All racing venues are not equal. In my book My Favourite Book, which analyses over 50,000 favourites, it is clear that some venues are good betting venues for backing favourites and yet other venues are not.

Caulfield, for example, has a reputation as being a punters graveyard with the lowest winning strike rate of favourites almost anywhere. Newcastle, on the other hand, produces a much higher strike rate of winning favourites.

The same philosophy can be applied to almost any category of selection. Have you ever considered where the best place is for you to invest your money? Are there specific tracks where you always seem to do well?

Winform Ratings have an excellent record at Cessnock. Not only can you find a greater percentage of winners there but the prices are often above average.

In our visit to the Jungle Juice Cup in July, we saw many longshot winners and we also found that local form is best as the Cessnock track is unique with both an uphill and a downhill run which tests a lot of horses. In previous issues we listed the strike rate of Winform rated horses at every venue across Australia along with average dividends. We have analysed the data base further to come up with the following observations based on looking at the top rated horse only.

Then we eliminated all the tracks where there was an insignificant strike rate or a consistently low dividend. Then we got the following results (and this is after analysing years of data).


Note: The profit percentage represents the category of those races.

Saturday includes all Saturday races both Metro/Provincial and Country.

If you chose to bet just the weekend you would get 56.8% of the available profit. Obviously the more days and venues you bet the more profit you make. In addition, if you bet say Metropolitan races only your profit on turnover may be higher because there are more betting options and bigger pools to bet into. On the other hand the profit achieved is a lot less than expected at 19% of profit on 32% of available races. It suggests that longshots are harder to find at Metropolitan venues. Overall, the average dividend of winners was $5.62 and making a handy 10%+ profit which for a full year produced $85,000 profit for $100 bets. And yes there were some long losing runs. In the end it is what you can put in your pocket that counts.

The majority of punters persist in the idea that you should stick to betting Metropolitan venues and for all the right reasons but our survey does show that this is clearly not the best option. At least if you do back a winner all your mates have probably heard of it even if you haven’t made as much profit.

Professional punters have a different philosophy. Anyhow, it’s up to you to decide. Analyse where you do best and are happiest. Some punters have said to me “I want to see my money go around so I only bet at venues with good coverage” and fair enough. I also get “I’d rather back a $10 shot with a chance than a short priced favourite that wins.” My pocket doesn’t agree but that’s the difference between a mug punter and a professional. For some it is purely recreation and that’s fine if you can afford it.