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As a recent Racing Post article by their feature writer Julian Muscat outlined, Charlie Appleby, Godolphin and, usually, William Buick have been utterly dominant throughout the first two months of the Dubai Carnival at Meydan, seemingly knocking off the Group races at will, writes Tony Stafford. It was becoming almost as boring, and routine, he said, as had Willie Mullins at the Dublin Racing Festival and no doubt will be next week at Cheltenham. (I wasn’t the only one, it seems!)
Thank goodness, then, for one of the much-diminished squad of UK trainers who was happy to take them on. Step forward William Knight. It was at last year’s Carnival that his then seven-year-old Sir Busker suffered a freak incident that at the time looked to have ended his career as the Knight stable standard-bearer.
“You wouldn’t mind so much if it had happened in a dirt race”, he recalled during a barren summer, looking back at his shock when the fragment from the kicked-back piece of turf that landed square in Sir Busker’s eye and necessitated surgery and a long spell of rehab in Dubai after his race on last year’s World Cup night.
Happily, the gelding eventually returned to the UK, running a few times, adding a couple of places in autumn handicaps at Newcastle to career earnings of more than half a million for owners Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds and six wins, including at Royal Ascot.
Ironically, you might say, both Nick Robinson, whose founding of Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds was the impetus for syndicate ownership in the UK, and Neville Callaghan, long-term incumbent of Rathmoy Stables, now Knight’s beautiful base in Newmarket’s Hamilton Road, died in the last few months of 2023.
The year had started promisingly for him, with three wins by the first week of February. Amazingly, though, over the next seven months just two more successes came, for Paradise Row at Chelmsford during Royal Ascot week and Bunker Bay in a four-horse handicap at Yarmouth in July.
I remember him telling me: “We aren’t doing anything different, and the horses seem to be well, but they just aren’t winning.”
You can imagine his frustration and indeed fears for the future. The sales were coming up and all he could point to were five wins in the calendar year. Then somehow it changed. Some younger horses came along to live up to their promise, and crucially he managed to restock a fair amount at the yearling auctions. Last week came news of three new horses coming from an exciting high-value operation managed by his bloodstock agent brother, Richard.
Anyway, by the end of the year he had pushed the tally to 16, below what had become his norm but reassuring all the same after the travails of midsummer. One of the wins came from a two-year-old filly by the US sire Frosted out of a War Front mare that had been bred in the States by Rabbah Bloodstock, part of the sprawling worldwide Sheikh Mohammed enterprise. Godolphin Lite you might say.
Called Frost At Dawn she came to Rathmoy in the ownership of one of the regular Rabbah patrons, Abdulla Al Mansoori, who previously had the odd horse with Knight. William had suffered numbers-wise last year after Rabbah’s restructuring led to its biggest entity in the yard cutting back appreciably.
Frost At Dawn made her debut in late October, amid the Knight revival, taking the well-trod 490-mile round trip from Newmarket to Newcastle – laughingly described by the trainer as “my local track”, so often has he used it to educate and win with inexperienced horses from his yard.
She ran well, finishing a promising second, yet was allowed to start at 10/1 when easily winning three weeks later at nearby Chelmsford. The decision was then made to target some of the valuable fillies’ prizes for juveniles either side of the New Year.
Having started off with a second place at seven furlongs in late December, Knight understandably pushed her up a furlong for her next race early in January and she clearly didn’t stay. I think the Racing Post comment “pressed pace, upsides two furlongs out, folded tamely” was a little harsh, and it was back a furlong again next time when once more she led through the race but didn’t get home.
That brought the realisation that she was probably a sprinter. Her fourth race in Dubai was her career first over as short as six furlongs last month. Starting 40/1, again she took up the running, and this time was beaten on the line by the Godolphin favourite.
The common denominator in all of this was her speed, and now William took the plunge, entering her for the Group 3 Nad Al Sheba Turf Sprint sponsored by Emirates Skywards. Having been confined to racing against her own age and sex, this was a different matter altogether. It’s an all-aged race open to both sexes and it drew a 15-runner field, only three of which – William’s filly, the Godolphin hotpot Star Of Mystery, and a colt that started 100/1 and finished 14th, were the sole three-year-olds in the line-up.
I spoke to William before the race and he pointed out that while there was a massive disparity in their official ratings and prices, the form line through a Ralph Beckett filly called Starlust with the favourite suggested Frost At Dawn had only one length to find.
Star Of Mystery, of course, was an Appleby / Buick / Godolphin 4/9 shot against Frost At Dawn’s 33/1 – “unbelievable each-way value”, said William in his comments for the From The Stables service I edit every day. This opinion was markedly at variance with the official handicap figures as she had 21lb to find, and of course the market. She emphatically proved both wrong.
Down now to five furlongs for the first time, Frost At Dawn took up the running two furlongs out and then sprinted away under Mickael Barzalona to win by two and a half lengths in track record for the Meydan five furlongs. Admittedly, times were fast on Saturday, but when you consider the legions of smart Godolphin and other sprinters that must have graced that turf course in the 15 seasons since the track superseded Nad Al Sheba, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the time and performance.
Also impressive is the way William Knight soldiered on through the tough times and has come out smiling – well maybe just a hint of one. As to where the UK handicappers will rate Frost At Dawn after this brilliant performance is another question. He could well have to keep her to Group and other stakes races from now on.
Those older sprinters behind her included two well-tested horses from Ireland and the UK, apart from the favourite who has a 113 rating and won a couple of times for Charlie Appleby in a busy two-year-old season last year as well as her Dubaian exploits. Additionally, Johnny Murtagh’s five-year-old mare Ladies Church, a four-time winner, who was 8th, 9.75 lengths behind is rated 104, 4lb less than Charlie Hills’ Equality, who at six boasts five wins, and trailed in a near-eleven lengths 12th. Only the last horse home went into the race with a lower rating than the winner and most of those in between were well into the 100’s.
There are few more personable people in racing than William Knight. I’ve known him for a good while now and I couldn’t be more pleased with that astonishing result. Let’s hope a certain two-year-old son of Kodiac, sire of Star Of Mystery, lives up to early promise. Meanwhile he will be anticipating the prospect of the potential for horses being sent to him from the breeze-ups which will be on us all too soon.
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Now I must come to the shock and indeed embarrassment I felt with the news on Saturday that Mark Bradstock, the subject of last week’s article, had died. The story revolved around the amazing performance at Exeter of his horse Mr Vango, a 60-length winner a week last Friday and my belief he would stand a chance in the 3m6f National Hunt Chase at Cheltenham next week.
Bradstock, 66, whose widow Sara is the daughter of my long-term former Daily Telegraph colleague John, Lord Oaksey, had shown he could win big races, notably the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Hennessy Gold Cup with half-brothers Coneygree and Carruthers respectively.
I had no idea that he had been so ill, apparently for two years. Mark was highly thought of by his training peers and the one consolation, if there can be any in such awful circumstances, is that he must have been delighted to see one last impressive win from his family-run stable. I send my condolences to Sara and their two children Alfie and Lily.
TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/FrostAtDawn_NadAlShebaSprint_WilliamKnight.png320830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-03-04 08:20:082024-03-04 10:48:38Monday Musings: Darkest Before the Dawn
I am guessing that around 70% of the people reading this bet on horses on a regular basis, writes Dave Renham. By ‘regular basis’, I mean either daily or weekly. Regardless of how many bets you may have in a day, week, month, year or lifetime, the aim for the majority is probably to be profitable. Plenty do it just for fun and if they make a few quid from time to time that’s a bonus. And the smart ones combine those two reasons: profit, and fun.
For me I put myself mainly in the first category. There are two reasons for this, firstly a sense of arrogance, I guess; wanting to prove myself and outwit / outcompete the bookies. Secondly, I like having more money. Simple as that!
Introduction
To achieve the goal of long-term profits we all follow a slightly different path, not just in terms of how many bets we average a week / year but in how we go about the process. I think time is one of the biggest factors for many. It certainly is for me – gone are the days when I was able to spend all day, every day solely devoted to betting. I did that for roughly six years straight when I was running a tipping service from 2001 to 2007. I was in my mid-thirties when these 12-hour days dedicated to horse racing and betting was the norm. Nowadays, the thought of a 12-hour shift just makes me feel tired! Not only that, but I also cannot devote that sort of time to it even if I wanted to. Alongside my life in racing, I teach private online Maths lessons, have family commitments, etc, etc.
As it stands, at this point of my life, I would guess that on average there are probably three or four days in the week where I can give some time and thought to betting. That may be 4-5 hours on any given day, that may be as little as an hour. Hence, I have had to adapt my betting methods from those I employed between 2001 to 2007. Back then I focused on 5f to 6f sprint handicaps, as well as the occasional 7f contest. I would analyse every single qualifying race in significant depth. Some races would offer up bets, some would not. Spending a few hours on one race is fine if you can pinpoint a value selection – not so much fun when you can’t!
Fast forward around 20 years, and my pathway to finding bets is somewhat different. In the rest of this article, I’ll share some of my approach…
I wonder how many readers keep a list of horses to follow. That is something I have always done, but now I am far more reliant on it than I was back in the day. In fact, it has become the first thing I look at on the days when I have time to analyse some races. If I have a horse to follow declared to run, then my first port of call will be to look at the race in which it is running and assess its chance. If I have no daily qualifiers from my list, I will head to my ‘comfort blanket’ of shorter distance handicaps, looking primarily for any race where there is potentially a run style bias, a draw bias, or ideally both.
