Why Dobbing Is My Favourite Betfair Strategy (And How You Can Use It Too)

In this episode, I dive into my all-time favourite horse racing strategy on Betfair: Dobbing—aka Double or Bust.

I’ll walk you through:

• What Dobbing actually is (in simple terms)
• Why it works so well—even if your horse doesn't win
• The exact traits I look for when picking a Dob trade
• And why this strategy has stood the test of time for me

Whether you’re new to Betfair or an experienced trader looking for more structure, this episode will show you why Dobbing might be the most under-rated, data-friendly edge in horse racing trading.

👉 If you want to see how I find my Dobs, head over to LightSpeedStats.com

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Transcript

Martin [00:00:00]:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Lightspeed Stats horse racing podcast where we talk about Betfair trading on horse racing. And basically our aim is to make you a better trader on Betfair and to make your horse profits much, much higher. Today I've got a really exciting podcast because I'm going to talk about my favorite horse racing strategy. Now, if you missed episode one of this podcast, go back and listen to it. That was kind of the opening gambit for us, if you like. And that actually explains why we have set up this podcast dedicated to horse racing trading on the Betfair exchange. But one question I get asked all the time is, what's my favorite horse racing strategy? And I think the reason for this is that as a horse racing trader, there's loads and loads of different strategies you can use. Now, a lot of horse racing traders come in and they start with scalping strategies.

Martin [00:00:55]:
They try and scalp the markets pre race. Never been a massive fan of that, although I do hear that some people do really well at it. When I tried to do it, I found it was very much a case of fastest finger first. And I thought it was very difficult actually to have an edge on the market where I've always managed to have an edge on the Betfair trading market in general has actually been trying to spot markets where the prices are just flat wrong, rather than trying to take advantage of one tick here and there. And, and you know, I mean, anyone who's followed the Betfair trading community football side of things will know how successful Ryan's been with his one tick strategy on the big football matches. So, you know, I'm certainly not one to say that there's anything wrong with those. There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat. But the horse racing strategy I absolutely love is called dobbing.

Martin [00:01:47]:
Okay. Which stands for double or bust, as in dobbins. And then, well, when you're doing it, I guess we add in on the end because it's a doing word. But if you've been trading for a while, I'm sure you've heard of the term dobbing. If you haven't, I'm going to explain it a little bit more as well so you'll get the hang of it. Don't worry. Because I think the name double or bust, it sounds a bit aggressive or risky, but actually I think this is actually one of the safest trading strategies on Betfair. And I know that kind of sounds weird given its name, but I think perhaps the name actually has negative connotations that it doesn't deserve because trust me, done right, it's one of the most consistent data friendly approaches there is.

Martin [00:02:32]:
So today's episode I'm going to break down what dobbing actually is, why it works, what I look for in a good dob trade, and most importantly, why this strategy is my go to when I want a clear edge in the horse racing trading markets. So let's get into it. Dobbing stands for double or bust. Like I've mentioned, the concept is very simple. You back a horse before the race starts, you then lay it in play at half the price. If the horse's price hits that point during the race, you green up for a profit. Well, if it doesn't, you take the loss. Okay.

Martin [00:03:08]:
Hence the word double or bust. If you're betting £10 on, on a dob. Yeah. And you do it correctly, you are either gonna make £10 or lose £10. So you will double your money from £10 to 20 or you will go bust. Well, effectively you're just losing one stake here. So I guess the busting isn't really that helpful cause you're certainly not going bust. You definitely won't be breaking a bankroll using this strategy, especially if you're using proper bankroll techniques.

Martin [00:03:37]:
By the way, I've done an article on betfairtradingcommunity.com that I'd recommend everyone reads. It's not sports specific, so it work on football horses. If you just search bankroll and bet staking betfair trading community and it will come up and you'll be able to read the article. I think that's probably over the years been the article I've written and I've written so many, but the one that has helped people the most because I still get emails to this day from people thanking me, telling me that I have saved them thousands of pounds. You know, and there's nothing I like more. You know, a bit of a tangent here, but there's nothing I like more than hearing that. Because what it means is that someone who is losing money has now got a sensible way to stake and is either breaking even or making a profit or just losing a lot less money than they were. And you know, it's funny because you could say, let's say you go, well, someone's using this bankroll strategy and they're now they're still losing.

