making betting decision based on an incorrect tissue.
3. Betting too many overlays. With many horses in my tissue screeming “value” the reason was due to (2) above. However yours truly bet them anyway because they were value and you cant eat that!
4. Lack of selectivity. Without doubt A/W handicaps are the most difficult races to punt in. Because I restrict my activities to evening meetings, the urge to get involved in every race has to be tempered.
When watching an evening All Weather meeting at Kempton, Dave was in the pundits chair addressing email questions from the public. When asked how long it took him to perfect his tissue technique, his response. “Years”. A quick email to Tooting confirmed that I need to create around 1000+ tissues before I can consider myself “capable”.
Oh well. Only 975 tissues to go! Basketball season is officially over for me so I have a lot more time to focus on (2) in the next few weeks.
I won’t be punting in Cheltenham this week, too difficult! However if anyone reading this comment is going to the Winter Derby at Lingfield this week, I’ll see you there. I’m attending as part of my education in A/W course configurations.
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Tags: Betting Theory