Going back to my horses to follow list I am going to share what types of things I look for in terms of how a horse can make it on to my list.
Horses that run well against a pace bias (Negative pace bias)
This type of idea is something I discussed in a two-parter for Geegeez back in November 2020. Here’s part one, and here is part two. In the article I picked ten races which seemed to show a pace bias and looked at the subsequent performance of horses that had ostensibly run well against the bias. The research for those two articles inspired me do much more digging. After writing those pieces I spent a few months fine tuning what I will call my negative pace bias method, and by April 2021 I was using it to highlight horses to follow for my personal betting.
In terms of determining a race which has the potential to throw up pace bias qualifiers that could make my horse to follow list, I use just two methods, both of which rely on a basic criterion or starting point. I want to share one of these ideas with you and my ‘in’ in terms of looking for this group of qualifiers is as follows:
Race distance of 5f to 7f
Race must be handicap with at least 10 runners
The first three finishers must have either been given pace abbreviations of L or P, or first three must have been given pace abbreviations of M or H.
On the third point, this stipulation allows me to explore two pace scenarios. Firstly, when there is bias to more prominent racers; and secondly an off the pace bias when mid-pack or hold up horses fill out the first three placings.
This initial starting point means I can trawl through recent results to find some qualifying races. It does not mean I will find a horse to follow in every race that passes my basic criterion. However, permit me to walk you through one example that did. It was a 7f 10-runner handicap at Southwell from January last year. Here are the first seven finishers with comments in running, run style (RS) abbreviations and sectionals:
As you can see, the first three home raced close to or up with the pace (see 'RS' (run style) column - L, P, P) as indeed did the fourth placed finisher. Another thing to note is that in terms of positions given from the running lines (the set of five bold font numbers - in-race position - and superscript - distance behind the leader/ahead), all four of these runners maintained a position in the top four throughout.
A further key fact staring us in the face thanks to the sectional data was that the first part of the race was slow (note the blue colours in the left hand side 'blobs' and especially in the first race blob above the result. Generally, if the early pace is slow in a shorter race, then those positioned near the front have an even greater advantage than usual. It means that in these early stages they are not exerting themselves too much and thus they can be expected to have more in the tank at the business end of the race. This makes it harder for horses in midfield or at the back early in the race to pass them late on. That certainly seems to have been the case here and the final telling sign is that, according to the sectional blobs, the final two furlongs were run FAST or VERY FAST compared with par, suggesting there was indeed plenty in the tank for those horses that had raced prominently.
All the pointers in this race suggest that the first four home were strongly favoured by how the race was run in terms of pace. Titan Rock, on the other hand, which finished fifth, was not favoured by how the race was run. He was held up early in 8th, maintained a similar position for much of the race before finishing fastest of all in the last two furlongs. Not only that, he ‘took keen hold’ early which would have expended some additional energy. He finished best of the midfield/held up runners and was a horse that I felt had run well against a pace bias. Another positive was that, priced 22/1, he had also outrun his odds. He was a horse that I put on my horses to follow list.
Zip, who finished 6th, and Witch Hunter, 7th, were also of interest as both were settled off the pace early; and Titan Rock only beat Zip by a nose, who in turn was only a neck in front of Witch Hunter at the line. Zip had been favourite, so I downgraded his run a little as he was unable to make up any ground in the final furlong or two. Witch Hunter was of more interest than Zip because he, like Titan Rock, had been keen early, but had also been forced to switch left two furlongs out losing him some vital time. Hence Witch Hunter made my list as well as Titan Rock with Zip missing out.
Now we are all familiar with the phrase Sod’s Law... well, Zip won on his very next start at the juicy price of 11/1. So, I potentially had missed out on a big priced winner having failed to put him on the list. In better news I backed Titan Rock on his next two starts, which are shown below along with that original Southwell run:
A win at 13/2 arrived two runs after Southwell - when racing closer to the pace – that did help ease the pain of missing out on Zip’s win! Witch Hunter on the other hand was less of a success from a personal perspective. Here are his next seven runs and once again I’ve included the original Southwell result at the bottom:
As you can see Witch Hunter did eventually get his head in front at the huge price of 50/1 (7 runs and 5 months after Southwell), but I had removed him from my list by then. I ended up backing him on his next four runs, hitting the post twice at 5/2 and 14/1. I kept him on the list despite a poor 20th out of 22 showing at Doncaster. This is because he had never raced on heavy ground and was trying a mile for the first time. In hindsight, maybe I should have skipped this race and waited for the next one.
There is no fixed number of races a horse will stay on my list. Having said that, it is rare that I retain one for more than three or four runs. Likewise, I will not back every horse to follow that is declared to run. I will put my money down if I perceive the horse to offer me value.
In many respects it would be much easier if I had a hard and fast rule that stated, for instance, that any horse on my list to follow should be backed three times and then removed from the list. However, for me, that becomes more systematic which is not how I operate. That might be an idea for some – it would certainly save time and help with discipline; but I still like individual race analysis and trusting my judgement.
I could offer many more examples of horses that have ended up on my list via the pace bias route – some winning soon afterwards, others not. As with any approach it is not bombproof. The decision about the races you pick and the horses you list are personal to you. That's part of the fun!
I have been using this method for nearly three years now and it is one I will be continuing to use in the coming months and years, which probably tells you that I think it is a worthwhile one!
Horses that run well against a draw bias (Negative draw bias)
Negative draw bias attempts to highlight a horse or horses that ran well from a poor draw and hence in theory have run better than their finishing position may have initially indicated. Essentially, this is using the same premise as I did with horses that had run well against a pace bias.
I discussed the general theory of negative draw bias before back in May 2022 and, despite writing about it there, I think it is important to emphasise that this idea continues to produce future winners on a regular basis. Now, draw bias per se is not as potent as it once was and much, if not all, of the value has gone in terms of backing well drawn horses. However negative draw bias is alive and continues to kick and I want to keep it firmly in the minds of readers as you can definitely profit from this. Allow me to share with you how I pick what makes it to my horses to follow list.
There are two ways a horse could be flagged up on negative draw bias. Firstly, horses which run well from a known poor draw, for example a horse drawn 10 at Chester over 5f finishing within a length or two of the winner. And secondly, a race where the numbers seem to indicate one side of the draw was strongly favoured. This primarily occurs on straight courses with big fields (circa 15+), usually when such races see the field split into two or more groups.
Let's look at the first one – horses that run well from a 'known' poor draw. The criterion for 'poor draw' varies from course to course and distance to distance. For example, at some track/trip combinations a horse drawn 10 or higher is drawn poorly, at others a horse drawn 7 or higher is drawn poorly. I use a small but select band of course and distance pairings, namely:
As with the pace bias races, I tend to stick to handicaps and in general the bigger the field size the better. In terms of distance beaten or finishing position for potential list qualifiers, it depends on the individual race and my perception of the strength of the bias.
The second approach takes longer to establish potential list qualifiers as I need to examine every big field handicap to see if one part of the draw has seemingly been strongly favoured. Below is a race where I found three horses that made it to my horse to follow list:
This was a Chester sprint over five and a half furlongs, so low draws tend to be well favoured. The first horse that caught my attention, then, was Evocative Spark who had started from stall 8. Chester sprints I always re-watch a few times on video, and I watched this race back at least five times viewing different horses. I don’t always check the race video regarding potential list making horses but track position at Chester can be crucial due to its very tight nature.
Horses drawn 8 or wider at Chester over 5½f have a PRB figure of around 0.41, so the 8 post for Evocative Spark in this field of eleven was a poor one. Also, the horse finished really well having been short of room – he was the fastest horse in the final furlong (note his 1-0 split of 12.26s). This was a definite for my list. Likewise, Count D’Orsay, who finished a neck behind Evocative Spark in 5th was drawn even worse in 10 (DR says 12 but stalls 9 and 10 were non-runners). Not only that but he raced wide losing important ground on such a tight track. He also finished very well (3rd fastest horse in final furlong clocking 12.41s) and he too made my list.
There were two other horses I considered, the first of which was Dare To Hope. Draws 1 to 4 are by far the best draws here so the 7 box for Dare To Hope I still classed as a negative. He ran better than his finishing position of 7th suggested, but not quite well enough to make my list. The other horse I considered was the winner Call Me Ginger. It is rare that I will consider a winner as a potential horse to make my list but, having watched the race a few times, I realised that Call Me Ginger was value for more than his winning margin. Starting from stall 6 he ended up racing three wide most of the way before being shuffled about seven horses wide on the final turn. He ran much further than ideal so I reckoned that if he hadn’t been wide for so long, he would have won by two or three lengths rather than a short head. Hence, Call Me Ginger was the third horse to make my list from this race.
So, what happened in subsequent races? I’ll start with the horse that didn’t make my list, Dare To Hope. Next time out, having been dropped 2lbs in the weights, he finished second at 17/2, before winning two starts later at 14/1. This is a bit of déjà vu – first Zip and now Dare To Hope!
