Why Betfair Horse Racing Strategies Struggle During Cheltenham

Cheltenham is one of the biggest weeks in horse racing, but it can also be one of the toughest times for Betfair horse racing strategies.

In this video, I break down why so many strategies struggle during the Cheltenham Festival, what changes in the markets, and why results can look very different compared to normal racing days.

You’ll learn how increased liquidity, sharper prices, more public money, and unusual race conditions can all affect your edge. I’ll also explain why some traders force strategies during major festivals when the smarter move is to step back, reduce stakes, or adapt.

If you trade horse racing on Betfair and want to understand what really happens during Cheltenham, this will help you avoid common mistakes and think more clearly about your strategy.

If you want tools to test, track, and improve your horse racing strategies, check out LightSpeed Stats here: https://lightspeedstats.com/signup/

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Transcript

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Hello, welcome to another podcast from lightspeedstats.com, the number one trading software on Betfair for horse racing, where you can actually back test your strategies using real Betfair data to see if they would have performed well or not, and create your own strategies and to hopefully give you an edge on those horse racing markets. By the way, guys, if you haven't signed up to lightspeedstats.com, it's half price for the first month of the minute. Not sure how long that will last, so get involved on that while you can. Great, great deal for you to take. But I wanted to talk today, and I'm literally recording this podcast on Cheltenham Gold Cup Day. I wanted to talk about why big, big meetings. And I'm not just talking about you know your average weekly big meeting, I'm talking about the big festivals like Cheltenham, like Ain Tree with the Grand National, probably the two that I'll talk about quite a bit here because they're really good examples. Why I think these kinds of races often do not work for your normal strategies, and I'll talk about some of the reasoning behind that as we go. So, how about let's crack on with it today? Um, so this is a dedicated podcast. Some of the times on this um channel you will get videos that are podcasts as well, but you'll also get dedicated podcasts like this. And the reason is that I know that sometimes the video stuff isn't ideal, and because obviously you can't see the screen that I'm talking about when I'm doing a video, but there's so much good information in there that you can still follow along, especially if you've you know you're listening and you're getting some ideas for what to do, or what a lot of people do is they listen um while they're actually using the software, uh, which again, you know, it's a great idea to do. And if you haven't subscribed to Lightspeed Stats on YouTube, um go and do that. You know, this is a new channel. You know, we are the sister site to Bet Fair Trading community, obviously a much, much bigger channel, but we want to grow the horse racing. Um, and we know you guys have responded so well to the horse racing software, so we're really pleased about that. And uh, I want to kind of give you a bit of insight into horse racing trading and why I think festivals are quite difficult. So, one thing I've noticed with horse racing festivals like Cheltenham, which is on at the minute, which is a great example of this, is that it excites the average punter so much, okay? What does the average horse racing punter get excited about? Well, there's two things Cheltenham and the Grand National, right? And I literally don't even say entry because it's just that one race, right? The Grand National. Um, and Cheltenham, although the Gold Cup's the big event, I think you know, punters get excited about that whole festival because it's just such a huge, huge week for horse, probably almost a bigger week than the Grand National. Obviously, Grand National is you know by far the biggest race of the calendar. Um, and what that does is it means that there's a lot of new money being brought into the markets because people who don't normally bet on horses or people who maybe only put a few quid on, they suddenly ramp it up when Cheltenham comes around. Now, this sounds like it might be a really good thing, right? Because if I'm sitting there as a you know an esteemed BetFair trader and I'm a horse racing trader and I'm making profits, I'm thinking, well, bring more fish to the market. Because ultimately, punters like that, they're not gonna be using software, they're not gonna be on light speed stats trying to get an edge, they're not gonna be creating great horse racing strategies as we've seen so many of you do. They are just gonna be the type of people that go into bet for it or stick some money in vetfare when they're at work, and they're just trying to have a go, right? They're not really researching what they're