Advice

All Weather Favourites

We are coming towards the beginning of the National Hunt season and All Weather racing is going to start ramping up. With that in mind, I thought it was appropriate to take a look at the statistics of favourites on All Weather tracks today.

Let’s start by taking a look at the different All Weather tracks over the last 10 years.

[table id=3 /]

The first thing we  notice is that the strike rate is pretty much the same at every track, hovering around the 31% mark. However, Lingfield and Southwell make a significantly smaller loss than the other tracks and the PIV is better!

Looking at the gender of the runners also shows some interesting information.

[table id=4 /]

Notice how Colts and Rigs have a much better PIV and ROI. In fact Rigs have made a profit but there have only been eight runners in ten years, so we aren’t going to have very many betting opportunities. Colts on the other hand have had 3575 runs in the last ten years, just over one runner per day. They have only lost 1.5% to SP which means that if we were hunting the odds the chances are that this would have broken into a small profit.

That is an excellent starting point!

Digging further by filtering our results to only show us the performances of Colt favourites on the All Weather, we see…

[table id=5 /]

Focusing only on betting at Lingfield and Southwell we are now making a small profit to SP! Combined they have had just over 1600 runners in ten years, which is about one selection every two days. Notice the PIV’s are 1.03 and 1.01. This means that these horses win 3% and 1% more than we would expect them to, ideally we want these to be a bit higher but not bad for only applying one rule.

[table id=6 /]

A lot of punters think of All Weather racing as being only sprint racing. Being a fan of sprints, I can also be guilty of talking about them more than other types of All Weather racing, but of course, longer distance races do also take place on All Weather tracks.

Looking at the table we can see that there is a sweet spot between 10 furlongs and 14 furlongs. This indicates that I am not the only person who likes sprints on the All Weather. In fact these favourites are looking very over-bet at 5 furlongs with a PIV of 0.86 and a ROI of -15.3%.

At the longer distances the public are under-betting the favourites quite significantly. If we group them together we have 627 runners over 10 years, which is just over 1 selection per week. The strike rate is averaging 42% with a profit of £59.24 to £1 bets. Don’t forget though, this is to SP and it is very easy to beat SP!

Will this continue into the future?

Maybe, but probably not. Favourites are so focused on by the betting public that the small edges that are found are often eroded very quickly as punters jump on them.

So why am I looking into them?

Betting at the shorter end of the market is much easier for a lot of people. Psychologically the odds make us feel like we are betting on a horse that has a chance of winning, and the losing streaks are shorter. The problem is that making a profit on them can be a challenge because everyone has the same idea.

However, we can go around making a profit on them in a different way!

The strike rate of Colts racing on All Weather that are favourites is 39%. If we only take those with an SP of 15/8 or lower the strike rate increases to 48%.

The problem is these horses make a loss. So how do we get around that?

By not betting on these runners!

I know I have just written 700 words on how they win 48% of their races, and in some situations even turn a small profit. The reason for this is that we are going to be using them as saver bets.

What this means is that we are going to be looking for races which has one of these selections running (at 15/8 or less). Then we are going to use our form reading skills to find other horses that we feel have a chance at winning the race.

Look for…

  • Proven performance over the distance
  • Proven performance over the going
  • Ability to compete strongly in races with similar class runners
  • Not declining in performance over the last 6 months

When we find a horse that meets these criteria we place a bet on them. We then place a second bet on the favourite so that we break even if this horse wins.

This strategy of placing bets means you will be contesting the favourite with its strongest rival, but breaking even when it wins. You will be breaking even or making a profit over 70% of the time!

Michael Wilding

Michael started the Race Advisor in 2009 to help bettors become long-term profitable. After writing hundreds of articles I started to build software that contained my personal ratings. The Race Advisor has more factors for UK horse racing than any other site, and we pride ourselves on creating tools and strategies that are unique, and allow you to make a long-term profit without the need for tipsters. You can also check out my personal blog or my personal Instagram account.

2 Comments

  1. I can not access my smart sigger account every time i enter my password it tells me wrong password entered so I click on the forgot password and get a message saying reminder sent to your inbox. But I never receive any reply.
    Could you please help
    Regards keith furby

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