Martin [00:04:32]:
They're only losing a little bit compared to what they were. That does make a massive difference to people's lives. And obviously, you know, we're striving here for profit. We, we don't want to be making losses, but there's a difference between losing ten pounds a month and losing ten grand. Seriously, it can be life changing for you. If you really want help with your bankroll and bet staking, I really recommend you go and search out that article and read it thoroughly. Okay? Now, I think that with dobbing, going back to dobbing, it does sound a bit binary, right? Either win or you lose. And you win the same amount if you win and you lose the same amount if you lose.

Martin [00:05:11]:
But here's the thing, we're not just guessing, okay? And I think this is where the negative connotations to the phrase double or bust come about. Usually you'd be doing it on, say the toss of a coin where your odds are literally 50, 50. You've got no edge on the market. You might be doing it on the casino where you've definitely not got an edge in the casino games. Maybe on the roulette wheel going for red or black. And I think that it's important to remember, like with any kind of betfair trading, we're not guessing, certainly not guessing in the traditional sense of the word, where it's just like, we're just gonna have a guess. If you wanna, you could, you could use the word guessing and say it's an educated guess. Okay.

Martin [00:05:54]:
You know when people used to, you know, watch who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I've not seen the show for a long time. Eric Clarkson does it. I don't know if he still does it, but he was doing, I see all three of those episodes and they were quite good. But I remember that it used to be you would have an educated guess. Well, it's not this and this. And I'm thinking that's what betfair trading is. You're using your knowledge, you're using data, using software in the case of lightspeed stats.com to give you a leg up on the market. You are actually having a much more educated guess than someone who's just betting because they like the name of the horse or they like the colors the jockey is wearing.

Martin [00:06:31]:
Okay? They're using data and patterns to find horses that consistently hit that 50% price drop in play, even if they don't win. Now you can look on the lightspeedstats.com website software and if you're not a member, go over there, sign up, at least get on the email list. We've got loads of good free stuff that we send out. But if you want to Sign up for the membership and get access to the software. I highly recommend trying it out. It's 50% off the first month's price and there's no real reason not to do it. Now. It's at such a cheap price to try out, but you can go onto the race cards and check the dobbing percentages of the horses running that day.

Martin [00:07:14]:
And I find that massively helpful. Okay. Because you're using data and patterns. And for me, that's what makes dobbing so powerful. It rewards research, structure and discipline. Okay, now I want to give a couple of little tips before I get onto my next point about this. Okay, let's say you're looking because there's a lot of things. There's a lot of people out there that will do podcast videos, but they won't really tell you what is what works.

Martin [00:07:39]:
Sometimes I wonder if it's because they don't know what works on Betfair trading or not, but maybe that's just me being skeptical of them. The reality is that. Let's say you're looking at a race card. What's the first thing you're going to be looking at? Okay, if you want a horse that dobs, we're going to be looking for a high dob percentage. Okay. But that's a very basic step. Okay. The next thing you want to do for me is check whether the horse has gone up or down in class.

Martin [00:08:05]:
Because if the horse has gone up in class, then it suggests it'll be racing against a better quality of horses. Now, that's not always the case in reality, but it should be. Okay. If I'm taking dobbing stats from a horse that's been running in class five and it's now running in Class four, I'm not going to take those stats into account. I'm going to leave that one. Because it's like football, right? If I look at a team that's been playing in League one and it's now moved up to the championship, I can't assume it's still going to keep winning all its games like it was in League one. Now, sometimes that happens, but actually most of the time teams come up a division and they struggle. Look at the championship to Premier League.

Martin [00:08:45]:
Last two seasons, the three teams that have gone up have come down. Well, it's similar, I think, in classes in horse racing, where if you're going up in class, you have to be wary. The horse might not run the same way. Now, if the horse is going down in class, I'm much less Concerned because they should be having a worse quality of races. And in fact, if they have a really high, let's say they're a class one horse or they were a class one horse and they were, you know, dobbing frequently and then they go down to class two. Well, you think that that pattern should carry on. Okay, so that's something that definitely interests me. The other thing to look for, and this is really key, and again, these are some basic steps.

