Exotic bets make value picks pay

After a lengthy search for a successful exotics punter who was willing to share his knowledge with us, I am happy to say that just last week we were granted an interview with John, a smart punter from near Geelong who uses exotics as his primary bet type. We learned that John left school before completing his VCE but admitted to having a solid understanding of mathematics and in particular statistics and probability. Although he didn't divulge all the details of his betting methods, what he did outline to us provides an interesting insight into how punters can make exotic bets pay.

Assessing races for value

John indicated that his key skill is identifying value better than the market. Unlike a lot of other value punters, he chooses exotic bets to leverage that capability. When I asked him why he preferred using exotics compared to the win and place markets he smiled and said For me it pays better. He went on to explain his view that the exotic pools had more less informed bets in them which created greater value compared to fixed odds markets.

He assesses each race and creates his own book. This is the bit you need to get right, otherwise the rest doesn't work he said. It's also the most labour intensive part of the process taking John and his associates many hours to complete for a single race meeting. At the end of that process he has created his own odds for each runner in each race that he assesses.

 

The exotic betting framework

The strategy behind the professional punter's exotics betting approach lies in getting the best return from the value he identifies in the market. The Geelong punter has analysed exotic results over many years and has noted that value identified in the fixed odds win bet market is typically multiplied in the exotics markets.

After the book is set John focuses on picking his exotic combinations and their stakes. He explained his approach here by using trifecta examples, but indicated that they were only one of the exotic bet types that he uses.

Each runner's market odds and assessed odds drives two indicators for him:

• Value indicator - calculated by taking the difference between current market odds and John's assessed odds and representing it as a percentage. For example if a horse's current odds are $8 and John assesses it as a $5 chance then the indicator is calculated as the difference ($8 - $5) divided by the market odds i.e. $3/$8 = $37%

• Winning chance indicator - John categorises each horse according to his own assessed odds to determine its chance of winning.

These two indicators are plotted on his Exotic Bet Decision Making Chart

The horse outlined in the example above is assessed as a $5 chance and represents over $25% and therefore gets rated as an Extremely Strong value opportunity.

The exotic punter was a little guarded about how he dealt with things from here. I learned that he takes multiple combinations and uses stronger value opportunities in more combinations compared to lower value opportunities. He indicated.

• Extreme value - saturate the combinations
• Very strong - somewhat saturate the combinations
• Strong - are included sparingly
• Fair - limited inclusion
• Weak - rarely included

 

Exotic combinations

If you play enough exotic combinations you're going to crack trifecta's fairly regularly. The trick is to ensure your yield is high enough each time to make a profit.

John's ability to maintain a successful run through exotic betting comes from his saturation of genuine value opportunities throughout his combinations. These chances drive higher returns which provides greater profits.

There were a few questions left unanswered however. One in particular was how he assesses value when the trifecta market is constantly fluctuating. I just got a smile and raised eye-brows to that one.

He is a customer to each of the major totalisators and does not have a preference for one over the other.

He is now in his seventh year as a full-time punting professional, and although he does dabble in win betting markets, his key focus is exotics, as it has proven to be the major contributor towards his success.

Abe Shelbourne