Meanwhile, Evocative Spark came out next time and won easily.
However, before readers pat me on the back, I did not back the horse as I was put off by his draw in 9. A wide draw over 7f is not as bad as over 5½f but it was enough to put me off. The words ‘missed’ and ‘boat’ spring to mind once more.
In happier news, Call Me Ginger was back racing seven days later at Ascot and I did back him: he won at 11/2.
Count D’Orsay came second in his next two starts, both of which carried my money. I backed him one more time, but he finished 8th and was taken off the list.
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Let's now switch to big field handicaps where a draw bias has seemingly occurred, and there were three similar examples at Royal Ascot last year: two on Friday and one on Saturday. The first race indicating a strong draw bias was the Sandringham with the first ten horses home as follows:
The draw seemed to play a huge role in the outcome of this race with the first seven home drawn 25, 16, 18, 24, 20, 29 and 19. High to middle draws totally dominated the finish and the first seven all raced on the stands’ side (near side). Magical Sunset (drawn 5) and Lady Alara (drawn 3) were the first two home from the low draws on the unfavoured far side. This race screamed out that both these horses had run far better than their finishing position suggested. Hence both were added to my list of horses to follow.
Later that day in the 5f Palace Of Holyrood Handicap the same pattern emerged with high to middle draws dominating the race. The first eight finishers were drawn 25, 16, 17, 20, 27, 29, 13 and 23. Harry Brown (drawn 7) finished 9th, best of the low draws and far side group. The second horse home on the far side was The Big Board who finished 11th. Of the two, Harry Brown made my list but as The Big Board finished a further 2¼ lengths behind Harry Brown I decided not to add him.
The next day the Wokingham Handicap replicated the middle to high draw pattern making 5th placed Fresh (drawn 4) and 9th placed Kings Lynn (drawn 2) potential horses for the list. These were the only single figure drawn runners to finish in the first 17 horses over the line! Fresh was two lengths behind the winner and Kings Lynn a further length back. Both had done enough in my opinion to be followed.
In hindsight perhaps I should have reconsidered adding The Big Board to the list given that these races, which had been so close to each other, had both shown such a strong and consistent bias. However, I didn’t, and you guessed it, déjà vu reared its head again. The Big Board won its next two starts at 4/1 and wait for it... 22/1.
Of the five listed horses I backed Fresh three times before taking him off the list after a best effort of 5th of 17. Kings Lynn finished 6th next time, not beaten far, but after finishing well down the field in the Stewards Cup (22nd of 27) he was removed, too. Harry Brown I backed twice with disappointing finishes of 8th and 10th before binning him. Lady Alara also won two races later at 25/1, but I had scrubbed her from the list after a poor run at Sandown. Ouch! Magical Sunset proved more fruitful: she finished 7th next time but was beaten less than two lengths. I kept her on the list which proved a very good decision as she won next time at 18/1.
Using negative draw bias to pinpoint horses to follow is a method I have used for over 25 years. So, a lot longer than I have used my negative pace bias methods. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s I felt these horses would offer value in subsequent races, and I still believe that now. As with negative pace bias such horses won’t always win for you, and sometimes you will drop horses from your list that a run or two later make you feel a fool by winning. I have also shown examples above of horses that I considered but did not ultimately appear on my list and who went on to win soon afterwards. Moreover, I have shared times when I have not backed a horse from the list only for it to win. This is part and parcel of betting I’m afraid – those ‘if only’ moments, those ‘déjà vu’ moments. You win some, you lose some.
Maybe, after all, I should experiment on paper at least, backing all negative pace and draw qualifiers on their next three starts and see how the outcome would differ. Can I be a 'system' man after all?!
Race Watching / Race Replays
While discussing the Chester sprint earlier, I mentioned I re-watched the race several times. Reviewing past races is something I have done for years, but I wish I had done more of it especially going back in time. In terms of negative pace or draw bias races, I tend to watch back all the potential negative pace bias races, but not all the draw biased ones. I tend to skip re-watching big field straight course handicaps which look draw biased – over the years I have found that using the draw positions and the comments are good enough, plus the fact many of these races I do watch live.
Although I bet far more on the flat, I do also bet on National Hunt racing, primarily in chases. National Hunt chases are the races I watch back more than any other race type, including flat races. My focus is generally on novice chases, and I try to steer clear of the bigger meetings or more high-profile young chasers. One time of the year when I watch a lot of NH racing is in the summer. Evening jumps meets are more accessible for me in terms of being able to watch racing live, so I find that a useful avenue when searching for horses to add to my list.
I want to use an example of a horse I noted back in the summer of 2017, namely Adrrastos. I saw him win at Worcester in a novice handicap chase on 18th July of that year. What impressed me was his jumping – he was fluent, jumped straight and when push came to shove his athleticism seemed to stand up well to pressure. That was his chase debut and, looking back on his hurdling career, he had won once and been placed a further five times in seven starts. His two bumper races also saw him pick up a pair of places. Hence, for the level he was at, he had been consistent over the smaller obstacles / on the level which I took as a positive. I also liked the fact that he led from start to finish. As readers of my articles will know I like front runners in chases. Another positive was that his trainer, Jamie Snowden, was faring better with his chasers than his hurdlers at the time (Chase A/E index was 0.88; hurdle one was 0.65).
Adrrastos had done enough for me to make my horses to follow list. I backed him next time in a four-runner chase at Stratford. He won comfortably by ten lengths (SP 7/4) leading from start to finish and jumping cleanly bar a slight nod on landing at the final fence.
Now, chasers can stay on my list for several races, especially young improvers, and Adrrastos as a five-year-old was in that category. His next run saw him upped in class into to a £13,000 handicap chase back at Worcester and it was his first time outside novice company racing against more experienced chasers. I decided to swerve this race from a betting perspective. I thought his price was a little tight (SP 7/2) given the class rise.
As it turned out I made the right decision. He was taken on for the lead this time and raced mainly in second. Coming to the last there were five horses within a couple of lengths. He showed a good attitude to finish close up in third, beaten 2¾ lengths. That effort was plenty good enough to keep him on my list but I did notice a couple of times he was jumping slightly to the right. Not badly, but enough for me to make a note. This was a left-handed track and horses that jump out to the right consistently are at a disadvantage especially if the jumps are on a bend. I was hoping therefore to see him race right-handed soon as this jumping trait would not potentially be an issue.
He headed to Plumpton next and was back in novice company and back down in class (£6,000 race). These were big positives for me; the only negative was being upped in trip from two miles to 2½ miles. I was not sure this increase in distance was what he needed. However, after looking at the race in detail I decided if I could get 8.0 or bigger on Betfair then that would represent value, and I managed to nick 11.0 just before the ‘off’. Adrrastos led but made his first serious jumping error in four starts and was pulled up soon afterwards, just before the second last. To be fair, despite leading at the time, I am not convinced that he would have gone on to win without the error. I think it was the extra distance that was his undoing.
The question now was should I keep him on my list? My answer was yes, but with caveats. I was now looking for very specific conditions for this horse. Back to two miles, ideally on a right-handed track, ideally likely to front run, and below Class 2 company.
Adrrastos did not reappear on the racecourse for 502 days! I had pretty much forgotten about him until his name was flagged up again. In this race, three of the four conditions were met – track was Hereford which was right-handed, it was over two miles and it was a Class 3 event. One downside was when I looked at the pace tab on Geegeez:
In the LR/2LR/3LR/4LR (last run, 2nd last run, etc) columns, 4 means 'led'. It didn’t look like Adrrastos would have it all his own way in front. Dicosimo was another genuine front runner while Envole Toi had also front run in his previous three races. Hence three of the four conditions had been met, the other was iffy.
The other potential downside was this huge break. I assumed though that if the trainer was running him again, he was ready to go; whether he would be fit enough was another matter. I looked at his trainer’s record with horses coming back from a long break – with chasers it was not too bad although to get a decent sample I looked at breaks of six months or more.
As with any potential bet from my horse list, I had to decide whether the price available offered me value. Taking all things into account I felt he should be priced somewhere around the 10/1 to 14/1 mark. 20s was available on Betfair and so I felt that represented a viable bet.
Dicosimo won the battle for the lead with Adrrastos racing in second, but Adrrastos jumped well and was still in contention three out and travelling nicely. He took the lead at this point and never surrendered it. The ideal outcome! Adrrastos stayed on my list for a further six months in which time he ran on eight further occasions. Of those eight, I backed him in four, winning once at Kempton (right-handed track where he led from start to finish), and coming 4th, 3rd and 3rd in the other three. It is rare for me to keep a horse on my list for so long, but there will be occasions when it makes sense to do so. I felt this was one such horse.
I have given you one detailed example of how I have deployed watching race replays in the past. This is one of many examples I could have chosen. Not all have gone as well as this of course, but I specifically chose that one because I wanted you to appreciate that horses can stay on the list for more than a few races. If, that is, there is good reason!
Watching past races is not for everyone but I find it very useful. Yes, I will spot things that 99% of others will, but there will be occasions when I spot something that most do not – I just have to make sure these ‘spots’ are insightful ones!
