Why Is Every Bet Just an Edge and Not a Moral?

Kingsley on SEN radio with racing.com. Segment courtesy of SEN x racing.com.

Everything is just an edge at the end of the day. We look at a race and think this is a moral, this one cannot get beaten. But everything can get beaten. Every bet you have is an edge over the true price, and that edge might be big or it might be tiny. Once you accept that, the whole thing gets easier to handle, because you stop expecting any single bet to do something it was never going to do.

What an edge actually looks like

An edge can be ten per cent, twenty per cent, thirty per cent. It can also be one or two or three per cent, which is often what you are getting on a weekend. In practice that means you might be taking six dollars about something whose true chance is four dollars sixty. Or you take two dollars about something whose true chance is a dollar seventy. That is the game. You are never really going to find scenarios where you are getting three dollars about a dollar fifty chance. The bookies just do not allow it. So the edges are usually smaller than people imagine, and they only show up over a lot of bets.

Why most of my bets lose

Around eighty per cent of my bets lose. That number surprises people, but it follows directly from what an edge is. A small edge over the true price does not make a horse likely to win. It makes the bet worth having. Because of that, staking becomes really important. If you get the staking wrong, the edge never gets a chance to show itself. And you have to view each one as just another bet. Not the bet. Not the one that has to land.

Do not get emotionally attached

The trouble starts when you decide you love a selection. You convince yourself it is going to win, and then it gets beaten, or you get unlucky, and you take it personally. That is the part to work on. Luck has a beautiful way of evening out in the end. Good luck, bad luck, good luck, bad luck. We tend to focus on the negative. How unlucky was I, how unlucky was I. The truth is we forget the good luck and remember the bad luck, then get down on ourselves too much over it.

What actually decides where you finish

If you get the other things right, you finish in front. Your selection process. Your staking. The odds you are taking, which are extremely important. Those are the parts you control. The result of any one race is not one of them. Luck sits on top of all of it and washes out over time, provided the work underneath is sound.

So the next time you are certain about something, sit with the idea that it is just an edge. Size your bet accordingly, take the odds that make it worth having, and move on to the next one without carrying the last result with you.

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More from Kingsley

• "Should You Feed the Market Back Into Your Own Ratings?"
• "How Do You Beat a Market That's Already Been Knocked Into Shape?"
• "Is There Any Value Left in Futures Markets?"

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