Martin [00:09:25]:
There's a few bits you're going to want to do. I'll explain a bit more as we go. The other thing you want to do is make sure there's not many, if any, other horses with a higher dog percentage in the race. So if I want a horse to half in price, I need it to go out in front or I need it to look like it's running really strong. Okay. Be in a really good position. If there's two horses that might do this, what's to say the other horse doesn't do it and then the horse I want to drop in price can't quite reach the price I need it to. Okay, that's the problem.

Martin [00:09:59]:
If you've got too many of these good dobbing horses in one race, and this does happen quite often. So I much prefer to only have one horse in the race when I'm dobbing. I like to know that one has a really high dob percentage and the others aren't that great. Okay, so what do we need to win at? So, percentage wise, we know that if we win 50% of our trades, we'll break even, right? We'll either double or bust. And if we're winning half the time, sometimes we're winning, sometimes we're losing. It evens out. Okay? In fact, with the bet, fair commission, 2%, you'll make a small loss. Okay.

Martin [00:10:34]:
If your horse is hitting at 50%. So we know that we want at least really realistically to beat the percentage. We want at least 55% to have an edge. Ideally more, maybe 60%. That's kind of where I'd be looking now. When you're looking at horse's dog percentage, that might be where you start to look. You might go, well, okay, so I'll look at 60% as the dobbing rate. That's the one I want.

Martin [00:10:59]:
Maybe you look at 65, maybe you look at 70%. Okay, now that will be up to you. You can decide which percentage you like. I do like to be on the higher end where possible. I'm not enamored with 60% just because it's a thin margin. So the way I look at it, let's say you're looking at the last 10 runs, right? Which most stats do. If they've dobbed 60%, they've dobbed six times, but it only would have taken one race to go slightly differently and they only would have dubbed five times and suddenly it's only 50% and you've not got an edge. Okay, so I prefer to have 70% kind of as my baseline.

Martin [00:11:36]:
But again, you might be happy with 60%. And like a lot of things with Betfair trading, it's something you can try out, experiment with. This is why I think it's so key to go and get the lightspeedstats.com software, go and start using it. You don't even have to build the filter. Although if you want to build a Dobbs filter, I do highly recommend that. But you could just look at the races each day and look at those dog percentages and go, wow, look at the other ones. Okay, what's the pace? Is it a quick horse? You can look at whatever things you like and it's, it's so, so good for that. But remember, we kind of want to be winning at 55% plus here.

Martin [00:12:11]:
So I'm going to be looking for horses that dob 70% of the time. I always think if you can minus one race from that and it's still above what you need it to be. So let's say they dob 70%, 7 out of 10, but they only you take one away, that means they dob 6 out of 10, they're still above what you need them to be. I think that kind of allows for some of the error in the stats in terms of maybe one race. They just got lucky, you know, And I think that's really important. And I know that a lot of bet fair traders don't think like that. And I think often that can be what separates the men from the boys, you know, or the women from the girls, I suppose you have to say these days. But the reality is that dobbing can be really powerful because of this.

Martin [00:12:52]:
Okay, I'm gonna break it down a bit more logically here for you. So when a horse travels well in its races and it's a front runner, as we call it, which means they're just out in front running in front, self explanatory. But if you haven't heard the term, you don't know it. Now here's another thing on lightspeedstats.com that I want to mention, we have a policy that, no question is a silly one. I know that a lot of people who trade horses now come from a football background or even a cricket background, tennis background, and they want to trade horses because they've seen how lucrative it can be. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Just email us infoightspeedstats.com and. And we will help you if you need any help.