Sectional Timing
This is a relatively new area for me. Sectional timings are now a part of my pace and draw research at the courses we can get them. Clearly, sectional timing is linked inextricably to pace bias. I used some of the sectional data in the Southwell race discussed earlier in the negative pace bias section. I also used it when looking at the Chester draw race. The beauty of sectionals is it gives us more numbers to play with, as opposed to just race comments, pace abbreviations, etc.
In the last 12-18 months I have been experimenting with a variety of sectional timing ideas that I hope have the potential to find horses for my 'to follow' list. I am still learning what might work and what definitely doesn’t, but it is a fun process as it is something I have not looked at in depth before. I am not quite at the stage yet when I can confidently say a specific sectional timing idea is likely to be profitable, so no horses have been added to my list to this point. However, let me share an example of one of the ideas I’ve had that may have potential.
So, I have been looking at big field handicaps and specifically at well fancied runners (favourites / strong second favourites) that were well beaten, with the idea of trying to use sectional timing to find reasons for their poor run. If the reasons are compelling enough, then perhaps these horses could be worth following. Each of these race studies/analyses of sectionals will be slightly different depending on exactly how the race panned out and how the favourite ran.
Here is an example race from Ascot last year (I have excluded the in-running comments to get a big enough screenshot). The first ten finishers home are below:
The favourite, Perotto, finished 10th, so on the face of it a disappointing run. However, if we look carefully, out of the top ten finishers, nine of them were positioned in the back half of the field early (after two furlongs) - note the first bold number, representing race position, and the superscript denoting distance behind the leader. Perotto is the only one of the those that was positioned in the top ten early, 3 lengths off the lead (103).
The first part of the race (S-6, start to six furlongs out) - see the blobs above the result grid - was FAST compared with par, the last part (1-0, the final furlong) Q SLOW (quite slow), so everything was pointing to a pace collapse, or at least a notable deceleration, late in the race. If we focus on Perotto’s path through the race, he was challenging for the lead two furlongs out (3hd) having been five lengths off the lead at the 4-furlong pole (135). Maybe this effort was not his optimum strategy, and from there he started to drop away again.
At this point I wanted to dig further by using some of the numbers the sectionals gave us. Because the horses that were placed in the top ten positions early all finished 10th or worse, I thought it would be a good idea to compare the final furlong splits of these ten horses. I have highlighted the times (red squares) and positions/lengths behind leader (blue squares) in the screenshots below:
Perotto’s final furlong time of 13.94s was over half a second quicker than any of the horses that had raced in front of him early. The next fastest, Ghaly, was clocked at 14.53 (0.59 seconds slower). My assumption therefore was that, considering the early pace, Perotto did well to finish that quickly.
Taking all the sectional evidence into account, I feel that Perotto’s run was better than it looked. Now I’ve stated earlier that no horse has yet made my list by sectional ideas such as this one. My thinking is still not fully formed as I have intimated. I suppose I could argue that this race could be considered a negative pace bias race, which technically it was, but it did not meet my criteria to qualify on pace bias grounds. It would have done if it was over 7f as opposed to a mile.
On this occasion, it would have been a sound decision to list the horse as Perotto has raced three times since and won twice, at 5/1 and 10/3.
I am hopeful that in the next few months I will be confident enough with at least one of my sectional timing ideas to begin putting it into practice.
Those of you interested in sectional timing should really check out the data on the Geegeez site and Matt’s excellent content which can be found from the Articles tab at the top of any page and scroll down to the Sectional Timing area – there are 17 articles dedicated to it.
**
This has been a long article and it's time to wind things up. I do have other ways horses qualify for my to follow list, but that will have to wait for another time.
Please share any ideas for horses to follow lists in the comments below – it would be great to hear your thoughts.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timoshenko_Goodwood_830x320.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2024-02-27 11:13:062024-03-01 09:36:26How to Compose a ‘Horses to Follow’ List
There is one trainer who has held a licence for 36 seasons and who, in only one of them has he failed to train a winner, yet equally, has never reached double figures of wins in any of them, writes Tony Stafford. Any ideas?
In that time, he has won a Hennessy Gold Cup and a Cheltenham Gold Cup, both with horses bred from the same mare he bought unraced as a potential retirement interest for his father-in-law. Maybe you would be thinking he was a part-time wealthy “amateur” practitioner of the trade, but not a bit of it.
In just over two weeks’ time at Cheltenham, our hero will not be frightened to take on the might of Mullins, Henderson, Nicholls and the rest in the National Hunt Challenge Cup Amateur Jockeys’ Novice Chase over 3m6f.
Few horses get to the start of that race having won over the distance. Our man’s horse had run in only one chase, finishing third, before last week. Yet when he turned out for his second, over said distance, he was already rated 120, based on four runs over hurdles. I guarantee you when his new rating is revealed tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. on the BHA website, he will be quite a lot higher. In his case I would hate to be the handicapper!
Before Friday at Exeter – yes, we’re slowly revealing our evidence – the trainer had run six individual horses in a total of eight races this season (April to April) with no wins. To keep up the exemplary 36-year (minus one) record, the My Pension Expert Devon National Handicap Chase, only passed as fit for racing after a morning inspection, would hopefully change all that.
Step up Mark Bradstock and wife Sara, nee Lawrence, with the eight-year-old Mr Vango. Sara apparently told the Racing TV people beforehand – I didn’t see it – that he would win. He did, and how!
It wasn’t a massive field, but with two or three confirmed front-runners and all with far more experience than their gelding, it wasn’t guaranteed on first sight that he would get to the front. Get to the front he did, though, and listening again to Mike Cattermole’s commentary with accompanying pictures, you can tell his growing incredulity at what he, those at Exeter, and we around the country were witnessing.
Making all, and along with a couple of inevitable novicey errors, he strode through almost two full circuits of the galloping Haldon track in deep ground seemingly without much effort.
Halfway through the second time round the pack was still within reach but, coming to the end of the back straight and turning for home, the margin between Mr Vango and no doubt an equally disbelieving Ben Jones kept stretching. It was ten, then 20, then 30, and over last, according to Mike, he was 50 lengths clear.
The trio that was still going hadn’t even reached the penultimate fence when Mr Vango jumped the last. Neither had they arrived at the final obstacle as Ben was pulling him up. The finishing margin was 60 lengths. Foxboro, an old slowcoach who had toiled in rear all the way so hadn’t really been involved in the unequal task of trying to match strides with this galloping automaton, plodded on past two others to record a symbolic but still rewarding £6k runner-up spot, 14 lengths clear of the legless other pair.
I cannot resist a little dig at the Racing Post. After the win, Mark Bradstock’s prizemoney tally for the season is listed as £1,492 – the Exeter race alone was worth 13 grand to the winner. [Of course, geegeez has it correct at £16.5k in seasonal earnings – Ed.]
I think I should declare a slight personal interest. Sara Lawrence became Sara Oaksey when her father John inherited his late father’s titles as Lord Thevethin and Oaksey, the latter being the name he preferred to use. Since Mark, previously five years’ assistant to the great Fulke Walwyn and winner of 18 races as a jockey, took out his licence in 1989, she has been a constant vital cog in the small family outfit along with showjumping son Alfie and point-to-point rider/trainer Lily. As their web site shows, they still have limitless ambition along with unerring belief that they hold the key to developing jumping horses to their highest potential.
The mare Plaid Maid that Mark sourced won five races for John, one hurdle (probably to his annoyance) but then four in her main job over fences. It was after her racing career though that she made her mark on the sport, producing both Carruthers, their 2011 Hennessy winner, of which John was part-owner. He, sadly, died the following year.
Carruthers continued racing for Mark Bradstock for four more years then, aged 13, transferred to Sara to train in point-to-points. Over the next three years he ran 17 times for one win, with daughter Lily in the saddle each time, retiring as a 15-year-old.
I’m sure Sara and Mark have constantly wished they could have told him that Carruthers’ little brother Coneygree had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup. I remember there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when he beat Willie Mullins’ Djakadam and 14 others nine years ago next month.
Coneygree was still a novice – the first since Captain Christy in 1974 to win the Gold Cup – and did it having been unbeaten in his first three chases, at Newbury twice and Kempton. He made all the running, jumping boldly, at Cheltenham and I couldn’t help wondering last week if that might also be the recipe for success with Mr Vango if he takes his place in the field next month.
Coneygree’s path to the Gold Cup was troubled – he had almost two years off before that first chase late in 2014 because of injury. After the triumph he won one more race at Sandown in November of the following season, but that was it as far as wins go.
Plaid Maid had been bought to interest John after his retirement, as if being the leading light in the Injured Jockeys Fund for many years and an honorary member of the Jockey Club wouldn’t have been enough for most people, never mind the writing.
His father had been Chief Allied prosecutor of leading Nazi criminals at the Nuremburg War Trials and John, expected to be a lawyer – he studied law at Harvard after his initial studies at Oxford – watched the proceedings as a deeply impressionable young man.
He preferred though to become a journalist, but one that could combine writing with winning 200 races as a jumps amateur. My good luck was that, by joining the Daily Telegraph in 1972, I was able to watch at first hand the way in which he combined his art with his love of riding and horses. And I did so for the next three decades. He always greeted me with, “Hello boy!”
For many years we worked in tandem on reporting the Grand National for the Sunday Telegraph. In those days there was a limited number of telephones and we used to have the use of one room and a land line in a house called Chasandi sited dead opposite the Aintree main entrance. Brough Scott and others also had similar facilities in other rooms in the house. I think the newspapers paid for the couple’s extension!