doing. Um, and again, there's nothing wrong with this. A lot of people, you know, they play this sport for fun. I don't, I'm I'm just here to make money. All I want to do is make money, it's it's my obsession in trading, and it should be yours. Um, and I want to give myself the best edge to do that. I know that software like Lightspeed Stats does that for me, and obviously the average punter doesn't. So you feel like, well, if that money is getting into BetFair, great, because we can take advantage of that. But it doesn't really happen that way, and oddly enough, what hat what tends to happen is the reverse of that. And often strategies that have been performing really well for me suddenly take a nosedive during these big festivals. A week that I think is going to be hugely profitable ends up being a disappointing week. Um, and this has happened time and time again, to the point that when these festivals roll around, I actually tend to just take it a bit easier. Um, and I don't get mega excited about them. That that's why I don't really talk that much about big festivals, even on these channels. Um, because you know I'm a horse racing trader and I trade horses every day. It doesn't, you know, I'm not just getting excited for Cheltenham and the Grand National. I actually think the Grand National is probably the worst race to try and trade, personally, um, because it's such a big field of runners, one that you're just not used to at all. Um, and I just feel like if you want an event where there's a lot of variance, it's there, and you might say, well, just lay the horses then, and it's like, okay, but look at the prices you're having to lay at because the odds are so high. So, you know, I mean, I remember um one of my early experiences with the Grand National. I mean, the best thing to do on a race like the Grand National is have a sweepstak with your family, like we used to do every year, put a fiver in each, you know, draw them out of a hat, what horses you get. Because you might as well do that as far as I'm concerned on that race, because it's so random, there's so much variance, um, and I feel like your usual strategies that you use aren't going to work on it. Now, you might be able to research the race really well and find an edge that way, um, but I'm not somebody who wants to spend loads of time doing that on an individual race. There's no point with so many races on. I want to look at my strategies that are performing well in the software that have been kind of bulletproof tested, so I know they're battle-hardened and ready to go, and I know that meetings like this are very difficult for those strategies. I'm going to talk about why that is in a minute, but I want to give this example of one of my early experiences was I used to be um really good friends with someone whose dad, ironically, same as my dad, um, was a professional betfare trader. Um, but he was more of a kind of he'd be an on-course bookie and things like that. He'd he'd kind of vary a lot of what he did, whereas obviously my old man was just pure Bet Fair trading all the way. Um and I remember this guy, and and his he was obviously, you know, a bit like me, kind of taken on what his dad was doing and again, some of those skills, and he gave me some tips for the Grand National. Now, this was at a point, I mean, I was pretty much just looking at cricket, football, um, tennis, a little bit of NFL at that time, and horses were kind of alien to me. Um, as I think a lot of young people, I mean, I was probably only 18 at this point, 19. And I think a lot of people, you know, unless you've grown up in an environment of horse racing, um, at that age, you're kind of just learning the ropes with it, right? Because it's not like football where you don't get many kids, they've got a picture of a horse on their wall from horse racing. Do you know? We've got pictures of footballers on our wall, you know. Darren Edy, do you remember him? I think he was one of the first players I had on my wall. Um, I used to love Darrell such for some reason. Um, I I realise that a lot of you listening probably might not even be football fans because it's a horse racing podcast. Um, but yeah, you know, you're not gonna have a picture of Willie Mullins. I'd be surprised if someone had a picture of Willie Mullins on their wall as an eight-year-old, but let me know. I mean, if you did, fair fair play to you. Um, Ruby Walsh, you know, jumping that last fence and missing uh when he should have won all those races. Anyway, um, it's really interesting that I got this guy to give me some tips, and he gave me, I think, about five or six horses in the Grand National, and you know, this guy was good, like he made money on horses, he knew what he was doing. Um but none of them placed. And the thing is, I kind of just went, oh, well, that's really disappointing. Like he's he's really good at what he does, and he couldn't even get one out of six to place. Why is this? Again, I think there's just too much luck and variance with a race