Run Style Bias in Handicap Chases: 2024/25 Season Update (Part 1)

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It has been three years since I looked at run style bias in National Hunt racing, so I felt now was a good time to revisit the topic, writes Dave Renham. Personally, I use run style bias for around 50% of my National Hunt bets so it is an area that I feel is extremely important. This article is the first of a two-parter.

The focus for both articles will be handicap chases with seven or more runners. Data has been taken from UK NH racing spanning from 1st January 2017 to 6th October 2024. I have split the races into four distance bands – 2m1f or less, 2m3f-2m4f; 2m5f-2m6f and 2m7f-3m2f. In this piece I will concentrate on the two shorter distances of 2m1f or less and 2m3f-2m4f. There is a relatively small number of handicap chases at 2m2f and these have a micro-section below.

As a reminder, geegeez.co.uk offers some powerful resources and the stats I am sharing with you here are based on the site’s pace / run style data, which can be found within individual racecards, a separate Pace Analyser tool, and in the highly configurable Query Tool. The run style data on Geegeez is split into four groups – Led (4), Prominent (3), Mid Division (2) and Held Up (1). The number in brackets is the run style score assigned to each group. Below is a basic breakdown of which type of horse fits which type of run style profile:

Led – horses that lead early, usually within the first furlong or so; or horses that dispute the early lead. The early leader is often referred to as the front runner.

Prominent – horses that lie up close to the pace just behind the leader(s).

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack or just behind the mid-point.

Held up – horses that are held up at, or near, the back of the field.

Race Leaders in Handicap Chases

Let me start by comparing the win percentages for the ‘L’ group (early leaders/front runners) versus the other three groups combined (Prominent, Mid Div, Held Up) across all distances by Year:

 

 

As the graph indicates front runners have a definite edge when it comes to strike rate. It is important to be aware that the number of runners in each run style group differs: prominent and hold up categories usually have more runners within their groups. 'Leaders' is the smallest group as usually you only get one early leader in this type of race, occasionally two when there is a battle for the early lead.

Hence although raw strike rates have significance, it is may be instructive to look at metrics like Impact Values (IV) and the A/E index (Actual winners/Expected winners). More information on these IV and A/E metrics can be found here.

First here are the A/E index splits by year:

 

 

These figures correlate positively with the strike rates. The ‘L’ group of race leaders have recorded consistently high A/E indices ranging from 1.09 to 1.33. The three other run style groups combined have ranged from 0.76 to 0.82. Anything above 1.00 for A/E indices suggests good value so front runners have consistently offered punters good value year in year out. Onto the Impact Value comparison now:

 

 

This is to all intents and purposes a carbon copy of the A/E graph. These initial findings already highlight why run style bias is important in handicap chases and something that needs to be factored in to your form study. It is time now to break the stats down into the distance bands as mentioned earlier. Let me start by examining the shorter distance handicap chases.

Handicap Chases of 2m1f or less

To begin with l will share the win strike rates for each group. Note that these figures are based, as before, on the wins to runs ratio within each specific group. Here are the splits:

 

Based on what we have seen already in this article in terms of the overall stats, these figures should come as no surprise. The ‘led’ group is comfortably clear of the rest in terms of win rates. Thereafter, the graph slopes from left to right implying that the nearer a runner is to the front of the race in the early part the better. We will see this pattern tend to recur across all race distances. Let me share the A/E indices for these shortest distance handicap chases next:

 

This is another demonstration of how the 'Led' group have offered punters excellent value. 1.23 is a strong A/E index figure on a significant sample size. We again see the sloping pattern from left to right, giving us the correlation statisticians are always looking for. The IV splits complete the set:

 

There is strong positive correlation once more, emphasizing the edge front runners have over 2m1f or less. Indeed, if you had sourced a crystal ball in perfect working order and been able to predict all the horses that led or contested the lead early in these races you would have secured a huge £1 level stakes profit of £330.21 (ROI +29.9%). This is just to Industry SP; to Betfair SP you could probably double that figure.

Now I want to examine the individual course run style stats over 2m1f or less. Courses that had a handful of qualifying races have not been included. Below is a table comparing the wins to runs ratio within each run style group, as well as their A/E indices. I have colour coded it to help make the biases clearer. Numbers in green are positive, numbers in orange or red are negative.

 

 

The strongest front running biases look to be at Cheltenham, Doncaster, Hereford, Hexham, Sedgefield, Southwell and Stratford. Other courses where the bias is still very significant include Cartmel, Huntingdon and Plumpton.

I did a little extra digging into the Cheltenham and Sedgefield run style stats because, as we know, it is all very well having a front running bias, but it is not easy predicting who will lead a race early. Looking at the Cheltenham numbers first, five of the 27 winners were top rated pre-race in the PACE section of the geegeez.co.uk racecards, while 12 of the 27 came from the top three in the pace ratings. If you had backed ‘blind’ the top three pace rated horses in all qualifying races at Cheltenham, you would have made a profit of £29.18 to SP (ROI +36%). Looking at Sedgefield, where there were more qualifying races (44), the top-rated pace horse won 12 times and backing them blind would have secured an SP profit of £16.55 (ROI +37.6%). The second rated pace horse won eight times for a profit of £28.04 (ROI +63.7%). So, 20 of the 44 races were won by one of the top two rated pace horses in the pre-race pace cards. That is extremely impressive going.

Clearly, I have delved more deeply into just two courses and distances as regards analysing the performance of the pre-race pace ratings, but the initial signs are promising. The problem with this type of research is that it is quite time consuming as you can only cross-check one race at a time. However, when I get some time, I will analyse some more.

In terms of courses where front runners ‘under achieve’, these include Carlisle, Ffos Las, Newbury, Sandown, Uttoxeter and Warwick. As punters, it is important to recognise the uniqueness of British horse racing in terms of how different course configurations can be. Courses can be left- or right-handed, sharp or stiff, undulating or flat, while the circumference and shape of each track differs too. Fences are placed in different positions and the length of run ins also varies. Some of these factors may help to strengthen or indeed weaken any front running bias.

Now it is time to switch to the next distance band.

Handicap Chases at 2m2f

Briefly, there were 86 races at this specific distance in the near eight year study period. The breakdown is below and, happily, the pattern is repeated: horses that lead do much the best, though those racing midfield have outperformed prominent runners. Hold up runners have found life difficult.

 

 

Of the five qualifying tracks with 7+ runner handicap chases at this specific distance, Kempton was by far the best performing for front runners.

 

 

Handicap Chases of 2m3f to 2m4f

I am going to start with this cohort by looking at the strike rates for each run style group as I did before. Keep in mind that these are wins to runs ratios calculated within each group.

 

These figures mimic closely those for the 2m1f or less distance band. Front runners would have again been a licence to print money should you have been able to predict them pre-race. Backing the front runner during this timeframe, would have made a profit of £548.82 to £1 level stakes (ROI +33.3%).

Onto the A/E indices now:

 

These numbers suggest the front running bias is stronger than over the shorter distance. Let’s see if the IV figures back up that assertion:

 

The chart does correlate with the slightly improved A/E indices. To save readers scrolling up and down to compare the two distances, the table below shows these stats in one place to make the comparison easy:

 

 

The led and prominent figures are higher for both metrics at the 2m3f-2m4f distance, while the mid div and held up figures are lower. All of this points firmly to an even stronger run style/pace bias to front runners.

Time to examine the individual course data for the 2m3f-2m4f group now, and below is another table comparing the wins to runs ratio within each run style group, as well as their A/E indices. It’s colour coded as before:

 

 

It is interesting to see that Cheltenham, Doncaster, Sedgefield and Southwell have strong front running biases again as does Plumpton. Other courses that have displayed a good edge to early leaders include Carlisle, Musselburgh, Perth and Uttoxeter. There are three courses where front runners have been at a disadvantage which were Bangor, Ffos Las and Lingfield. The Ffos Las figures for 2m1f or less were also poor for front runners.

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And that is where we will leave the first of this two-parter. It will be interesting to see how strong the front running biases are at the two longer distance groups - find out next week! Until then...

- DR

More on Price Movement from Opening Show

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A few weeks back I wrote an article, which you can read here, that featured an introduction to patterns of price movement from Opening Show odds (OS) to SP odds, writes Dave Renham. In this piece I want to revisit the topic and expand my research. I have taken data from 2021 to 2024 (up to and including September 21st) for UK flat and all-weather racing and I have used William Hill odds as representative of the general bookmaker community.

As I mentioned in my earlier piece, the OS for most races occurs around 10-15 minutes before the race is due to start. Each horse will have its opening price and then, as money is wagered in that period before the race starts, the odds will fluctuate. Some will shorten, some will drift, and some will either not move or end up back at the same price they started.

Price Movement: All Runners

I will begin by sharing the figures for all UK flat/all-weather runners during the study period to see what percentage of these runners shortened in price, lengthened in price, or stayed the same price when comparing their OS to their final Starting Price (SP). There is an extra chunk of data compared to the original article here, but the splits are virtually identical (within 0.2%):

 

 

We can use these figures as our baseline when comparing different angles. As can be seen, nearly half of all runners lengthen in price from OS to SP, compared with just under a third that shorten. Around one fifth of all runners end up having the same SP as their OS price.

Original Article Summary

Before moving on let me quickly recap the other main findings from the original article:

1. Horses that shorten in price win roughly 1.7 times more often than horses that lengthen in price.

2. Horses that lengthened in price when their OS was 7.0 (6/1) or less, lost only 1.5% to BSP.

3. Horses with an OS starting point of 18/1 or bigger have lengthened or drifted in price more than half of the time.

4. Horses with an OS of between 100/30 and 13/2 have similar percentages when it comes to shorteners and drifters. All other prices see a big differential as shown in the overall figures (see graph above).

5. The five trainers with the highest win strike rates of the period, namely Charlie Appleby, John & Thady Gosden, William Haggas, Saeed bin Suroor and Roger Varian combined to make a BSP Return on Investment of 5.5% when combining all of their horses that shortened in price from OS to SP.

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Clearly if we can improve our chances of predicting the price movements of horses we are planning to back in the time between OS and the start of the race, then it has the potential to improve our bottom line.

Price Movement by Trainer

My first port of call in this piece is to examine more trainers in detail.

Positive Price Movement by Trainer

To begin with here are the trainers with the highest percentage of runners that have shortened in price between OS and SP:

 

 

The top 20 are listed and Jane Chapple-Hyam heads the list. She is one of only two trainers who had more horses that have shortened in price than lengthened, John Gallagher being the other. Focusing on her runners with an opening show price of 9/1 or shorter we get the following splits:

 


 

Over 45% of her shorter priced runners hardened in price in the 10-15 minutes before the start of the race. Compare this to the average figure for all trainers with this price stipulation which stands at 37%. That is a noteworthy differential but John Gallagher’s splits see more than 50% of his runners priced at single figures on the opening show shortening in price. His stats are thus:

 

What is quite bizarre, however, is that the Gallagher runners that drifted in price won more often than those which shortened. Not only that, but the drifters made a tidy BSP return of over 30p in the £; his horses priced 9/1 or less on the opening show that shortened to SP showed a huge loss of 44p in the £ at exchange prices.

All of the other 19 trainers in the above list had the reverse with their shorteners winning more often than their drifters, which is the pattern one might expect based on the overall data. Jane Chapple-Hyam’s performance fitted this far more typical profile, and the results of her shorteners were much more impressive than for those that drifted as the table below shows:

 

 

Chapple-Hyam’s horses that shortened also made a small profit to Industry SP. It should be noted that her 159 runners whose price remained the same also made a profit to BSP.

Negative Price Movement by Trainer

Time to look now at those trainers whose horses have drifted / lengthened the most in percentage terms from OS to SP.

 

 

As you might expect, most of the trainers on the list are lesser name trainers whose horses tend to operate at the lower end of the ability spectrum. This is reflected in a tendency to saddle bigger priced runners which we know from previous research means they are more inclined to drift than mid- to shorter range priced runners.

There are a couple of additional stats I’d like to share. Firstly, Grace Harris when sending her horses at Wolverhampton has seen 66 of the 99 runners lengthen in price, exactly two-thirds. Secondly, Linda Perratt runs more horses at Ayr than at any other track, but her runners drift in price more often than her average: just under 61% of her Ayr runners drifted in price from OS to SP, and of these 133 runners just five won, showing significant losses. At Hamilton, where Perratt also runs a good proportion of her horses, she sees a similar percentage, 64.3%, drift from OS to SP.

Before moving on from this table of trainers, it is quite a surprise to see George Boughey in this group. It is also interesting to note that his shorter priced runners have similar percentages to his overall ones. Below, there is a graph that shows the percentage splits for runners that were 5/1 or shorter at OS:

 


 

Using this OS price stipulation across all trainers sees 43% of runners drift in price. Boughey’s figure is over 10% above this. So why do so many of Boughey’s shorter priced runners drift in price from OS? That is the 66 million-dollar question, I guess; most likely is that they are frequently over-bet earlier in the day, which leads to a correction 'on the show'.

Why Do Horses Drift?

In fact, now is perhaps a good time to discuss some of the reasons why a horse may lengthen in price in the period close to the ‘off’. Firstly, it is partly due to the bookmaker’s overround being slightly bigger on OS compared with the final market overround, in order to defend against a horse which might have been offered at the wrong price - a rick, in the parlance.

Secondly, how a horse behaves before its race can influence the price, normally in an outward direction. For example, horses that sweat up in the paddock or behind the stalls are noted and this tends to be a negative which often pushes the price out. Also, some horses get very agitated in the parade ring and that warning sign tends to see the price start to drift also. Other horses get to the start fine but then become a problem, usually making it difficult for the handlers to load them in the starting stalls. Another factor can be that a horse is difficult to restraint when going to post,  expending too much energy before the start. And yet another reason for horses drifting is when a different horse in the same race is well backed. In that scenario and in order to balance the market, bookmakers will ensure that at least one horse, often more, move out in price to compensate.

Why Do Horses Steam?

Horses that are being backed close to the off can be down to a mix of reasons also. One obvious reason is because the owner and/or stable are expecting a very big run from their charge. Another reason for contracting price movements is when a horse is shortened deliberately by the bookmakers because they have 'running on' liabilities from multiple bets should the horse win. A third reason could be paddock demeanour - fitness, behaviour, physical well being and the like. And there will be a few times when it is simply not easy to explain a late market move be it positive or negative.

Price Movement by Owner

I want now to look at a selection of owners and consider the percentage splits for those whose horses have run the most during the study period. I have ordered them by the highest percentage of horses that have shortened in price:

 

 

There is a huge difference between Marc Chan at the top and Antony Brittain at the bottom. Chan’s runners do very well when they shorten in price, hitting a strike rate of 29% and producing a profit to SP of £38.77 (ROI +56.2%) and to BSP of £48.65 (ROI +70.5%).

Horses from the Shadwell ownership have also made sound profits when concentrating on their runners that have shortened from OS to SP. Of the 437 such runners 116 have won (SR 26.5%) for a profit to SP of £48.29 (ROI +11.1%). To BSP this improve to profits of £89.39 (ROI +20.5%).

One of the most interesting findings from my point of view is that Godophin’s runners are not that strong in the market. Personally I would be betting a Godolphin runner as late as possible or at BSP if fancying one of them.

