It is that time of the week again where we look at the system that we started last week and begin to build on it. In the last post we had two polls that were going to help us to decide whether we wanted to make a back or lay system and what way of analysing the main profit of the system was preferred by most of our readers.
The poll results were:
Back System – 88% (22 Votes)
Lay System – 12% (3 Votes)
The second poll results were:
Profit – 43% (13 Votes)
ROI – 33% (10 Votes)
SR – 23% (7 Votes)
Bets – 1% (0 Votes)
The reason that Bets got 1% is because the software automatically starts any category with 1%. The interesting thing is that the first poll got 25 votes and the second one got 30. If you thought that you couldn’t make a difference on the first one and so didn’t vote then I want to re-assure you that this is not the case so please do vote in future.
It is quite obvious that we are going to be creating a back system. I am pleased that more people are interested in backing rather than laying as there was a time when everyone wanted to lay. I have tried to explain for years that it is much harder to do successfully than back but never been sure whether anybody took note. Profit is the most important criteria to measure the system on but we also want to take into account the ROI and strike rate.
Since someone is going to have to make some decisions on their own and I am writing this series then I guess that is going to be me! I am going to start by looking at the worse quality of races purely because most people don’t. If we concentrate just on class 7 races (the lowest class there is) then we are getting just a bit more than 100 races a year. For this reason we are going to look at races that are in classes 6 and 7.
After a bit of research I decided that it would be best if we focused on all-weather racing because there is significantly more of this race type at the lower classes than others. To create this system I shall be using data from 2005 to 2008 and then testing it on data from 2009 until the present.
I would like to hold another poll this week to see whether you are interested in betting on favourites or would prefer to stay away from favourites. It is important that we make this decision at the beginning of the creation process because it is going to affect the strategy that we use. You can find this poll at the bottom of today’s post.
What I have done is to investigate a few of the most obvious areas of a horses form and put the results below. As we cannot move on until we get the results for the new poll, I would like to get your opinions on what you think of the information below and which direction you would be interested in taking? Once we get past this stage it is going to start moving quite quickly J
| Age | Runners | Winners | Win S/R | P/L Div | P/L | ROI |
| 2 | 5373 | 530 | 9.86 | -0.27 | -1464.77 | -27.26 |
| 3 | 13922 | 1291 | 9.27 | -0.25 | -3487.75 | -25.05 |
| 4 | 12769 | 1165 | 9.12 | -0.25 | -3147.66 | -24.65 |
| 5 | 8498 | 834 | 9.81 | -0.20 | -1694.08 | -19.94 |
| 6 | 5347 | 478 | 8.94 | -0.25 | -1356.29 | -25.37 |
| 7 | 3753 | 367 | 9.78 | -0.17 | -633.94 | -16.89 |
| 8 | 2703 | 235 | 8.69 | -0.27 | -724.91 | -26.82 |
| 9 | 1613 | 146 | 9.05 | -0.28 | -450.85 | -27.95 |
| 10 | 713 | 64 | 8.98 | -0.25 | -179.1 | -25.12 |
| 11 | 299 | 29 | 9.7 | -0.17 | -52.19 | -17.45 |
| 12 | 140 | 11 | 7.86 | -0.45 | -63.38 | -45.27 |
| 13 | 36 | 3 | 8.33 | 0.03 | 1 | 2.78 |
| 14 | 24 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -24 | -100 |
| 15 | 1 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -1 | -100 |
A Quick Guide To Reading The Information Above
As you can see I have broken down all the races into age groups and you can see that the strike rate is very similar throughout the range. When looking at the profit and loss figures you must remember to take into account the number of runners as this is the amount of horses bet on. Obviously more bets mean more losses but comparative to smaller amounts of bets they may not be as bad. To make this easier I have included a column called P/L Div. This is simply the profit/loss divided by the number of runners but it makes it easier to compare the different profit levels against each other without bias.
As you can see there is not much difference in the P/L Div and this looks like a factor that doesn’t hold much influence. You also need to take into account the number of winners when looking at information like this. For example horses aged 13 made a profit but we only got 3 winners and this is not enough to base sound judgement on. As a minimum you should have 30 winners if possible.
This gives you a good idea how to look at the information and below are the tables with some more common factors (don’t worry we will get to the unusual ones later!)
