Horse racing trading systems

Horse racing trading systems

Posted: RaR Date: 20.07.2017

Racing trading in the pre-race markets is perhaps the holy grail of the Betfair trading world. It allows time for a novice racing trader to assess things fully and avoid getting led misled by lightning-fast and often unpredictable sudden market movements which can be pretty scary to simply witness during a horse race, let alone to trade.

Therefore most people who try their hand with horse racing for the first time tend to stick to the pre-race markets until fully up to speed with the factors causing the price movements, as well as experience of racing generally and knowledge of horses, trainers, jockeys, course layouts, etcetera.

I have recently published my strategies for the IR markets in my new Horse Racing Trading In-Running ebook, these are fairly beginner friendly methods. It is important to note here that racing trading, whether before the off or when the event is in play, is inherently difficult to master. Having said that, I should also point out that once you have mastered it, you will be hard pushed to find a faster way to make regular and large profits in normal working hours from the comfort of your home.

Horse racing markets are, at least when compared to stock markets, volatile to say the least. For example, how could I possibly know that a huge gambling syndicate is about to stick half a million quid on the second favourite in the 3.

It is not necessary to have a crystal ball to protect yourself from such things, but plenty of experience combined with a HUGE level of personal discipline and a very defensive mindset in your trading is more than enough to prevent such things emptying your bank of all the green you made in the previous few races. I have mentioned how difficult it is to trade horses. There is however one thing which is even more difficult than taking regular profits from the racing markets.

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That is teaching other people to do it! I would not be at all surprised if it was less than 1 in Is this because the courses or trainers are all rubbish?

It is just that this stuff is bluddy hard to master! Since Betfair pre-race trading is the holy grail, it stands to reason that this form of trading takes more time, effort, discipline, experience, knowledge and patience than any other method.

I believe this to be the case too, without a shadow of a doubt. Due to this difficulty factor and the complexity of these markets, I can not explain my entire approach on this page. There is theory, and then there is practice. Trying to learn racing trading is like trying to read a very big book by a very dim candle light. Anyone out there reading this who has mastered horse racing trading will know precisely what I am talking about. Until then, it feels very much like guesswork.

You are then able to glance at a market and within a few seconds decide whether:. Point 1 is, in my experience at least, by far the hardest to learn to identify. It may sound silly but again, for anyone reading this who knows how to trade pre-race markets, it will make a lot of sense I am sure.

It can take some people months, others years , before they stop looking for a trade , and instead look at the markets in a more calm and balanced way, just aiming to find out what IS happening rather than what they want or hope to see happen. In essence… beginners look for trades. Experienced traders just look at the market to see if there is a trade. And the answer most of the time is NO.

Doing so only ever ends in tears, and losses. As most traders know, the majority of markets do not have a trade available for you every time you glance at it, surprise surprise! But knowing this in theory, and behaving accordingly when you are faced with a busy screen of clickable ladders, these are two very different things. This is assuming you are looking for a sign that a move is about to take place which is the essence of my trading style. Of course some people are just looking to scalp one or two ticks, and for those people yes there could easily be many trades in every market, every single day.

I used to do this myself on football markets as well as horse racing. However, I found the workload high, and the rewards low. Scalping can definitely make regular and consistent profits, no doubt about that at all. But staring at every ladder intently for hours each day tends to give me severe headaches and by the end of the day I feel wiped out, so I stopped doing that long ago and stuck to the better equation of doing less to make more.

A nice picture of a heavy drifter. But a much nicer picture for those who could see it coming when the horse was priced around evens 2. Spotting a move in the markets ideally before it happens!!

horse racing trading systems

Betfair Trading software is an absolute must. Live TV pictures are essential too. Secondly you have it on your main TV screen which is bigger, far better quality, and frees up your PC screen for more ladders or charts or Sonic The Hedgehog or whatever else you want on there. Due to the delays on all the feeds, especially ATR, I would NEVER trade what I am seeing on my pictures. The pictures merely give you hints and tips for why the ladders are doing what they are doing.

