(SHorBES) HORSE RACING RATINGS: +328 Units Profit With A 34% Strike Rate
Two Selections A Day Make A 19% ROI
Horse racing ratings are an integral part of finding a profit from betting on the horses.
With more ratings for every horse than any other provider in the UK, we began a public analysis of each one in 2020, and are adding to them regularly.
You can see all the ratings in the series here.
Some will perform well and make insane horse racing profits on their own, others will not perform as well but will indicate strong horses and work excellently when combined with other factors.
In this post we’re going to look at the SHorBES horse racing rating.
It’s quite a mouthful, but there is logic behind the crazy name. This speed rating is the best ever (BE) speed figure (SPDFIG) on the current race type (S).
There are raw ratings, rank and difference from top versions of this rating.
Before we dig in and see how it performs, let’s see…
WHAT HORSE RACING RATINGS STATS MEAN
We use a few pieces of information that help us to understand the performance of horse race ratings. Below you will find an explanation of these for reference.
SELECTIONS
The number of selections that have been found
PROFIT
The profit, or loss, of the selections to Betfair SP with a 2% commission. Where Betfair SP isn’t available we have used the SP odds.
WINS
The number of winners found in this sample of selections.
STRIKE RATE
The percentage of winners found from the selections.
ROI
Return On Investment. The percentage return made on turnover, based on betting 1 unit per selection.
A/E
Actual/Expected. Also known as the PIV (Pool Impact Value). This shows how many winners were found compared to the number of expected winners (based on odds). If this figure is greater than 1 then we have an edge, less than 1 and we don’t!
CHI2
The chi square is a statistical test which tells us how likely the results are due to chance or skill. 100% means the results are 100% based on chance, we want them to be as low as possible.
DOES THE SHorBES RATING MAKE HORSE RACING PROFITS?
Using data from 2018 to the present day, I’m going to start by looking at the top four ranked horses in every race.
Starting with all the top four rated horses in every race, with no conditions applied, we get these results:
RANKINGS
RANK #1
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 26038 | -467.49 | 4510 | 17% | -2% | 1.01 | 38.97% |
RANK #2
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 25797 | -606.24 | 3874 | 15% | -2% | 1.01 | 60.44% |
RANK #3
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 24978 | -1094.92 | 3256 | 13% | -4% | 0.99 | 75.40% |
RANK #4
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 23831 | -1804.85 | 2711 | 11% | -8% | 0.96 | 4.79% |
NO RATING
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 39996 | -2391.08 | 3389 | 8% | -6% | 0.99 | 51.70% |
We can see that the strike rate decreases steadily from the top ranked to the fourth ranked, which is a strong indicator that this rating is performing smoothly with the most likely horse to win being the top ranked.
None of the top four ranked horses, or the horses without a rating, make a profit out of the box. Although the top ranked strike rate of 17% is amongst the best starting strike rate we’ve found so far, and has an out of the box A/E ratio of 1.01, indicating a tiny edge and suggesting we’d bounce around just below and above break-even if we bet these horses.
RAW RATINGS
RATINGS >= 150
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 73501 | -2418.30 | 8974 | 12% | -3% | 0.99 | 51.90% |
RATINGS >=125 AND <150
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 58693 | -1289.03 | 6956 | 12% | -2% | 0.99 | 52.75% |
RATINGS >= 75 AND <125
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 74222 | -3819.30 | 7560 | 10% | -5% | 1.00 | 88.06% |
RATINGS < 75
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 58710 | -1876.69 | 4432 | 8% | -3% | 1.00 | 80.42% |
Looking at the raw ratings, we can again see a decline in strike rates as the ratings drop, which is as we would expect.
The A/E ratio is 1.00 or 0.99 for all groups, but the highest rated horses only have a strike rate of 12%, compared to top ranked horses having a strike rate of 17%.
An A/E ratio of 1.00 means that these horses are winning the same amount the odds would predict. Whilst this won’t make us a profit, it’s a very strong position to be in with a single rating without any race conditions. A lot of raw ratings will have an A/E of less than one initially, indicating that they are finding winners less than the odds suggest.
DIFFERENCE FROM TOP
LESS THAN 5 POINTS DIFFERENCE
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 77638 | -3247.17 | 9639 | 12% | -4% | 1.00 | 60.49% |
MORE THAN 5 POINTS AND LESS THAN 25 POINTS DIFFERENCE
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 60807 | -3378.39 | 7191 | 12% | -6% | 0.98 | 13.40% |
MORE THAN 25 POINTS AND LESS THAN 60 POINTS DIFFERENCE
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 66265 | -1152.77 | 5990 | 9% | -2% | 0.99 | 24.93% |
MORE THAN 60 POINTS DIFFERENCE
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 60416 | -1624.99 | 5102 | 8% | -3% | 1.01 | 48.23% |
The performance of the DiffTp (Difference From Top) is very similar to the raw rating.
None of the versions make a profit out of the box, but they all find a similar amount of winners that we would expect to find based on the odds of the selections.
It’s not surprising to see that none make a profit instantly. After all, we’re looking at the fastest horses over the current race type. Although our speed ratings are different to other providers, in this situation they’re going to show the fastest horse in the race for these conditions, and this is available to other bettors as well.
In order to see if we can find a profit from this rating on its own, we need to dig into it further.