Below is the number of days since the horse last ran:
| DSLR | Runners | Winners | Win S/R | P/L Div | P/L | ROI |
| 0-7 | 9211 | 1110 | 12.05 | -0.18 | -1652.06 | -17.94 |
| 8-14 | 13814 | 1363 | 9.87 | -0.24 | -3304.46 | -23.92 |
| 15-21 | 10069 | 951 | 9.44 | -0.23 | -2318.72 | -23.03 |
| 22-28 | 5789 | 523 | 9.03 | -0.26 | -1526.59 | -26.37 |
| 29-42 | 5583 | 457 | 8.19 | -0.28 | -1576.60 | -28.24 |
| 43-56 | 2469 | 206 | 8.34 | -0.15 | -369.01 | -14.95 |
| 57-90 | 2665 | 198 | 7.43 | -0.28 | -749.60 | -28.13 |
| 91-150 | 2195 | 155 | 7.06 | -0.18 | -385.43 | -17.56 |
| 150+ | 3396 | 190 | 5.59 | -0.41 | -1396.47 | -41.12 |
Below is the draw the horse is racing from:
| Draw | Runners | Winners | Win S/R | P/L Div | P/L | ROI |
| 0 | 67 | 5 | 7.46 | -0.18 | -11.88 | -17.72 |
| 1 | 5134 | 483 | 9.41 | -0.33 | -1669.01 | -32.51 |
| 2 | 5129 | 536 | 10.45 | -0.21 | -1056.06 | -20.59 |
| 3 | 5132 | 488 | 9.51 | -0.22 | -1125.73 | -21.94 |
| 4 | 5120 | 589 | 11.5 | -0.12 | -611.77 | -11.95 |
| 5 | 5069 | 516 | 10.18 | -0.16 | -835.96 | -16.49 |
| 6 | 4953 | 464 | 9.37 | -0.27 | -1330.41 | -26.86 |
| 7 | 4750 | 480 | 10.11 | -0.24 | -1130.83 | -23.81 |
| 8 | 4486 | 424 | 9.45 | -0.21 | -927.25 | -20.67 |
| 9 | 4151 | 352 | 8.48 | -0.29 | -1214.32 | -29.25 |
| 10 | 3722 | 274 | 7.36 | -0.34 | -1260.45 | -33.86 |
| 11 | 3095 | 233 | 7.53 | -0.30 | -933.16 | -30.15 |
| 12 | 2387 | 181 | 7.58 | -0.16 | -379.87 | -15.91 |
| 13 | 1387 | 97 | 6.99 | -0.37 | -509.64 | -36.74 |
| 14 | 528 | 28 | 5.3 | -0.43 | -225.6 | -42.73 |
| 15 | 48 | 2 | 4.17 | -0.77 | -37 | -77.08 |
| 16 | 22 | 1 | 4.55 | -0.41 | -9 | -40.91 |
| 17 | 3 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -3 | -100 |
| 18 | 1 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -1 | -100 |
| 19 | 2 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -2 | -100 |
| 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -1 | -100 |
| 21 | 2 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -2 | -100 |
| 23 | 2 | 0 | 0 | -1.00 | -2 | -100 |
Below is the finish position of the horse last time it raced:
| Finish LTO | Runners | Winners | Win S/R | P/L Div | P/L | ROI |
| Un-Raced | 1430 | 100 | 6.99 | -0.31 | -441.17 | -30.85 |
| 1 | 3488 | 629 | 18.03 | -0.20 | -682.49 | -19.57 |
| 2 | 4553 | 810 | 17.79 | -0.16 | -719.74 | -15.81 |
| 3 | 4883 | 664 | 13.6 | -0.16 | -766.43 | -15.70 |
| 4 | 5187 | 585 | 11.28 | -0.19 | -966.38 | -18.63 |
| 5 | 5206 | 511 | 9.82 | -0.15 | -802.62 | -15.42 |
| 6 | 5166 | 431 | 8.34 | -0.27 | -1392.55 | -26.96 |
| 7 | 4844 | 360 | 7.43 | -0.13 | -629.87 | -13.00 |
| 8 | 4466 | 261 | 5.84 | -0.38 | -1692.80 | -37.90 |
| 9 | 3968 | 236 | 5.95 | -0.21 | -823.03 | -20.74 |
| 10 | 3517 | 165 | 4.69 | -0.42 | -1460.99 | -41.54 |
| 11 | 2787 | 106 | 3.8 | -0.45 | -1241.75 | -44.56 |
| 12 | 2119 | 113 | 5.33 | -0.24 | -505.67 | -23.86 |
| 13 | 1344 | 63 | 4.69 | -0.37 | -492.22 | -36.62 |
| 14 | 700 | 43 | 6.14 | -0.14 | -99.22 | -14.17 |
There is plenty of information there to get you thinking and I shall be looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Next week you shall hear my thoughts and how we have moved the system forward based on everything you have said. If you didn’t get a chance to read last week’s post then you can click here to catch up. Don’t forget to tell me whether you would like to bet on favourites or non-favourites using the poll below.
[poll id=”4″]
The issue of favourites or not is not that important to me. However if we look at the poll for week 1 and note that strike rate came out as low priority in the voting. That would suggest that the majority will probably be looking for a non-favs based system. Secondly I have always been led to believe that favourites in this sort of class (class 6 or 7) are generally the least trustworthy of favourites to bet on.
Paul
Good point about last weeks poll and the strike rate. I have never found the favourites in these races to be particularly worse or better than any others an a quick analysis shows that they win at 30% as expected. In my experience the biggest difference is that finding profit with favourites is a lot harder.