When is the right time to enter the Australian Horse Racing Betting market and show your hand? The Art Of Knowing When To Bet is one of the most underrated in punting!
Should you bet early, late or a combination of both? It’s a modern punters conundrum!
To be a successful at anything in life, particularly in business you have to be always ready and willing to adapt to the changing environment.
With the introduction of the Minimum Bet Laws in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania (coming soon in QLD) what used to be the old APN or on track fluctuations has been replaced with an entire day of action.
The ‘market’ doesn’t open 20 minutes before the race anymore. It opens at 9am when the minimum bet laws kick in and the pro’s start betting and the vicious fluctuations start.
Aussie bookies are becoming increasingly reactive to the opinions of smart punters and flucs are no longer one or two rolls after a sharp bets.
When the big boys step into one, it can go $41 into $7.50 within a matter of seconds – smashing the price of the runner you were looking to back that day no doubt.
So when is the right time to bet? Unfortunately, there is no right answer.
Often you’ll see horses that are very well backed in the morning with corporate bookmakers drift back out to somewhere near or sometimes beyond their price in the morning but more often than not when the sharp punters show their hand early the horses starting price is well below it’s morning quote.
Pro tip: By observing the tendencies of the big players you can often determine which horses will be targeted in betting and thus shorten (bet early!) and which horses will have their fair share of layers (wait till the death).
Pro Punter in focus: Zeljko Ranogajec
For example, the majority of big players focus on speed maps and horses that ‘map well’. Likely those settling in forward positions. Have you mapped your horse to be last on the fence in a big field?
Now it could be argued that the betting market opens when the bookies first put up their fixed prices – which is true for a percentage of the population and any obvious or glaring errors in the prices get ironed out during this period.
The only catch is that sharp accounts don’t have access to bet on these markets and if they do they are for very small limits so why would you show your hand to the bookies so early?
However, at 9am on race day the serious flucs start when all punters can get set to win upwards of $10,000 with bookies across Australia.
A popular school of thought that seems to be doing the rounds now is bet as early as you can if you’re happy with the value you are getting because if you get it wrong, the price drifts and the big teams don’t like it – chances are the horse will not be winning anyway.
Conversely, if you get it right and secure a price before it plummets with all the bookies you’ll be on a well-backed runner that statistically win a lot more races than horses that drift alarmingly.
We all know how important taking the right price is. So watch the markets and record data on the horses you like and how often they are shortening compared to drifting from their 9am morning line.
Over a decent sample size you should start to get an idea as to whether you should be locking in a price as soon as possible or hunting for the best fluc, tote or exchange price late.
There are so many ways to skin the punting cat, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
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Good punting!