that big in size, that big in scope. But the problem is, with these big events comes a lot of money, okay? And it's not necessarily smart money, but it's money that changes the effect of the market you're trading. So the strategy you've built, most of the races it will be trading, probably 99% of them, are races that are fairly mundane, you know. Wolverhampton on a Tuesday night, you know, an all-weather race, and that'll be the kind of trade it's making every day, right? Loads of times potentially, yeah. And then the big festival rolls around and it's a it's kind of a totally different thing. There's loads more money in the market. The horses often are a much higher quality, again, which I think can be quite difficult to trade because you know, if you've got class one horses all racing each other, they're all gonna be pretty solid, right? Um, but not only that, a lot of them will have been training for this moment, right? They are training for this race, so you know it's a bit like uh I'm trying to kind of relate it to football a bit. I guess it's a bit like you know, the final stages of a World Cup or the Champions League, where you're gonna get the best of the best against each other in theory, whereas some of the earlier round stuff, when they're not competing against such things, it's probably a bit easier to predict, right? Um, so I feel like that has a big impact. The fact that the quality of racing has gone up. Because as a horse racing trader, when you're creating these strategies, when you're when you've back tested a strategy and you've got a strategy that's been performing well for you, you don't necessarily want quality races. You don't necessarily want quality opposition, do you? Part of your edge is finding a really good horse or a really good situation in a race where there's a lot of bad horses or a lot of bad situations. Because ultimately, in theory, that's what's going to give you the edge on the market. So I think it's a really kind of interesting concept that often trading these big festivals doesn't work. And one thing I'd like to say to you you know, if you have been trading Chelten, or if you have been trading a big festival and it hasn't gone how you wanted it to, don't let that dishearten you. Don't be put off by that because I think that's fairly common. Um, you know, one of our favourite traders on Betfair Trading community, John, he's spoken about this as well. There's kind of a a couple of conditions. I'll talk about another condition I want to talk about, which is um the impact of the ground, of the going. Um, and I want to do that, I'll probably do that on the next kind of podcast that's not a video podcast. Um, so maybe in a week. I like I I want to try and I do want to try and drop a lot more horse content because uh, you know, it's funny, right? Football, we're we're just at the stage now where we're starting to let people into the back testing um to test it and then we'll get it out onto kind of out there for the public, um, and obviously members will get the first look at that and the football, but we've got this on the horses already. So so many people messaging me every week. Can I get access to the football back testing? I really want the back football back testing. Oh, I can't wait for football back testing. Well, in the meantime, you've got the horses. The horse racing back testing is here, it's been here for four years now. Um, we've had really good feedback from everyone who's used it, everyone's loving it. And uh, I want to so I want to do more content because I think the one thing we haven't really done, and we haven't um I think we've just been so concentrated on getting that football back testing developed and out there that you know we haven't done enough content on the horses. So I want to do more on the horses because to me, horse racing is just as great as football trading, if not better. Um, and you know, the strategies that people are creating uh are phenomenal, and uh you know it's really really good, it's really encouraging to see kind of how well the backtesting it's changed life for a lot of horse racing traders at the end of the day. Um, so I'm gonna get I'm gonna get more stuff out there. But don't be put off if festivals are kind of making you struggle a bit. And if you want, if you feel like you don't want to trade them, I wouldn't even have an issue with that. If you said Martin, I'm not gonna trade festival, big festivals anymore. I'd say fair enough, right? Similar sort of thing happens on Saturdays, I find often Saturday, although not to the same extent, but often Saturday I find can be one of the more challenging days, right? Um, however, you know, the weekdays can be great. And again, I think it's to do with the quality of the racing. I think the the higher the quality, the tougher it is. People will say this about football, so you probably would have heard this. Like, don't trade the Premier League. I don't particularly agree with this, but but people will say don't trade the Premier League