They are a safety net, or an EXTRA indicator, not a trading indicator on their own. Why would you want to put yourself up against those highly experienced traders, and hand them a second or longer advantage over you? Are you just keen to throw money away?!! Good, neither am I. Watch how fast those on track traders snatch your notes if you leave them hanging out in the breeze! Your trading software will show you what is going on at exactly the same time as everyone else, you have no delay and no disadvantages, that surely must be a good starting point for anyone, beginner trader or full timer.

There are a variety of trading methods in my toolkit and I use them all from time to time, but the main bulk of my trading is done using just two approaches:. The basic approach of my early trends strategy is to find what looks like a strongly fancied horse, usually within the top 3 or 4 horses in any race based on the early morning tips in the Racing Post , Sporting Life and other leading newspapers and websites, combined with chart analysis and betting data.

This is long before the markets start getting any serious liquidity. The thin volume can actually help here.

All trading is about trying to find a reliable way of predicting moves. In this case, what the tipsters are saying and what the betting markets are doing give a combined indication which is often very reliable, leading us to take a position based on where we think the volume will go when it finally arrives throughout the day.

Go in any bookies at am and see how empty it is. When the punters start cramming through the door around lunch time, stuff starts to happen. When the Betfair traders get on their ladders, stuff happens even faster. When the bookies lay off their books and the serious traders get involved, the markets can look very different to how they looked at am. This change is what this method is all about, trying to see how this money is going to be placed in the market when it finally turns up.

I will look at all the tipsters and all the betting money. This is where the tipsters come in. In this case, if many of the tipsters fancy a particular horse, and the early betting shows a large volume of bets going in the same direction, I would then place a back bet on the horse as early as possible.

I will watch the odds throughout the day monitoring my position fairly loosely with practice this gets easier, they rarely go badly against me but they can sometimes do so, therefore I check every half an hour to an hour generally.

When the market warms up with heavier volume I will look more regularly hoping for a stronger pre-race trend to form as it gets backed in closer to the off.

Usually it will come in at least ticks, sometimes less sometimes more and of course sometimes they are losers. I will take a profit when I feel it has run its course as far as the trend is concerned. The only other thing worth mentioning is the use of charts in my Betfair trading software. Sometimes I will trail a stop loss behind that moving average line as the trend rolls along.

If it breaks through the MA, I am out. If nothing has changed, I will hold on as long as possible as it inches my way. Recently I have been working with a friend of mine programmer to try and develop a small piece of software to do most of the donkey work above. The idea is to design something which can do all of the selections for me in seconds, and possibly even manage the trades too if we can get really clever with it.

But for now maybe just an alert to text or email me if the price moves suddenly against my position. The second method is the one I use much more frequently. The early trends requires my day to be fully free from early doors right through until the races start as I may need to sit down and check charts and information online etcetera throughout the day.

My main pre-race trading is done only in the last ten minutes pre-off. For true trend trading, the more money involved, the more reliable the trend indications and moves. This applies to any market. Thin markets are known for wild volatility and unpredictability. It therefore stands to reason that the bigger the market in terms of volume the greater the stability, and the more weight we can put on the signals we are looking at.

When it comes to trading just before the off, big money is coming in every second or two. I have said already and I will say it again, this type of trading requires a HUGE amount of practice and discipline.

With that said, here is a basic outline of how I trade the 10 min pre-race markets:. These are easy to spot once you have watched enough ladders. We are looking for a horse on a constant and steady sometimes fast move in one direction. I open all charts for the main players in a race. In some races, the favourite might be odds-on, the second favourite is 3.

However a competitive handicap at a big meeting might have 5 or 10 horses all which are priced under Sitting OUT of a market IS A TRADING DECISION!

The trade you chose is to stay out of the market and watch. I have no idea how much money tea has saved me! So, assuming I open the charts and I see a favourite which has crept in coming down in odds all day, and is still gradually coming in 10 minutes from the off, I will look for the reasons. This is usually ideally caused by one thing, the other horses are not competing with it in the betting market so their prices are not pushing the book in any direction.

