Horse Racing Tips and Racing Systems That Work…At least some of the time anyway!

3 Great Racing Tips From Barry Hills

By on Oct 5, 2010 in Aida Racing |

I read last month in the Racing Post Newspaper some extracts from the trainer Barry Hill’s Biography ‘Frankincense and More’. One of the headlines struck a chord with me, it was…

“Never bet odds-on, never back each-way and don’t be frightened of a long price”

I think that is excellent advice. Making money consistently backing horses is not an easy thing to do in fact sometimes it seems damn near impossible. Having some rules to stick to is a very good idea and I feel the three put forward there by Barry Hills are three very good ones.

  1. Never bet odds-on
  2. Never back each-way
  3. Don’t be frightened of a long price

Let’s take them one at a time.

1. There are many people who back odds-on and odds-on shots do of course win quite a lot of the time. However before the race for most punters it is not as easy to spot that odds-0n winner before the off.

Betting odds-on means you are risking more money than you stand to win. As I am writing this entry I have just seen ‘Picture Editor’ win a Leicester at 1/14 on, meaning £14 on to win just £1.

On the form the horse was entitled to win easily and he certainly did but 1/14 on, that is a crazy price to go chancing your money on. Ok so maybe it wasn’t too much of a risk, but the horse is only a 2 year old so not much more than a baby. The horse had also only raced once before and all manner of things could have happened in the race so the risk I feel was not worth taking.

This is at the far end of the scale on the prices and as I said the horse was entitled to win on his first win last month but other odds-on horses are for me a lot harder to fancy.

Horses are not machines, they can spook at anything you even see them swerving badly off course sometimes so to risk more money than you stand to gain does not make sense to me.

2. Each-Way betting probably has as many people in favour of it as it has against it. Personally while I do occasionally back each way I much prefer to back two horses in the same race instead.

When you back each-way say at 20/1 for example you have half of your stake to win at 20/1 and the other half goes on at either 1/4 or 1/5 of the odds, so either 5/1 or 4/1 as the case may be.

If you horse comes 2nd by even a nose your win bet is of course lost and you will only get either 5/1 or 4/1 so for place. So when you take off your win potion of your bet you are only really getting 4/1 or 3/1 and that is on a 20/1 shot that just got pipped on the line!

The bookmakers don’t do anyone any favours, why would they? they are in business after all.

I know people who like to back each-way at 5/1 and then if the horse finished placed they have not lost anything. But if the horse finished unplaced they have lost both sides of the bet the win and the place.

There are of course horses that might be 11/2 for example where you feel they have a great chance of winning and really can’t see them finishing out of the first three, which is great but in my experience there are not too many occasions when you can be so sure.

In general betting each-way is poor value and believe me ‘Value’ is one of the keys to making consistent profits in horse racing.

3. How many times do you look at the days results and see 16/1, 20/1, 25/1, 33/1 and even 66/1 winners? There are usually winners at these kinds of prices every day, they are not so easy to spot before hand mind you, but horses at longer prices do win too.

If you fancy a horse at a longer price don’t be frightened to back it. I marked one off last month at 33/1, on that occasion I decided against it as the horse was not proven at the distance, the horse won at 33/1 by over 2 lengths. I was kicking myself when I found out.

You don’t need many 33/1 winners in a month to put you in profit, but you might need an awful lot more odds-on shots and each-way placed horses to get even close to it.