Price Movement by Horse Gender

I want to look next at the sex of the horse to see if that makes a difference to the how the price changes from OS to SP. You hear comments especially about younger male horses such as ‘he is acting very coltish’, etc. Hence, I thought it was worth looking at the figures for colts, geldings, fillies and mares.

 


 

There are some differences here with fillies drifting in price more than the other three – over 50% of all fillies have drifted in price. Is this partly down to their behaviour / composure in the paddock, going down to post and behind the starting stalls? I’m not an expert in animal behaviour so I cannot say, but it definitely gives food for thought.

Price Movement in Selected Horses

Finally let us look at some individual horses – I have chosen to share the data for just over 50 horses currently in training. The ones in green are horses that are often backed and hence tend to shorten more from OS to SP; those in red tend to lengthen in price most of the time. The number of qualifying runs in 2021-2024 must have been 30+ to make the list:

 

 

Given how frequently these horses run it is no surprise that there are familiar names in the list including sprinter Summerghand. It may be interesting to note that he is rarely backed late and has drifted from opening show to starting price in nearly 60% of his races. My personal plan is to dig deeper into each horse in the table to see if I can find logical reasons why their stats are as they are. What those are could be down to one key factor, or a group of factors; it might be horse behaviour pre-race, or linked to trainers or owners, or perhaps due to the price range the horse goes off at. I think there are likely to be reasons why the stats for each horse are as they are because they are all far from the ‘norm’ at either end of the % splits spectrum.

That's all for this second helping of price movement from opening show to the off. I hope it has given you some further insights into how the market may shape up in those last few minutes before the start of the race.

- DR

A Study of Owners in UK Flat Racing, Part 2

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This is the second of a two part series looking at some owner data for UK flat horse racing, writes Dave Renham. The period of study covers 1st January 2019 to 8th September 2024. Profit and loss figures have been calculated to Industry Starting Price (ISP), but I will quote Betfair SP (BSP) when appropriate.

In the first piece I shared data for the major owners who had the top 25 strike rates during this time frame and drilled into three - the Godolphin operation, Shadwell Estate and Cheveley Park Stud. To begin with in this piece, I will review the man with the second-best strike rate overall.

Mark Chan

Backing Marc Chan-owned horses in Britain during the study period has returned a tidy profit to SP of £34.12 (ROI +20.1%) with a strike rate close to one win in every four. Chan, a Hong Kong businessman, has a small but select group of horses that race in the UK. Initially, he owned and raced horses solely in Hong Kong, however in more recent years he has spread his wings. Saturday August 26th 2023 is a date that will be etched in his memory forever, as he landed an impressive treble that day with Angel Bleu winning the Group 2 Celebration Mile at Goodwood, Kinross the City of York Group 2 contest at York just 20 minutes later and then, 55 minutes after that, Lezoo prevailed in the Listed Hopeful Stakes at Newmarket. Three Class 1 wins at three different courses in just 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Most of Chan's horses are trained by Ralph Beckett and their record together reads: 38 wins from 144 starts (SR 26.4%) for a profit of £27.37 (ROI +19%). To BSP this improves to £44.34 (ROI +30.8%). Chan also has a couple of horses in training with John and Thady Gosden. Currently the Chan/Gosden combination has seen 4 wins from 11 starts.

Mark Chan Runners by Gender

One stat that stands out with Chan’s horses is the difference in success between his male runners and his females. Let’s look at the strike rates first:

 

 

Male horses have been 1.8 times more successful in terms of winning races than female horses. There have been more male runners, but still a fairly even split (94 male; 76 female). In terms of returns to SP there is a considerable difference:

 

 

That disparity equates to around 63p in the £ between the SP returns for male horses compared to female ones.

Other Mark Chan Runner Stats

There are three further subsets of stats I’d like to share:

1. Chan’s runners performed well when priced 6/1 or shorter. This group of runners secured 36 wins from 96 (SR 37.5%) for a profit of £35.62 (ROI +37.1%); A/E index 1.31.

2. Focusing on the Grade 1 tracks (Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown, York), Chan secured a 21.5% strike rate (20 from 93) for an SP profit of £13.60 (ROI +14.6%); A/E index 1.29.

3. Chan-owned two-year-olds have performed extremely well with the benefit of at least one previous run. These juveniles have won 16 of their 43 starts hitting a huge strike rate of over 37%. Returns have been 34p in the £ to SP, 44p to BSP. Compare this to his 2yo debutants who have scored only three times from 21 (SR 14.3%).

As I’m writing this, Kinross has just won for a tenth time (eighth for Chan) winning the Park Stakes (Group 2) at Doncaster.

 

Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum

I want to concentrate on the past three years for this Dubai-based owner as his team has excelled during that timeframe. Sheikh Obaid's prizemoney earnings have exceeded £1.5 million in each of the three years, and each year has seen his strike rate north of 20% (21.4% in 2022, 20.9% in 2023 and an impressive 24.7% so far in 2024). Backing all runners ‘blind’ in the past three years would have seen a £85.28 profit to SP; to BSP it stands at a very healthy +£164.41 (ROI +26.6%). It should also be noted that his figures are not skewed by several big-priced winners.

At the front end of the market, Sheikh Obaid has proved profitable to follow, with his favourites and second favourites having combined to win 92 races from 256 (SR 35.9%) for an SP profit of £18.20 (ROI +7.1%). To BSP this improves to £36.03 (ROI +14.1%).

Sheikh Obaid Runners by Age

Moving onto age of horse now and here are the splits:

 

 

Two-year-olds have an excellent record as have those aged four. What is interesting about the 2yo results is what happens when we compare win strike rates based on number of career starts. Normally 2yo debutants score much less frequently than those that have run before. However...

 

 

...as can be seen here, Sheikh Obaid-owned juveniles on debut have won more often than any other subset and, at a ridiculously high 29.9% strike rate for 2yo debutants. The average strike rate for all 2yo debutants in the past three years stands at just 8.4%. Here are the full figures for these 2yos on debut:

 

 

To BSP these figures improve further to  profit of £99.37 (ROI +129.1%). Backing Sheikh Obaid-owned debutants has been a license to print money in the past three seasons.

Sheikh Obaid Runners by Trainer

It’s trainer time next and here are the stats for all runners from any stable that has saddled more than 40 runners for Sheikh Obaid:

 

 

Karl Burke looks the stand-out performer and, if ignoring his bigger-priced runners (14/1 or more), the overall profit improves by £26 to £87.08. His 2yos have been exceptional winning over 36% of the time (16/44) and returning 42p in the £ to SP, 60p to BSP.

Kevin Ryan has a good record in novice events for the Sheikh, scoring ten wins from 36 (SR 27.8%) for a tidy profit of £19.40 (ROI +53.9%). To BSP the profit stands at £30.46 (ROI +84.6%). Sticking with Ryan, when his runners have been in the top three in the betting they have won over 30% of the time (17 wins from 56) returning 39p in the £ to SP, 56p to BSP.

Roger Varian also has a couple of positive stats to feedback to you. Firstly, when Jack Mitchell has ridden their record reads 12 wins from 40 (SR 30%) for a profit of £10.83 (ROI +27.1%). To BSP that improves by a further 9p in the £. In Class 5 events Varian has a 35.7% strike rate thanks to ten wins from 28. Returns to SP stand at 18p in the £, 31p in the £ to BSP.

Unfortunately for Varian, and to a lesser degree for us punters, Sheikh Obaid removed all of his horses from Varian's Carlburg Stables last month.

Sheikh Obaid Runners by Race Class

There has been excellent consistency over the last three years from the runners of Sheikh Obaid which is highlighted nicely by an analysis of race class. His runners have produced profit to SP in every single class of race as the graph below shows:

 

 

Obviously, to BSP these figures improve still further. Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum is by all accounts a demanding owner, but he does seem to be one to keep a close eye on at present.

 

Amo Racing Limited

Amo Racing Limited was founded by football agent Kia Joorabchian and they have had over 200 winners in the past six seasons. However, this year has not gone so well hitting a strike rate of below 10% compared with over 16% when combining the years 2019 to 2023. There have been plenty of ups and downs already with horses being taken away from trainers and jockey Kevin Stott being sacked after eight months of an initial one-year contract; Joorabchian certainly seems to do things his way.

To date he has one Group 1 success courtesy of King of Steel in the 2023 Qipco Champion Stakes. However, it was his 150-1 winner, Valiant Force, at Royal Ascot in the same year that perhaps he is best known for.

Amo Racing by Trainer

In terms of trainers both George Boughey and Alice Haynes boast a 20%+ win strike rate, although this year, as with all his trainers, this figure has dropped.

Perhaps the most potent stat is for favourites: jollies wearing the distinctive purple and white livery have won 103 of their 249 starts (SR 41.4%) for a profit to SP of £28.59 (ROI +11.5%). To BSP this stands at +£44.60 (ROI +17.9%). For the record Amo-owned favourites have edged into profit to BSP even during this poor year of 2024.

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Trainer Performance by Price Movement

In some other recent articles I have written about price movement, so I thought I would check for any owners who have fared particularly well with horses that have shortened in price from Early Morning Odds (around 9am in the morning) to final Starting Price. The idea was to try and establish which owners may be worth 'following in' if you see a horse of theirs being backed.

Positive Price Movement

There are six owners who have achieved an A/E index of over 1.00 with at least 75 horses that have shortened in price during this time frame. They are shown in the graph below:

 

 

Two owners that I have discussed earlier, Marc Chan and Sheikh Mohammed Obaid, both appear in this list of six. All six from the chart above - the others being David Armstrong, Valmont Racing, Qatar Racing and Paul & Clare Rooney - have been profitable to SP as well as BSP, impressive considering all the horses shortened in price during the day. Hence, a positive market move for any of these owners should be seen as material.

Negative Price Movement

It is interesting when looking at the A/E index of Paul & Clare Rooney with horses that do the reverse and drift from Early Odds to SP. When this has happened their A/E index was way down at 0.59. Such runners showed hefty losses to SP standing at over 55p in the £. But when their horses have been backed, they have produced a return to SP over nearly 7p in the £, with an A/E index of 1.01 (as can be seen in the graph). The strike rates between the two groups vary massively, too, going from 18.9% for horses that shorten to 6.7% for horses that drifted in price.

There is a similar pattern when comparing ‘shorteners’ and ‘drifters’ for Qatar Racing Limited. Here are their splits:

 

 

There is a noteworthy difference here again, much bigger than the norm. Are certain owners really in the know? It’s obviously difficult to tell, but if I was thinking about backing a horse owned by Qatar Racing, I’d prefer to see it strong in the market than weak.

 

Additional Owner stats

For the final part of this article I'm going to share some individual owner stats that I believe are worth knowing:

1. Opulence Thoroughbreds have an excellent record with their 2yos when racing on the all-weather, scoring over 37% of the time and producing returns to SP of 22p in the £.

2. Kirsten Rausing has a good record with her 2yo runners trained by Andrew Balding. Eight of the 24 runners in the study period have won securing an SP profit in every year from 2020 to 2024.

3. Middleham Park send out on average over 600 runners every year hitting a win strike rate of 12%. They spread their horses across numerous trainers and the stand-out handler for them has been Robert Cowell. Of his 67 runners 17 have won (SR 25.4%) for an SP profit of £48.23 (ROI +72%). No other trainer for Middleham has exceeded an 18% win rate with most of them between 10% and 14%.

4. The Cool Silk Partnership has an overall strike rate of 14% but with runners from the Archie Watson yard this jumps to 20.1% (19 wins from 93). Also keep an eye out for the jockey booking because when Hollie Doyle has taken the ride the stats read nine wins from 27 (SR 33.3%) for an SP profit of £16.26 (ROI +60.2%). To BSP it jumps up to +£22.78 (ROI +84.4%).

5. Sticking with Archie Watson and The Cool Silk Partnership, runners sent off first or second favourite have produced outstanding results: 15 wins from 31 (SR 48.4%) for a profit to SP of £24.15 (ROI +77.9%).

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And that concludes the second of two owner articles. I hope you enjoyed both pieces and have gained some useful insights to help inform your betting where certain owners are concerned.

- DR

A Study of Owners in UK Flat Racing, Part 1

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As the title indicates, this article looks at some owner data for UK Flat and AW racing, writes Dave Renham. The period of study is from 1st January 2019 to 8th September 2024. Profit and loss has been calculated to Industry Starting Price, but I will quote Betfair SP when appropriate. This is the first of a two-part series.

Flat Owners' Strike Rate League Table

Let's kick off by looking at the top 25 owners in terms of their strike rate (150 runs minimum to qualify):

 

 

Godolphin top the chart perhaps as one would expect, but hot on their heels is Marc Chan. The top six in the list all have decent A/E indices with four of that six hitting 1.00 or above. I will look at some of the owners in more detail later in the piece.

One owner to not quite make the cut is King Charles and Queen Camilla. Since taking over from the Queen at the end of 2022 the Royals have slimmed the operation down a little. They have had 21 winners from 164 runners (SR 13.8%), but losses have been steep, at £70.42 (ROI -42.9%). The A/E index stands on just 0.71. There has been performance drop off since the death of Her Majesty. From 2019 to 2022 Queen Elizabeth II had 270 runners of which 56 won (SR 20.1%) for a loss of £42.37 (ROI -15.2%); A/E index 0.92. It will be interesting to see if there is an improvement in performance with Royal runners over the next couple of seasons.

 

Godolphin

Godolphin had their first winner in December 1992 in Dubai and from 1994 the operation went global. At the time of researching this piece Sheikh Mohamed's racing entity winner-count worldwide stood at 8787, of which 430 came in Group 1 races.

Godolphin UK Annual Strike Rates

In this country they are based in Newmarket and have two trainers, Charlie Appleby and Saeed bin Suroor. Below are their overall yearly win strike rates.

 

 

There seems to have been a slight uptick in performance in the past three seasons (2022 to 2024). This has been reflected in the profit/loss column with 2019 to 2021 seeing losses of £368.61 (ROI -18.0%), while from 2022 to 2024 these have been much reduced to just -£38.48 (ROI -2.4%).

Godolphin Top Jockeys

Onto jockeys now and a look at all jockeys have had at least 60 rides for Godolphin and have ridden for them in 2024. I have ordered them by number of rides:

 

 

William Buick is the main stable jockey now James Doyle has moved on to Wathnan Racing. Doyle has still ridden for Godolphin this year but only 13 times and with just one win. Buick has an excellent record considering how many rides he has had. Betting all his rides would have yielded just a penny in the pound loss, while to BSP this moves into profit by £73.00 (ROI +6.8%). Oisin Murphy has an excellent record and primarily has ridden for bin Suroor. He’s only been called upon seven times so far in 2024 but has three wins from those rides. Going back to 2019 Murphy has an excellent record when riding in novice events. He has managed 18 wins from 41 rides (SR 43.9%) for a profit of £19.85 (ROI +48.4%). To BSP this improves to +£27.73 (ROI +67.6%).

Godolphin at Grade 1 Tracks

The next area to share is the stats at Grade 1 courses. This is where the biggest races tend to occur and a big operation like Godolphin do target quality.

 

 

The performances at Newmarket stand out. As you can see, I have split them into the Rowley and July courses, partly to show the consistency shown at Godolphin's local track. The two highest strike rates come from the Rowley and July course stats, both have shown profits to SP, and both A/E indices are comfortably above 1.00.