If I check and see all horses, other than the favourite, looking weak in betting terms or drifting out in price, I will back the favourite and keep an eye on those other horses for a sudden change where they might start gaining in strength which would threaten my plan to back the favourite as it comes in before the off.

Most strong favourites, without any real pressure from other horses in the market, will come down in price the closer you get to the off time. Everyone loves to back a strong favourite, that is not only true in the bookies but on the ladders too. I use a dedicated computer for all of my horseracing trading. I will see if I can sort out a better way of doing it at some point, although I have no plans to run courses on this stuff so not sure if there is much point really.

My brother in law who is currently dabbling once a week on baby stakes while between jobs trades on his Apple computer which can take instant screenshots easily, and he regularly sends me them asking for my thoughts.

I just had a quick scan through them and I found one which makes a lovely example of the above point:. This is a perfect example — a very simple race set up — the favourite is strong. Dave bro in law decided to back it when the 2nd favourite drifted past 3.

The third favourite and all other runners were high priced outsiders with no bearing on the market whatsoever. So this was a dead easy trade even for him, the only real threat to the odds-on favourite is not fancied and is drifting badly.

What else could the favourite do but shorten in odds? He was well chuffed with his small but no doubt very satisfying green! I did say he is new to this! The psychological effect of losing a good green is twice as powerful as winning one. But if he had stuck to the easiest and most obvious moves like this one then he would have had a nice green day.

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He is slowly learning when to sit out. Sitting out really does build profitability. If I do get into a market without enough clarity, I am out the very second I realise my mistake. This is another very hard thing to do in practice, but very important to learn. I fooled myself, I disadvantaged myself , so I must restore my advantage by getting out and saving my cash for a race I do have a better feel for. The markets are never right or wrong.

This approach applies to a drifting favourite just the same but obviously in reverse. If I see a favourite trending out, I will again look at the other runners to see if I can find the reason. A drifting favourite is never enough reason to trade. A move which you can understand is the only tradeable move. Otherwise how would you know when the move is coming to an end? And they always do of course. Picking your exit price is half the battle of making regular greens.

If you can only understand one move a day, you should only trade one race a day. The markets are basically a see-saw with the favourite on one side and ALL OTHERS on the other. So if one side is pushing down, the other side naturally must rise up as the book tries to stay in balance. In which case you would bear in mind your initial feeling, but you would need it to be confirmed by those horses sitting on resistance actually breaking through that resistance.

Then the see-saw would have some real power behind it, and a trade is then sensible as the odds are heavily in your favour that the favourite will move and will move enough distance to get you in, out, and greened before it runs out of steam.

As you may have realised, I tend to only trade the favourite. This is not a concrete rule by any means, I often trade other runners but I definitely trade the favourite far more often. In such cases I am ready like a snake to pounce on the exit button if I am wrong, but equally ready to pounce in with my other half stake if my gut feeling was right. A ranging market takes a second or two to spot. Years ago when I started trading the racing markets I used to hate these and I usually left them alone as I was only ever hunting for a big trend on the favourite in either direction.

Over time, I learned that money can be made from the ranging markets too, not as much perhaps, but making a few quid here and there in between the bigger moves certainly seemed better than drinking too much tea and running back and forth to the loo all afternoon. A ranging market is basically just a market where the horses are not trending strongly outside of their previously traded range.

You can see this previous range within your software, all the main trading software programs show the traded volume next to each price on the ladder. This gives me an instant view of where that horse has traded and more importantly which prices saw the most money being traded.

A ranging horse is a horse which has a very clear band of prices at which it has traded, and very little volume outside that range.

Here is a good example of a ranging horse courtesy of bro in law again:. You can configure it to your liking, so choose colours for traded volume bars which suit your own preferences and make it as clear as possible to your eye. You can find hundreds of these when you start to recognise the simple indications of a horse ranging tightly.

But that can be ignored as that was earlier in the day and the very low volume at all prices above 3. This might remind you of why and how I do the early trends stuff above. After this time the big money has quite clearly shown what prices this horse is being allowed to trade at.