I took my notes, attending the initial stage of the post-race press conference, then repaired to offer my version of events verbatim over the phone to readers of the Irish, Scottish, and northern editions of the paper. John’s considered, exhaustive, rounded-out and always unique version came an hour or so later and the rest of the country got his elegant turn of phrase. Mine disappeared into the ether!
One incident I’ll never forget was the time he asked me to join him while he was working for ITV at the Derby. In those days the beautiful grassy paddock (sorry Epsom, that one now isn’t a patch on it even if it lets the racegoers see the horses) was down where the racecourse stables still are now. John had a small raised cabin with a big picture window halfway down one side as he watched and spoke to the viewers.
I’m not sure I did much for him that day - it’s not as if he asked me to go get him a cup of tea and a biscuit or anything - but there’s a reason I’m fond of relating it. It was 1981, the year of Shergar, one of the greatest Derby winners but one that is remembered for what he wasn’t allowed to do rather than what he did on the racecourse or might have done at stud. Everyone before 2000 knew the name, even now you occasionally hear it in stand-up routines.
But back to Mr Vango and friends. Have a look when you get a moment at the lovely website of Mark and Sara Bradstock and you will wonder how, in these days of trainers with 300 horses to call upon, these amazing people get so few chances to show how good they are.
Coneygree gave Nico De Boinville’s career the jump start that was needed for Nicky Henderson to take notice. He was still a conditional when he won the Gold Cup. In Coneygree’s previous race he was unavailable, and Richard Johnson stepped in. Nico said: “I dreaded that he would keep the mount for the Gold Cup but when he won the Denman Chase at Newbury, Sara called to say he was my ride.”
Some family, some legacy and if Mr Vango runs and wins – he’s 25/1 with bookmakers with whom you might get on, it could encourage a few more people to support them.
Talking of support, it’s the House of Commons debate on affordability checks at Westminster Hall today. If racing is to have any chance of getting proper funding, it’s vital that the people that can wish to bet are not artificially denied the chance and the case is properly put to the proportion of MPs who are lukewarm about racing.
My sources say, even without those fatuous checks, bookmakers need shaking up, so often are even tiny bets refused. One friend tells of the Australian system or how it was when he lived there a while ago and I doubt it’s changed since.
When he was there, bookmakers were allowed on course, while off-course was their tote (called TAB) monopoly. Depending on which ring the bookie worked in at the track, he or she was compelled to lay to take out a minimum value in each respective ring.
We have the best racing in the world and the worst conversion from what’s bet on it into prize money. Getting rid of this affordability nonsense would be a first step, but much more needs to be done even when that stain on the sport is crushed, as I hope it will be. I wonder what John, or My Noble Lord, as the late John McCririck always called him, would have thought of it all!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Coneygree_SaraBradstock_NicodeBoinville_CheltenhamGoldCup2015.png320830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-02-26 05:18:182024-02-26 09:07:18Monday Musings: Bradstocks Aiming High Once More
In the first half of this two-part mini-course we looked at the basics of multi-race bets, as well as the key area of staking. In this concluding part the focus will be on strategy and tactics: what to consider when framing your bets, and how to manage your position once your tickets are 'live'.
You'll also find a video tutorial for the Tix app, as well as links to access it.
When to play: Value Considerations
Any day is a good day to play a multi-race bet from a fun perspective; bets such as the placepot or jackpot promise to keep us engaged in a race meeting for as many as six races and, since the advent of penny minimum lines, for a smallish stake.
Everyday tote placepot pools have around £50,000 to £75,000 in liquidity, but the bigger meetings can have upwards of a million pound in the placepot!
Because of the nature of multi-race place pools - where players typically have two, three or four chances to get a horse into the frame - bigger dividends typically need something unexpected (in market terms) to occur in more than one race.
So, in order to play placepots semi-seriously, I believe we must have a contrarian view in at least two of the six races, ideally more. Using the previously discussed ABCX approach, it is possible not to over-stake or poorly stake a bet which recognises the likelihood of most races being 'chalky' (i.e. the fancied horses making the frame) while still allowing for a less anticipated result which can make the bet.
Small pools, such as some of those for Irish race meeting placepots, and jackpots where the number of units bet is below the guaranteed £10,000 pool (and where you feel the cumulative odds will be lower than 10,000/1) are a couple of very playable scenarios.
Is SP or the exchange a better bet?
Before placing a multi-race bet - or indeed any pool bet - we need to consider whether the return might be greater via another market medium. Specifically, will the SP (especially if Best Odds Guaranteed can be leveraged) or exchange accumulator pay more?
We obviously cannot know the answer to this in advance but, generally, when playing win pools it is prudent to stay close to the top of the market. As an example, if a 20/1 shot wins any race in the sequence I will almost certainly not have that runner selected. The reason is that, when multiplying the odds of the other five winners in a six-leg bet by 21 (20/1), it is somewhere between quite and very likely that the pool dividend will pay less than an SP or exchange accumulator bet on the same six races.
The exception to this rule is when there is a large rollover or a highly liquid pool, such as the American pool for the Breeders' Cup Pick 6, or indeed many of their Pick 4/5/6 pools, which are often guaranteed to $500,000 and more.
For your average Redcar or Rasen jackpot, however, we need to stay close to the head of the market, or bet another way, or pass the opportunity.
In the example below (5.00 to 7.30 races), there was a rollover and the jackpot pool swelled to £30,000 for a Wolverhampton evening card. The SP accumulator paid £19,305 compared to a tote jackpot dividend of £20,153.20. But the Betfair SP accumulator (at 2% commission, which you should all be getting - see this link) paid £33,798. And the biggest priced winner in this sequence was 8/1 !
The Betting Market
Market Rank vs Market Price
One of the features of multi-race pools, more so than single race win markets, is the heavy domination of the top of the market. This is largely a function of poor staking and/or poor bankroll management and/or insufficient bankroll, whereby players who take one or two horses per leg (see part 1) rarely go beyond the third or fourth in the betting lists.
Moreover, when they do, it's typically a 'Hail Mary' pick at big odds staked exactly the same as a short-priced runner. Clearly, this is heavily sub-optimal; and it is precisely what gives smarter punters, like you and me, their edge. Those longshots belong on a C ticket or in the bin, generally.
Don't deviate too far from the market
The market is generally right, or at least not far wrong. It is an excellent indicator of a horse's chance, so much so that there is strong linearity between the two. This chart shows win strike rate by odds. Ignoring the price of 18/5, which has very little data and is the big outlier, this chart very well illustrates the robust relationship between price and win chance.
And this chart, by market rank, 1 being favourite, 12 being the twelfth in odds rank, tells the same tale:
In Britain in the last five years, the favourite has won a third of all races; the favourite and second-favourite have collectively won more than half of all races; and the first three in the betting have won two-thirds of all races.
Thus, in a random sample of six races, we might expect four of them - two-thirds - to be won by the first three in the betting. The further implication is that we may need to be looking further along the lists for a couple of the legs in a six-leg wager.
What does this mean in practice? It means that, across A's, B's and - usually in multi-race win pools only - C's, you should have reasonable coverage of the top of the market; and, somewhere in the race sequence, you should be risking a few longer priced horses - but usually in addition to, not at the expense of, the top of the market.
Steamers and Drifters
This section should come with a wealth warning: drifters DO win!
In case you're not familiar with the terms, a 'steamer' is a horse being backed - usually showing with a blue background on odds comparison sites and on the 'Odds' tab of our racecards, while a 'drifter' is a horse which is weak in the market, usually with a pink background on odds checker sites.
[N.B. unlike other odds comparison sites, geegeez only tracks price movements from 9am on day of race. While overnight moves are not irrelevant, we feel they are less material than moves on race day, and particularly in the final hour or so before a race]
As a general principle, in races where form is fairly well established, I will note the market but follow my own form study. The exception is in bigger field handicaps where horses priced between 8/1 and 16/1 (approximately, not hard and fast) have taken notable support.
I tend to look at the markets in the morning, and then again an hour or so before the first race, which is the time when I'm starting to frame my bets.
In the example above, where the favourite is weak and the third favourite is strong, assuming I could see a reason for this in their form, I would quite likely put both runners on A.
There is quite a bit of 'feel' associated with this. Players need to get to know trainers and owners, too. For example, horses owned by J P McManus are often put in at defensive prices: odds which reflect the fact they might become subject to a gamble rather than which indicate the horse's true form chance.
Horses owned by large or wealthy syndicates - for instance, Elite Racing Club, Owners Group, or Highclere Thoroughbreds - are often overbet; consideration of the support for such runners needs to be approached mindful of who might be backing it.
Equally, horses doing something notably different - first time in a handicap, coming back off a layoff, stepping up/down markedly in trip, etc - merit at least a second glance. Does the trainer have 'previous' in such a scenario? Is the horse bred for this extra distance? And so on. Geegeez reports have plenty of assistance in this regard, and the inline snippets in the card are always instructive.
Using Unnamed Favourite
This is a great tactic and heavily under-utilised. It can be deployed in a number of different scenarios, of which these are just a couple.
