PLAYING THE PERCENTAGES

Having watched the second instalment of a documentary about Morecombe and Wise last night, I was struck how adept they were at adjusting to trends.

Anyone that survives in any kind of business for a length of time has to be able to move with the flow. Eric and Ernie managed that pretty well, ensuring longevity in an otherwise short-lived profession.

They correctly identified the need for change, but not change for its own sake, merely in order to avoid burn-out and to appear fresh and relevant despite the fact they were treading well-worn boards. What they were clever at was re-inventing the M&W brand without compromising their ideals.

Flexibility is important. Racing, or more specifically betting, is a movable feast. That is to say what is laid out on the table alters.

There is no such thing as a blueprint for success in betting, only an approximation of how to approach its problematical composure.

Most races are like traps set by masters of the perverse. In common with other pursuits, the only recommendation is for would-be punters to spend as much time as possible researching their art: in this case horses and the races they contest. (Sometimes concentrating on the right race is as important as the horses.)

To a degree you can never do enough work, but because you are not sitting a specialised hypothetical exam and the checklist and work schedule is potentially endless, any effective short cut is welcome.

In order to find a possible bet you first have to look at every race before you and start short listing and eliminating. That takes time. Sure, some races only require a cursory look before they can be safely discarded. But even then you can overlook a horse or a clue that is a potential game-changer; hence the often heard cry from professionals that there is simply too much racing.

Now I know this seems like a plaintive cry in the wilderness to those with proper jobs that pick the game up and down at will. After all, how can there be too much of a good thing? They will argue you can always by-pass races or meetings of limited interest. On the face of it this seems reasonable. The problem is, after a while of blanking a major part of the race program, unfamiliarity will catch up with you.

The professional will start to lose his awareness and consequentially his edge. Much of this edge comes from the amount of information and data a professional (or someone constantly exposed to the business) stores in his head.

If he had to look up every piece of form, every horse, every jockey and trainer involved, his work rate would slow to such a degree that he would quickly become ineffectual, going through the motions rather than reaching meaningful conclusions. I have often found myself in this position, where endless races become an indistinct mist of print that could just as well be random pages from Tolstoy’s tome, War And Peace.

I have even overlooked horses I had noted as being of interest next time, even though I have scanned the race they are due to run in. The name has floated before my eyes, unregistered in a brain stuck in neutral, only becoming significant when someone mentions it is a market-mover the next day, or I actually clock it in running.

Maybe I am getting too old. Or maybe, as M&W did, I need to review the way I work. Swinging the percentages in your favour has always been my mantra.

I believe that, to be successful, this applies to any business. Without creating an edge for yourself you end up being just another punter, funding those that know more or are better players than you are. Business is invariably cut throat.

I used to believe the way forward was to become a walking racing encyclopaedia. I was aware of all the relevant form lines. Even when using a formbook, I instantly knew where to look to obtain collateral form. These days I have taken my eye from the ball too often to the extent I feel in danger of overlooking salient factors. The less you keep abreast of any business, the more it begins to slip through your fingers. Sometimes all it takes to give yourself that all-important edge is a scrap of information.

Take Cue Card, whose next intended run is in the King George VI Chase at Kempton. You know Cue Card, the horse that made a fool of so many of us (excepting stalwart fan Alice Plunkett) at Haydock. He would not stay we asserted; not good enough in any event. Wrong on both counts. Alice’s blind faith, although poorly thought out (liking a horse and having a picture of him on your wall does not count) was rewarded. (Is that a serpent you hear hissing with derision on my shoulder?)

So now we know Cue Card stays. Also that in the Betfair Chase he beat the best chasers assembled in any one place seen so far this season. That means he must have every chance of consolidating that success at Kempton on Boxing Day.

Yes, and no… Random factor aside, there is one important piece in the Cue Card jigsaw that might go overlooked, particularly if those evaluating his claim to the big Christmas chase are still suffering from the affects of the previous day’s alcohol intake.

Cue Card has had seventeen races over hurdles and chases. All of them bar one were on left-handed courses. On the one occasion he was asked to race right-handed, he ran poorly. The one occasion? In last year’s King George at Kempton Park – this of course being a right-handed track.

To the intelligence operative, this promises to be a breakthrough piece of information. They have a saying in Intelligence: If it looks like a fish and smells like a fish – it probably is a fish.

