Ben Krahe spent many years framing markets as a bookie and backing his judgement against some of the big players.

In recent times he has made his living as a professional punter focusing on harness racing.

So he's in a great position to share his insights into how to frame a market and rate every runner in the race.

Punting Insights You'll Find

Market percentages explained in layman's terms

Why framing a market as a bookie requires a different mindset to that of a punter

Some of the most important factors he considers when doing the form

Why he starts with a 120% market before bringing that back to 100%

The reason he backs every single overlay

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: All right Ben, how are you going?

Ben Krahe: Good thanks Dave, yourself?

David Duffield: Yeah, going really well, thanks. I just wanted to get you back on the podcast to talk about framing your market and percentages. I had a few questions along those lines recently so if you're talking to a novice punter or more of a weekend punter, how do you even explain market percentages?

Ben Krahe: That's a good question. To put it in layman's terms, if a bookmaker is betting 120%, in theory the bookmaker should win 20%. I mean, that's in theory and all things being equal and that's if they lay the same amount of money to lose a certain amount on every horse, then the bookmaker will in theory make 20%.

This never happens because a bookmaker will never lay every horse for the same amount of money but in theory, that's the basis behind it.

David Duffield: All right so when they talk about a 100% market, in theory you can back every runner and come out square.

Ben Krahe: Correct.

David Duffield: So 120%, the market's framed in favor of the bookmaker. What about, as an analyst or putting together a market where you're trying to find overlays, what percentage are you framing your market to?

Ben Krahe: I always do a market to 120 or 130% originally. It's just because, being an ex-bookmaker it's just the way I was brought to do it and that way the other bookmakers usually go up about the same.

What I do then is I convert it to a 100% market and that way anything that we get which is over the odds, we theoretically should be making money. As long as, of course, I've rated it correctly.

David Duffield: All right, is it just the bookmaking background or how have you found that to be a better system to do 120% and then bring it back to 100 as opposed to just starting there?

Ben Krahe: The way I do it is, I've also developed a spreadsheet which sort of changes things. If you just do a straight 100% market, I'll give you an example. I might mark something 100 to 1 but when I put it through my spreadsheet it might spit it out at 500 or 600 to 1, which is probably it's real chance in a 100% market.

If you're just going to frame a straight 100% market, are you really going to mark something for 600 to 1? I'm not too sure that you will so I like to do it at the 120, 130%. I whack it through my spreadsheet, which has got a couple little secrets in it involving the long-shot favorite bias as we've discussed on this program many times.

It's not a straight conversion 100% but what it does is, it stretches the long-shots out a little bit more and it brings the favorites in a little bit more.

David Duffield: On the punting side, did you have a look at framing 90% or 95% or is it more, always do it at 100% and then just back all the overlays?

Ben Krahe: Look, there's a few ways to do it. I've got a couple of friends who are professional punters that frame markets 80% and that way they have a lot less bets. It's just whatever suits you and the way that we're doing it at the moment, I'm happy just to, I like to have a bit of a play every race. This way we have a bet in every race.

If you're doing 80%, you're probably only going to have 2 or 3 bets a day. If that's the way you want to go,