Horse Racing Systems can cost you anything from a few pence up to £100 or more. Some systems are presented in thick manuals full of charts, graphs and past results whilst others are just consist of a couple of typed pages. From experience I have found that the success of any system has little bearing on its actual cost.

The main problem for a potential system purchaser is that you have very little idea what you are actually buying until you have paid for your system and had a chance to assess it. Even then you will not know how good any system is until your have actually tested it over a period of time. One of the best systems that I have ever used can be summed up in about 4 lines of text whilst another that I use regularly is over 200 pages in length.

An alternative to buying a system is to devise your own. This is far easier than you might think. In recent years the Betfair Betting Exchange has become very popular and on there it is possible to either back a horse to win or lay one to lose. So the first decision to make is whether your system is going to be designed to pick winners or losers.

For the purposes of this article I will show you how to build a simple system to find losers. Without going into to much detail the basic principle of laying horses on the betting exchange is that you are really taking the role of the bookmaker. This means that if the horse loses you win the stake but if it should win you will have to pay out the odd that you made when laying the bet. This means that if you lay outsiders they are less likely to win but when they do you can face a big payout. Therefore to keep the liability to a reasonable level we will only lay low priced favourites.

Rule One: Only select favourites priced at less that 3/1

It is a statistical fact that only about a third of favourites actually win their races. However, if you laid the favourite in every race you would finish up out of pocket, therefore we need to add some further filters. In some races all the horse carry more or less the same weight whilst in other the horses are assessed by a handicapper on their past performances and weighted accordingly. If the handicap worked perfectly all the horses should finish the race in a line across the course. Of course this never happens but it is a fact that favourites have a poorer record in handicaps than in other types of race.

Rule Two. Handicap races only.

Surprisingly favourites enjoy a greater success in National Hunt Racing than on the flat. I say surprisingly because you might think that with the addition of jumps this would make it more difficult but that is not the case. National Hunt races tend to be much longer than most flat races and horse have more time to sort themselves out. In a flat sprint race if a horse misses the break at the off all chances may be gone. Therefore:

Rule Three. Flat races only

Another fact is that in flat races the favourites seem to perform better when the going is described as “Good”. There are some horses that run better on the “Soft” or “Firm” going but as a general rule most prefer good going. If you go to the Racing Post web site you can look up a horses past performances.

Rule Four. The selection should not have won or come second in a race on the same going as that posted for this race.

So there is the beginning of a simple system. As it stands I am not sure that you would make very much money from it but it is ready for testing. You should never place cash on any systems selections until you have paper tested it for at least one or ideally two months. You can also use this period to assess your results and possibly add further filters or rules to improve the system.

Building a successful horse racing system can not only be fun but very profitable as apart from making money from your bets you can always sell the system to others.

Finally no matter how good any horse racing system is or is claimed to be none can be guaranteed win all the time and you should never wager more than you can afford to lose.