Martin [00:13:34]:
We want horses that make early moves, stay in contention, and obviously if they do those things, the odds will come in and it will often half in price and we will hit our dog target. Even if the horse finishes near the back of the field, if that horse runs well enough at one point in the race, often the price will halve. And that price drop really is where your opportunity lives. You're not betting on the horse to win, and this is really important. You're betting that at some point the market will react positively enough on how it's running and give you the exit price you need and the price will halve. And because it's a strategy based on movement, not results, your strike rate can actually be higher than traditional backing to win methods. So, you know, this is one of those strategies where you're not going to be losing. You know, if you're picking decent selections, you're going to have a decent strike rate.

Martin [00:14:29]:
You're unlikely to go on runs of, you know, nine, ten losers in a row. It can happen, but it's unlikely. So obviously, let's kind of break down a bit of a list of what I look for then, because I've talked about a few things here. Okay, Number one, I want to see that the horse price drops in previous races consistently. So like I talk about, really, I look at the last 10 runs. That's what I look at personally. I want to know that 70% of the time, plus it has dobbed. Okay.

Martin [00:14:57]:
I want to look at its running style. Front runners are ideal. Like I said, horses that lead from the front almost always shortening odds early in the race. Now, this is particularly true, obviously, in shorter distance races, but it can also be true in the longer distance races. You don't want horses that have a tendency to get held up because that can be riskier. You want horses that give themselves a good chance, give themselves the kind of simplest path to victory, if you will. Course and distance, right. Some tracks favor strong early pace, others suit late closes.

Martin [00:15:37]:
You want to match the horse's style to the course. Look at how it's performed at the course. Has it dobbed at the course before. Has it done these things? Has it won at course and distance before? These are all really good things to know if you're looking for a good horse that's likely to shorten in price. Because remember, if a horse wins, it shortened all the way down to 1.01. Right. Okay. Field size and pace pressure.

Martin [00:16:02]:
Okay. Too much early pace equals danger. If you've got a race where lots of horses have a really good pace rating, I'd avoid it. You want a race where the horses aren't that quick. You want to race where they don't have strong pace early on. And you want to be the kind of only horse that's really likely to dob early. Okay. That's the horse you're looking to back.

Martin [00:16:25]:
Okay. You don't want a horse that burns out before the halfway point. I like six to tener, six to tenner. I like to make a tenner. I like six to ten runner races and ideally just really one front runner, Maxim. And. And I want it to be that horse. Look, it's quite specific, but remember, there's so many races each day that we can afford to be a little specific.

Martin [00:16:51]:
We don't just have to back every single horse that has a high dobbing percentage regardless of what else is in the race. You know, you might look at. I mean, it's like, let's say a horse is running a Class 1 horse for some reason is running in a Class 6 race. Yeah. Well, you're not just going to go, oh, well, this, this one in the Class 6 has won a lot of races. So, you know, I'll ignore the fact that this class one horse is here. No, we know which horse is likely to be the strongest there. The other thing to look at a bit is ground conditions and draw.

Martin [00:17:24]:
Now, again, the thing with all these different facets, okay, is they're kind of micro factors that can affect how a horse can run its race. But it's really important to consider them. And in the Lightspeed Stats horse racing software, you could literally create a strategy that will show you what conditions the horses dob in most of the time. What would actually be profitable. Okay. I mean, how cool is that? You can literally put it in and it will show you the results on the results breakdown and you can actually see. Wow, okay. You know, for instance, I can see that horses dob better when it's good to fur.

Martin [00:18:06]:
Now, I'm making this example up. I'm not looking at the software right now. But the point is you can do all this stuff you can look at it. You can even look at what tracks horses dob at more often, especially in the situation. And the dobbing percentages that you're looking for, once you've got that baseline of what percentage, now you might go, I want to look at horses that dob 60% of the time. Well, run it, run it in the back testing, see how that performs. Is it better than 70%? You know, it doesn't have to be the be all end all of your decision, but I think it's a really important thing to think about. So why is it my favorite.

