By Alex Deacon

(This article was first published on 8/3/2003 and is reproduced with the kind permission of the Racing Post. This article and many thousands like it can be accessed free of charge in the excellent archive of www.racingpost.co.uk )

ONE of the most fatal errors that you see punters making time and time again is over-reacting when hearing or seeing some piece of new information.I'm sure most people can think of at least one example of this but my own personal favourite came when I was with a few friends at the races.One of them received a phone call from a minor jockey with a "hot" tip for one of the afternoon's events. Not knowing either the jockey concerned or his relative success when phoning up with his recommendations did not stop all bar a couple of people in the party instantly lumping on.

They seemed to believe they had heard a hotline from the future or at the very least that twilight and entirely imaginary world where "somebody" knows who's going to win. I think it's safe for most people to assume that if they are party to such snippets of information then it's highly likely that they're the intended victims rather than the beneficiaries of the jockey or connection's largesse.

Regardless of the result (pulled up three from home) I can't help but think that it was a little scene played out in pretty much every betting shop across the land. In each case someone receives and then shares some information and people's overreaction to it results in punters turning themselves over without having had any need to do so. Another way that it's easy to do yourself in before even having a bet is to derive your supposed edge from what is clearly publicly available information, such as off the back page of your daily newspaper. Nine times out of ten the market will already reflect anything you have read about and more often than not, if it's something that directly relates to betting, the realistic price will be long gone.

A case in point over the past couple of weeks has been the occasionally short prices on draws in both the Italian and English leagues. In each instance the thinking behind the short prices seems to be that in a game in which the draw would suit both sides it stands to reason that the draw is the most obvious result. As a consequence, in each game where this is suggested the price on the draw has shortened well beyond its "true" price with punters unable to stop themselves.

They often steam into a quote that has simply moved far too much to the extent that I'd imagine such fixtures have become something of a layer's dream. It is, of course, very easy in hindsight to say we should have done this or ignored that. It does, though, always seem to be the case that when one looks back to what would have been the best play at the time that you invariably find that only the cold hard facts and not opinion and conjecture should have influenced us. Learning to separate these facts from the doubts that always seem to come into play when betting on sports is the difficult thing and nowhere is this more so than during the course of an event.

A good example of why it pays to not put too much emphasis on short-term events in sport, however initially surprising they may seem, came a couple of years ago. With the 2002 Tour de France poised to enter the Pyrenees, Lance Armstrong was surprisingly beaten into second place by 11 seconds by Santiago Botero in the sixth-stage time trial. In this instance, the sheer surprise of the Texan's defeat was enough for those watching, followed regardless of course by those that weren't, was to see Armstrong's outright price wobble, despite the fact that Botero was hardly a surprise winner given that he was the world time-trial champion at the time and that between them the pair had seen off a fine field of time-trialers. Equally bizarre was the fact that the doubts as to his overall chances had emerged on the evidence of this single stage, on which Armstrong had gained eight seconds on the wearer of the yellow jersey. Needless to say two weeks later and those that played it with the bigger picture and went against the short-term overreaction came out on top.

Overreactions occur on a continual basis every day in sport. Watch a live match on Betfair and record what happens when a goal is scored. You will invariably find that the price on the goalscorers shortens, particularly if they've taken the lead, to a point in excess of one that is justified. The extent of the overreaction can be judged by the way that within a few minutes, once the hysterical money has been matched and sanity has prevailed, the prices usually move back in line with a more realistic level.

Similarly in cricket's one-day internationals it's quite possible to see the markets change on account of a single four being hit or an early wicket being taken. But again, they usually fall back in line with reality only moments later.