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Its traded as low as 3. This tells me that after the real money arrived, this horse has a tight and clear range of 3. Again, no guarantees in trading, but the probabilities are good enough for me. A competitive handicap Hcap shown on Betfair is often a good place to find these, not that I go looking for them. Handicapped races frequently have horses trading within a clear range.

Sometimes only ticks, sometimes more, sometimes even less. Of course past data is certainly no guarantee of future performance heard that before?! Because it has resisted doing so many times already.

Every time the horse was backed down to 1. Then each time it drifted up to 2. As these ranges can and do sometimes get broken, we must not see them as any kind of rule , just a suggestion of what is likely to happen. It is a trade because I am aligning my money with what is more likely than not to happen. I expect it to go wrong, I plan for it to go wrong, I am ready to act the second it does go wrong. I will also have several eyes peeking at the other runners, again looking for an early warning that something is not going to pan out how I want.

At this point, I am out, usually before it actually does so. This stop loss can be automated in trading software. Some markets can stay within their ranges right up to the off, but I will usually expect at least one attempted breakout as they do often test their boundaries at some point before the off. With this method, the best trading period in my experience is between 10 and 5 minutes from the off, 2 minutes at the very latest. When it gets closer than 5 minutes to the off I find more chance of range breakouts, 2 minutes from the off they are even more likely.

I had a look around on Youtube for a video which might show a rangey market nicely for those readers who have not looked at this stuff before.

Here is a market which firstly looks tricky regardless of any significant things happening to make it even more tricky, and something did happen to do that, a horse was withdrawn. These are nasty races for beginners generally, you can almost throw all the early analysis out of the window! But this video is perfect for showing here. When I opened this video up and saw the first glimpse of the ladders, I very nearly closed the window as it looked to be of no use whatsoever in showing the type of rangey market I am discussing here.

But for some reason I was intrigued enough to watch it through and I am glad I did. Even in an erratic and volatile market which has just had a hand grenade thrown into it, look how quickly a range formed. Again, this is NOT my idea of a perfect example of a tight range but loosely I would say it quickly became apparent that this horse had a range of 1.

Watch it again, and count how many times it hit the end of the range and reversed. How many range trades could you have had in this market?

He now waits for things to settle down and get some clarity again. What actually happened here is someone wanted to back a grand or whatever on this horse, and decided to back it down at 1.

Instantly those lay orders which were hoovered up were replaced with plenty more. Regardless of the back bet which has just gone through the market, it is clear that 1. Just after he enters, it dives one tick below his lay. He wisely gets out as for a split second it looked like a strong move down.

If he had held one more tick, he would have stayed in for the subsequent return up the range. I would point out here that in no way am I criticising the master of Betfair racing trading which is Peter Webb by the way. I am sure in his own hindsight what a wonderful thing that is he would have held that extra tick anyway. But remember, exiting is NEVER a mistake, even when it is. If that makes sense, you are really tuned in now! Exiting takes more balls than entering, remember that when your ego is taking a bashing: Also notice what a big chunk of lay money bangs in at 1.

This is further confirmation that serious money is resisting this price moving lower than 1. The 2k or so backers money at 1. That was two clear challenges to breaking out of the top of the range, both failed. There is even a solid effort from a spoofer at 1.

The money looked spoofish simply due to the sum being so much bigger than most bets entering the ladder, and it was confirmed as the spoofer pulled it out and ran for the hills when it looked like getting matched! Spotting the spoof… The traded volume bar on the right shows In other words he bottled it and cancelled his order as it was never intended to actually get matched. If that 5k bet was matched by a layer, that would have added 10k to the traded volume bar at that price.

Another way to spot a weak attempt at spoofing is to see where it sits on the ladder. If you see regular very large sums in relation to the rest of the bets landing one tick away from the current prices then you are probably seeing spoof bets trying to push the market actually the other traders around.

A tick away from the action gives the spoofer a bit more time to cancel it. I would love to watch someone spend a day quickly matching all spoof bets, that would be fun! He orders a back bet at 1. He then cancels it at Watch the back money build up in seconds to over 2.

