Advice

Understanding The Official Rating

There very rarely seems to be any information available about how the Official Rating actually performs and so today I thought it would be good for us to have a look at some of its stats and see how it works.

Let’s begin with the basic ranks of Official Rating and how they perform.

Official Rating Rank

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

1

11106

1971

17.75

-1657.6

-14.93

2

8258

1180

14.29

-1398.19

-16.93

3

7716

835

10.82

-2269.76

-29.42

4

7145

787

11.01

-953.66

-13.35

5

6734

668

9.92

-1303.74

-19.36

6

6283

556

8.85

-1504.65

-23.95

7

5544

454

8.19

-1047.44

-18.89

8

4904

322

6.57

-1361.3

-27.76

9

4025

284

7.06

-943.18

-23.43

10

3353

192

5.73

-886.05

-26.43

This shows a very linear path with regards to the strike rate, the top rated has the highest strike rate and this declines in a steady fashion through to the 10th top-rated. I chose to stop the ranking at 10 as that should be more than enough data to find out what may be happening.

The ROI is not so linear and it is jumping up and down all over the place which is not ideal. The perfect scenario would be for the top rated losing the least and then steadily increasing losses as you drop through the ranks.

Turf Races

Official Rating Rank

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

1

4378

739

16.88

-762.53

-17.42

2

3363

484

14.39

-471.21

-14.01

3

3165

344

10.87

-975.99

-30.84

4

2955

314

10.63

-398.51

-13.49

5

2840

303

10.67

-475.51

-16.74

6

2694

243

9.02

-608.1

-22.57

7

2468

184

7.46

-537.81

-21.79

8

2090

124

5.93

-730.17

-34.94

9

1740

133

7.64

-122.92

-7.06

10

1413

68

4.81

-561.38

-39.73


Chase Races

Official Rating Rank

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

1

1552

294

18.94

-134.01

-8.63

2

1295

180

13.9

-325.77

-25.16

3

1221

132

10.81

-354.9

-29.07

4

1120

127

11.34

-275.56

-24.6

5

991

111

11.2

-39.35

-3.97

6

897

78

8.7

-310.61

-34.63

7

756

79

10.45

-58.72

-7.77

8

657

51

7.76

-130.55

-19.87

9

470

33

7.02

-206.63

-43.96

10

390

30

7.69

-151.5

-38.85


Hurdle Races

Official Rating Rank

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

1

1977

408

20.64

-247.74

-12.53

2

1488

226

15.19

-133.79

-8.99

3

1352

127

9.39

-409.67

-30.3

4

1195

109

9.12

-146.3

-12.24

5

1092

89

8.15

-286.23

-26.21

6

968

70

7.23

-224.88

-23.23

7

860

74

8.6

-135.05

-15.7

8

762

46

6.04

-283.67

-37.23

9

707

60

8.49

-138.96

-19.66

10

610

42

6.89

-152.38

-24.98

When we split the race types into these three groups we notice that the ROI is still erratic in all of them but the variation in strike rate is very interesting. In turf races the top 2 rated are slightly better performing than the rest but down to the 5th ranked they are all quite similar.

Chase races is limited to the 1st ranked being significantly better but then having similar strike rates down to 7th rank while Hurdles noticeably have a higher strike rate for the top 2 ranked with the 2st ranked being over 20%. More importantly the 2nd ranked in Hurdle races seems to be overbet less than the other rankings, as does the 1st ranked in Chase races and so these may be the areas to focus on to investigate a bit further.

Our first step is to break the 2nd OR ranked in Hurdle races down by SP rank to see how they perform.

SP Rank

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

1

236

75

31.78

-36.72

-15.56

2

293

70

23.89

3.94

1.35

3

216

29

13.43

-40.01

-18.52

4

168

23

13.69

55.5

33.04

5

126

10

7.94

-13.5

-10.71

6

99

9

9.09

67

67.68

7

73

4

5.48

-2

-2.74

8

67

2

2.99

-37

-55.22

9

56

3

5.36

6

10.71

10

56

1

1.79

-39

-69.64

As we would expect the strike rate is higher for the top ranked by SP but the ROI is far too erratic for us to get any useful information out of. We will need to try something else such as days since last raced.

Maybe the second ranked horses prefer to have a bit of breather before being raced again but if they have too long then they no longer perform as expected.

DSLR Ranges

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

0-7

99

15

15.15

-39.63

-40.03

8-14

271

40

14.76

-0.55

-0.2

15-21

273

52

19.05

9.79

3.58

22-28

193

36

18.65

31.51

16.33

29-42

224

30

13.39

-78.84

-35.2

43-56

96

12

12.5

-33.67

-35.07

57-90

100

14

14

-24.35

-24.35

91-150

66

6

9.09

3.25

4.92

150+

166

21

12.65

-1.29

-0.78

Interestingly we see straight away that the ROI is considerably better when the horse has had between 8 days and 28 days rest and this gives over 700 selections on our 1 year data sample which is a significant amount.

This is liable to be back fitted to the year of data in the testing sample and I would be very surprised if it held up but let’s take a look at data from other years.

Year

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

P/L BFSP

ROI BFSP

2007

728

103

14.15

-46.28

-6.36

145.96

20.05

2008

796

109

13.69

-109.96

-13.81

39.91

5.01

2009

796

135

16.96

14.2

1.78

201.31

25.29

2010

426

59

13.85

-88.92

-20.87

7.39

1.73

As we thought the ROI in other years is nothing like as good and so this would need some serious tweaking but just flat betting these selections would have made a profit every year to Betfair SP which is interesting.

If we go back to looking just at 2009 and instead look at the official class level of the runners ranked 2nd for OR.

Class No

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

1

76

10

13.16

-37.77

-49.7

2

76

14

18.42

44.63

58.72

3

255

34

13.33

1.66

0.65

4

754

110

14.59

-162.33

-21.53

5

327

58

17.74

20.03

6.12

We see that class 2 and class 5 completely outperformed the other class levels for ROI in this period of time. As class 5 has more runners available let’s take a look at how this performed since 2007.

Year

Runners

Winners

Win S/R

P/L to SP

ROI to SP

2007

266

37

13.91

-1.43

-0.54

2008

302

42

13.91

-85.09

-28.17

2009

327

58

17.74

20.03

6.12

2010

168

31

18.45

41.36

24.62

Apart from 2007 which was nearly break-even you notice that our ROI has been increasing each year. If we then look over to the Profit and Strike Rate columns we can also see that both of these have been steadily increasing each year.

This is very promising and suggests that there is a trend of horses ranked 2nd in the official rating of class 5 hurdle races are being more and more under bet. The more under bet they become the more profit we can make.

Now that we have found this possible niche of profitability it is time to discover why this is happening and what situation indicates that we have an under bet horse. Although the trend suggests that it is possible to flat bet these runners and make a profit you will be much better finding out why this is happening and which race shapes it is most likely to happen in. This will allow you to build on this information and create a niche system that you can add to your betting portfolio.

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.

One Comment

  1. Appreciate these historical stats and what can be gleaned from them. Thanks for the information. I only wish I had a DB that I could play with but I can’t afford anything like the stuff that can be bought/queried from Proform/Timeform/Smartform/Flatstats, etc., etc..
    There’s HorseRaceBase.com but that’s online and doesn’t allow downloading.
    So thanks for these forays into the past.

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