You may have read our previous article on ‘steamers and drifters’, two popular terms in betting.
If you haven’t, a steamer is any selection – it could be a racehorse, football team, tennis player, golfer etc – that has a weight of public money behind it, which in turn forces bookmakers to trim its odds in order to insure themselves against a huge liability.
A drifter, meanwhile, is essentially the opposite – to balance the books of a steamer, a bookie will allow the odds of other, less popular selections to drift.
The most common examples can be found in football when the team news is revealed – a side without their best players, through injury or being rested, will drift and their opponent (or the draw) will steam.
In horse racing, the inclement weather on the morning of a racecard can cause similar odds fluctuations – a deluge of rain on already wet ground may see those who favour heavy ground ‘steam in’, while forces that favour faster ground drift outwards.
This is all fine, but for punters it can be a minefield – do we follow the steam, i.e. bet using the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, or do we assume that once the pile-on commences, that the odds will move too far in one direction; creating an opportunity to ‘fade the public’.
The truth is that different situations will dictate which strategy is the optimal one to deploy.
Wisdom of the Crowd When Betting
In some ways, the modern punter has advantages over his peers from yesteryear.
Social media gives us access to information quickly, easily and free of charge, which means we can get wind of stimuli that might precipitate steamers and drifters before the odds have moved too far in either direction.
Think about the release of team news before a football game. In days gone by, that information would have spread slowly – indeed, there was a time when fans and punters had to call premium rate phonelines if they wanted to hear the team news in advance of kick off.
Today, this information is shared to tens of millions of social media accounts in seconds – indeed, there are even times when the info is known before it’s even officially published. Think of a team playing an away game; they might turn up at the stadium by bus a few hours before kick off – if a player doesn’t disembark with their teammates, it would be fair to assume they’re not playing in the game.
That is just one reason why the wisdom of the crowd is such a powerful force in betting these days. Using sites like the Betfair Exchange, it’s possible to see the weight of money that is coming in for a team, player or horse – there is, usually, good reason for a selection to be backed in such a way.
Sometimes, a pick will be backed in heavily just because their opening odds are perceived to be too high – this often happens on a Monday for that week’s golf tournaments around the world, with the first bookmaker to publish their prices for the week often taking something of a leap of faith.
Other times, the stimuli of a steamer are more dynamic – team changes, weather updates, sickness bugs etc. Joseph Buchdahl, a prominent figure in the industry, has collated hundreds of thousands of ‘wisdom of the crowd’ football bets over the years, and his findings are interesting to say the least.
By following the public money, the average punter’s bankroll would have increased considerably from August 2015 to today.
However, that’s not to suggest that blindly following the crowd into bets is a smart strategy – such an approach could lead to lengthy losing streaks, and lest we forget that the public is prone to emotional responses, rather than cold, hard calculation.
Is a tennis player more likely to win because it’s their last Grand Slam event? Is a golfer more likely than not to win their home tournament? Will Man City lose just because their star striker isn’t playing?
Utilising the wisdom of the crowd can be a useful tool when drawing up your bets, but it’s a strategy that comes with a number of caveats – if the public was winning bets left, right and centre, wouldn’t we all be millionaires by now?
Fading the Public When Betting
There are two things that can be true of the wisdom of the crown approach to betting:
- The information that causes a steam or drift can be false or misinterpreted
- The steam or drift can push the odds too far in one direction
One of the perfect examples of this comes at the big horse racing meetings. Some horses are taken to the hearts of the public – Tiger Roll is one such example in recent years, so on the day of a big race his odds were pushed in by casual punters backing a horse that they’d previously heard of, or for whom there’s a ‘narrative’.
A similar scenario unfolds in betting markets linked to managerial appointments in football. If a manager is sacked, the bookmakers draw up a list of potential successors – you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be an ‘emotional’ name on there, perhaps an individual that has managed the club before. It’s absolutely not written in the stars that they will get the job this time, even if the steaming odds suggest otherwise.
Betting against the crowd by being a contrarian is a risky business – usually, there is a legitimate stimulus that forces odds to steam or drift. But in some markets, there can be a psychological, emotional bias that sees odds steam.
Think about Both Teams to Score or Over/Under 2.5 Goals – football fans love goals, particularly in games that are televised. They will almost certainly back BTTS or the overs line, regardless of the value of doing so, which for contrarian punters can make BTTS – No and Under 2.5 Goals the more appealing option.
The most popular betting events – think the Grand National, Cheltenham Gold Cup, FA Cup final, Wimbledon, The Masters golf – always has a large weight of money from casual sports fans, rather than clued up punters. Opposing this, by laying steamers and backing drifters, can be optimal.
The secret to fading the public in your betting is knowing when big odds moves are based on legitimate changing variables, and when they are simply emotion-led responses – unsmart money, we might call it.