Place betting has to be the worst value bet you can have. Here’s why. Each place dividend is affected by rounding down. When you purchase any item, the law says that your purchase price is rounded up or down to the nearest five cents, so an item that costs, say $1.97, is yours for $1.95 but at $1.98 the price is $2.00. Now this is equitable. Some are up and some are down but the average will be the same.

When betting on the TAB, the only way is down and not to five cents but to ten cents, so a dividend of $1.99 becomes $1.90. Put in perspective, this represents a “tax” of 9% with the average being near enough to 5%. This rounding down is enshrined in legislation in every State of Australia and why not? The Government makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per day from this and most punters are none the wiser.

The issue was raised with Trades Practices by one of our Winform Members and their response was in effect “they are the rules and if you don’t wish to accept it you don’t have to bet." It simply means that the punters of Australia don’t have a voice.

Fortunately, we now have the option of betting with IAS for the place at Super Price which pays a 5% bonus on the UNITAB place dividend. In effect, this does two things. Firstly, it erases the effect of rounding down. Secondly, it means that your place bet doesn’t effect the place pool, which these days can be very low.

In a recent country race, the place pool was just over $7,000. From this you can take away at least 15% (the TAB percentage), $1050, and you now have just $5950 which is split in three, about $2,000 for each placegetter. If your selection already has $1,000 on it the dividend will be $2.00. Have another $100 on it and now only $28 of this is added to the pool for this horse so now we have $2028 and $1100 in bets. The dividend is now $1.84. But wait. We now have a rounding down and the final declared dividend is $1.80, so our $100 bet has reduced the profit on our bet by 20%.

Placing the bet on IAS, the dividend stays at $2.00 with a 5% bonus (on profit) so $2.05. This is a 31% increase in profit for the same bet.

Of course it’s not as simple as that because there are always other forces in play with other punters betting other horses but with the potential to get 30% better returns from your place bets you now have a very good chance of making a profit. Favourites make an all time loss for the place of just 8%. With just a modest increase by using IAS super price and judicial pruning, that loss could be reversed, and a small profit returned, especially with the use of a good staking plan.

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