Now, the Godolphin stables are based in Newmarket, so the horses do not have to travel and are used to the surroundings. Even so, these stats are impressive especially given the quality of opposition they face at Headquarters. If you had backed all of their runners at Newmarket to BSP, profits would stand at an impressive +£172.44 (ROI +22.2%). If we look at the yearly BSP returns (ROI%) we see the following:

 

 

Profits in every single year showing excellent consistency. The last three years have been particularly strong.

William Buick has an outstanding record for Godolphin at the Suffolk track thanks to 133 winners from 368 (SR 36.1%) for a profit of £84.61 (ROI +23%). To BSP this climbs to +£121.46 (ROI +33%). Oisin Murphy is 10 from 22 and his mounts have returned a huge return to SP of 159 pence in the £. That has been achieved with the biggest priced winner being 9/1.

All in all, the Godolphin operation keeps firing year on year, and there are no signs of this abating.

 

Shadwell Estate Co (formerly Hamdan al Maktoum)

The Shadwell Estate is a world-renowned racing and breeding operation located in Britain, Ireland and the USA. Sheikh Hamdan al Maktoum became one of the leading figures in international horseracing from the 1980s until his passing in 2021. He was champion Flat owner in Britain nine times, the last of which was in 2020. The operation is now run by his daughter, Sheikha Hissa. It is noticeable that the operation seems to have been streamlined since the death of Sheikh Hamdan with the number of runners per year roughly halving. This seems mainly due to the number of 2yo runners which have decreased dramatically.

In 2022 Shadwell had their best season in the 2019-2024 period hitting over 32% winners and returns to SP of 25p in the £. This year to date has been a little ‘sticky’ relatively with a strike rate of half that on 16.8% and losses edging close to 40p in the £. I am assuming 2024 has just been a small blip, based on going back further in time when they had similar strike rates in 2012, 2013 and 2016.

 

Shadwell Estate Trainer Performance

Below is a table showing trainers who have saddked at least 100 runners for Shadwell and at least one runner in 2024:

 

 

The Gosden, Varian and Burrows yards have all provided excellent long-term results, blind profits to SP and A/E indices above 1.00. This year two trainers in particular have struggled, with Charles Hills on just one win from 19 and Richard Hannon having drawn a blank from all of his 14 runners.

A trainer they may start to use more is Kevin Phillipart de Foy. He has had only four horses to date but three of them have won and overall, he has five wins from 12 from those horses.

In terms of jockeys, Jim Crowley gets the lion’s share of the rides and from 2019 to 2023 he made a blind profit to BSP in every single year, and to SP in four of the five years. This has not been the case this year which is no surprise given the 2024 figures shown above.

From a racecourse perspective, there are 11 courses where Shadwell has sent at least 100 runners since 2019. These favoured tracks have combined to produce a BSP profit of £199.67 (ROI 12.7%). I have graphed their A/E indices below:

 

 

Doncaster and Lingfield have extremely strong A/E indices of 1.29 and 1.26 respectively when Shadwell runners visit. At both courses they have provided good profits to both Industry SP and BSP and the strike rate at Lingfield has been better than one win in every three (34.3%). Kempton is another track where their runners have performed extremely well.

Shadwell Market Performance

Looking at the betting market, Shadwell runners have turned a profit on both favourites and second favourites:

 

 

To BSP profits stand at £45.85 (ROI +6.7%) for favs, and +£65.42 (ROI +14.4%) for second favs.

It will be interesting to see how Shadwell move forward in the next two or three years.

Cheveley Park Stud

The Cheveley Park Stud is Newmarket’s oldest stud farm and has been one of the major forces in European bloodstock and racing for over 35 years. With a strike rate of around one in six they have not been as successful as the likes of Godolphin, but there are still a few positive angles to share, as well as some negative ones.

Below is their annual breakdown:

 

 

As can be seen, it has been a little up and down. This year to date has been good, as was 2021. Last year saw quite a dip so it is difficult to get a handle on how things may go each year.

Cheveley Park Stud by Race Class

Onto to Class of Race next and here are the splits:

 

 

The headline here are those 38 wins at Class 1, with a profit to boot. To BSP this profit stands at £75.71 (ROI +29.3%) and sticking with BSP Class 1 races have yielded a profit in four of the six years. If we breakdown the Class 1 races we see that Listed races have offered the best returns:

 

 

All 17 wins from the Listed races have come with female runners. Females have provided 86 of the runners; the 11 male runners have drawn a blank. It should be noted at this point that around 75% of ALL the horses from Cheveley Park have been female with the vast majority of these being fillies, most of the colts from the stud being sent to auction.

Cheveley Park Performance by Surface

With most of Cheveley Park's runners being fillies, I suspect that the turf versus all-weather stats are worth looking at. Generally, female runners find it harder on the all-weather than on grass, so I am predicting that the red, white and blue-silked runners have a slightly better record on turf. Let’s see:

 

 

No surprises here. The turf figures are far superior to the all-weather ones across the board.

Cheveley Park Performance by Trainer

A look at trainers next. Firstly, a comparison of strike rates across the main trainers (60 runs minimum):

 

 

Quite a variance here, ranging from William Haggas at over 22% to Roger Varian at under 10%. Let’s see which trainers have produced the best A/E indices over the period of study:

 

 

David O’Meara is the standout with an A/E index of 1.11. He had a decent strike rate of close to 19% and has been profitable with Cheveley Park runners to both SP (12p in the £) and BSP (24p in the £). Also take notice if Danny Tudhope is booked to ride for O’Meara and Cheveley Park. They have combined to secure a 54% profit to SP, 71% to BSP.

The Gosden stats look a bit weird as they have been profitable to SP (18p in £) and BSP (26p in the £), but their A/E index is down at 0.84. However, this is because of a below average performance with shorter-priced runners. For the record the stable has made an SP profit in five of the six years.

Cheveley Park Market Performance

Finally for Cheveley Park, let me share some market data because it caught my eye. When the SP has been short (9/4 or shorter) the results have been quite poor. The ownership entity has managed 100 wins from 294 qualifiers (SR 34%), but losses have been significant at £69.53 (ROI –23.7%).

But when their runners have drifted in price from Early Odds (around 9am in the morning) to their final SP they have made a profit if backing to BSP. There have been 749 horses which have lengthened in price from Early Odds to SP of which 108 have won (SR 14.4%) for a BSP profit to £81.08 (ROI +10.8%). So don’t be put off by a Cheveley Park drifter. Drifters at single figure BSP prices have made a profit so these figures are not skewed by several big priced winners.

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That concludes my first piece. I hope there have been some useful nuggets for you to take advantage of in the future. I will continue from where I left off next time. Until then...

- DR

Seeking Value with Female Flat Jockeys

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The 3.30 race at Goodwood on September 3rd 2024 will be one that Hollie Doyle will cherish for the rest of her life, writes Dave Renham. It was the race where she rode her 1000th career winner on the David Simcock-trained Leyhaimur. In doing so, Hollie became only the second woman to achieve this monumental feat following in the footsteps of Hayley Turner who rode her 1000th winner in November last year (2023).

Horse racing is one of the few sports where men and women compete against each other on a level playing field. One would sincerely hope that by now Doyle and Turner have proven to trainers, punters, bookmakers and fellow jockeys alike that women riders can be as successful as their male counterparts.

Back in January 2021 Matt wrote a piece on the site where he set about trying to answer two questions:

1. Has the sport begun to level the chasmic disparity between male and female rider opportunities? and

2. To what degree is it appropriate to do that based on performance data?

 

His study covered a five-year period from 1st January 2016 to 31st December 2020 and the link to read it is www.geegeez.co.uk/male-and-female-jockeys-a-comparison/.

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What I plan to do with this article is twofold. In the first part I am aiming to build upon the start of Matt’s research into his question of gender disparity, bringing us up to date over the subsequent four years. In the second part I would like to focus solely on the performance of female jockeys.

Male vs female: Overall Numbers

Firstly, let me share Matt’s findings for all riders in UK flat races between 2016 and 2020, broken down by gender focusing solely on the percentage of rides for each group.

 

 

As the pie chart shows, a whopping 91% of all rides were taken by male jockeys during this time frame. That's an enormous disparity. The question is, have matters improved at all in more recent times? Below is the same male/female percentage comparison but looking at data from 1st January 2021 to 5th September 2024:

 

 

Things have improved but just barely. I wonder if we have seen a year-on-year increase or not? Let’s see:

 

 

From 2021 to 2023 we were heading downwards not upwards. At least 2024 has seen the percentage move in the direction it should be. As can be seen, parity is a long way away and even an 80/20 male to female split seems years, possibly decades, away.

For these figures to change we need to see more Hollie Doyles. What I mean by that is that Hollie has ridden 17% of all the rides given to female jockeys in 2024. That equates to 796 rides out of the 4741 total rides for all female jockeys. Only two other female jockeys have had more than 300 rides this year to date, those being Saffie Osborne on 493 and Joanna Mason on 470. If, say, just another three female jockeys had been given the opportunities this year that Hollie has had (e.g. ridden in nearly 800 races), then the male riders to female riders’ splits would have moved from 88.7% male rides vs 11.3% female rides, to a better, if still badly unbalanced, split of 82.9% vs 17.1%. However, that would still be a solid improvement on the situation in a scenario where just three female jockeys get those better opportunities - and two of them used the lever of family connections to get started. Riders need races to gain experience, and the simple truth is that female jockeys are still not getting enough opportunities.

 

Male vs female: Favourites

Matt’s article also looked at data for favourites in terms of the male rides / female rides percentage splits. From 2016 to 2020 only 6.7% of all favourites were ridden by female jockeys. In the more recent past (2021 onwards) this has improved a little, but only to 8.3%. However, when we look at the overall results (2021-2024) for both groups of favourites we see some interesting findings:

 

 

Strike rates for both are within 0.33% of each other, but female jockeys have offered punters by far the better value. Losses to SP have been 7p in the £ better for female riders compared with the male jocks. Meanwhile the female A/E index is an excellent 0.96 compared with 0.91 for male riders. To Betfair SP backing all favourites ridden by female jockeys would have made a blind profit of £46.97 (ROI +2.6%).

If we examine like for like we get a better idea why the female jockeys have had the best of it on favourites. Most races in this favourite sample have been handicap races (because 71% of flat races in 2024 have been handicaps - and similar percentages apply to the other recent years). 80% of the races where females rode the favourite and 68% of races where males did have been handicap races. And in these handicap races female riders have outperformed their male counterparts. Here are the handicap favourite results for ’21 to ‘24 split by gender of the rider:

 

 

In these like for like races female jockeys have a better strike rate by roughly 1.5%, and they have almost broken even to SP, as compared with losses of 10% for males. The A/E index values (0.97 vs 0.91) also show a value edge for female riders. This represents a still present blind spot in the markets.

Before moving to part 2 of my piece, all the other stat comparisons Matt made in his write-up have similar percentage splits now to what they were then. As an example of this, from 2016 to 2020 25.2% of all apprentice jockey rides came from female riders, from 2021 onwards it stands marginally higher at 26.4%.

We can only hope the next four or five years sees a vast improvement and many more opportunities for female jockeys.

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Top Female Jockeys: An Overview

At this juncture, it's time to move away from the male vs female rider comparison and focus solely on the ladies. Let me look at the records of the female jockeys who have had the most rides between January 2021 and early September 2024 (ordered by number of rides):

 

 

Hollie Doyle

Hollie Doyle has the highest win percentage but over the years, as her stock has risen, it has become difficult to find profitable angles when backing her. Hollie still performs exceptionally well and is obviously one of the top jockeys in the country; it is just that she has become very popular with punters which makes her expensive to follow generally speaking.

If we go back to the previous two years (2019 and 2020), her ROI was -8% to SP, and you could have secured a healthy £177.24 (ROI +9.9%) if backing all her mounts to BSP. These 2019-2020 figures were achieved with a virtually identical strike rate to what transpired in 2021-2024. Clearly, then, it is this rising popularity in the last four years especially that have driven down the prices on her runners and thus any value has been stifled.

Saffie Osborne

That has yet to happen  - though of course it will do - with Saffie Osborne, as backing all her rides “blind” in the past four seasons would have secured a profit to BSP of £65.98 (ROI +3.6%). In fact, Osborne has produced a blind profit to BSP in each of the last three years.

I am a firm believer that Saffie Osborne, if given the right opportunities, can be as successful as Hollie Doyle in the years to come. She is only 22 and she seems to be going from strength to strength, especially when we consider her yearly performances in terms of the A/E index stat. This stat is one that attempts to establish value where, generally speaking, a figure above 1.00 represents a good value proposition. Here are Osborne’s A/E figures by year:

 

 

As the graph shows her figures have been getting better and better year on year. No wonder she has proved profitable to back to BSP more recently.

Saffie has had an excellent record with horses near the front end of the betting since the start of 2021. Those runners with an SP of 6/1 or shorter have provided her with 162 winners from 653 runners (SR 24.8%) for an SP profit of £40.04 (ROI + 6.1%). To BSP this improves to +£97.50 (ROI +15%). If we extend this to horses priced 14/1 or shorter, she is still in profit to SP to the tune of £31.54 (ROI +2.5%) thanks to 220 wins from 1277 rides (SR 17.3%). To BSP her profits stand at a healthy £207.88 (ROI +16.3%).

I am sure the value on Saffie Osborne’s mounts will soon diminish, especially if continuing this upwards spiral. However, for the moment I think she will continue to offer punters good value.

Joanna Mason

Another female jockey to impress me recently has been Joanna Mason. She primarily rides for the Mick & David Easterby - granddad and uncle respectively - yard and, when we compare her record for this yard with all other jockeys combined, we see the following:

 

 

Her stats are far better than when combining all the other Easterby jockeys in one group. This has also been the case when we compare the results of the more fancied runners from the stable. With Easterby horses priced 9/1 or shorter we get these splits:

 

 

It should be noted that to BSP a blind profit could have been had backing all of Joanna's runners, as well as the subset of those priced 9/1 or shorter.

It is a shame that she has not been given many opportunities from the bigger yards: she has ridden five times for William Haggas including three rides since May this year. She has ridden one winner and had three placed horses so hopefully more rides will come her way from that stable soon.

Hayley Turner

Hayley Turner averages around 400 rides a year these days, down somewhat on the peak of her career when between 2006 and 2012 she averaged 725 rides per year. However, she is still performing well 24 years after her first ride and especially when her horse is prominent in the betting. In the past four seasons on horses with an SP of 4/1 or shorter she has won 81 of her 264 rides (SR 30.7%) for a small £10.76 profit to SP. This equates to a return of just over 4p in the £. To BSP the figures improve to +£28.65 (ROI +10.9%).

David Simcock and Andrew Balding continue to use Hayley on a fairly regular basis and these two trainers have provided her with the most rides in the past four seasons. Both trainers have been rewarded with excellent results:

 

 

Turner has been very close to breaking even for both trainers across all their combination runners, and to BSP she has made a profit of £15.77 (ROI +9.3%) for Balding, and £21.83 (ROI +10.8%) for Simcock.

Josephine Gordon

Josephine Gordon has an overall win strike rate of only 7% across the past four seasons but 58% of her rides have been on horses priced 14/1 or bigger. Hence, she tends to ride lesser fancied runners which explains that low strike rate. However, when we focus on her rides on horses whose prices were 12/1 or shorter at SP her record reads 57 wins from 458 rides (SR 14.6%). These runners have edged into profit at SP to the tune of £2.42. To BSP profits stand at +£64.66 (ROI +14.1%).

