Glossary

The words on this site, in a punter's language.

Every technical number on Furlong Ledger carries a plain line beside it. This is the longer version.

The off: The moment the race starts. Furlong Ledger enters around the scheduled off, at the price available then.
Back: To bet on a horse to win, at a price the exchange shows you.
Lay: To bet against a horse, taking the other side of someone’s back bet.
Exchange: A betting market where punters bet against each other rather than against a bookmaker, at prices set by the market. Betfair is the exchange the signals are made for. The exchange charges commission on net winnings in a market.
Price, or odds: Decimal odds, as an exchange shows them. A horse backed at 11.50 returns 11.50 times the stake if it wins, the stake included.
SP: Starting price: the official odds at the off. Furlong Ledger takes the exchange price available around the off, which is not the SP.
Position: One back bet on one horse in one race. The record counts positions, and stakes one unit on each.
Market: One race. A market can hold more than one position, and commission is charged once on the market’s net winnings.
Session: One day of racing. The record is published session by session.
Unit: One stake. Results are in units so you can put your own money to them; the bankroll we recommend is 200 units, so with €2,000 set aside a unit is €10 and every bet is €10.
Level stakes: The same stake on every position, whatever happened before. The record stakes level: one unit a bet, always.
Strike rate: How often positions win, as a percentage. On its own it says little; what matters is how often they win compared with what the prices implied.
Won more often than the prices implied: The strike rate divided by the strike rate the prices predicted. Above one, the horses won more often than their odds suggested; that is where a result from backing horses comes from.
ROI: Return on investment: net result divided by the total amount staked. The return for every unit risked.
Net result: Gross winnings minus losing stakes minus commission, over a stated period and number of positions. Never shown here without both.
Drawdown: The largest fall from a high point in the running result before it recovered. The number that tells you how deep a losing spell went.
Losing run: Consecutive losing positions. The deepest one is what the largest drawdown measures.
Each-way: A bet split between win and place, offered as one bet at two stakes.
Signal: The message sent right at the off: race, horse, price and stake. Sent over Live, as a notification and on Telegram.
Live: The page in the dashboard that shows signals as they happen, with the day’s positions filled in when you come back to it.