ULTIMATE ANALYSIS: QIPCO 2000 GUINEAS (Winner Finding)

This weekend we have the QIPCO 2000 Guineas and the QIPCO 1000 Guineas races taking place at Newmarket.

They’re big races in normal times, but they’re even more special this year because they’re the first major races to be taking place in the new world of social distancing we find ourselves.

In this post I’m going to analyse each of the QIPCO 2000 Guineas to uncover who I’m going to be betting on. I’d love to hear who you’re going to be betting on in the comments below.

If you’d like to know how I approach betting at horse racing festivals, and why it’s different to normal, then you can read it here.

WHY THE QIPCO 2000 GUINEAS HORSE RACE IS IMPORTANT

The first ever 2000 Guineas Stakes race was on 18 April 1809. It was started by Sir Charles Bunbury who had co-founded the Derby previously.

Originally called the 2000 Guineas because of the original prize fund. A guinea was 21 shillings, which is about £1.05.

Within fifty years the 2000 Guineas was considered to be one of the most prestigious races in Britain for three-year-olds.

There are five leading events for this age group, and as the season progresses the distances in the races also increases. These five events became known as “Classics”, and this concept was adopted by a lot of other countries.

Since 2001, the 2000 Guineas and the 1000 Guineas Stakes have offered equal prize money. Each had a purse of £523,750 in 2019.

QIPCO 2000 GUINEAS ANALYSED

In any big event the first task we have is to slim down the number of possible horses in a race.

There are fifteen runners declared for this race, and we can immediately reduce this to seven runners.

How?

By removing any horse that has odds of higher than 29/1.

Does this mean the winner won’t come from these runners?

No.

But it’s very unlikely to, and we have to balance time spent versus risk, and the risk is low.

The seven runners we are left with are Pinatubo, Kameko, Arizona, Kinross, Wichita, Military March and Al Suhail.

A QUICK STRENGTH TEST

With our seven runners we want to run a quick strength test to see which horses, on the face of it, are likely to be the strongest runners.

I do this in a few ways.

METHOD #1

Let’s look at our AI compiled probabilities for each of the horses winning.

Immediately we can see that there are 3 runners who are predicted to have a significantly better chance of winning this race than the others.

Pinatubo is predicted to be the best, and at the time of writing is the odds-on favourite, followed by Arizona and Kameko. Both of these other runners are also leaders in the market.

METHOD #2

Using the 5278 CFR rating we can immediately see the strongest four runners in the race, and know that one of them will win between 52% and 78% of the time.

We have the same three runners as before, with the fourth being Al Suhail. However, the order of them has been reversed, putting Kameko first, Arizona, Pinatubo third and Al Suhail fourth.

METHOD #3

We’re going to use a Monte Carlo simulation to determine the strongest horses in the race. The results of this simulation look like this…

You’ll notice that this produces the exact same four runners at the top, and puts Pinatubo as the favourite, but as before shows that there isn’t any value to be had with this runner.

WHAT WE NOW KNOW

Using three different “quick strength tests” we’ve discovered that the strongest horses look to be Pinatubo, Kameko and Arizona. Al Sohail is definitely also there as a contender and should be considered as a higher odds threat.

We could just use this information to determine how we want to place our bets in this race, or we could take it a bit further.

So let’s take it a bit further…

TAKING IT FURTHER

There are a number of ways that we can take our analysis further. We could go into the horse history to see how the stronger horses perform under the current race conditions, and this is something I regularly recommend.

But today I want to do something different, I’m going to use a different race card, with different ratings, to go into the runners performance in a bit more detail.

I’m going to start this by looking at two ratings, the ACPFPCLTD and ACSPCLTD.

These two ratings are class ratings which show us the average competitive (AC) level of the horses, based on another rating. We also use a time decay feature (TD) which reduces the contribution of races to the score the longer ago the race took place.

Importantly we can see that both of these ratings agree on the top three horses.

Pinatubo is the strongest, by a long way in both ratings. Second is interestingly Al Suhail, and Arizona is. third.

This gives more strength to Pinatubo, whilst also adding more to the possibility of Al Suhail performing well.

However…

As you can see in the image above, if I scroll a bit further along the race card I can see the Horse Win % where we can see that Al Sohail has only won 25% of his races, as opposed to 100% from Pintabuo and 40% from Arizona.

It’s worth pointing this out as it may affect our decision of how we bet later on.

Finally I want to get an idea of how the runners have been performing over their last few races.

I’m using the PFPPLr, PFPPLr2, PFPPLr3 and PFPPLr4.

These show the number of points gained or lost from the PFP rating in the last race (PFPPLr), last two races (PFPPLr2), last three races (PFPPLr3) and last four races (PFPPLr4).

When you see an increase in each successive rating, this means the horse’s rating has continuously improved over each of the last four races. When you see a drop, it means that race has caused a reduction in the score for some reason.

The best scenario is to see a smooth increase in each rating as you go from PFPPLr to PFPPLr4. Which is exactly what we get for all four contenders.

We can see that all these runners have been improving at a similar level except for Pinatubo who has improved more than the rest.

SO WHERE THE HECK DOES THIS LEAVE US?

We now have four contenders:

• Pinatubo
• Arizona
• Kameko
• Al Sohail

Pinatubo looks to be the strongest, but I’m not sure he’s strong enough to warrant odds of 1.86.

Arizona and Kameko both look to be good propositions that could take Pinatubo on, whilst Al Sohail has potential to place.

HERE’S HOW I’M GOING TO BET

These are the current odds as I write this article:

There aren’t currently any of the side-markets available, and I am sure I am going to want to use the place market.

Whilst Pinatubo is likely to be the strongest horse in the race, his odds are definitely far too short at the moment, which means I will be going against him.

Although I am going against him, I’m doing this in the knowledge that he has a very strong chance of winning the race, which means. I need to structure my bet with this in mind.

For me there’s little between Kameko and Arizona, but I do think Al Sohail has placing possibilities.

Here are the ways I would consider betting this race:

1. A dutch bet on Kameko and Arizona with Punatubo included to be break-even if he won. A place bet on Al Sohail, possibly in the extra place markets depending on the odds when they’re available.
2. Two 80/20 bets on Kameko and Arizona, with a place bet on Al Sohail, possibly in the extra place markets depending on the odds when they’re available.
3. Three place bets on Kameko, Arizona and Al Sohail.
4. A lay bet on Pinatubo, and 80/20 (or place) bets on Kameko and Arizona, and a place bet on Al Sohail, possibly in the extra place markets depending on the odds when they’re available.

Depending on the odds available, I will go for number four, as long as the place profit from the 80/20 bets will allow a profit if they’re the only ones that win.

How are you going to be betting in this race? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

If you want access to the ratings and software that I used to do this analysis, create your account here.