Who wins the Ladbrokes King George VI Chase?
Cyrname probably? If you take the betting market as your guide.
It’s the sort of question I get asked by friends ahead of high profile races like the Grand National. I usually try and swerve the question. The pressure of losing someone else’s money is too much.
My point is, any of the 6 runners in the King George ‘could’ win it, one of them will, probably. However you have reached your selection and however advanced your criteria you’ve only done half the job.
Betting odds are just an expression of probability. So, after you’ve assessed the chances of each horse, the next part of the puzzle, is which horse has a chance greater than the odds you can obtain?
So many punters just complete the first part of the puzzle, it’s a fundamental flaw in their approach. You might as well just back every favourite and save yourself some time and effort. It’s the favourite for a reason, a consensus of everyone forming and backing their opinion on any race.
You won’t win, by that I mean you won’t win in the long term. You’ll back plenty of winners but you won’t be a winner.
“King George VI Chase” flickr photo by Carine06 https://flickr.com/photos/43555660@N00/8315710432 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
Compiling 'tissue' prices
Compiling your own tissue prices is a practice to develop. While your view that forms your prices will be subjective and a reflection of your selection process. It’ll allow you to benchmark your perception of the odds against the market.
Ideally, compile your tissue prices without looking at the betting market beforehand. That way you’ll not be influenced by how the horses have been priced up by the market. You’ll be surprised by how sometimes your opinion differs drastically from the odds available. I always then recheck my analysis to make sure I haven’t missed a key piece of info and made a glaring error.
If your then happy and you’ve priced something up significantly shorter than the odds available then you are looking at a potential value bet.
It takes practice, but you’ll start to add a critical part to your betting strategy, highlighting value bets.
Importantly it will stop you making bad value bets. You’ll start to think twice about backing horses that you make a 2/1 shot yet the market has the horse at even money.
King George VI tissue prices
Here are my tissue prices for the King George Chase and the current best prices available. I price up my tissue to 100%, the betting market will be anything up to 2% per runner over 100%.
The King George best prices available are currently to 104%.
TISSUE PRICE % CHANCE CURRENT BEST PRICE
CYRNAME 11/8 42% 6/4
LOSTINTRANSLATION 9/2 18% 2/1
CLAN DES OBEAUX 4/1 20% 11/2
FOOTPAD 12/1 8% 11/1
THISTLECRACK 9/1 10% 18/1
ASO 48/1 2% 66/1
Total book 100% 100% 104%
So, I agree with the market as to Cyrname’s chance, though there’s little value against my assessment in the current 6/4. It’s not inconceivable that he could drift, if he were to get to 2/1 then that would be interesting.
I’m against the market on Lostintranslation, he’s of no interest to me at the current best priced 2/1. Similarly Footpad.
Clan Des Obeaux, Thistlecrack and outsider Aso I have shorter than the market and worth a deeper look.
'Who wins the King George"?
So next time someone asks you “who wins”, or even better gives you a tip and tells you who is going to win.
Respond by asking them, ‘what’s the minimum price you would take on the horse”? You’ll learn a lot about their credibility from the answer.