because you know the bookies they've got the market odds right, they're so well in tune with the Premier League, they put so much, many of their resources and thoughts into it, which I do think is true to an extent. I'm not saying that part's wrong, I don't think it's an unbeatable um league, not by a long shot. Um, but obviously, you know, let's say you're looking at the French second division. I had this conversation with someone who's not a Betfair trader this week, who's a punter, and I said, Well, yeah, they're not going to put the same resource into the French 2nd Division. You know, I have quite a big edge a lot of the time in the Serie R because I watch a lot more Serie R football than the average UK punter. And remember how UK skewed a lot of these markets are. If I know something about the team I'm following, like into Milan, I can know stuff that's happening that the market doesn't really take into account. Um, I think I saw that man, I didn't check this. I need to check the odds actually. I don't tend to check uh trade cup matches very much. Um, but the Champions League game this week, Man City, Real Madrid, apparently they were favourites away from home. I don't know if that means in the tie. Either way, absolutely bar me when you look at Real Madrid's record, history, squad, um, you know, and that's not to put Man City down at all. You know, I've got I've got quite a few ties to Man City um these days, but I just don't get it. Why odds quite often are put on historical things that happened, you know, a couple of years ago when one of the teams quite clearly has the better of the other team most of the time. Um, and again, that's why in horse racing you want to be able to take advantage of opportunities, and I feel like you do get better opportunities, um, you know, the lower kind of standard of racing, and you'll notice patterns because remember, most of the strategies you test, they're gonna be looking, most of the races they look at and they backtest are gonna be non-festival races, so your strategies are almost set up for the non-festivals, which is perfect because that's what happens most of the time. There's no point just having a Cheltenham strategy, but that's it, and you go, Well, I've got a really good horse racing strategy, great. Well, how can I use it today? No, you've got to wait for Cheltenham. What? It's just finished, that's alright, just wait another year to make some money. I've got a really good Grand National strategy, brilliant. Well, is that all you've got though? Yeah, but it's really good. Okay, great. That's one race a year. So you're better off having something, obviously, that works more of the time. Um, so yeah, I think that's I think I made my point, haven't I? Uh do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? If you agree or disagree and just want to comment, just email me info at lightspeedstats.com. You can email me anytime. I'm always happy to help and talk to you whether you're a member or not. But seriously, at this point, I know it sounds crazy, but if you're not a member, which which is nuts, and you can get half price on the first month to use this back testing. So even if you're going, I've got a horse racing strategy idea, um, but I don't know if it's going to be profitable. Well, sign up and test your strategy. You could do that in a day. Like you could literally create your strategy that you want, test it, see if it's profitable, and go, oh, maybe I'll look at this moving forward. And then the other great thing is you could keep that for the month or two months, whatever, then come back to it in two months' time and look and go, oh, interesting. It has made money moving forward. And you won't even have to test it because the software will automatically update day-to-day. And again, as I say, this is the real Betfair data. Okay, it's not it's not just grabbing like bookie odds or anything like that. This is real BetFair data that's been given to us by I'm saying given, we've paid thousands of pounds for it, but it's something that is from BetFair, it's literally their data, and I cannot stress the power and importance of that enough. Anyway, guys, I hope you've enjoyed the podcast. Um, I'm hoping to do a lot more of these. Again, get in touch with me. I really like to hear you guys if you're enjoying the podcast or not. Um, give me some feedback. You know, this is these are fairly new podcasts. Obviously, I've been doing the Bet Fair Trading Community one for probably about 10 years now. Um, so I kind of know what I'm doing with that one a bit more, and I'm open to suggestions. What would you like to hear? What would you like to see on either the YouTube channel or the podcast? Um, because you know, at the end of the day, it's for you. I want you to improve as horse racing traders on Betfair, and this podcast is for you to do that. So, you know, let me know how you want to do that. But most importantly, guys, I hope you have a great week and I hope you make some money trading the horses on Betfair.