Notice how hard it resisted the next attempt, but the layers finally overcame the backers and 1. How many warnings did you see there? It did briefly break through, then the range boundary still dragged it back down briefly before losing for good the final time. Watch it several times and you will actually start to feel the market forces pushing and pulling.

It has to really. The rest of the video is not of much use, other than to show that this breakout was strongly resisted even after it broke, there was strong backers money just slowing down the drift until it finally lets rip and gets up over 1. So again, NOT an example of a race I would be range trading, and NOT an example of a good tight range. In this example, I would definitely not have believed it was a ranging one from early analysis. I want to see much clearer traded volume bands than this race showed.

I can not and would not criticise Peter Webb when it comes to trading. Peter Webb knows far too much to accuse him of that, and he was clearly spot on in waiting and planning for the move he wanted to trade there. Trying to watch, learn, AND have money at risk is a surefire way to failure.

You will be shaken out of trading in no time. You will quickly learn what a ranging market is versus a trending one. Trending ones move even faster and are even more volatile, so they take even longer to learn to trade in my opinion. After a year or trading trends and ranges, you might be somewhere near ready to start trading reversals!

Another year and you might be able to trade a trend, and then the subsequent reversal tacked onto the end!! The nicest part of range trading is the stop loss issue. When trading a trend, you have to constantly move your stop loss to protect some green.

Why make green if you are not banking some along the way? Range trading is different. In the example of a favourite trading between 1. One other nice thing about range trading is the dilemma of when to make your entry. You can just drop in two orders, a lay order down the bottom and a back order up the top. When one of the orders is taken, you now switch on a bit and basically defend yourself against the risks.

If so, you now know the range may be under threat. Are the other horses staying in their range? Are any other horses playing up? Remember the see-saw analogy….. Assuming all looks good, you just wait until your horse moves to the other end of his range, and you bank your green with a satisfying click, and often get back in for the return journey to the other end of the range. Obviously this sounds as easy as cake, and often it can be just that easy. You need to be alert.

The closer it is to the off, the more likely it is that the above threats can harm your trade. There are various other semi-methods I apply, including an occasional scalp which I use increasingly rarely these days but if bored I might steal a tick or two if it looks just too easy to ignore! There are obviously about sixty-five million other words I could write which would all be relevant and useful here.

But firstly this is just a page on the site and is already a lot longer than I intended, secondly I am writing an ebook about this very subject so I will put my energy into explaining more there. I will end with a reminder that my website is NOT intended to be any kind of trading advice or recommendations to do anything whatsoever.

I merely share this stuff for educational purposes for people who want to read it. Anything you do with your mouse is your responsibility, and yours alone! If you found this article useful or interesting, please consider sharing it using the buttons below….

Fantastic advice and thanks for putting together a great site. Who would you consider the top tipsters you mention in the post? Years ago Robin Goodfellow, Tony Stafford, and the Daily Star tipster were memorable ones for causing a wave of emotion among their readers.

I am less up to speed on it lately as I have not used this method for a while, mostly due to personal commitments making the timing of these trades difficult for me. I do intend to get back to it this year and I will brush up this post and add a lot more detail as soon as I can.

I have a lot of stuff planned for the site this summer regarding horses. I dutch non handicaps and lay the fav in handicaps but green up using both strategies. Just to small stakes at first till I am confident enough to step up. Hi Dave, interesting post thanks. Why do you only dutch non-Hcaps? I notice a 1. A lot of effort and a lot of good advice as usual. Looking forward to the ebook. A quick way to save a screenshot is with Dropbox.

On my PC I do a Ctrl Print Screen and it saves a copy of it into a screenshots folder in my dropbox folder so I can get it later. I am taking that tip so I have it ready for the ebook as I will need to screenshot lots of live trades for that one. He owes me anyway. Only ask yourself a question why would anyone trustfull counterfeit a screenshots?