While writing this article there has been quite a coincidence because Josephine Gordon has just won at Kempton in the Class 2 London Mile Series Final Handicap on Whitcombe Rocker at 11/1, giving him a brilliant ride from a tough outside stall. Funny how things happen like that!

One to note: Olivia Tubb

To finish up I want to talk about an apprentice who, despite having only 122 rides to date, could be the real deal. Her name is Olivia Tubb, and she is currently apprentice jockey to Jonathan Portman. Her overall record is impressive:

 

Clearly it is early days, but when we examine her record for Portman, she has a 17.7% strike rate producing returns to SP of 26p in the £ (44p to BSP). All other jockeys combined when riding for Portman have won just 7.4% of races losing a whopping 45p in the £.

It is also impressive to note that with horses priced 4/1 or shorter she is 11 from 29 (SR 37.9%) for a profit to SP of £15.24 (ROI +52.6%). Her A/E index stands at a huge 1.55. She should have an exciting future – let’s hope she gets enough chances to prove it.

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To conclude, there is sadly still a wide opportunity chasm between the chances afforded to male riders as compared to female riders. That needs to change because there is plenty of female talent in the jockey ranks - and the stats I've shared I hope has proved that beyond doubt.

- DR

Early Odds to Opening Odds to Starting Price

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In this article I will compare the early morning odds (EMO) of horses with their opening show odds (OS) to their final Industry Starting Price (SP), writes Dave Renham. Data has been taken from 1st January 2021 to 31st August 2024 focusing on UK flat racing. This includes both turf and all-weather racing.

To begin with let me look at all horses whose prices have shortened throughout the day. In other words, their OS were shorter than their EMO, and their SP odds were shorter than their OS. For future reference these runners will be known as the ‘shorten/shorten’ group. Here are the figures:

 

 

As we can see there is a healthy strike rate close to one win in every five and a sound A/E index of 0.91, with losses to SP equating to around 12p in the £. When we look at the Betfair SP returns losses reduce to just over 4p in the £.

Let's compare those figures with the same view where the prices drifted all day. Therefore, horses whose OS were greater than their EMO, and their SP's were longer than their OS. I will call this group ‘drift/drift’. Here are their splits:

 

 

As you might expect we see a much lower win rate (roughly one success in every 16 starts), a much lower A/E index of 0.81, and significant losses of 34p in the £. These figures do improve markedly when looking at the BSP returns but losses still are over 12p in the £.

Clearly there are more combinations of price movements than just ‘drift/drift’ and ‘shorten/shorten’. Below is a graph showing the percentage of runners for each ‘price movement combination’.

 

 

As the graph shows, around a quarter of all runners drift from EMO to OS and then drift again when it comes their final SP. This ‘drift/drift’ group contains almost twice the number of runners of the ‘shorten/shorten’ group. That should not come as any great surprise based on what we have seen in previous articles where far more horses drift in price than shorten in price.

Time to go back and dig a bit deeper into the ‘shorten/shorten’ group. Let me share their results based on their EM price range. Prices shown are in decimal form:

 

 

The stats shared in the table show that the shorter the price in the morning the better for these horses that shorten and then shorten again. Horses priced 6/4 or lower in the morning that have shown the ‘shorten/shorten’ profile have got close to breaking even to SP. To BSP they edged into marginal profit to the tune of £13.75 (about 1%). That is impressive, and surprising given the tight nature of the betting market at these very short prices.

It is time now to examine the ‘drift/drift’ group by EMO. Here are their splits:

 

 

We have a similar ‘feel’ here with shorter priced runners in the morning doing the best by far. This can be seen by the correlation between the ROI column and the A/E index column. Once the Early price hits 3.5 or bigger we see a real dip in both columns. Focusing on the horses that had Early Morning Odds of 3.25 (9/4) or shorter, when you look at the BSP returns we see that backing all of these runners would have procured a profit of £46.20 (ROI +1.2%).

Sticking with this subset of ‘drift/drift’ runners that were priced 3.25 (9/4) or shorter early, if we focus on those that had a Starting Price of 5.50 (9/2) or bigger we get these very impressive results:

 

 

These runners have produced a one in six strike rate, an excellent A/E index of 1.08 and returns of over 8.5 pence for every £1 staked. Using BSP the results are naturally better, showing a very healthy +£156.07 profit (ROI +25.1%).

Staying with the ‘drift/drift’ group, let me share the returns on investment for both Industry SP and Betfair SP when we split the results by handicaps versus non-handicaps:

 

 

The graph shows that horses that have the ‘drift/drift’ profile in non-handicap races lose punters far more money than those with that profile which contest handicap races. This graph is a good illustration of the value that can be found on the exchanges these days, and this article hopefully outlines an approach for exchange SP players.

I want to now focus on trainer data to see if any patterns emerge. Let's first look at the trainers with the highest win strike rates when their horses fit the ‘shorten/shorten’ pattern. (A minimum of 100 runners to qualify):

 

 

Seven of the 15 trainers in the table have secured a profit to Industry SP, while a couple of others (Varian and bin Suroor) have made a profit to BSP.

This trainer data includes all price points. But there is going to be a world of difference in terms of long-term performance between horses that have Early Odds of 33/1, Opening Odds of 28/1 and an SP of 25/1, compared with those whose odds went 7/1, 6/1, 5/1. Therefore, as I often do with trainer data, I am narrowing down my focus to horses whose Early Morning Price was a single figure one (e.g. 9/1 or shorter).

Here are the trainer splits for these more fancied runners who fit the ‘shorten/shorten’ profile. (A minimum of 75 runners to qualify this time – ordered by win strike rate):

 

 

Considering we are talking about horses whose prices have shortened during the day these overall results are excellent – much better than I would have anticipated. The profit/loss figures are impressive especially as they are based on Industry SP returns. 14 of the 22 trainers in the table have secured a blind profit to ISP. This moves up to 16 when using BSP. It is also good to see other trainers perform well under these circumstances such as Hughie Morrison, Jim Goldie, Brian Ellison, Richard Fahey and Mick Appleby. Just imagine if as punters we could have predicted this ‘shorten/shorten’ pattern before it happened and backed them all at their early prices! Ah well, at least there's still value in following the money later on with these handlers.

Of course, just because the price of a horse shortens from EMO to OS, does not mean it will continue in that downward direction. In fact, only about 35% of horses that shortened from Early to Opening (with Early Odds of 9/1 or shorter) will continue to shorten from Opening Show to SP. That is, two-thirds of positive early movers will drift back out again before the off.

To finish this piece, I want to look at the ‘drift/drift’ data as far as trainers are concerned. It makes sense to focus again on those horses whose EMO were 9/1 or shorter. The trainers with the top 15 strike rates are shown (min 100 runners):

 

 

As you can see, strike rates are much lower (to be expected), and the P/L figures are generally much poorer, although six of the 15 still made a profit to SP.

As a mathematician, I find market movement analysis fascinating. In the teaching of mathematics, pattern recognition is so important for contextual understanding. In horse racing, finding any patterns within price movements can help in determining the optimum time to place your bet.

Although this article has merely scratched the surface of EMO to OS to SP price movements, there have been some very interesting findings. From my research I feel inspired to do some more digging. And when I do, I will be sure to share it with Geegeez readers.

- DR

 

Racing Pot Pourri

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As regular readers will know I do a lot of research and write regular articles, including for geegeez.co.uk, writes Dave Renham. Sometimes though there are some ideas or questions I want to research but decide against it because there would not be enough ‘meat’ for a whole article. So, today I plan to put that right and will share some of my findings with you. Data has been taken from UK flat (and AW) racing going back to 2017.

Comparing a horses’ current handicap mark with their highest winning mark

In handicap races horses are given weight to carry based on their Official handicap rating (OR), or handicap mark. When horses win a race, the Official Handicapper will reassess their handicap mark and almost always the horse is given a higher rating. This means they will have to carry more weight and/or run in higher grade next time, the idea being the weight will slow the horse down a little.

Hence, I decided to examine the results for horses in handicaps that were running off a higher mark than their highest winning mark, the same mark as their highest winning mark, and those racing off a lower mark than their highest winning OR. Here are the splits:

 

 

This seems to give clear evidence that horses higher in the ratings compared to their highest winning mark win more often and look slightly better value.

Digging a bit deeper into those horses winning off a higher mark than their previous best, the age stats are worth sharing:

 

 

As the table shows, once the horses get to 7 or older their performance level and value drops off markedly. Hence older horses trying to win off a handicap mark higher than their previous ‘best’ should be treated with some caution.

 

Favourites and position in the weights/handicap

Next, I wanted to know whether the weight position within a handicap race makes a difference when the horse starts favourite. We know that higher weighted horses win more often than lower weighted ones, but the market adjusts prices well to compensate.

In the chart below I have split the results for favourites into three weight groups – the top three in the weights, those that were 4th to 6th in the weights, and those that were 7th or worse.

 

I looked first at strike rate:

 

 

As you can see, favourites that were in the top three of the weights have won more often than the other two groups. I had expected this, but I had reckoned on a slightly smaller percentage difference between the higher weighted favs and the rest. However, in terms of value it is the favourites that were lower in the weights that did best:

 

 

Those favourites 7th or lower in the weight position had the highest A/E index at 0.97 and losses to SP were much smaller than the other two groups. In fact, betting the '7th+ position in the weights' group of favourites to BSP would have secured a small profit of £114.93 (ROI +2.1%).

 

Older horses that are favourite for the first time

I wanted to see whether first time favourites aged four or older were good or bad value. For a horse not to have started favourite in any race aged two or three but which did so when four or older, I guessed there would be a relatively modest pool of horses that qualified. That was the case with around 2400 horses earning favouritism for the first time over this period stretching right back to 2017. Here are their combined results:

 

 

These are quite strong figures for any group of favourites. I am not sure what I was expecting but I suppose slightly poorer performance. Indeed, if betting to Betfair SP you would have secured a profit of £69.52 (ROI +2.9%).

It is also worth sharing the results by age as they are probably what one would expect:

 

 

Four and five years that start favourite for the first time ever have been far more successful than horses aged six or older.

 

Horses that wore headgear last time out (LTO) but return to track next time without headgear

In the past I have researched horses that have worn different types of headgear. So what about horses that wore headgear LTO, but had it taken off on their next start? Here are the figures:

 

 

Nothing earth shattering here, but after some further digging, I did discover something that I thought was worth sharing. It is the stats for horses that won LTO in headgear, but then had it removed for their next start. This idea is a little alien to me as I am guessing it is to many – why would you remove the headgear if it clearly has worked LTO? However, it has happened 444 times and of these only 65 managed to repeat the win and you would have lost a whopping 31 pence in the £ if backing them.

 

Horses switching from a Grade 1 track to the all-weather

I had assumed that horses that were racing on the sand who had run last time at one of top tracks would do quite well. I guessed they would possibly be overbet, but by how much?

 

 

As you can see the strike rate is acceptable but when viewed as a whole the returns are poor. These horses do indeed look overbet. However, I have gone further and looked at some of the top trainers to see how their charges have fared. Here are the trainers with the highest win strike rates:

 

 

There are some strong figures here for many trainers – John and Thady Gosden, Saeed bin Suroor and Roger Varian have done especially well with these runners. Also, Hugo Palmer, (Roger and) Harry Charlton and Richard Hughes have very positive stats too.

 

Revisiting Price Movement from Opening Show to SP

In a recent article I examined some data pertaining to price movements between the opening show and the final SP. In the comments a question was raised about trainers who have low career strike rates asking if their horses shorten in price during that 10-minute period before the off will they produce a fair-sized loss to the pound? They were wondering if this could become a possible lay angle? So I took a look.

My database allowed me to check trainers whose overall win strike rate in the past two seasons had been 7% or less – so the lower end of the trainer spectrum in terms of win success. Firstly, I wanted to check what proportion of their runners shortened in price between opening show and SP. The graph below shows the splits:

 

 

This pattern was seen in the main article with more horses drifting. Focusing in on those that shortened in price, here are the overall results for all qualifiers:

 

There is a lowish strike rate and relatively poor returns to SP and BSP. Having said that, these runners would have lost you money if you tried to lay them. However, horses that started favourite having been backed late have some ‘lay’ potential. Lay profits quoted below are based on a simple £1 a lay method:

- Favourites, including joints, won 547 from 2059 runners for a BSP loss of 7.43%. If laying all such favourites you would have made a tiny £6 profit. If you restricted it to handicaps, favourites could have been ‘layed’ to a profit of £39.

- Trainers who have not had a winner in the previous two weeks have a poor record with these ‘shorteners’. This is particularly true when the horse has started favourite. There have been 1184 qualifiers of which 24.5% of them won (290 runners). If laying all 1184 runners you would have made a profit of £75.77.

- Favourites priced 2/1 or shorter would have provided a lay profit of £34.98.

- Fillies and mares when favourite have a poor record when their price has shortened. Of the 514 qualifiers 121 won (SR 23.5%) and laying all such runners would have yielded a profit of £59.28.

 

It is always nice to get feedback and questions in the comments section under my articles and it will be interesting to see if this piece sparks any interesting responses.

 

Losing favourites on debut

Horses on debut are an unknown quantity. Yes, we know who the trainer is, we have sire data to look at, the cost as a yearling, future entries, etc. But we are still somewhat in the dark. Horses that lose on debut when favourite are a group of horses I wanted to dig a bit deeper into.

Looking at their second starts after their debut loss, their figures read:

 

 

Despite a fair strike rate losses are still relatively steep at nearly 18p in the £. However, there are a few angles both positive and negative that I’d like to share with you.

1. Horses that were beaten favourite at Ascot on debut have bounced back well on their next start winning 10 of 25 (SR 40%) for a profit of £10.97 (ROI 43.9%).

2. Beaten favs on debut when dropped in class for their second career start have done well. 90 wins from 252 runners (SR 35.7%) for an SP profit of £11.27 (ROI +4.5%). To BSP the figures improve to +£34.42 (ROI +13.7%).

3. If the second start happens to be on an all weather surface, these runners have broken even to SP. To BSP profits stand at £41.56 (ROI +10.5%).

4. Horses that finished second on debut when favourite have been poor investments next time. They have won 33% of the time (111 from 336) but losses were a steep £89.59 (ROI -26.7%). You would have made a profit of £55.65 if laying these runners to BSP instead of backing them.

 

Onto to my final port of call.

 

Horse changing stables

Horses change stables from time to time for a variety of reasons. Maybe the owner has moved location, maybe the performances have been below par and owner wants to try a different trainer and training environment. Occasionally horses switch after racing in sellers or claimers.

Let's therefore look at the first run results when sent to a new trainer. Does any yard do particularly well with new recruits? Here are all the trainers who have had 100 or more qualifiers:

 

 

Archie Watson’s figures are superb while Kevin Phillipart de Foy's and Mick Appleby’s stats are also extremely decent. Keep an eye out for Hollie Doyle riding one of Watson’s new recruits. When she takes the ride, their combined record is outstanding – 17 wins from 48 (SR 35.4%) for a profit of £66.51 (ROI +138.6%).

