In the 4.30 Leicester Alfajer is now trading between 7/4 and 2/1 with conventional bookies yet on Betfair it is trading at 1.98. Why would anyone bet at those odds when, not only are the bookie chappies offering better odds, there is a deduction on Exchange winnings?
“Nowt so queer as folks” as they would say here in wildest East Yorkshire... Now that we have signed up Aussie Trevor Bayliss to coach the England cricket team, we will be thinking that we have a chance in The Ashes when the old enemy arrives on these shores in July. He is probably already on the phone to KP...
Ron: assuming your post-time is accurate, I think that you probably just caught a market blip half an hour before the off. The returned SPs were in fact: Industry: 3.25 (9-4) BF: 3.5 (5-2) After commission (max. 5%, but most people who bet at all aren't paying more than 4.8%), the BSP comes out at 2.38-1, about an eighth of a point better than the industry figure. I've made this point on here before - and it wasn't original then - but I'm pretty much convinced that the only significant action on the exchanges happens in the three or four minutes before the off. How many times have you heard the ATR or RUK studio presenter say of a winner (or indeed, of a loser ?) 'there was money for that this morning, but it did weaken appreciably on course'. I won't go into great depth here, partly because this general thesis will form part of my excitedly-awaited essay on How to Win Money on Winter AW Racing ( to be published on this site later in the year); but, in general, the overnight and pre-show day-of-race markets are just an extended tuning-up process for the real action immediately before the off. I don't know anything of this particular instance, but my guess is that a fairly substantial bet (maybe a few hundred ?) was seeking a match and, at that point in time, had to go down to 1.98 to complete it. If you wanted to extract a lesson from all this, it would be that market movement before the game-clock is close to zero is usually meaningless as regards predicting the race outcome, because so much of it reflects people backing to lay or laying to back. Or it could be something more sinister: the Association of Chief Police Officers has already dropped hints that a number of exchange accounts held by individuals are believed to be 'shell' vehicles for systematic money-laundering. Certainly, from regular watching, you might wonder why a completely insignificant and apparently insoluble handicap generates a disproportionately large exchange market, and why the actual result appears to be almost irrelevant.