If someone is using a counterfeit screenshot to sell a product, they are committing a criminal offence of Fraud. You are entitled to your opinion, I am entitled to disagree with it, and I do completely. I do not believe for a moment that Peter Webb and Caan Berry have or ever would do such a thing. I do not know of Tom Hargraves. These people are in my view completely honest and decent people who are making a good living from horse racing trading.

If you have evidence to the contrary I would urge you to take it to the police. If you only have an opinion then you are of course entitled to it, but I would suggest you look further into it FOR some evidence, and when you find there is none, you should consider whether your opinion is a rational one to hold. If not, maybe modify it somewhat. One other point I would make, I think you should put your energy into making their screenshots a reality for yourself rather than worrying about whether theirs are genuine or not, which I am sure they are!

Ok no problem Tim. You can watch this video to understand what i mean youtube. Maybe I am not clever enough for this, but to me it just looked like you zooming in and scrolling your mouse around at random. Against my better judgement I resisted the urge to ignore what you were saying as I like to listen to all points of view even if my gut feeling says not to.

I have given you airtime to accuse some people who are definitely in my opinion very successful professional traders. The burden of proof lies firmly with the accuser under our legal system here.

Opinions and beliefs are meaningless, as are personal gripes, jealousy, hatred, or any other emotionally driven opinions. You said it was clear and obvious to see this alleged fraud. I invited you to present this clear evidence, giving you the benefit of the doubt and allowing you to publish anything you wanted, something I am sure most other people would not have been kind enough to offer you on a public forum such as this.

After some discussion and two videos where you could have explained all of your evidence which you say is so clear and easy to see, I am yet to see the slightest hint of proof at any of your allegations.

If this were a courtroom, I am I would love to see ANY fraud proven and dealt with by the law, I urge you to do so here so that any fraud can be dealt with, or if not proven, for you to be satisfied that no fraud has taken place and spend your time on more positive ventures which will benefit you more, whichever the case may be.

I would be grateful if you could pop back here to comment and update us all on what the Police say and do with your crime complaint once you have shown them all evidence you have of the alleged scam. You can look up the local police force for each of the people you mentioned and report it to them on their non emergency number, or if you are outside the UK you could perhaps use Interpol at https: I wish you luck in proving what you seek to prove, and if you do not, I wish you luck in all your other endeavours and hope you come back to let us know what happened either way.

All the best to you. The information transmitted on just one page is much larger than any other source I found on the internet: I wonder if you have a date to make your ebook available.

Please add me to your forthcoming trading ebook mailing list. Much appreciate what you are doing for the little guys. If you like the Facebook page or sign up in the ezine subscription form on the right hand side, that will keep you up to date with the announcements. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of new posts by email. I will NEVER abuse your email, and I will NEVER spam you. I hate spam more than you, no really, I DO!

Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Betfair Horse Racing Trading — Pre-Race Markets Racing trading in the pre-race markets is perhaps the holy grail of the Betfair trading world. Come on Dad, breakfast is ready!

Comments Betfair Horse Racing Trading — Pre-Race Markets — 28 Comments Ray on December 20, at 3: I really like the sound of this and I would love to see a video of this.

Tim on December 21, at 5: Jon on February 14, at 3: Mike on February 19, at 1: Tim on April 5, at 4: Steve on February 21, at 3: Dave Hill on August 19, at 1: Tim on August 20, at Chris on May 21, at 4: Tim on May 21, at 5: Matt on May 22, at 3: Brilliant article, thanks very much Tim!

Tim on May 22, at 7: Tooters on May 22, at 7: Barry on May 24, at Hi Tim, great article. Any news on when the ebook will be ready?

Tim on June 5, at Should be within the next month, hopefully weeks. John on June 1, at 7: John on June 18, at 8: Tim on June 18, at 9: John on June 19, at 8: Tim on June 19, at 9: John on June 21, at 8: Tim on June 21, at 8: Hello Tim, The information transmitted on just one page is much larger than any other source I found on the internet: Tim on June 7, at 2: Several weeks at a guess. Walter on June 18, at 7: Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

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