Mick Appleby has done well with a small group of 2yo new recruits winning 8 from 28 (SR 28.6%) for a profit of £37.71 (ROI +134.7%). He has also done well with runners over shorter distances. Sticking to 5f to 1-mile races only his record with new recruits reads 54 wins from 261 (SR 20.7%) for a healthy SP profit of £76.25 (ROI +29.2%).

 

So, there you have it. Hopefully there has been a bit for everyone here. There are certainly a few worthwhile takeaways for backers and layers alike.

- DR

Non-handicap juveniles in late turf season

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Blink and you’ve missed it. Yes, the British summer is coming to an end, and horse racing is soon to be heading into the last two full months of the turf season, writes Dave Renham. In this article my focus is from the start of September to the end of the turf flat season which is about a week into November. I want to concentrate on two-year-old (2yo) turf non-handicaps in the UK during this time frame. Data has been collected from 2015 to 2023 with profits/losses quoted to Industry Starting Price. Betfair SP figures will be quoted if appropriate.

Some of the larger stables send their better 2yos out at this time of the year so the trainer findings should be interesting. However, let's begin with the betting market.

Betting Markets

For this section I have combined ‘joints’ so for example the favourite includes clear favs, joint and co favs, etc. I want to start by looking at the value metric of A/E indices – here are my findings:

 

 

Favourites tend to offer more value than punters realise, but the gap between favourites and second favourites in this juvenile non-handicap context is much bigger than we usually see. Taking such runners across all months over the last nine seasons the A/E index for favs is 0.92 and second favs is 0.88. The gap between the two is more than twice this in the latter months of the sample years, as you can see in the graph (0.94 v 0.84).

Let me compare the returns to SP and the strike rates now:

 

 

Favourites have been winning close to 40% of the time and have been twice as successful as second favourites in terms of strike rate. Losses to SP have seen favourites lose only 6.7% compared with second favourites 17.3%, showing strong correlation to the earlier A/E index chart. To Betfair SP favourites would have lost you only 3.5p for every £1 bet and in three of the nine years they would have made a profit. Once we get to fifth or bigger in the betting the winning chances become very low indeed, and they offer horrendous value.

Sticking with favourites here are some additional stats to share:

1. Favourites starting at less than 1.50 have won 80.2% of the time (77 wins from 96) for a profit of £5.07 (ROI +5.3%).

2. Female favourites have broken even to BSP.

3. There are not many 2yo races that are longer than a mile, but when the distance hits 1-mile ½ furlong or more, favourites have won 76 of their 181 starts (SR 42%) for a small profit to SP to £7.10 (ROI +3.9%). To BSP after commission you would have had another 59p in your pocket on top of that!

4.  Favourites at this time of the year who are unraced or have had just one previous career run have provided the worst value. This group have provided 910 qualifiers of which 323 won (SR 35.5%) and backing all would have seen losses to SP of £117.03 (ROI -12.9%). To BSP losses are still edging to 10%.

5. In Class 1 or 2 races favourites have almost broken even to SP losing just 1p in the £ and turning a small profit to BSP.

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

Onto a look at the most recent piece of form based on finishing position.

 

 

Perhaps the takeaway stat is for last time runners-up. They have the strongest figures across the board. In terms of A/E indices, the best value may lie with LTO 2nds, 3rds and 4ths. It looks best to avoid horses that finished fifth or worse LTO and also debutants (the ‘no run’ group). LTO winners have a relatively modest record, too, and don’t look a solid play in the round.

 

Female runners

I want to briefly share some interesting filly (female) data. Earlier it was noted that female horses when favourite have performed well. Now I want to look at these runners as a whole group, and specifically their record when running against their own sex as compared to when running against the ‘boys’. Here are the splits:

 

 

There is a clear pattern here where female runners fare better when racing against their own sex. They have a much-improved strike rate in these races and, more importantly, losses are 16p in the £ better to both Industry SP and Betfair SP.

If we look at mixed sex races in a bit more detail, we can see that the higher percentage of male rivals there are, the harder it becomes for the females. The graph below shows the win strike rate across different percentage bands of male runners:

 

 

Once we hit over 75% of the runners in the race being male, the chance for any female runner becomes very slim in terms of winning. If we now look at the return on investment figures now, we can see that once more than half of the runners are male, females would have lost you a considerable amount of money:

 

 

So, the data is clear when it comes to considering female runners in 2yo non-handicaps on the turf at this time of year: generally stick to races against their own sex, or if considering a wager in a mixed sex race make sure that most runners in the race are female.

 

Trainers

Onto the area of greatest interest to me trainers. Here are the top performing trainers in terms of strike rate – 20 in total. To qualify they must have had at least 100 runners (ordered by win strike rate):

 

 

It is quite surprising to see nine of the twenty with a profit to industry SP, and a further two (Beckett and Varian) hitting a plus to BSP. Charlie Appleby has the best strike rate but has offered punters quite poor value. Saeed bin Suroor stats should be treated with caution as since 2020 he has had only 19 runners.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the records of these trainers with that of their earlier season form, i.e. their 2yo turf non-handicap record between March and August. I have created a table comparing A/E indices and strike rates over the two monthly groupings:

 

 

I should mention average field sizes are notably larger later in the season (9.5 v 8.7) which means we should expect lower strike rates in the Sept-Nov group. However, that factor is the same for all trainers so each individual handler comparison is fair.

Looking at the table, the numbers for two of the trainers have inspired me to do a deeper dive on each. Firstly, the Gosden stable. Their A/E index is much better from September onwards as is their strike rate (despite the bigger fields). Hence, after doing some digging here are strongest stats for the Clarehaven Stables yard:

1. There are three courses that stand out. Firstly Newmarket, despite the quality of 2yos on show at this time of the year. Team Gosden has saddled an impressive 35 winners from 177 runners (SR 19.8%) for a profit of £10.35 (ROI +5.9%) – A/E 1.07. Newbury has provided excellent results, too, returning over 26p in the £ from an impressive 29.6% strike rate (13 from 44). Yarmouth is the third track to mention with 13 wins from 50 (SR 26%) for a profit of £19.46 (ROI +38.9%). The BSP returns have naturally been even better.

2. Both male and female runners from the stable have proved profitable to back blind and their strike rates have been virtually the same at 22.7% and 22.3%.

3. Sticking with gender and looking now at the ‘sex of race’, the Gosden stable has done especially well when their horses stick to same sex races as the table below shows.

 

 

Based on these figures, I would be ideally looking for same sex races if wanting to back a Gosden runner.

4. The team is 9 from 17 in Group 2 races. A small sample, but worth sharing.

 

Onto the second trainer I want to highlight - Ralph Beckett. Let’s share some Autumn 2yo turf non handicap stats:

1. Take note of any Beckett favourite, the stats are eye-watering – 45 wins from just 87 favs (SR 51.7%) for a profit of £35.51 (ROI +40.8%). The A/E index stands at a crazy 1.33.

2. If the yard has sent the 2yo over 200 miles that looks material. There have been 83 such runners of which 29 won (SR 34.9%) for a profit of £18.38 (ROI +22.1%). For the record Beckett is 6 from 10 at Pontefract, and 5 from 11 at York.

3. Female runners from the Beckett barn have been the stars scoring over 21% of the time. In fillies’ only contests they have returned 8.5p in the £ to SP, 20p in the £ to BSP.

4. Take serious note if the money seems to be coming for their runners. Horses that have started at a shorter SP compared to the Early Morning Odds have produced superb figures – 62 winners from 214 runners (SR 29%) for a healthy profit of £83.34 (ROI +38.9%). To BSP this increase to +£114.75 (ROI +53.6%).

 

The latter months of the season can be a challenge for punters especially with the weather becoming less predictable; two-year-old races especially can seem a minefield. However, the findings in this piece should help to point us in the right direction.

- DR

 

Price Movement from Opening Show

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In my previous article - which can be read here - I looked at favourites and specifically their Early Morning Odds compared to their Starting Price, writes Dave Renham. In this piece I am drilling into patterns of price movement from opening show to SP. This considers all runners, not just favourites. Data has been taken from the three full years from 2021 to 2023 for UK flat and all-weather racing and I have used William Hill bookmaker data.

The opening show for most races occurs around 10-15 minutes before the race is due to start. Each horse will have its opening price and then, as money is bet during the time before the race starts, the prices will fluctuate. Here are two randomly selected examples from Friday 26th July showing how prices can move. The first race was the 3.00 at Ascot which was a 10-runner handicap over seven furlongs. The prices in red were the opening show odds, and the table shows how the odds changed (moving from left to right).

 

 

In that race, four horses lengthened in price from opening show to SP, five shortened in price, and one stayed the same. The winner, Billy Mill, drifted from an opening show of 9.0 (8/1) to a final SP of 13.0 (12/1). The second race was earlier on the same day at Thirsk at 2.00. This was a 9-runner Novice contest also over 7f:

 

 

The market looks less lively than the Ascot one and this time five horses lengthened in price, two shortened, while two remained the same. Angel Express remained the same price (17.0) for the whole time, while the winner Ryka drifted slightly from an opening price of 4.0 (3/1) to an SP of 4.33 (100/30). The favourite, Tutu Star, was a positive in the market and shortened a point from 5.0 (4/1) to 4.0 (3/1) but finished only sixth.

 

It is time now to look at ALL runners over this three-year period to see what percentage shortened in price, lengthened/drifted in price, or stayed the same price when comparing their opening show to their final Starting Price odds. Here are the findings:

 

 

As can be seen, nearly half of the runners drifted or lengthened in price. I am not surprised by this as traditionally bookmakers used to give themselves a bigger margin when publishing their opening show. I am not sure whether the increasing influence of Betfair has impacted this dynamic, as I do not have data pre-Betfair. Let me now share the turf flat versus all-weather price change percentages before moving on:

 

 

These figures indicate that on the sand a slightly higher proportion of runners drift in price from opening show to SP when compared to the turf flat. I am not sure why this is the case, possibly due to risk aversion related to a higher number of lower grade races, but it is a stat worth taking note of. I did look at the individual course breakdown and in general the figures were similar. However, Ascot was slightly out of kilter with the percentage of horses that drifted/lengthened in price, at 41.6%. It is also interesting to note that the five courses with the lowest ‘drift’ percentages were Grade 1 courses – Ascot, Epsom, Goodwood, Newmarket and York. Perhaps the better courses have more accurate - or confident - opening shows? That would make sense given the generally larger volumes of turnover on the early prices (i.e. before the opening show).

 

Market movement during this short period before the start of arace is a good indicator of ‘chance of winning’ as the graph below shows when we examine the win strike rates of the three groups:

 

 

Although horses that shorten in price win more often, if we look at Betfair SP returns it is the ‘stayed the same’ group that have edged it by a couple of pence in the £. They have lost 4p in the £, those that shortened have lost 6p and the drifters lost 7p. It always amazes me how efficient a racing betting market is.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph those runners whose price lengthened or drifted have lost 7p in the £. However, if we restrict drifters to those whose opening odds were 7.0 (6/1) or less we get the following figures:

 

 

This is getting close to breaking even – losses of just 1.5 pence for every £1 bet. Using the same price considerations for horses that have shortened in price they won more often (25% of the time) but losses were still over 5p in the £.

Going back to drifters, when their opening show is 15.0 (14/1) or bigger, they have produced much greater losses at more than 11p in the £. Hence, all things being considered, horses that go out in price from an opening show of 7.0 (6/1) or less have offered the best value.

My focus now is to look at price movement from opening show to SP within different price bands. The figures are split by percentage of qualifying runners:

 

 

These price bands are based on big sample sizes so we can be confident that the general principles will be replicated in future. Possibly the most eye-catching numbers are those for bigger priced runners. Once we get to an opening show of 18/1 or more, over 50% of these runners will drift in price. There also seems to be difference to the overall ‘norm’ when it comes to those priced up between 100/30 to 13/2. The percentages between shorteners and drifters are close to parity. To see this more clearly let me graph the comparison:

 

 

The graph clearly shows this ‘close to parity’ situation with the 100/30 to 13/2 opening odds price bands. Either side of that, drifters occur more frequently than shorteners and in many cases the difference is significant. For punters this type of information should be really useful – having the overall stats gave us a good ‘feel’ but breaking it down into price bands has given us much more knowledge and understanding of how certain prices may change in that pre-race period.

Now of course, a good proportion of punters back horses on the exchanges rather than with traditional bookmakers. However, if you are still someone who bets with the bookies the info shared should help your decision making about when to place your bet. This is especially true if you tend to bet close to the ‘off’ and/or at Starting Price. Even if you only bet on the Exchanges, the price movements for traditional odds and Exchange odds tend to mirror each other, so this data should serve either way and help to inform your timing of bets. The best strategy for placing a bet at most price points seems to be to wait for SP / BSP because your horse is more likely to drift late on. With instances of opening show odds of between 100/30 and 13/2 though, it is far less clear-cut in terms of the best time to place that bet.

The last area I want to take a quick look at is trainers. I thought it may be a good idea to group the data for the top five trainers in terms of win strike rate over this three-year period. The qualifying trainers are Charlie Appleby, John and Thady Gosden, William Haggas, Saeed bin Suroor and Roger Varian. Firstly a look at the splits in terms of what percentage of these trainers’ runners have shortened in price, lengthened in price, or stayed the same price when comparing their opening show to their final Starting Price odds.

 

 

These combined figures see a difference in percentages between the two main groups of just 7%, compared with a 15%+ difference in the 'all trainers/runners' graph earlier in the piece. Logic suggests that this would have been the case – runners for more successful trainers are likely to be ‘stronger’ in the market than the norm. But it is good to see it in black and white (or green and orange!)

What is even more interesting is when we combine the results of these five trainers. Here are the findings:

 

 

Horses that have been strong in the market for these five trainers have combined to produce a fair profit. Indeed, four of the five trainers made an individual profit with their runners that shortened in price from opening show to SP – the Gosden stable was the only one to make a loss.

To conclude, understanding how a betting market may evolve from opening show to SP is an area that is rarely analysed. I have found it enlightening doing the research and some of the findings in this article should provide punters, as well as myself, with a better feel of how a market may develop on the show.

- DR

Examining the Final Market Rank of Morning Favourites

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In this article, I will examine market patterns with horses that are clear favourite when the bookmaker’s early odds are set, writes Dave Renham. This is typically from 9am on the day of the race in question. For favourite backers especially, having a better appreciation of how likely an early morning favourite is to remain market leader is a key part of the betting puzzle. For the record, I have taken data from UK flat/AW racing going back to 2016.

Rate of early favourites remaining favourite at the 'off'

Firstly, let me examine how many early morning clear favourites remain as a favourite come ‘the off’:

 

 

As the graph shows, just under 64% of early morning clear favourites retain this position at the head of the market come the start of the race. That rises to nearly 70% if we include joint-favourites, while just above 30% do not retain favouritism.

These figures account for all runners, so let's drill down into various sub-categories.

 

Handicap vs. non-handicap final market rank

To begin with, I have divided the races into handicap races versus non-handicap races. One would expect to see a difference here, with non-handicaps more likely to see early morning favourites retaining their primacy come ‘the off’:

 

 

Over 73% of early morning jollies remained clear favourites in non-handicap races by the start of the race – roughly 15% above the average in relative terms.

Onto the handicap splits now:

 

 

For handicap races, less than 60% of early morning favourites have remained at the head of the market. As predicted, there is quite a difference between both race types.

