Melbourne Cup strategy

About the author:

Author name:

By Michael Knox

Job title:

Chief Economist and Director of Strategy

Date posted:

03 November 2015, 11:34 AM

Economists generally have enough sense to know that they nothing about horse races. There are people who do, and they are called tipsters. Every Melbourne Cup Day, their tips are published in major newspapers.

Today we have taken the tips published in The Australian newspaper. There are seven tipsters in all. From these tipsters we construct our most favoured rating. Every horse nominated to win gets 3 points. Every horse nominated to come in second gets 2 points. Horses nominated to come in third get 1 point.

• Preferment - 13 
• Fame Game - 12
• Trip to Paris - 4
• Bondi Beach - 4
• Max Dynamite - 3
• Our Ivanhoe - 3
• Almoonqith - 1

In order to generate the value for each horse, we multiply these points by the odds. The odds in the electronic market at 7.30am this morning for these horses were:

• Fame Game - $4.50
• Trip to Paris - $7.50
• Preferment - $9.00
• Max Dynamite - $12.00
• Almoonqith - $16.00
• Bondi Beach - $21.00
• Our Ivanhoe - $21.00

When we multiply the odds by the most favoured rating, the value points for each of these runners is shown in the table below:

Consequently, our recommendation this year is for an each way bet on Preferment.

Disclaimer: Remember our recommendation is for the best value bet rather than for the highest probability of winning