Where do you start?
You could start with any, but since there’s not a huge amount to differentiate in the performance of them except strike rate, I’m going to use the strike rate and look at the top ranked horse to see how it performs under different race conditions.
WHAT IMPACT RACE CONDITIONS HAVE
Before we look at the impact of race conditions, we need to choose which groupings we’re going to focus on. These are the strongest groupings from each version of the rating:
RANK #1
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 26038 | -467.49 | 4510 | 17% | -2% | 1.01 | 38.97% |
Taking the top ranked horses and breaking them down into different race conditions gives us the following results.
| Race Type | Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| NH Flat | 940 | 15.08 | 202 | 21% | 2% | 1.05 | 41% |
| Chase Turf | 3719 | 93.37 | 568 | 15% | 3% | 0.96 | 29% |
| Flat Turf | 8863 | -838.47 | 1506 | 17% | -9% | 0.99 | 80% |
| Hurdle Turf | 5975 | 410.63 | 1125 | 19% | 7% | 1.07 | 1% |
| Hunter Chase | 184 | -30.74 | 54 | 29% | -17% | 1.17 | 19% |
| Flat AW | 6346 | -122.36 | 1052 | 17% | -2% | 0.99 | 75% |
| Chase AW | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0% | 0% | 0.00 | 0% |
| Bumper AW | 11 | 5.00 | 3 | 27% | 45% | 1.56 | 39% |
| Missing | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0% | 0% | 0.00 | 0% |
Looking at how horses ranked one in the race for this rating over specific race types has made a big difference.
Immediately you can see that Hurdle Turf races have made the most profit, but there’s also a profit on NH Flat, Chase Turf and Bumper AW.
Bumper AW has only had 11 bets, so there isn’t enough to make that a serious option and we’ll remove it.
From the remaining three we can see that Chase Turf races have an A/E of 0.96, so we’d expect that profit to disappear over a period of time.
That leaves us with NH Flat and Hurdle Turf, both showing a good A/E. The Chi2 for NH Flat is a bit high, but there’s only 940 selections (around 1 per day) and that will come down over more selections as long as the selections continue to have a good A/E.
For now we’ll focus just on the Hurdle Turf, which looking into race types only, has generated a +410.63 unit profit (7% ROI) since 2018, with a 19% strike rate, a 7% advantage (A/E of 1.07) and a 99% chance this is because of the rating.
That’s pretty good on it’s own, with nothing else. But look what happens if we combine it with knowledge we already know. For example that the 5278 CFR top ranked horse performs well in Hurdle Turf races, but with a much higher strike rate.
These horses didn’t have an advantage, as you can see in the investigation into the rating here.
But the strike rate of 19% above is going to be a bit low for us.
With this knowledge we can assume that applying a condition of the top ranked 5278 CFR horses as well will significantly increase the strike rate, keeping the edge from the current SHorBES rating.
Here’s what happens:
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 954 | 225.84 | 360 | 38% | 24% | 1.08 | 8.69% |
Check out the strike rate now! It’s 38%, much better.
The profit has dropped, but the number of selections has dropped by 84%. That’s why the ROI has jumped from 7% to 24%.
However going from nearly 7 selections a day to 1 may be a bit drastic. It’s also meant that we haven’t got enough selections to be as confident as we like, and the Chi2 has gone above 5%.
If we include the top two ranked 5278 CFR horses to increase the selections, we end up here…
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 1707 | 328.03 | 575 | 34% | 19% | 1.08 | 3.41% |
We’ve lost 4% on the strike rate, but it’s still strong. The selections have increased to around two per day, and importantly the Chi2 has come back to below 5% which makes us more confident.
IN SUMMARY
We’ve found that straight out of the box, the horse racing rating SHorBES doesn’t make a profit from any of the breakdowns we’ve looked at.
This tells us that we need to look further into each of those categories in order to find an angle that has an edge.
Starting with the most promising segment, horse ranked first, we looked in detail at the race types and found two that were worthy of considering.
At this point we were already making a profit, with nothing more than the top ranked horse on Hurdle Turf races!
But there were a lot of selections, and the strike rate was lower than we ideally wanted.
Taking into account some of the investigations we have done in previous articles, we added in the 5278 CFR rating to significantly increase the strike rate and ROI.
The final result was:
| Selections | Profit | Wins | Strike Rate | ROI | A/E | Chi2 |
| 1707 | 328.03 | 575 | 34% | 19% | 1.08 | 3.41% |
This was achieved by:
- Horses ranked 1st for SHorBES
- Hurdle Turf races only
- Horses Ranked 1st or 2nd for 5278 CFR
Let me know if you are already using the best ever speed rating of a horse over a specific race type by leaving a comment below.
If you’re not using it, then maybe you’ll think about it now ?
The SHorBES horse racing rating is available to RA Pro members on the Standard race card. In just a few seconds you can create a custom race card with the ranking version of this horse racing rating on it.
If you’re not yet a member of RA Pro, you can register here.
You can practice this approach, and develop it further for zero-risk at Aldermist, the world’s only LikeReal Racing platform. Any system or strategy that is profitable at Aldermist will also be profitable on live racing.
Don’t forget… this is just one basic analysis on the SHorBES rating using race types, there are limitless ways we can investigate this rating to uncover profitable angles.