Right now, with only assumption to draw on, I am inclined to believe Cue Card may be a fish. Whether he turns out to be one or not is to an extent immaterial; what matters is we have established the often overlooked component that can turn victory into defeat.

As a fish, we know his possible vulnerability before he swims upstream toward the waiting bear on the bank rather than afterwards. Armed with this information, those caring to back Cue Card do so with their eyes wide open.

They may be able to successfully address the possible drawback, securing a guarantee from the Tizzards (or someone close by) that it is purely coincidental that Cue Card’s form thus far has been restricted to left-handed tracks, and that his bad run last year at Kempton had nothing to do with the configuration of the course. In which case, they will possibly obtain a better price than they should receive as sceptical bookmakers (my point will not be lost on them) will factor this doubt in to their odds. As it stands, the above scenario (pro or con) is an ideal example of obtaining an edge.

I used to survive and flourish by looking for such perceived advantages. Dissecting racecards and being able to decipher the secret signals is an imperative tool for a form analyst. And being able to work round the complex nature of a race is vital. No two can ever claim to be the same – different pitfalls permanently exist ultimately forcing us to guess.

Recently I have been rethinking operational options. With so much betting variance available (betting in running, arbitrage in all its forms: betting and laying, backing every horse in the race to show a guaranteed profit, taking one price laying off at another), the market has shifted incredibly. You could argue the day of actually trying to pick winners is over.

What matters is being able to foresee market moves. To that end, many players do just that these days – concentrating all their efforts into merely playing. They zigzag their way through race after race. In effect they are the ones truly playing the percentage game.

Aided by various computer programs – sometimes known as robots – they may only attain minimal profit on each race, but revenues accrue until, added up at the end of trading, a healthy profit is returned. Those of us waiting for the perfect bet are left watching while the ship sails. But playing on a large number of races each day is not without considerable risk and requires a strong mindset and budget.

The percentage game is the one all businesses play to some extent. Assuming we adopt sound judgement to such speculation, the greater the number of punts we take, the higher our chances of overall success becomes.

This may sound strange, but look at the blue chip companies. The film industry basically adopts a scatter gun approach, confident that, say, out of every hundred films, ten will bomb; forty will show a small profit and forty a small loss. Those aren’t the films that concern them. The films that concern them – those that float their businesses – are the remaining ten percent that make the brilliant Gravity-style profits.

They are the films that finance the Ferraris and allow their shareholders to take long lunches along Hollywood Boulevard. But, although it might seem obvious in retrospect, attempting to identify the blockbusters from the turkeys when they are in the can is tricky.

By chucking all their options into one bin, film studios can sit back and let the winners and losers sort themselves out. One Gravity is all it takes to finance all the duds. Everything else takes care of itself. The same applies in the publishing and music business as well as the money markets.

When the auditing is finished, the bottom line percentage profit on turnover may seem small – perhaps no more than 10 percent on a normal year – a whopping 25 percent if you are Warner Bros and produced and distributed Gravity – meaning, converted to odds familiar to us, they are betting to odds of 1/10.

That figure puts most of us off. However you shake it, those are the kind of odds we shun. But there is a difference between striking an individual wager at such long odds-on and having a virtual guarantee of that figure being returned over a succession of transactions.

A turnover of £500,000 a year to make £50,000 doesn’t seem so bad when expressed in those terms. And of course there is always the chance of uncovering the golden calf.

Maybe letting the racing channels roll and placing one hand on the computer mouse is the way to go for those that fancy their chances. Rewards are high but dangers are manifold. Before contemplating such a course of action, dummy runs are required and even then you need to take into account what works in theory does not always work in practice. We can all talk a good fight!

However, as with Eric and Ernie when confronted with television as opposed to music hall and then with the emergence of satire, punters in this age find themselves in a new world.

Ten years on, the advent of Betfair, off-shore betting and of bookmakers apparently chopping off limbs to encourage us to bet, mean punters are no longer in the cold. Opportunities exist to play and lay at will. In some cases markets are formed twenty hours before the advertised time of even maiden events. The genie-in-the-lamp is no longer solely answerable to bookmakers; what used to be the province of their trading departments is now in the public domain.

The world continues to turn. It may seem to have tilted on its axis; in truth it has always been thus: a new generation needs to adapt to the possibilities.