Doubling up on A
Plenty of races, especially non-handicaps, have a very short-priced favourite and an obvious second-choice. Sometimes these races can be 10/1+ bar the front two. Depending on how the rest of your ticket looks - mainly, in how many other races you've got B and/or C picks - and how much bankroll you have, it can be a smarter play to double the favourite on A, rather than place the jolly on A and the 'second in' on B.
In this example, the favourite, Roccos Inspiration, is 8/13, with Rogosina 11/4, Jubilee Flight 7/1 and it's 16/1 and bigger the rest.
If holding reservations about the jolly, it would still be hard to ignore its chance as a well-backed odds on shot.
Extra pick on B (or C)
A tactic I sometimes use - and, to be brutally honest, I'm not certain that the maths support it - is to play unnamed favourite on B or C. I do this in one of two situations, as follows:
Weaker favourite that I like
Let's say the favourite is around 2/1 or 5/2. Mathematically, and assuming a) the market is correct and b) they bet to a 100% overround [they don't but go with it!], this horse has a circa 30% (28.57% to 33.33% if you like) chance of winning. If I think he's value - that is, he should be a little shorter - without necessarily feeling he's a very likely winner a la Roccos Inspiration above, I can play his racecard number on A and 'unnamed favourite' on B along with (an)other contender(s).
Inscrutable handicap with multiple favourite contenders
I will quite often include unnamed favourite (F) when I go five, six or seven deep in an impossible-looking handicap: it's a degree of insurance against wide coverage being scuppered by a winning jolly. What I really want is for one of my longer-priced picks - more correctly, one of the least-covered horses in the pool - to win. But if the horse that the market ultimately sends off shortest wins, I will have all tickets containing that horse's racecard number as well as any tickets containing F for that race.
There were several races where I played variations of this tactic in an example I published in Part 1 of this mini-course, replicated below.
You can see the use of F in races 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. In race 2, I'd nominated the expected favourite on A, but I wanted to amplify him a little so added F to the B tickets as well; and in those other races, where I had less certainty about which horse would be sent off favourite, I didn't want to lose all of my C ticket investment if the market leader prevailed.
Using F on C tickets against a strong favourite is a relatively cost effective way of 'hoping to be lucky', a human character trait that is very hard to beat (!), whilst keeping the ticket in the game if the obvious happens - as it very often does.
Other TacTix - Insurance
Once you've made your placepot, jackpot, quadpot, Placepot 7 or Scoop 6 bet, it might be worthwhile managing your investment thereafter. This is not for everyone - after all, it's far from 'set and forget' to proceed in this way - but it offers players more control over the, erm, uncontrollable. That very odd statement should begin to make sense as you read on...
Insurance is a term for managing a position between the start and end of a multi-race bet in order to mitigate for the chance of a losing outcome. In other words, it's a way of covering more eventualities than you have on your ticket, albeit at fractionally greater expense. It is generally better to control the level of insurance you take according to the likelihood of something happening.
There are a good number of insurance options, some of which are below:
Place lay
When betting a multi-race place pool, banking on the shortest priced horse in the sequence is normally a good strategy - unless you plain don't like it. Even then, it makes sense to try to overcome any prejudices you might have associated with the horse or its connections. Assuming you have banked on that runner to make the frame, you can then lay it for a place on an exchange.
An even money favourite would be around 1.2 (give or take) to lay on Betfair. If your placepot stake is £50, you can fully insure the bet for £10 or so; or you can take partial insurance if you strongly fancy the runner by place laying to cover only a part, say half, of your placepot outlay. That makes your overall commitment £60 (or £55 for partial place lay) and needs to be factored into your P&L.
I will usually place lay for less than my stake: if I think the horse is very likely to get placed I don't want to spend what amounts to 20% of the ticket price buying insurance on one leg. But at the same time, I don't want to lose my entire stake. So I might place lay to get half my money back, as per the above example.
Last leg options
If you've been smart and/or lucky enough to get to the final leg, you will have some options. Depending on the type of race, and whether it's a win or place pool, the first option is to lay or place lay your pick. I would certainly do that if I was on a short-priced runner as a banker. An alternative might be a cheeky exacta...
If you have, for instance, the top three in the betting in a six runner race, you can place exacta bets on the remaining trio. As with the actual multi-race bet itself, we should not be placing a combination exacta (three picks equals six bets), as that is not a smart way to stake. Supposing the unsupported runners were 6/1, 8/1 and 20/1, we might legitimately place a reverse exacta to the same stake on the first two; but our stake should be smaller on each of the shorter pair beating the outsider, and smaller still on the outsider beating either of the other two. We're not looking for a 'lucky' payoff, we're just covering our existing bet.
There's (much) more on exacta-ology (yuk!) in a post I wrote here.
Calculating the insurance stake
To calculate how much insurance to take, work out the worst possible outcome in terms of a winning ticket. To help you do that, you can use the dividend calculator here.
Placepot / Place pool
This involves adding the selection a player has with the most amount of pool tickets on it, alongside the other best-supported runners up to the number of places available, as well as the unnamed favourite.
Adding the number of tickets on each of those together and dividing by the net pool (see Part 1 for gross and net) will produce the 'worst case dividend'. This is the figure, multiplied by the number of lines you have, against which you should hedge/insure.
In this placepot example, the net pool is 73% of the gross pool.
Let's say we have horses 1, 2 and 4 in this six horse race and we currently have 80p lines running on to each of them.
Our worst winning result - two places in a six-horse race - would be:
46F (the two horses with most units remaining, plus unnamed favourite)
= 83 + 31 +12.5 = 126.5 winning units
The worst winning dividend would then be:
41062.5/126.5 = £324.60
of which we would have 80p for our one placed horse, #4.
We staked £100.
So our worst case dividend would be £259.68 in this example. That number, less our £100 stake, is what we would use to work out how much to hedge/insure for. Or we could just insure for our £100 stake.
In a win pool, it often doesn't make sense to lay selected runners, mainly due to the cash needed. In that case, it is better to back unsupported runners assuming there aren't hordes of them!
Using our example race from above, where we have coverage of horses 1, 2, and 4, let's say the net win pool is £100,000 and we have those same 80p lines running into the final leg, from a stake of £100.
The worst case winning (for us) dividend is if the favourite, #4, wins. That leaves 95.5 units and a dividend of
100,000 / 95.5 = £1,047.12
We'd have 0.8 x £1,047.12 = £837.70 representing a profit of £737.70 (less £100 stake).
Suppose the Betfair odds on the other runners are #3 - 22.0, #5 - 150.0, #6 - 7.4
So we might back
#6 for £80 @ 7.4 returns £592 (commission to deduct also)
#3 for £20 @ 22.0 returns £440 (ditto)
#5 for £2.50 @ 150.0 returns £375 (ditto)
We are now guaranteed at least £837.70 back if one of our three jackpot selections wins; and a sliding scale, based on likelihood, of returns if one of our insurance bets wins.
In the very unlikely event that the 150.0 outsider won, it would be a tough break, but at least we'd collect
£375 - £100 (losing insurance bets) - £100 Jackpot stake = £175 profit. On a 'losing' bet.
A final word on insurance
I am absolutely confident that I've made the art of hedging/insurance sound more complex in the above than it actually is. The key is to track your position and to know roughly where you are in terms of potential payout and how much of that you're booked in for. Tote has 'will pay' pages on their website to show how much is running on to the next leg, and on which horses.
Often we'll be in a losing position and insurance doesn't really make sense. Occasionally we'll be in a losing position and insurance may guarantee limiting losses.
You'll soon get the hang of working out where you are but only if you get into the habit of tracking the remaining units in the pool.
Be Brave, There's Always Tomorrow
Multi-race bets, especially win varietals, are not for the faint-hearted. They can involve excruciating close calls where the difference between a nose victory or defeat runs to thousands of pounds. The flip side of that is obvious: they can involve halcyon close calls when the verdict goes your way for a vast sum. That's exciting!
The penny stake minimums offered on tote jackpots (especially, but also placepots) are good value in terms of sanity, and they allow a player to display the one attribute above all others that is required to win in the multi-race jungle: bravery.
Over-staking is an affliction suffered by most placepot / jackpot punters: the fear of not 'having it' overrides the rationality of not diluting the value of the bet. As well as over-staking there is bad staking - placing the same faith in every pick on a ticket regardless of whether it's 4/6 or 14/1.
If you can learn to overcome those two near-ubiquitous staking errors, you have a far better than average chance of catching big fish in these pools.
Being brave also means acknowledging that, no matter how juicy the rollover or how tempting the guarantee today, there is always tomorrow.
Appendix: Tix, the Pro Ticket Builder
Throughout this two-part series, I've referred to ABCX methodology, and to a mechanical means of computing the part-permutations and automatically placing those tickets into the pool. Tix is free for all to use, and can be accessed here. Please do watch the video below before trying to use it!
There are lots of ways to bet on horses. Win, place and each way are just the beginning: such bets involve a reliance on one horse winning or nearly winning, the outcome of which provides players with a (usually) known return.
I've long mixed up my 'singles' betting with more elaborate plays. Known as exotics in the States, such wagers tend to involve predicting a sequence of events: either the first two (or three or four) home in a race, or the winner (or a placed horse) in each of a number of consecutive races.