 

Handicap Favourites: Early price vs. SP

Sticking with these early morning favourites in handicaps, let me examine actual price movement now. How many of morning jollies shorten in price, how many lengthen, and how many stay the same? Here are the findings:

 

 

Over half of early morning handicap favourites drift, which is perhaps to be expected given the data shared above regarding the percentage of early favourites that fail to retain SP favouritism. Of this subset of drifters, just under 34% remain clear favourites, 8% start as joint favourites, and 58% end up second choice or lower in the betting.

Therefore, if you are keen to back an early-priced favourite in a handicap, waiting until much later in the day to place your bet makes more sense. Of course, you can use the Best Odds Guaranteed option, but the downside is that if the horse drifts during the day, you’ll end up getting Industry SP, which is not as good as Betfair SP. BSP has paid around 10p in the £ more than Industry SP with these drifting early favourites throughout the study – that’s huge.

 

Early Favourites by Class of race

I want to look at class of race next to see if that makes a difference to the market behaviour of early morning favourites. Clearly, with literally 99.9%* of Class 1 events being non-handicaps, one would expect Class 1 races to see a higher percentage of horses retaining favouritism. In the graph below, I am comparing the percentages of early morning clear favourites that maintain their status at the head of the market by class of race:

*12153 out of 12165 on the flat in UK in the last five years

 

 

Class 1 races are by far the most likely to see the early morning favourite keep that honour. Interestingly, the 77.7% figure is well above the average figure for non-handicaps shared earlier (73.4%). It is also worth noting that the two lowest classes have the lowest figures, and most of these contests will have been handicaps.

Going back to ‘better’ races, if we split Class 1 races up for early morning favourites, we see the following in terms of their final market position:

 

 

The data tell us that the better the race class, the more likely the early morning favourite retains favouritism at the start of the race. This makes sense as we'd generally expect odds compilers and punters to have a stronger handle, as well as level of confidence, on the best races. Moreover, there tend to be ante post markets for such races which allows more time for prices to settle.

 

Early Favourites by Day of the week

Let's now see if the day of the week makes any difference to favourite price movement from morning to 'off' time. My theory is that Saturday may see early morning jollies retain their status the most, but let’s have a look:

 

 

In fact, Friday has seen the highest percentage of consistent favourites, with Saturday following just ahead of Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are both noticeably lower, which may indicate the general quality of racing on the first two days of the week. Aside from the Monday/Tuesday component, there are no clear patterns or takeaways here.

 

Early Favourites: "The Dettori factor"

I now want to see if there might be what I've called a 'Dettori factor' when it comes to jockeys. Some punters still have jockeys they follow and probably follow over a cliff occasionally. So, I am trying to unravel whether any such rider is more likely to retain their position at the head of the market from morning to race time. I have chosen 20 jockeys with a good data set to analyse. They are ordered alphabetically:

 

 

There is quite a spread here when analysing the ‘Clear SP favourite %’ column, with James Doyle the highest at 77.9% and Shane Kelly the lowest at 55.5%. For Shane Kelly, one of the reasons it is low is because 71% of his rides have been in handicaps. That said, his figure is significantly below the average for all races/jockeys, at 59.1%. Therefore, one may expect that James Doyle’s splits for handicaps versus non-handicaps would be the opposite of Kelly's, with around 70% of rides in non-handicaps. However, the split is actually very even, with 53% of his rides being in non-handicaps and 47% in handicaps.

17 of the 20 jockeys have ‘Clear SP favourite’ percentages above the average (63.7%), with most of them well above. Maybe this is more of an indication of the stables they generally ride for. Perhaps it relates to the fact that they will ride more often in a higher class of race than your more journeymen/women jockeys. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Perhaps it is a combination of all three – jockeys, trainers, and classes.

 

Early Favourites by Trainer

Having looked at jockeys, I will now examine some trainers to see what their stats bring to the table. As with the pilots, I am looking at whether any trainer is more likely to retain their position at the head of the market from morning to race time. Here are my findings (I have chosen 35 individual trainer stats to share):

 

 

Generally, the higher figures in the Clear SP Fav% column come from high-profile stables that attack better races and meetings. Aidan O’Brien’s figure of 87.4% stands out. One would expect him to be at or near the top, but that number is still impressive. Most of his early morning favourites retained SP favouritism and more of them shortened in price during the day than lengthened: specifically, 53.7% shortened in price, 34.5% lengthened in price, and 11.8% stayed the same. This goes against the grain because if you look at all early morning favourites in all races, only 40.6% shorten, while a more significant 50.5% lengthen with 8.9% remaining the same price.

Sticking with O’Brien for a moment, when Ryan Moore has been riding the early morning jolly, these runners have remained favourite slightly more often than his average at 88.7%.

Charlie Appleby is the only other trainer hitting over 80% in this category. What is interesting about Appleby’s stats is that his figures are not skewed by race class. Below are the Clear SP Favourite percentages across the different class bands for Charlie Appleby's runners:

 

 

These figures are pretty level across the board with the lowest classes of race - those class 5, 6 or 7 races - seeing the highest percentage. Appleby’s figure for handicaps is 76.3%; for non-handicaps, it is 82.9%.

At the other end of the scale, Tim Easterby has a figure of 54.2% for early-morning favourites retaining final favouritism. However, with 88% of his qualifiers running in handicaps, one can see why this figure is low. Having said that, the 54.2% figure is also comparatively low – given that the average figure for all trainers is bang on 60% of handicap morning favourites retaining that status as the gates open.

Summary

This type of research has been new to me, and looking at early morning favourites offers a useful starting point in understanding how the top of the market may develop during the day. Clearly, every individual betting market will evolve differently, but even from what I have looked at so far there are definite patterns in terms of those early morning market leaders. There are also scenarios where it is more likely for the early morning favourite to still be the favourite come ‘the off’. The three strongest are:

1. Non-handicaps
2. Class 1 races, especially Group races
3. Runners from the stables of Charlie Appleby and Aidan O’Brien

I am further interested in researching how markets evolve during the day. Regarding early-morning favourites, I plan to examine early-morning prices coupled with the number of runners in the race. That may take a while, but it is on my ‘to-do’ list. And looking at price/rank movement for other market positions is also on that list.

Finally, if readers have any other topics/ideas they would like me to research for potential future articles, please post them in the comments below.

-DR

A day in the life of the Tote Placepot: Part 2

/in /by

This is the second article in a two-part series where I am looking at the Tote Placepot, writes Dave Renham. The data have been collated from the first six months of 2024 to give readers a good overview of this popular type of pool bet. I have included both UK and Irish racing. Part one can be found here.

The maths

The first point worth making is that the final pool size is less important than one might think in terms of your potential to win big. Let me explain mathematically why by comparing two hypothetical Placepot pools that, in terms of race-by-race outcomes, effectively mirror each other. I will assume that in each race, the placed horses account for 30% of the remaining units. Here’s how the maths work:

Placepot 1 – Final Pool Size £50,000

 

 

As you can see, the final winning units figure is £36.45. To calculate the Placepot payout, we need to divide £50,000 by £36.50, which gives a final dividend of £1,371.74 for a £1 unit stake.

 

Placepot 2 – Final Pool Size £400,000

 

 

In this example, we have £291.60 units left, but if we divide this figure by £400,000 to get our payout, lo and behold, we get the same final dividend of £1,371.74 for a £1 unit stake.

This happens because Placepot payouts/dividends are based on the percentage of the pot that is left. 10% of £1,000 and 10% of £2,000,000 is still 10%! Indeed, with a low starting pool of £79,000, the largest payout in the six months leading up to June's end came at Chelmsford. The payout to a £1 stake was just shy of £40k for a £1 unit stake. In addition to this payout, the third highest dividend in this time frame came at Tramore (£11,230.30 for a £1 stake), and the pool that day was just £13,667.

Average Placepot Dividend by Month

Having clarified some of the maths, let me start to look at some dividend data. In my previous article, I mentioned that in most years, the average dividend across all courses is around £400 to £500 to a £1 stake. Regarding the first six months of 2024, the average dividend has been £438. However, when we compare the average dividend month by month, we see how it can fluctuate:

 

 

As you can see, the January and February averages were much lower than the other four months, with January surprisingly modest at just £123.30. March and June have the most significant averages, just above the £600 mark. One cannot say whether these monthly figures indicate the ‘norm’, but with the Cheltenham Festival in March and Royal Ascot in June, I guess these two months will be at the higher end of the scale most years. Both have been the scene of monster dividends in the recent past.

Average Placepot Dividend by Country

It's time to break the data by country – UK versus Ireland.

 

 

Both nations are over the £400 mark, with the UK edging it. This is partly because Irish meetings take 30% out of the pool rather than the UK figure of 27%. It is, however, another example of how the payouts over time tend to average around these marks.

Distribution of Placepot Dividends

Now, I want to look at how the dividends have been spread across in terms of actual payouts. The table below illustrates this:

 

 

As can be seen, most payouts have been £100 or under – roughly 40% of pots have returned £50 or less, while 57% of all Placepots have been £100 or less. At the other end of the scale, payouts of over £1000 have occurred at 7.4% of meetings. As a regular Placepot punter, it pays to have patience – big payouts will occur, but they won’t happen day in and day out.

Placepot Dividends by Course

Regarding Placepot data for individual courses, data is limited for some tracks due to only six months of data. However, any course that has seen 12 or more Placepots in 2024 is shown below with their average dividend. I have ordered them by the number of meetings:

 

 

There is considerable variance between some courses, but that is to be expected, given the nature of this specific bet. These fluctuations are also more likely to be seen given the number of meetings we are dealing with. For example, in the courses with only 12 meetings, it just takes one significant dividend to increase the overall average markedly. This happened with Fairyhouse, as it turns out, thanks to a £7424 dividend, changing the average from £471 to £1051.

Course Dividend Example: Newcastle

The five all-weather courses at the top of the table have had a decent number of meetings. Let me share all the dividends for the top three courses in the table to help build a picture for each. Looking at Newcastle, here are all 45 dividends:

 

 

27 of the 45 (60%) were under £100, so just above the average for all courses (see earlier). Also, there were no payouts over £1000. This helps explain why the average dividend is down at £152.85. Newcastle hosts mainly all-weather racing (37 of the 45 meetings in the sample), and the average dividend on the sand was £172.64. Eight National Hunt meetings had a very low average dividend of £61.31.

Course Dividend Example: Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton had 44 meetings with the following dividends:

 

 

28 of the 44 dividends (63.6%) were under £100. There was one significant payout of £1349.80. Again, these numbers explain the modest average figure of £135.96.

Course Dividend Example: Southwell

Southwell, like Newcastle, hosts both NH racing and all-weather racing. The average figure for the NH meetings was £1088.03; for the all-weather, it was just £133.80. Let me split the individual dividends up this time – first, the NH:

 

 

There is quite a variety within this small subset, with seven dividends under £112 and five over £500 – three of those over £2K.

Onto the Southwell All-weather dividends:

 

 

There was nothing big here on the dividend front, with just one payout of more than £500. This means the four highest payouts came from the 12 NH meetings rather than from the 27 AW ones.

Breakdown of a Monster Placepot Dividend

To finish, I would like to go back and look in detail at the biggest Placepot payout in the last six months, which I mentioned earlier, was at Chelmsford. It occurred on 29th March, so let me take you through race by race.

Race 1 – The money wagered on this meeting was £78,973.19. After the 27% deduction, the starting pot was £57,650.41. The result for the first race was as follows:

 

 

With only two getting placed and the favourite missing out in third, around 81% of the pot disappeared, with £11,075.02 remaining going into race 2. Just over 50% of that 81% were units on the favourite.

Race 2 – A 12-runner event next, meaning three ‘placers’:

 

 

Although both the favourite and second favourite placed, the first three runners accounted for less than 40% of the remaining units, leaving £4273.85 in the pot with four races still to go.

Race 3 – Another 12-runner race for the third one:

 

 

The favourite placed again, as did the third favourite. This time, a smaller chunk was lost (around 37% of the units), leaving £2702.75 in the pot.

Race 4 – A 16-runner handicap was next on the card, meaning four horses would ‘place’:

 

 

I am sure all readers will be looking at the prices of the first four and appreciating that this result decimated the pot. Three huge prices were 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, while the winner, Merrijig, was 6th best in the betting at 14/1. Only 1.4% of the pot survived this race, leaving a paltry £37.28 for the last two races.

Race 5 – A 15-runner race was next, and at this point, a huge payout was on the cards. The last two races would ‘decide’ how big:

 

 

The favourite and third favourite placed, but even so, 75% of the remaining units were lost, leaving under £10 left - £9.75 to be precise.

Race 6 – The final race saw the following result:

 

 

Two joint third favs made the frame, but 85% of the remaining money was lost, leaving just £1.46 to be split between the winning punter(s). The final dividend was £39,486.50 for a £1 stake.

This dividend was so significant due mainly to the result of race 4, with the four placers at 14/1, 40/1, 80/1, and 40/1. However, race 6 played a more significant part than you might think. If that final race had seen the top three in the betting come 1,2,3, then the dividend would have been cut to £11,960.67. That nearly 12K is not too shabby, but it is a long way off, almost 39.5K!

**

 

Summary

The Tote Placepot is an excellent bet with enormous potential – it can only take one or two shock results to enhance the final dividend significantly. In theory, you could have five favourites placing and have a decent payout. Imagine a scenario where five favs have already placed, and the last race was a 7-runner affair where the first and second were priced 50/1 and 100/1. In this case, the pot would probably flip from an expected £10 dividend to potentially £2,000 or more.

Having the scope to build in more permutations is key for long-term success IMO. This is where the Tix software comes into its own. Using Tix, you can have several favs in the perm, a few mid-priced runners, and a few outsiders. This gives you cover for minimal stakes. If you haven’t used it – try it today!

-DR

A day in the life of the Tote Placepot

/in /by

In this article, I will look at how the Tote Placepot panned out on a randomly chosen day this year and what led me to research it, writes Dave Renham. I have chosen May 1st, not for any other reason than it was the first of the month and was not too long ago. I wanted to select the day randomly rather than trawling through some results and focusing on a day when there was a considerable placepot dividend or two. Punters who regularly attempt the Placepot know there are plenty of meetings with low dividends, but the fact that some huge payouts do occur makes it a bet worth considering. In fact, the average payout for the Placepot is usually between £400 to £500 in any given year.

As most readers will know, the Placepot is a bet you can place at any race meeting, and it works by choosing a selection or selections in the first six races on the card of the relevant meeting. The aim is to have a selected horse or horses to finish in the placings in each of the six races. It is important to appreciate that the number of placings per race depends on the number of race runners and, in some cases, whether it is a handicap or a non-handicap. The finishing positions that constitute a place in any race in the Placepot are as follows:

2 to 4 runners – 1st

5 to 7 runners – 1st and 2nd

8 to 15 runners – 1st, 2nd and 3rd

Non-handicap 16 or more runners – 1st, 2nd and 3rd

Handicap 16 or more runners – 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th

If a selection becomes a non-runner, your choice in that race moves to the favourite. You can choose ‘favourite’ in your selection process rather than a specific horse if you’d like – that is an option. It is also worth sharing that if you are on the favourite and there are joint- or co-favourites, the one with the lowest racecard number becomes your selection.

