Why Extra Bets in a Race Wreck Your Profit

Recorded July 2025 for The Grind Ep 1: My Worst Month in Years. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

Most punters do not lose because their best selection is wrong. They lose because they cannot help backing the next one along with it. I keep records on every selection I rate in a race, not just the top one, and when I line those records up side by side the picture is very clear. Selection one is the one that returns a profit. Everything below it does not.

What the numbers actually show

Selection two is showing a loss of 6.4% off 1,800 bets. Selection three is showing a 10% loss off 1,799 bets. Selection four is showing a loss of 6.4% off 1,600 bets, and that sample is a bit lower because there are races where I do not have a fourth selection at all. Those are not small samples. They are big enough to tell you something real about where the value sits.

The point is not that selection two or three are bad horses. They win races. They are the ones that beat my top pick often enough to sting. But over a long run of bets they do not pay their way. The edge lives in the top selection, and it thins out very quickly after that.

Why saver bets drag you back

This is the trap I see people fall into. Their top selection, the biggest overlay, is showing them a profit. Then they add the second pick as a bit of insurance, and maybe the third as a saver, and all that extra turnover is running at a loss. The profit from the good bet gets eaten by the bets around it. A punter who should be in front ends up square, or worse, ends up a losing punter while still picking winners.

It feels safe at the time. You cover more of the race, you cash more often, and it hurts less when the top pick gets beaten. But you are not being paid for that comfort. You are paying for it out of the one part of your betting that actually works.

The market has changed

Twenty years ago I used to back three or four horses a race. That was fine then. The markets are different now. With the high percentage markets we have these days, you simply cannot spread across a race the way you once could and expect the maths to hold up. The room that used to be there is gone.

So now it is usually one bet. Sometimes two. There was a race on a Saturday where I backed four horses, but they were all longer ones out of the market, not a top pick with savers stacked underneath it. That is a different kind of bet with a different reason behind it. It is the exception, not the pattern.

Have a look at your own records and split them by selection rank. Work out what your top pick has done on its own, then work out what the extras have done. If the answer looks anything like mine, the fix is to stop having the extra bets.

Every race on the card, rated, with Kingsley's selections and the speed maps behind them. Your first day is free, no card needed.

More from Kingsley

• "Did You Let Emotion Take Over in the Melbourne Cup?"
• How Race Pressure and Cruising Metrics Find Winners
• How Much Value Do You Need Before Laying a Horse?

From the full video: The Grind Ep 1: My Worst Month in Years

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