"Is Strike Rate or Return on Turnover More Important?"

Recorded October 2025 for Losing Is a Gift: Why Punters Must Embrace the Pain. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

The numbers that made me stop and look

I broke my own bets into groups and compared them. The Golden Bullets won at a 27 per cent strike rate. The backs, of which there were four times as many, won at 23 per cent and returned 5.5 per cent profit on turnover. Then there are the good roughies. Three hundred and thirty one bets, only 7.8 per cent winners, and 19.4 per cent profit on turnover. The group that won least often returned the most. That is worth sitting with for a moment, because it goes against how most people judge a punter.

Strike rate is the easiest number to fake

Anyone can tip winners. The thing that wins most often is the favourite. If you want a long list of winners next to your name, back odds-on favourites and you will get one. You will look very good on paper. You will not necessarily be in front. That is the whole point. A high strike rate tells you how often you were right. It tells you nothing about whether being right was worth anything.

So when someone leads with a strike rate, the first question I ask is what they were getting paid to be right. A 27 per cent strike rate is very good. So is 23 per cent. But 7.8 per cent with a 19 per cent return on turnover is doing more work for me than either of them, because every unit that went through those bets came back with more attached.

Return on turnover is the number that matters

Return on turnover is the one I keep coming back to. If you can lift that number, you would rather have fewer, better bets and win less often than have more bets and win more often. That is the trade most punters refuse to make, because losing runs feel bad and a long list of winners feels good. Feelings are not the scoreboard.

The good roughies lose far more often than they win. That is built into the price. You have to be comfortable sitting through stretches where nothing lands, because the maths only shows up over a decent sample. Three hundred and thirty one bets is enough to start seeing the shape of it. Thirty bets is not.

We are trying to make money, not tip winners

That is the line I keep returning to. We are not trying to tip winners. We are trying to make money. Those two goals pull in different directions more often than people realise. Chasing winners pushes you toward the short end of the market, where everyone else already is and where there is rarely anything left on the table. Chasing value pushes you out to places where you will be wrong most of the time, and paid properly on the days you are not.

It all comes back to value. My own process has shifted over time as I have worked through this, and the shift has been toward caring less about how often I am right and more about what I am getting when I am.

If you track your own betting, add return on turnover next to your strike rate and look at them side by side. You may find the group you are proudest of is not the group doing the work.

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From the full video: Losing Is a Gift: Why Punters Must Embrace the Pain | The Grind Ep.10

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