Incidentally, although this article will not explicitly cover bets such as fourfolds and accumulators with traditional fixed odds bookmakers, the principles can be applied and, where readers are able, best odds guarantees leveraged.
In this previous post - written almost 15 years ago now - I outlined how to play, and win, the tote placepot. The principles outlined in that post remain true now. Let's recap.
tl;dr Give yourself a better chance of catching awesome placepot, jackpot and Scoop 6 scores by using a clever bit of staking software
What are pool bets, and why are they of interest?
Pool bets involve all players' stakes being invested into a pot, from which winning players are paid a dividend after the pool owners have taken their commission. That means the objective is not only to find 'the right answer' but also for that correct answer to be less obvious than most players expect. It generally is.
Multi-race pool bets can offer an interest throughout the afternoon for a single ticket; and, if a few fancied runners under-perform, they can pay handsomely in relation to fixed odds equivalent wagers.
Let's consider an example of such a bet, in this case a placepot from Day 3 of the 2020 Cheltenham Festival. The gross pool - that is, the total bet into the pool - was £823,150.20. After takeout, the pool operator's advertised commission from which all costs are paid, of 27% the net pool was £600,881.40.
That pot would be divided between the number of remaining - and therefore winning - tickets after leg six, with the dividend declared to a £1 stake. Players can nowadays bet in multiples from a penny upwards.
In the first race that day, the favourite, Faugheen, ran third, with 4/1 Samcro winning. 361,390.13 units went forward to leg two.
In the second race, all four placed horses were towards the top of the market, including the unnamed favourite. 146,064.28 units went to leg three.
The third race, the Ryanair Chase, saw 2/1 second favourite Min beat 16/1 Saint Calvados with the 7/4 favourite in third. Most of the remaining pool money prior to the race, 114,468.48 units' worth of it, went forward to leg four, the Stayers' Hurdle.
In that fourth race, around 83,000 units (nearly three-quarters of the remaining pool) were invested in Paisley Park, who ran a clunker and was unplaced. This race was the kingmaker on the day, just 2,198.41 units (less than 2% of the running-on total) successfully predicting any of 50/1 Lisnagar Oscar, 20/1 Ronald Pump, or 33/1 Bacardys.
As the warm favourite won leg five, 854.56 units contested the final leg, the Mares' Novices' Hurdle. Here, the very well-backed second choice of the market, Concertista, beat stable mate and 9/1 chance Dolcita, with a 100/1 shot back in third.
From a total of 823,150 tickets, and a net pool of 600,881.40, there were just 235.01 left standing after the six races. Thus the dividend paid
600,881.4 / 235.01 = £2,556.83
Because of something called 'breakage', see TIF's explanation here if you're interested, the dividend is rounded down to the nearest 10p, meaning every winning £1 ticket was worth £2,556.80. A 5p winning line would be worth 5% of that amount, or £127.84.
Let's talk about the takeout
The commission a pool operator levies for hosting the pool is usually referred to as the 'takeout'. In multi-race bets, some people consider that the takeout - 27% in the example above - is too high. But it needs to be considered in the context of the number of legs in the bet, and the perceived difficulty of landing the bet. The first part is more easily quantified.
For example, if the place pool for a single race has a 20% deduction - which it currently does in UK (ouch!) - then a six race accumulator in the place pools would result in 73.8% of stakes being 'taken out'. Double, triple and even sextuple ouch!
The actual per leg takeout on the tote placepot is around 5.1%, or 0.051, compounded six times; which leaves a 'live stake' of [1.00 - 0.051=] 0.9496 which equals 0.73 (1.00-0.73 = 0.27, 27% takeout).
Takeout takeaway: You don't need to understand the maths, you just need to know that there is relative value in the placepot compared with single leg win or place pool bets.
How can this be value?
Pool bets are another market, along with fixed odds and exchanges, framed around the same product, horse racing. Thus, they do not always offer the best value.
If you want to back the favourite, doing it on the tote is probably not the best option (though UK tote are currently offering an SP guarantee match, which locks in some insurance for the majority of times when the tote dividend on a winning favourite will pay less than SP). Still, you'll generally get better value on an exchange than either the tote or a fixed odds bookmaker can offer.
But if you want to bet a longer-priced horse, it will normally be the case that exchanges or the tote offer better value than fixed odds bookies.
And if you want to play a sequence of win or place bets - let's call them a placepot or jackpot - you may get better value with a pool operator.
If you only like fancied runners in the sequence, you will have no edge in a pool and are better off betting either a fixed odds multiple or parlaying your winnings in exchange markets.
But if you have an eye for an interesting outsider - and, as a Gold subscriber, you are farbetter placed to see such horses than the vast majority of bettors - then multi-race sequences are for you!
Remember, the objective is not just to be right; but to be right when the vast majority of others are at least partially wrong.
Basic Staking: how players get it wrong
The nature of multi-race betting means that optimal staking is almost as important as picking the right horses. Again, I've written about this before but it's plenty important enough to reiterate here.
Smart pickers of horses often confound their own attempts to take down big pots by either under- or over-staking. A six-leg sequence involves the player selecting one or more horses per leg, the total number of 'bets' on the ticket being a multiple of the number of picks per leg.
Thus, a player picking one horse per race will have 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1 bet. He or she will also have a very small chance of correctly predicting the required outcome unless he or she is either very lucky or most of the fancied horses make the frame/win. The former is not what this mini-course is about, the latter is generally self-defeating in the long-term.
This, then, is not an optimal way to bet such sequences.
'Caveman' Permutations
Probably the most common approach is to select two horses per race in a permutation (or perm for short). Twice as much coverage per race gives a far better chance of finding the right answer, but it also invites the player to invest a lot more cash in a somewhat arbitrary manner. We can write the calculation for the number of bets by using 'to the power of six' (representing the six legs in the wager). Thus:
2 horses per leg = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 26 = 64
3 horses per leg = 36 = 729
4 horses per leg = 46 = 4096
and so on.
As you can see, this quickly becomes eye-wateringly expensive. Moreover, it is deeply sub-optimal. We won't necessarily feel we need the same amount of coverage in an eight horse race with an odds on favourite as we will with a twenty-runner sprint handicap, so staking them the same doesn't make a lot of sense. Again, 'caveman' players are aiming to get lucky rather than playing smart.
Bankers
A way to whittle the number of perms in one's bet is by deploying 'bankers', horses which must do whatever is required - win, or place - as a solo selection. Adding a 'single', as they're known in America, to a six-leg sequence can make a lot of difference to the number of bets. Such an entry makes a 'to the power of six' bet a 'to the power of five' one, as follows:
2 horses per leg with one banker = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 1 = 25 = 32 bets
3 horses per leg with one banker = 35 = 243 bets
4 horses per leg with one banker = 45 = 1024 bets
and so on.
Using two bankers ratchets up the risk of a losing play but also dramatically further reduces the numbers of units staked:
2 horses per leg with two bankers = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 1 x 1 = 24 = 16 bets
3 horses per leg with two bankers = 34 = 81 bets
4 horses per leg with two bankers = 44 = 256 bets
and so on.
So, for instance, a ticket with two bankers and four selections in the other four legs would amount to 256 bets, whereas four horses per leg through a six-leg sequence would be 4096 bets. At 10p a line, that's the difference between £25.60 and £409.60!
Any single ticket perm, where all selections are staked to the same value (e.g. 10p's in the example above), is known in the trade as a 'caveman' ticket. This is because it still doesn't properly reflect, in staking terms, how we feel about our selected horses and it may be considered unsophisticated or a blunt instrument.
Advanced Staking: How to get it right
So if those approaches are varying degrees of how not to stake multi-race bets, how should we do it?
The answer is a strategy known as 'ABCX' which has long been used but was first expounded in print - to my knowledge at least - in a book by Steve Crist, the US writer and punter, called 'Exotic Betting', published in 2006. It's quite hard to get hold of nowadays, especially this side of the pond, but is well worth about £35 if you'd like to get seriously into multi-race (or intra-race, i.e. exacta, trifecta, etc) bets. Crist writes fluidly and with familiarity, so it's an easy read in the main, though some sections are necessarily a little on the technical side.
The ABCX approach invites players to assign a wagering value to each horse in each race, like so:
A Horses: Top level contenders, likely winners, or horses which you think are significantly over-priced while retaining a decent win/place chance. In this latter group, a 50/1 shot you think should be 20/1 need not apply; but a 20/1 shot you make 5/1 is fair game (notwithstanding that such a disparity normally means you've made a mistake).
B Horses: Solid options, most likely to take advantage of any slip ups by the 'A' brigade. Generally implying less ability and/or betting value than A's.
C Horses: Outside chances, horses who probably won't win but retain some sort of merit. Often it is a better play to allow these horses to beat you, or to bet them as win singles for small change to cover stakes.
X Horses: Horses that either lack the ability, or the race setup, to win (or place if playing a place wager), and which are thus excluded from consideration.
This approach works a lot better for multi-race win bets than for placepots and the like. In the place bet types, it is usually sensible to focus solely on A's and B's, with C picks going in to the same discard pile as X's. The exception to that rule of thumb would be days like the Cheltenham Festival where the pools and the field sizes are huge: the only sensibly staked way to catch one of the placers in many of the handicap chases or, quite often, the Stayers' Hurdle would be on a C ticket!
