[00:00] So during a recent race meeting, something really unusual happened I am Maximus, uh, Brian absolutely whopping the biggest bed we've ever laid. So at first glance, you could write this off as just a bit of hype.
[00:16] But there was an interesting aspect to this particular little interview that was done because it exploded all over the internet on the particular day. of being able to profit from this.
[00:30] But also, it tells you a lot about what goes on at a race course. we showed, you can actually see that what's happening is they're
[00:47] Go up and down the country on any particular day, and you will find an OnCourse bookmaker making up prices for any of the horses within that Now, most of these bookmakers will do relatively small amounts of
[01:02] money, but at the big meetings, they can take very large bets because. A lot of these bookmakers also have offices and can do bets online, and So it's not impossible that somebody can walk up, get a price and place
[01:16] a bet, which will then funnel all the way back to head office. You go into a race course, you have your fives and your tenors. However, that's not completely the whole story.
[01:34] So in days of old, if you went on course to uh, place a bet, you would find All of the bookmakers would communicate with each other using a form of sign language to tell each other what horse was available at what odds, and they
[01:49] the pricing for that particular market. It was all done on course and then communicated typically by phone. how all of the prices were set.
[02:05] The odds on Willy or WTI are now a far cry from the opening 20 to one or Some tobar in the early stages is holiday. The odds are down.
[02:20] Others can watch the race. Now if you actually look at what happens nowadays, of course, you And as a consequence, uh, the source of that information and the way that a market
[02:39] And in fact, the market sort of gets driven the other way round Nowadays, when betting exchanges were born, they began to become the arbiter. Of price and the central value within the market.
[02:54] And of course, if you were mispriced on course, then you could get picked off by somebody that would be able to lay off a bet on the exchange. So all of a sudden this ecosystem developed around that whereby bookmakers
[03:07] actually read the prices of the exchange, see what was going on, and then that And this was a way of them reducing the amount of risk.
[03:19] communicate with other bookmakers. All they would do is add their little bit of margin on top of that. So yeah, the market shifted from being on course, driving the prices and
[03:33] created pretty much off course and being driven down to the bookmaker. So we've learned already that pricing is now being driven offsite and
[03:47] down to the course where bookmakers are throwing their margin on. and that is that when we look, you know, one of the best ways of doing Uh, in action because if you go to a race course, what you'll find is loads
[04:02] of punters queuing up to place bets in between the races, and there'll be a And somebody will be stood there accepting all of the bets, and they will give you But at that point, if you go round the back of the board, you will often
[04:18] find somebody else there and they will be sitting on a laptop looking at the entire market, seeing how many bets that they've actually taken. Um, and they will be entering all of that information in using live
[04:32] And if they have, uh, a risk within the book that is just too large to bear, then Onto an exchange, and that's the way that the modern betting market works.
[04:48] On course bookmakers can stand all of the liabilities that they have in the book, off and reduce their overall liability. If you want some really deep insight into exactly how this works, then
[05:03] I suggest you check out Simon Knot, who does a variety of things for And they'll often follow star sports around, especially at big meetings. have on any particular race, if they've taken any, um, large bets and so on.
[05:20] Deep insight into exactly what goes on at each individual meeting. And you know, it's great credit to Simon and Star Sports for allowing And if you want to see this unfold at any particular meeting, very
[05:36] often you'll find Simon not in Star Sports, giving you a running dial. I am Maximus, uh, Brian absolutely whopping the biggest bed we've ever laid. What is a Whopper?
[05:49] Johnny said. A hundred thousand at eight to one an I am maximum. That's the biggest bed we've ever laid by a mile.
[06:03] I don't intend, we don't intend standard for 800,000 at the same time. So the interview that ITB racing did, um, was not only a. High profile
[06:15] It was the Grand National, and what we learned from the interview was that Fitz Dares had actually taken a 100,000 pound bed at eight to one on I am Maximus
[06:27] So now that you've got a little bit more knowledge, what do you think you Because you obviously don't have to stand to the bet if you don't want to. thousand pound, but I will take a tenor.
[06:43] decided to take the 100,000 pound bet. They would've had a massive loss if I Maximus went on to win, which it did.
[06:59] So if you put yourself in. Would you have just stood that bet and stood to lose a very Or would you have hedged that position and reduced your liability on to the exchange?
[07:16] Because that gives you an insight as to what they had to face, but also it Uh, bookmakers would hedge on an exchange. If you're gonna stand a massive liability, it's probably better to get rid of some
[07:29] of that risk at some particular point in time, and that is exactly what they did. So in every race I've ever traded, I always capture data, and that is so I can
[07:41] there anything that I missed, and so on. And this is a chart of the Grand National and more specifically, I am Maximus. Uh, which was the horse that this bookmaker laid a hundred
[07:56] So just the same way that you would do if you were hedging, if you were arbing matched, betting, whatever you're doing, if you back something at So if the bookmaker has laid iron Maximus for a hundred thousand pounds
[08:13] to hedge that position somewhat, they're gonna have to back it. The line is showing the last traded price. So you can see it's 10 and a half here, blipped up to 11, 10 and a half.
[08:25] This is sort of a typical grand national market. And underneath you can see the volume here. On I am Maximus, so you can see 300,000 pound and you can see the money's
[08:40] Again, nothing unexpected and you can see it beginning to rise as That's nothing unexpected. before the start of the race.
[08:54] So bearing in mind that the bookmaker has laid a hundred thousand pound, some of that a hundred thousand pound. So you tell me what happened to the price of I. A Maximus.
[09:08] begin to see what happens to the price, activity and the volume. So can you see that at around, uh, 1550, uh, we started to see a lot of
[09:20] heavy backing and of course the volume went shooting up because of that. And you can see the price on I Maximus started to come in. a temporary period here where.
[09:34] Um, but you can see that the heavy backing continued right and to the off. Um, the amount of money available on I Maximus was getting taken and,
[09:46] uh, every single bit of money that was available was getting back. on within this particular market. minutes before the start of the race.
[10:00] nine, and then eight, seven. But the backing then continues again, seven, six, and with slightly
[10:15] And then the race actually goes in play. We know it's backing because it's pulling the price in. Somebody is taking out all of the prices on the backside of the market
[10:31] And if it was somebody that was hedging, then they would be attempting to hedge a lay bed, which is exactly the situation that we saw. of showed their hand and a lot of the time, uh, on the Grand National, you
[10:48] the back of it knowing full well that. There's very few people that would be able to stand a hundred thousand pound bet into the future, and that was where your opportunity lays because you could have
[11:05] obviously backed it at a much higher price, laid it off at a much lower price, and netted the profit between the two. One is a lot of people don't realize that that's how the OnCourse market works.
[11:17] Now those prices are probably coming from the exchange with a better margin Um, but the thing that people don't realize is that actually if you But a lot of bookmakers do actually lets their bets stand because
[11:32] They'll take a view on whether they think a favorite. And they can, over the long term, make a lot more money that way than But when they place a, somebody places a large bed, then obviously that's probably
[11:47] And if you keep your eyes and ears open and you see something like this happening, then if they do start to hedge it on the exchange, you will see exactly the situation that we saw with I Maximus at the Grand National.
[12:01] And from a trading perspective, that means that you can actively profit from it. I did profit from it. I think they left it a little bit late to feed that money into the
[12:16] Uh, when you saw this price began to move, you could feel it within the market. you see a set of gambles occurring, um, then this is very often what
[12:30] And if you know that, then you can profit from it. Two.