Martin [00:18:42]:
I love the structure of this trade. It's simple, right? We're either getting a half price and profit of 100% or the horse doesn't get there and we lose 100% of our stake. We're never having massive losses because, well, let's say we bet 1% of our bank per dog, we can only ever lose 1%. We can only ever gain 1% or 0.98 actually, when you take commission into account. But we also know that if we're winning 60% of the time over the long run, we're going to make a lot of money using a strategy like this. It's not emotional, it's not based on oh, what horses do you or win. It's data backed, data driven, repeatable, and easily to track, easy to back test and easy to see what could work for you. When you log your trades, especially in our lightspeed stats software, you can start to notice the patterns.

Martin [00:19:39]:
Certain trainers that do well with dobs, certain jockeys that like to dob certain tracks where horses dob like clockwork, okay? And this builds confidence because this is no longer just your opinion. Now, you can factor your opinion in. You can make a strategy based on your opinion, philosophy or theory about what should be profitable. But then you can run it through the back testing and see what works. Look, what are we all looking for at the end of the day? I talked about confidence because when you know what you're looking for, it's a rinse and repeat system. Once you've got a good dob strategy, there's nothing stopping you keeping to rinse and repeat that strategy and keep trading that. Again, it's purely up to you. I'm not a financial advisor.

Martin [00:20:26]:
My point is that I'm talking about, as ever, what has worked for me. And let's be honest, it feels good when you green up mid race and watch the chaos unfold, knowing you're already in profit. You know, I've seen Horses and I've watched them and I've gone, oh, it's greened up for a dog, nice one. Then I watch and I go, oh, the horse is doing really well, maybe it'll win. Maybe I should have just stayed in and it ends up third or fourth. Right? That happens so so often. A lot of the time a horse might dob and it never even gets close to winning it because a lot of horse racing is about what people think will happen when it goes in play. Dobbing's not perfect.

Martin [00:21:03]:
No strategy is. You will have long runs where it doesn't go well. You might have five or six lose in a row. Like I say, you don't get huge long runs in general. So, you know, assuming you're, you're getting, making half decent picks, perhaps an assumption I shouldn't make because some of you might not be. But if you're disciplined and you log your trades and you focus on selection quality, not quantity, you'll find that this method has real legs. If you're new to it, start small, pay per trade, log your results. And once you see how often horses halve in price without winning, I don't think you'll ever look at horse racing in the same way again.

Martin [00:21:39]:
If you want to go deeper into how I find my selections, I've got a full guide and some filters you can use. And inside lightspeedstats.com I'm happy to share that strategy with you. There's a dub strategy in particular that I share with members that has been doing well for a long time now. What I've noticed with horse racing strategies in general is that when you watch them, especially ones like this, where you're either taking 100% profit or 100% loss, you can get a bit swings and roundabouts, but the important thing is you want the general trend to be moving upwards in the long term. And that is what this has done consistently over time. Again, you can't determine the future results by that for sure, but it certainly gives you some confidence and some decent leverage to start with. So, yeah, get over to lightspeedstats.com, try out the software if you haven't already. And if you're concerned or you just need a little bit to get you over that edge, come and speak to us and we can talk you through exactly what it is and whether it will help and suit your needs.

Martin [00:22:38]:
Because some people email me and they tell me what they want and you know, some people email and I email them back and I actually say I don't think this is what you're looking for. I don't think this will suit your needs. This isn't for you. Okay? So it's not about just getting everyone on board. It's about getting the right people on board. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are one of those right people. So, you know, if you've been hesitant, sitting back, oh, I don't know if I want to invest my money in myself as a trader. Well, if you want to make some serious money from horse racing on Betfair, you know, we've seen the stats, okay? The people who sign up for software do phenomenally better than the ones who don't.

Martin [00:23:13]:
In fact, you're so much more likely to become a semi pro or pro trader that I'd say without doing this, you've got virtually no chance. Okay? And it's not a guarantee that if you do, you will. But the point is, why not just give yourself the best chance? Like I say, drop me a message or check out lightspeedstats.com to grab that half price month free trial for the first month. Yeah. So that's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed this and want more strategy breakdowns like this, do me a favor. Share it with someone you know who likes horse racing. Leave a review or just reach out on the forum and let me know what you'd like me to cover next.

Martin [00:23:49]:
Until next time, trade smart. Log everything and I'll see you in the horse racing trading markets.