Selecting just one horse in each of the six races will create one betting line. You can, of course, choose more than one horse in a race if you wish to spread the risk, which will increase the number of betting lines. Most seasoned Placepot punters mix up the number of selections for each race to widen the net, as it were.

For those using permutations, calculating the outlay (cost) of your Placepot bet is relatively straightforward. Ultimately, you need to know how many selections you have in each race to determine your betting lines. To do this, multiply those six figures together. Hence, if you chose two horses in three races and one horse for the other three races, you will create 8 betting lines (see below).

2 x 2 x 2 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 8 lines

The cost of the bet will depend on your unit stake – if your unit stake is £1, then the cost will be £8:

8 lines x £1.00 unit stake = £8.00 total stake

You can adjust the unit stake to suit. For example, you may want to use a unit stake of 25p instead, which means the overall cost of the bet would be £2.00 (8 x 25p).

Placepot dividends are paid to a £1 stake. Hence, if the Placepot dividend is, say, £100, and you have one winning line with a unit stake of 25p, your dividend would be a quarter of £100 because you are using a quarter of a £1 stake. Your payout in this scenario would be £25 (£100 divided by 4).

For any Placepot player, though, you need to be aware of the excellent Tix software, a staking optimisation tool built by Matt and Nigel Dove. The Tix software gives far more scope for perming your selections using different stakes, should you wish. Find out more about Tix here.

The upside of the Tote Placepot is that it is a ‘pool’ bet, which means you are essentially pitting your wits against other people rather than the bookmakers. Also, a fair number of Placepot bets per day are struck at the racecourse by racegoers who are simply having a fun bet whilst on a day out. Therefore, I feel I should have a significant edge regarding my betting ‘opponents’.

However, before getting too carried away, the bet has a downside: the Tote takes out 27% of the money put into the Placepot betting pot. Hence, if £100,000 is bet on a specific Placepot, only £73,000 of this is available to win. It is essentially like a Bookmaker’s overround where they build in their profit margin.

 

OK, with that explainer done, let me share the Tote Placepot data for the five UK meetings that raced on May 1st:

 

 

Overall, the day was not the most productive one for Placepot players with three meagre payouts. The payouts are calculated by dividing the Adjusted Final Pool Size by the remaining winning units. Hence, the Ascot dividend of £139.90 comes from £85,632.55 divided by 612.02.

I want to analyse one of these Placepot meetings in detail—the biggest one on the day at Ascot.

Race 1 – 1.10

This was a six-runner Class 2 conditions race for 2yos. Hence, two Placepot places were up for grabs (1st and 2nd). Below shows how many units went on each horse, what percentage of the pool that was, the Starting Price of each runner, and their Finishing Position.

 

 

The horses in red were the two Placepot ‘placers’. Interestingly, the most ‘pooled’ money was not on the favourite, Diligently; it was on the second favourite, Rock Hunter. Because of this, slightly more of the pot remained than one might have expected. Hence, £45,939.17 was left in the Placepot pool as we entered race 2. This equated to around 39% of the Adjusted Final Pool.

Looking at the % splits for each horse, we can also see that Sex on Fire had more than double the amount of money placed on him than Atherstone Warrior (11.1% of the pool versus 5.33%) despite their prices being virtually the same at 17/2 and 9/1. I do not have a bulletproof reason why this might have been the case, as you would expect the amounts on each horse to be closer to each other. However, data on any 2yo race is limited at this time of the year. In this particular contest, you had two debutants, three horses having their second career start, and one having their third. Hence, even the most seasoned punter finds getting a confident handle on this race more difficult. That is probably part of why there was such a discrepancy between the two horses. I am guessing there was a jockey factor in play, too, as Hoyle Doyle was riding Sex on Fire. She is a famous jockey, and I suspect some occasional Placepot punters would have seen her name and simply based their judgment on that. Another could be how their prices fluctuated during the day, but more of that discussion later.

Race 2 – 1.40

This was a Listed race with only five runners, so again, there would be two ‘placers’ counting. Here are the splits:

 

 

Again, the SPs do not quite match up with the % of pool figures. The second favourite, Docklands, had the most pool units, 3% more than the actual favourite. Likewise, there were two horses at 4/1, and there was a 6% difference between the two, equating to around 2700 units.

This was the second race in which the favourite had failed to place. Generally, better dividends occur when favourites have a poor day in terms of placing. Hopefully, this makes perfect sense, as favourites will be popular with Placepot pickers.

Race 3 – 2.15

This was another five-runner affair; this time, a Group 3 contest. Let me share the data for this one:

 

 

This time, the favourite comfortably had the most units staked on him, but again, the market leader failed to place. With the 11/1 outsider coming second and having a meagre 1.55% of the pooled money (354.82 units), this result increased the chances of a big payout. 78% of the staked units before this race were lost, leaving a pot of £5255.03.

Race 4 – 2.50

A 10-runner Group 3 sprint over 6f was the next action on the day, and a more extensive field of 10 runners went to post. Three to count this time, and here are the figures:

 

 

This race was not helpful in terms of a chance of being a very big Placepot payday. The two horses with comfortably the most units staked finished second and third. The 28/1 outsider Jakaiaro finished a neck away in 4th. If that had reversed placings with the third, it would have caused a serious dent in the remaining ‘pot’ and increased the chances significantly of a big payout. So, there was just under £3100 left in the pot with two races to go.

Race 5 – 3.25

An eight-runner sprint handicap was the penultimate Placepot race at Ascot that day. Here is how the remaining units were split between the runners:

 

 

The favourite placed for the second race running and, despite being 7/2, had over 37% of the remaining betting units. This could have been nearer 20-25% of the remaining units based on the actual SP, which again would have increased the final dividend considerably. Based on the upcoming Race 6 results, if the favourite Woolhampton had secured 25% of the remaining Race 5 units rather than 37.48%, the final dividend would have increased by around 22%. That’s significant. However, it highlights that we are dealing with unit sizes for individual runners that can fluctuate perhaps more than one would expect, given the so-called ‘true’ chance of the horse placing based on the SP.

Race 6 – 4.00

The second division of the handicap sprint was the final race as far as the Placepot was concerned. Again, we saw eight runners go to post. There were 2078.18 units remaining before the race:

 

 

The favourite failed, and the two horses with the most units (top two in the market) could not place. 29.45% of the units of the remaining units survived, leaving £612.02 left in the pot from the initial £85,632.55. The Placepot payout was a reasonable, if not huge, £139.90 to a £1 stake.

Being basically a ‘numbers man’, it is interesting for me to scrutinise each of these six races in some depth. What struck me was the correlation between the individual horses’ SPs and the units staked on these horses. It certainly was not always a positive correlation in line with expectations.

I decided to graph some Ascot data by looking at the individual horses’ SPs and the % of Placepot pool units staked on these horses. It shows all horses with SPs of 6.0 decimal odds (5/1) or shorter:

 

 

The graph does slope from the top left to the bottom right, but it is far from smooth and has plenty of outliers/anomalies.

Here is a tabular format with the exact %s (to 1 dp) for the number crunchers out there. I have highlighted in red what I perceive to be the main outliers:

 

 

As you can see at the top of the table, we have three different horses priced up at 3.0 (2/1), but one has 38.8% of the money in the pool, and the other two are much lower at 28% and 26.2%. Arguably, there is an even more significant differential when we look at the three 6.0 (5/1) runners with pool %s ranging from 5.4% to 18%.

You will get fluctuations when analysing price versus pool %, but I must admit, I was initially surprised when I looked at these Ascot results. Of course, the data is limited to just six races, but even so, I did expand my digging to the other four meetings that day and found that of all the horses priced 2/1, the lowest pool % for one horse (Cajetan) stood at 22.3%, and the highest was 38.8% (Sweet William) at Ascot. Then, I looked at some bigger price brackets than I did for Ascot and found that two horses priced 6/1 (7.0) were poles apart when it came to their pool %s – one had 20% of the units in the pool, the other just 7.4%.

Now, it should be stated that prices of horses often change from the early odds to their final SPs, so I surmised that this must be a significant contributory factor in this wide pool % of variances we have seen from such limited data. Hence, I continued to do some more digging. I looked at the two 2/1 SP shots I mentioned in the above paragraph (Cajetan and Sweet William) to see their Early Odds (e.g., their odds in the morning). Lo and behold, the 38.8% pool horse Sweet William was 15/8, a notch under the 2/1 SP, and the 22.3% pool horse Cajetan was a much bigger price ‘early doors’ at 9/2. In this comparison, therefore, it seems likely the early odds were the main reason behind the Placepot pool % variance. So, it got me thinking... obviously!

I thought it might be worthwhile to check out some horses whose prices remained the same during the day. I decided to check out some horses with early odds of 2/1 and, also a final Starting Price of 2/1. I expect these runners should be with a few percent of each other in terms of pool percentages. This type of research must be done slowly, race by race, so I have only looked at the last 30 qualifiers (at the time of writing). That should give us a fairly good overview. Here is what I found:

 

 

As you can see, we still have some significant variances. The highest figure was 47.3%, more than double the lowest figure of 22.1%. OK, they were the ‘extremes’, but even if you ignore, let’s say, the highest and lowest three figures, there is still a difference of over 10% from highest to lowest (39.4% versus 29.1%). The average figure for all 30 horses is 33.8%, which is what I would have expected.

So, what does that tell us? Clearly, fluctuations in ‘expected’ pool %s will occur regularly. Is it possible to pinpoint patterns and predict likely pool %s for some horses? That is the 64-million-dollar question. My guess is that the make-up of all the prices within each race plays a key role, not just the individual prices themselves. I am sure there are other factors, and I have some ideas, but that is for another time (and a huge chunk of research).

Of course, some punters may argue that the important thing from their perspective is that they get at least one horse placed in each race and have a slice of the Placepot dividend. That is a fair point, but I’m guessing you would rather win one pot in ten if the dividend is, say, £5000, compared with winning five pots in ten, all paying under £20. We could all win more ‘pots’ if we stacked our selections with all horses from the top end of the betting. However, any such ‘wins’ will produce low dividends and give you no chance of securing a long-term profit. In fact, you will be haemorrhaging money! You need a better strategy than that to win big at the Placepot!

**

Summary

It's time to wind up this first foray into the Tote Placepot. I appreciate that I have inadvertently created more questions than answers. Still, I hope you might now have an increased appreciation of the Placepot and how much there is to the whole conundrum. For me, it’s time to do some more research into this Tote pool bet, and I will share that with you next time.

-DR

2-Year-Old Handicaps: Nurseries Part 2

/in /by

This is the second article examining nursery handicaps – handicaps for 2-year-olds, writes Dave Renham. In the first piece, I looked at various factors, including the betting market, position last time out (LTO), the sex of the horse, weight carried, career starts, and run style. You can read that one here.

In this second article, I will look at fitness in terms of when their most recent run was, LTO price, and trainers, amongst other things. The data are sourced from the last nine seasons of UK flat and all-weather racing (2015 to 2023), and profits and losses are quoted to Industry SP. I will quote Betfair SP where appropriate.

Days since last run

This is a metric most punters take notice of. The general pattern for all flat races is that the shorter the time since racing, the higher the strike rate. However, the market is well-adjusted to this and prices are usually balanced accordingly. Let’s see, though, whether an edge can be found, either positive or negative, from the 2yo nursery stats:

 

 

The strike rate pattern can be seen here, as mentioned above. Horses returning to the track within five days are comfortably hitting the best strike rate but are the third worst in SP returns. They also provided the worst returns to BSP of all the groupings. The one group to avoid, though, is the group that has had the longest time off the track (61+ days). These have offered the worst returns, the lowest strike rate, and the lowest A/E index.

 

Surface switch (or not)

I want to share some data on what surface the nursery was run on (e.g. turf or all weather) compared with the horses' previous start. Hence, there are four possible combos to look at:

 

 

So, what do the stats say? The A/E indices suggest that one of the four combinations offers far better value than the other three. The graph below shows the figures:

 

 

Horses switching from a run on the all-weather LTO to the turf this time have offered punters by far the best value. This is also reflected in the returns for both SP and BSP.

 

 

The Flat / LTO AW figures for SP returns are better by over 7p in the £ than the other three. In addition, the BSP returns are positive at around 5.5 pence in the £. This is probably due to the market slightly downgrading the chances of young horses switching from the sand to the turf. With limited race experience on both surfaces, it can be challenging for bookmakers to price up these surface switchers accurately.

 

LTO Race Type

Next, look at the LTO Race Type, splitting by handicap vs. non-handicap.

 

 

It has been a slight advantage for nursery runners to have run in a nursery handicap on their most recent start. Regarding non-handicaps LTO, you might want to avoid any horse coming from a claimer, as they would have lost you 77p in the £. Also, horses coming from sellers have done poorly, losing over 32p in the £.

 

LTO Price

I often look at this metric: the price of the horse on its last run. To begin with, I will look at some LTO Starting Price Bands, focusing on the value metric, which is the A/E index:

 

 

When examining last day starting price, we see a scenario similar to the one in the first article – the maxim is the shorter, the better. Horses priced up 6/4 or shorter on their most recent start are ones to watch closely. Backing these runners blind to SP would have yielded a slight loss, but to BSP a return of nearly 6p in the £ would have been achieved. Also, if you had been a bit more selective with these 6/4 or less LTO runners, sticking to those that started in single figures next time, then you would have been rewarded with 177 wins from 689 runners (SR 25.7%) for a BSP profit of £85.84 (ROI +12.5%). You would have also made a profit to SP with these runners to the tune of £27.27 (ROI +4.0%).

 

Class Change

Does a change in class of race make any difference? Here are the splits:

 

 

There is not much to choose between the three here, although the ROI% is better for class droppers. Class droppers have been profitable at Betfair SP but these results have been skewed by several high prices hitting the mark.

 

Trainers

My final port of call is to look at trainers. Firstly, let me examine the trainers who had at least 70 nursery runners during the study period and obtained a strike rate of 14% or higher. I have ordered them by win strike rate:

 

 

Ten trainers have managed a profit of which eight have an A/E index above 1.00. All eight of these trainers should be classed as positive in these races. I will revisit some of these in a minute, but before then, onto those trainers who have recorded a strike rate of below 8%:

 

 

All eleven in this table have seen losses of over 40 pence in the £ to £1 level stakes, and I would be avoiding these trainers in nurseries unless some other impressive stats could convince me otherwise.

As often with trainer data, to avoid high prices potentially skewing profits let me focus on trainer performance with runners that started in single figures (e.g. 9/1 or less). For this group I have relaxed the qualifier restriction to 50, including 48 trainers that had at least 50 qualifiers by using this price restriction:

 

 

Ralph Beckett has the stand-out single price stats, producing returns just shy of 26p in the £. He also has an excellent A/E index of 1.21. Breaking down his results for these 9/1 or shorter nursery contenders, I notice that his male runners have completely outgunned the female ones. The first article noted that male horses comfortably outperformed their female counterparts in mixed-sex nurseries. Here, the contrast is even more stark. His male horses (when 9/1 or shorter) have won over 31% of their starts returning 47p in the £; his female runners within the same price bracket have won just 18% and would have lost you over 6p in the £.

The stats are also very interesting for Beckett when looking at ALL his runners across ALL SP prices – we see the following based on A/E indices:

 

 

There are no winners in the 10/1+ bracket – he is 0 from 48 with only two placed. The message is clear – any Beckett runners priced 9/1 or shorter should offer excellent value; any priced 10/1 or bigger offers little or no value.

