| By :
David Duffield
Last week's two horse race in country Victoria was an excellent example of the TAB takeout and the 'edge' you need to beat in order to be a winning punter. Race 4 at Warrnambool was reduced to a two horse field and the tote odds on those runners were:
$1.30 and $2.30 (Vic TAB)
$1.40 and $2.10 (NSW TAB)
$1.60 and $1.80 (Uni TAB) That's an 18% to 20% takeout and one that is exacerbated by the TAB's ridiculous rounding down policy. One example is that a horse that should be $1.39 after the TAB's 16% deduction actually gets rounded down to $1.30. This double deduction actually makes a huge percentage difference and means the tote is uncompetitive at the short end of the market. With racing markets of 118% to 120% no wonder that sports betting's share of the gambling dollar is increasing so rapidly. You can normally get least $1.90 in sporting head-to-head match-ups so effectively the 'price' to bet on sports is far, far cheaper than racing. As a general rule it is far easier to bet into a 105% market than into 118% to 120% and another advantage of sports betting is just how simple it is to understand and how easy it is to follow. If you are still stuck in the stone ages and a TAB only punter you need to seriously question whether you are fair dinkum about winning. Why agree to pay so much more when the exact product is available for a far cheaper price in the shop next door? When talking to fellow punters you can often gauge their success simply by asking who they bet with. A normal progression in the evolution of a punter (and you could say the sliding scale of success) is a timeline such as this:
(1) TAB only punter
(2) First corporate bookmaker account
(3) Add additional corporate accounts and a Dynamic Odds membership
(4) Open a Betfair account
(5) Learn to lay and trade on Betfair Every one of those steps takes you closer to your goal of being a winning punter. If you are stuck at stage one or two then you really need to make the effort to progress. Open up accounts with the corporate bookies and enjoy better dividends. Get to the last two stages and understand exactly how to utilize Betfair and you only have a very small edge against you (just a few per cent) before you start winning. If you are still betting solely with the TAB you deserve to lose. That may sound a little harsh, but since when does being lazy, naive and complacent deserve to be rewarded?
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