Dutching Without the Favorite: A Statistical Guide to Finding Alternative Winners

Probably one of the hardest things to do in horse racing is picking a winner. The second hardest thing to do is picking another runner to win instead of the favorite.

In this article, we will explore an alternative approach: Dutching without the favorite. To evaluate this method, we need to answer three core questions:

• Why would we want to do this?
• How do we find an alternative runner?
• Are there runners we can ignore?

About the Author & Our Tools

For those who don't know me, my name is Malcolm. I am a programmer and statistician, and I have been producing software and tools for the betting industry for over 20 years. To keep our analysis grounded in hard data, we will use statistics drawn from PR Ratings, a piece of software I designed to analyze horse racing data dating back to 2015.

Before we dive into the data, note that we have a free tool available to help you implement this strategy. The Free Dutch Dashboard helps automate these calculations, and you can access it via the link at the end of this post.

The Reality of Favorites: A Closer Look at the Numbers

The general consensus in horse racing is that favorites win roughly 36% of the time. When analyzing all Betfair Starting Price (BSP) ranked favorites over the last year, our database shows they won 35.33% of the time.

Overall, backing every favorite blindly does not yield a long-term profit—as you might expect—though they do have individual months where they perform well. However, looking only at that 35% average hides some crucial patterns. The picture changes dramatically when we filter favorites by price:

• Favorites under 2.00 (1.99 and lower): These strong odds-on favorites win 61.55% of the time.

  

• Favorites at 3.00 and above: When looking at weaker favorites priced between 3.00 and 1000 (factoring in Betfair BSP minus a 2% commission), the strike rate drops to only 24.91%.

  

How to Find Viable Alternative Runners

If we identify a weak favorite and decide to bet against them, how do we choose our alternative selections? While deep manual form analysis is always an option, we can also look at historical trends using PR Ratings' "Quick Analyze" feature.

Over the last year, the distribution of winning runners across all races looks like this:

• 1st Favorites (Rank 1): 35.3% win rate
• 2nd Favorites (Rank 2): 20.87% win rate
• 3rd Favorites (Rank 3): 14.0% win rate
• 4th Favorites (Rank 4): 10.0% win rate

Combined, roughly 80.79% of all winners come from the top four in the betting market. If you extend this to the top five or six runners, you cover the vast majority of winning horses.

Which Selections Can We Safely Ignore?

To keep a Dutch profitable, we need to limit the number of selections. Our data shows we can confidently ignore longshots:

• Runners priced between 20.00 and 1000: These horses win only 2.22% of the time.

  

• Runners priced between 10.00 and 1000: These horses win only 4.24% of the time.

  

This reveals a defined window of opportunity: if the favorite is priced over 3.00, we can focus our Dutch on the next three or four runners in the betting market, while ignoring longshots priced over 10.00 or 20.00.

A Practical Example

Let's look at how this scenario plays out in practice using a one-mile handicap race. In this race, the market was tightly split. The favorite was Voldemort, but there was very little separating the three main market rivals: Marina, Voldemort, and My Boy Harry.

Because the market was so competitive, it looked like a great opportunity to take on the favorite. Another runner, Jenny Candice Chart, was dropping back down in class after a few lesser efforts and also looked interesting. Due to hot weather, the racing schedule had been brought forward, making conditions slightly different than usual.

As the race ran, Mbappe had trouble early on. Perfetto went strong and took an early lead, but went a bit too early. Volandim closed in fast at the finish. Ultimately, the favorite, Voldemort, failed to win.

Admittedly, during this live demo, I actually forgot to place the physical bet! When analyzing and documenting live, it is easy to miss the betting window. However, the underlying analysis was correct: Dutching the alternative selections would have secured a nice profit, as the favorite was beaten.

The Strategy Rules

When you identify a race where the favorite is vulnerable, a structured Dutching strategy can be highly effective. Based on the data, here are the parameters we use:

• Dutch Range: 2 to 4 (backing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th favorites).
• Favorite Price Range: 3.00 to 100.00.
• Price Limit: Avoid selections priced over 20.00 (though you can occasionally hedge them if you believe they have a sneak chance).

This statistical approach shows that when a weak favorite is beaten, the victory highly frequently goes to the second, third, or fourth favorite.