Returning to the latest table, other trainers to keep on the right side would be Sir Mark Prescott, Rod Millman, Ed Walker, Archie Watson, and runners from the Crisford stable. I would also keep an eye out for all the others highlighted in blue near the top of the table.

I think any trainer in the bottom quarter of the table whose A/E index is under 0.75 should be treated with caution.

 

Five Key Trainer Angles

Before finishing, I would like to share five of the most vital trainer stats I could find:

1. Charlie Appleby at Newmarket has secured 14 wins from 37 (SR 37.8%) for an SP profit of £13.29 (ROI +35.9%).

2. At Grade 1 tracks (Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown, and York), the Crisford stable has won 10 of 30 starts (SR 33.3%) for a profit of £17.91 (ROI +57.9%). This is an excellent effort considering these nurseries are some of the most competitive.

3. George Boughey has a strike rate of 41.8% with nursery favourites (28 wins from 67) for a profit of £12.65 (ROI +18.9%).

4. Ralph Beckett has an excellent record with LTO winners thanks to 14 wins from 37 runners (SR 37.8%) for a profit of £19.63 (ROI +53.1%).

5. Tom Dascombe, like Beckett, has done well with winners LTO, scoring 33.3% of the time (18 from 54) for a profit of £43.67 (ROI +80.9%).

**

That concludes my analysis of nursery handicaps, which are a betting medium that can certainly form a part of one’s betting portfolio. I hope some of these angles can give you that vital edge over the crowd.

-DR

2-Year-Old Handicaps: Nurseries Part 1

/in /by

July sees the recommencement of nursery races, handicap races for 2-year-olds, with the first of them scheduled for Haydock and Carlisle this Saturday, writes Dave Renham. This article is the first in a two-part series that will look at these niche races. I have collated data from the last nine UK flat and all-weather racing seasons (2015 to 2023) with profits and losses quoted to Industry SP. I will quote Betfair SP where appropriate.

 

The market

My first port of call is the betting market and a look at some Starting Price bands. Let me focus first on a value metric, the A/E index:

 

 

As the graph neatly indicates, the shorter the price, the better the value. The only slight outlier is the 18/1 to 33/1 but, essentially, as the price gets bigger the value decreases.

If we now examine the Return on Investment (ROI%), we can see how well the two metrics correlate with each other:

 

 

Odds on shots have made a small profit, although there were only 131 such runners, so you certainly would not have raked it in! While I am not usually a fan of short prices, any horse priced 6/4 or shorter in a nursery is worth a second look. Conversely, performance dips when we hit 13/2 or greater, so nurseries look generally top-of-the-market orientated.

With shorter prices doing relatively well, let me dig into the results for favourites; one would surmise, given the data so far, that they are likely to be the best option in terms of market position. Here are the overall stats:

 

 

We have a strike rate of around three wins in every ten races, a good A/E index of 0.98 and minimal losses to SP. To Betfair SP, this loss would have become a £37.52 profit, giving a small +1.6% ROI. In addition, nursery favourites have performed better on the all-weather than they have on turf, as the stats below show:

 

 

Nursery favourites on the all-weather have edged into SP profit. To BSP, these figures improve to £61.43 (ROI +5.8%).

Another favourite angle I looked at was the going conditions on the turf. It seems the firmer, the better:

 

 

The good to soft or softer results may be because the market assumes that a young horse with limited experience can act on a softer surface when it has not raced on one before. This is just a theory. The good/firm+ and good ground results for favourites saw a small positive return to BSP.

The final favourite stat to share focuses on horses that had previously won twice as a 2yo. Of these 303 horses, 109 won (SR 36.0%) for an SP profit of £15.79 (ROI +5.2%). To BSP, this improved to a profit of £32.78 (ROI +10.8%).

 

Position Last Time Out (LTO)

I want to examine a recent performance metric, so let's investigate the position LTO stats.

 

 

The slight anomaly is the results for the 5th – they are out of kilter with the remaining ones. Overall, it seems the better value - or least worst, perhaps - lies with those runners who finished first or second LTO. If we look at the BSP returns for those finishing in the first two LTO, losses become very small at less than 1.5 pence in the £.

Sticking with those runners that were first or second LTO, if we restrict that LTO race to a nursery, we edge into BSP profit by £43.15 to £1 level stakes (ROI +1.7%). Essentially, I would view a run in the top two places LTO as a slight positive.

 

Weight carried

When I first came into racing, there was an old adage about backing the top weight in a nursery. I’m not sure how successful that may have been ‘back in the day’ before we had a wealth of weight stats to pore over. However, that is not the case now. Although top weights win more often than any other weight position, they would still have lost you nigh on 20p in the £ for every £1 staked. Below, I have looked at actual weight carried rather than position in the weights. When I talk about the actual weight carried, I take any jockey claim into account. Below are the ROI%'s for different weight groupings.

 

 

Across the board, we have losses to SP and, in some cases, significant losses. As a rule, the lower weights have returned more significant losses, and hence, I would be wary of backing a horse carrying 8st 9lb or less and ignore totally if they are under 8st. In fact, the 7st 13lb or less group won just 3.7% of the time, with an extremely poor A/E index standing at 0.55.

While discussing weight carried, let's compare the performance of jockeys in terms of claiming jockeys. Trainers use apprentices in handicaps to take weight off their horse's back which, in theory, should slow them down less during the course of a race. The quid pro quo is that these jockeys are less experienced than the ‘pros’. Here are the stats:

 

 

The more experienced the jockey, the better the win rate and the higher the A/E index. In terms of ROI%, the correlation with those two metrics is good, although 5lb claimers have lost 1p more in the £ than 7lb ones. The ‘top’ jocks (no claim) are close to breaking even when betting on BSP. Ultimately, I would be less inclined to back a horse in a nursery with a claiming jockey on board, especially one carrying 5 or 7lb.

 

Career Wins

Earlier, I touched on the fact that two or more career wins when sent off favourite was a positive. So what about all runners in terms of career wins? Let’s look at the win and each way strike rates first:

 

 

In terms of win SR%, horses with two or more wins in their debut year have been the most successful. Those who are still maidens have struggled in comparison. When we look at the returns to SP, these correlate well with the win strike rates – the 2+ group would have lost you 13p in the £, the 1-win group lost 18p, and the 0 wins group lost 20p.

 

Sex of horse

This is an area I like to look at because occasionally gender biases are unearthed. The vast majority of nurseries are for both sexes, and I have concentrated on those mixed-sex nurseries (roughly 1900 races over the study period). Here are the figures:

 

 

Male horses clearly come out on top across all metrics. When I learned this, I thought analysing nurseries with a similar split of male to female runners was worthwhile. I have looked at races where the split is no worse than 40% females versus 60% males and vice versa.

 

 

The bias toward male runners strengthens a little, especially considering the ROI%s. All things being considered, a male runner is a better nursery proposition than a female one.

 

Run Style

The final area to examine in this first piece is run style. I’ll begin by reviewing the win strike rate for the four categories geegeez.co.uk stores in its database: led, prominent, mid-division, and held up.

 

 

Based on all previous evidence I have shared regarding run style, these figures should come as no surprise. Let’s see if the A/E indices correlate:

 

 

The bias to early leaders/front runners in these contests is significant. As I have mentioned numerous times, the early leader will only be known a few seconds after the race has started. Hence, taking advantage of this run style bias is not easy. What the early leader conundrum does do, as far as I am concerned, is to continue my pursuit to find more accurate ways of predicting the early leader in run style-biased races. If your crystal ball had managed to predict all nursery early leaders since 2015, you would have made a profit of £701.95 (ROI +24.6%) to £1 level stakes. That equates to £7019.50 to £10 win bets.

**

Part 1 Summary

In conclusion, here are the key points:

1. The best value lies with shorter-priced runners - 6/4 or better / favourites.

2. Favourites have been profitable to SP & BSP on the all-weather and to BSP on good or firmer going. Favourites have also proved profitable to SP and BSP, with at least two previous wins.

3. Horses that finished 1st or 2nd last time out in a nursery have edged into BSP profit.

4. Horses carrying 8st 9lb or less have a relatively poor record; those carrying under 8st have an abysmal record.

5. Male horses outperform female horses.

6. Horses that lead early have a considerable edge.

 

And that wraps up part 1. In part 2 next week I will continue my digging into these nursery handicaps. Until then...

-DR

What Happens After Royal Ascot?

/in /by

A few months back, I looked at the performance of horses on their next start having had their last race at the Cheltenham Festival, writes Dave Renham. I will revisit that idea in this post but the focus now is on horses that raced last time out at Royal Ascot. Royal Ascot finished on Saturday so now is a great time to examine the numbers.

The data was taken from 2009 to 2024 (prior to this year's Ascot meeting), and profits and losses were calculated to Betfair Starting Price less a 5% commission.

All runners

Looking at all runners coming from Royal Ascot on their next start – they have scored 14% of the time with losses to BSP of 10 pence in the £.

Finishing position at Royal Ascot

My first detailed port of call is where the horse finished in their race at the Royal meeting. Let’s see the splits:

 

 

Last time out (LTO) winners and runners-up score better than one win in five on their follow-up run. LTO winners from two stables should be noted – firstly, Royal Ascot winners from the Aidan O’Brien stable have gone on to score next time 22 times from 55 runs (SR 36.4%) for a profit of £5.26 (ROI +9.6%; A/E 1.00). The Gosden stable has produced similar figures with 12 wins from 38 (SR 31.6%) for a profit of £3.95 (ROI +10.4%; ROI 0.98).

LTO runners-up have edged into profit, but this is down to one huge-priced winner (BSP 75.0), which completely skews the figures. Ultimately, finding an edge from where they finished in their Ascot race seems complicated.

One interesting comparison to make is between the performance of horses that beat more than half of their Royal Ascot rivals (excluding winners) and those who beat fewer than half of them. Below is a graph comparing win and each way (win & placed) strike rates for both groups:

 

 

As you can see, horses that finished in the top 50% of runners in their Ascot race have completely outperformed those that did not in strike rate (both win and each way). They would also have lost you 6p less for every £1 bet compared to the 0 to 49% group.

Digging a bit deeper, if we restrict this 50% to 99% group to those that ran in Royal Ascot handicaps, these 1360 qualifiers would have turned a profit of £84.50 (ROI +6.2%). These handicap stats are not hugely skewed by the winning prices either.

 

Course (next time)

Course data next. Which courses fare better than others when Royal meeting runners visit on their follow-up run? Here are the courses that have had at least 100+ qualifying runners:

 

 

Five courses have turned a profit: Chester, the Curragh, Haydock, Newbury, and York. The Newbury results include three winners priced between 40.0 and 60.0 BSP, so this profit figure can be ignored. Meanwhile, York had a massive 200.0 BSP winner, so this is the second course to have unreliable BSP profit figures. Sticking with York, horses that raced next time at the York Ebor meeting in August have an abysmal record with just 17 winners from 210 (SR 8.1%) for a BSP loss of £90.07 (ROI -42.9%). The A/E index stands at an extremely low 0.60. The other three ‘positive’ courses (Chester, the Curragh, and Haydock) have not had their results badly skewed, and visits to these courses after Royal Ascot can be viewed as a positive. Haydock figures, I would say, are the most reliable as they managed a profit to Industry SP.

The Goodwood next time stats are poor. Most of these qualifiers appeared at Glorious Goodwood – 724 of the 768 runners. Of these, just 78 won at the Goodwood Festival for losses of £190.40 (ROI -26.3%). Personally, I would ignore the vast majority of LTO Royal Ascot runners reappearing at Glorious Goodwood.

Before moving on, it looks best to disregard horses that switched from the turf of Ascot to the all-weather on their next start, as their combined figures read a disappointing 52 wins from 369 runs (SR 14.1%) for hefty losses of £133.56 (ROI -36.2%).

 

Days since the Ascot run

Let me now examine the performance of these Royal Ascot runners based on how quickly they return to the track. Below is a graph mapping their A/E indices:

 

 

Horses returning to the track between 8 and 14 days later have provided the best value. So, keep an eye on them in the next few days. On average, per year, 40 to 45 horses return to the track within that time frame. They have won just over 18% of their follow-up starts. They have not been profitable if backing ‘blind’, but they are horses that undoubtedly require a second glance. Horses off the track for more than four months (121 days +) have offered the poorest value and have the lowest strike rate amongst all groups.

 

Class Change

A look at Change in Class of race next – here are the splits:

 

 

Clearly, horses dropped in class have by far the best record, with comfortably the best strike rate and losses at just 4.1% compared with 17.7% and 19.9%, respectively.

 

Trainers

It's time to look at the performance of trainers. A tiny proportion of horses switch trainers after Royal Ascot, so the data I am sharing is based on trainer results, with horses running for the same stable as they did at the Royal meeting. Here are all trainers with at least 70 LTO Royal Ascot qualifiers. They are in order by win-strike rate:

 

 

Two trainers have impressive A/E indices, with horses having their first start after Royal Ascot: Bin Suroor (1.19) and Fahey (1.06). Runners from both stables are worth keeping a close eye out for. Five trainers have made a profit, but to try and avoid big-priced winners skewing the figures, let me show the performance of the trainers above if we restrict their runners to those who started in the top four of the betting on their next start:

 

 

This table is a better one to concentrate on from a trainer's perspective. The top six have some excellent stats regarding strike rate – all have proved profitable, and four (Bin Suroor, Cox, Fahey, and Beckett) have A/E indices above 1.00. It is interesting to see Charlie Appleby's very modest figures, as he is usually a trainer who has excellent stats.

 

Additional Stats

1. Horses whose SP was 7/2 or shorter at Royal Ascot have gone on next time to win 83 times from 302 runners (SR 27.5%) for a minimal loss of £4.58 (ROI -1.5%).

2. In contrast to the first additional stat, horses whose SP was 40/1 or bigger at Royal Ascot have won next time 166 times from 1679 runners (SR 9.9%) for significant BSP losses of £323.47 (ROI +19.3%).

3. 2yos beaten more than five lengths at Royal Ascot have struggled next time out, scoring 15.9% of the time and losing over 23p in the £ to BSP. Compare this to the 2yo winners from the Royal meeting who have gone on to win over 30% next time out, losing just 3p in the £.

4. 3yo Royal Ascot winners have gone on to win next time in 35 races from 148 starts (SR 23.7%) for a break-even situation.

**

 

Conclusion

It is challenging to make blind profits using a specific angle from LTO Royal Ascot competitors. However, based on all the findings, I feel LTO handicappers are worth keeping a close eye on as long as they didn't win and beat at least 50% of their Royal Ascot rivals. Several will pop up and win next time, many going under the radar.

Regarding trainers, Saeed Bin Suroor and Richard Fahey head my list, with Ralph Beckett and Clive Cox close behind. This is especially true if their Royal Ascot runners start in the top four of the betting next time.

Horses heading to Haydock after Ascot and those making their trips to Chester and the Curragh have done well. I would be wary of any Royal Ascot runner reappearing for the first time subsequently at Glorious Goodwood or the York Ebor meeting.

Horses dropping in class are far more likely to win than those which do not. Finally, horses returning to the track 8 to 14 days after their Royal Ascot spin are the best-performing group regarding time off since their Ascot run.

-DR

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