Back in the old days, most successful professional punters were in attendance on the actual racecourse itself. With the abolition of betting tax and the advent of the betting exchanges, this is no longer necessary. There are many roads that lead to Rome in the realm of successful professional punting and taking on the favourites is one of them.

Many punters who are new to the betting exchanges start out by laying big outsiders in the belief that it is “stealing money” because they “have no chance”. This tactic works for a while as by sheer definition, most long priced horses lose. The problem with this tactic for the Layer is that the prices for longer priced horses on the betting exchanges are substantially higher than what they are on track or what the theoretically correct price of the horse should be for that matter.

The end result is that one or two large priced horses go in as they inevitably will and the punter is swiftly wiped out. A much safer tactic and one used by many exchange pro’s is to LAY carefully selected favourites. Horses at the top end of the market will be very similar in price to the prices that are being offered in the offices and on track. This means that the punter is not at such a grave disadvantage if they blindly Layed the favourite as they would be if they blindly Layed the outsider.

I always prefer to LAY favourites that are shorter than 3.00 because the penalty is not as severe if you are wrong. But you could easily reduce that still further if you liked. I also look for other strong contenders in the race as well. This means that I will not lay the favourite if I believe that there is no other horse that is capable of winning.

So just what do I look for when I oppose favourites. Well there is a famous saying in horse racing that goes “never expect a horse to win when it is doing something for the first time”. If you continually bet that an event will happen for the first time then you have no place in gambling. You need to go with the trends and go with the PROBABILITIES not the POSSIBILITIES.

Generally I look to see if a horse is racing over a certain distance for the first time, wearing blinkers for the first time, never raced at all, first race after moving up in class, first time over current going, first time over surface etc etc. The list is a very long one but hopefully the idea is coming across. Laying the favourite based on only one of these factors is a bit flimsy. But if you were to find two, three or even four of these big minus points against the horse then a possible lay is starting to present itself.