Once this hierarchy has been established, a means of framing the selections into a bet - or bets - is required. I have used more than one ticket (virtual betting slip, if you like) to optimize my staking for almost two decades now; and if you are not doing likewise, you are losing money, simple as that.
The good news is that, while the mechanics I'm about to share are somewhat convoluted, there is a tool that does all the grunt work - which you can access for free right here. 🙂
Staking multiple tickets using ABCX
As I say, the heavy lifting will be done by an app/piece of software I co-developed, called Tix. But it is good to have at least a passing familiarity with the maths of ABCX. Alongside the different combinations of A's, B's and C's, there are staking considerations, too. We call these 'multipliers'.
The way I almost always use my A, B and C picks is as follows:
- All A's: 4x unit stake
- All A's except for one B pick: 3x unit stake
- Mostly A's with two B picks: 2x unit stake
- All A's except for one C pick: 1x unit stake
Let's take a recent example from a jackpot - predict six consecutive winners - at Plumpton. My ABCX (the X's not shown) looked like this:
To be clear, the green column is for A picks, the yellow is for B picks, and C picks are in the right hand sandy coloured column.
As you can see, I had a single A in legs 1 and 2, with lots of supporting coverage on B and C tickets as well as more A options after the opening two races.
I should add that there's always a bit of shuffling around after the initial placement of my fancies - and I have moved winners off tickets many times! [This, of course, is an issue however you play placepot/jackpot/Scoop 6 type bets]
In leg 1, #1 was the 1/4 favourite in a short field of hurdlers, the smart novice Through The Ages.
The image above shows my picks in the Tix app. What it doesn't show is the part-permutation tickets the app created for me, or the associated stake values. So let's introduce those now.
At the top of this image, there is a series of check boxes where you can decide which combinations of ABC selections you want to play. In this case, and indeed most cases, I have selected all of those possible options.
Alongside each combination option is a further quartet of check boxes where users may amplify stakes. For example, ticket 1 (all A's) has a 4x amplification, tickets 2 to 6 (any 5 A's with 1 B) are 3x unit stake, tickets 7 to 16 (any 4 A's with 2 B's) are 2x normal stakes, and tickets 17-21 (any 5 A's with 1 C) are 1x stakes.
The total amount wagered across these 21 tickets was £47.46, and everything was worked out by the Tix app!
Ignoring the absolute cost and its relation to your own level of staking, consider that cost against a full perm 'caveman ticket' covering all the picks I played across A, B and C of
4 x 6 x 6 x 9 x 7 x 11 = 99,792 bets, at 1p = £997.92
It is not the £950 (approximately 95%) saving in absolute cost that is the smartest component here, although that is obviously very smart. Rather, it is the fact that my stronger fancies - and the more likely sequences of winners - are all multiplied for more than 1p, the unit stake in the calculation above.
We'll cover the use of unnamed favourites in part 2 of this article. For now, suffice it to say that this is a means of a) keeping more tickets alive, and b) playing up your perceived merit of the favourite. I use this tactic a lot in multi-race tickets and encourage you to introduce it into your play once you're up and running.
It takes a few seconds for me to place 21 tickets as per the above. I just click the 'PLACE ALL BETS' button on Tix.
The winning sequence at Plumpton looked like this:
Leg 1: #1, 1/4 favourite, an A selection
Leg 2: #3, 9/2, a B selection
Leg 3: #8, 10/3, an A selection
Leg 4: #8, 9/2, an A selection
Leg 5: #7, 9/2, an A selection
Leg 6: #5, 5/1, an A selection
All six winners were 5/1 or shorter, so this wasn't the toughest sequence ever devised! The dividend, to a £1 stake, paid £13,520. My 3% unit was worth £405.61.
Incidentally, the SP accumulator would have paid £5365.59 for £1, and the Betfair SP accumulator (good luck trying to place these multiples there!) would have returned £10,206.47.
Paying more than two-and-a-half times SP, and 30% above BSP, made the jackpot the clear value play on this day. It doesn't always, so keep that in mind.
===========================
Total payout: £405.61
Total profit: £310.15 (including -£48 in Betfair hedges)
Approximate odds: 9/4
===========================
There is an important note in the totals above. The approximate payout on this bet was 9/4. Not 100/1 or 1000/1 or another big number.
With the safety net of spreading around and insuring/hedging via Betfair, I am happy to stake more, relatively, in search of a bigger absolute (i.e. cash money) return.
This is another subject to which I'll return in Part 2, along with when to play, using unnamed favourites, taking insurance, the value of the early markets, and, of course, Tix.
In the articles I write for geegeez.co.uk, I use various different means of evaluating performance, writes Dave Renham. One of them is win strike rate. This is the measure of how often, as a percentage, something wins, be it a horse, jockey, trainer etc. I also typically look at the combined win and placed strike rate which I usually refer to as each way strike rate.
While strike rates have their place, and I especially like them for comparing specific data grouped by year because I believe seeing similar percentages year in year out should give us more confidence that an angle may be replicated in the future.
Winners, or Profit?
However, higher strike rates do not necessarily equate to value or profit. Let me try to illustrate this by looking at the following two scenarios covering a thousand bets.
A strike rate of 45% at prices of Even money
A strike rate of 25% at prices of 7/2
The first scenario would see 450 winning bets and 550 losing ones. The second scenario would see 250 winning ones and 750 losing ones. So initially one may think that the first scenario is the preferred one. However, if betting all runners at £1 level stakes, the first scenario would produce an overall loss of £100 (£900 returned on £1000 staked) – that equates to losses of 10%. Meanwhile, betting £1 level stakes based on the second scenario would deliver a profit of £125 (250 x 4.5 = £1125, less £1000 staked) which equates to overall gains of 12.5%. So, the lower strike rate out of these two examples has proved much the better option.
It is a misconception that number of winners is the most important thing when trying to make money betting on horses. Obviously, we need winners to potentially make a profit – zero winners are not going to make anyone any money! I wish I had a tenner for the number of times friends of mine have asked me for ‘winners’ when they go on their annual trip to the races. It happens every time they go. And each time I give them the same answer: ‘if you want winners, back the favourite’. Backing the fav in each race at a meeting will be the best option if your sole intention is backing the most winners; and for once a year 'day at the races' punters, it's the best approach - hope to be lucky.
However, making a profit at this game is about getting ‘value’ prices, more of which later...
Similar Strike Rates
Before discussing the key word ‘value’ I want to now look at what I call similar strike rates, and potential issues therein. Having similar strike rates does not necessarily provide the same return on investment. Below is a table showing a four-year period in the riding career of jockey Hollie Doyle. Profits / losses and returns have been calculated both to Industry SP and Betfair SP.
As you can see, we have very similar strike rates year on year ranging from 14.16% to 15.42%, but the profit/loss and returns columns differ markedly. Indeed, the lowest strike rate of the four years (in 2019) produced the best returns – using either SP or BSP. So, what is happening here? It is simply down to the fact that Hollie Doyle has become a far more well known and popular jockey as time has passed. Being more popular means more punters bet on her rides, which in turn shortens the price of those rides. However, I need evidence to back up this theory.
To do this I am going to present two graphs. This first shows a comparison of the percentage of her overall rides each year using two price brackets – horses priced 5/2 or shorter, and those priced 18/1 or bigger.
This graph shows two things that correlate with each other. Firstly, the percentage of shorter priced rides (5/2 or shorter) has increased steadily over the years; likewise, the percentage of bigger priced rides (18/1 or bigger) has decreased steadily year on year. These stats help to demonstrate that the prices on Doyle's rides have been shortening over time – at least as far as very short and very big prices are concerned.
What happens now if we consider the average price of all her rides during this four-year period? Once more I have broken the stats down by year and the graph below relays the info:
This second piece of evidence that shows the average price of Hollie's rides has been dropping year by year. There is positive correlation between both graphs. Therefore, we have two conclusive 'exhibits' which suggest that her increasing popularity and exposure has shortened the prices of her rides over the years; and, related, has enabled her to secure the mount on horses with better prospects. I am confident that my theory, for once, has proved to be a good one.
This is not the only example of the similar strike rate issue. One of the reasons certain draw biases no longer provide the potential for profit is that as a bias gets better known, the odds on that bias begin to contract/shorten.
To give a classic example of this let us look at Chester five-furlong data going back to 2004. Chester’s 5f trip is infamous for favouring lower drawn horses due to the tight turning nature of the track. Here are the stats for horses drawn right next to the inside rail (stall 1) over 5f showing a comparison between 2004-2013 and 2014-2023. I have used SP only in terms of profit/loss/ROI as BSP was not used from 2004 to 2007:
Strike rates are similar as we saw with Hollie Doyle’s data, a difference of only 1.5% here, but the profit/loss/ROI are markedly different. Yes, the 2004-2013 runners have a slightly higher strike rate but not enough to make a difference of £73 to bottom line, or an ROI swing from 25% to -20%.
If we now look at the average SPs over these time frames, we can see that the prices have shortened:
We have 6.52/1 (decimal odds 7.52) versus 5.56/1 (decimal odds 6.56) - a drop of nigh on one whole point is significant considering how many runners are in the sample.
To corroborate this,I also looked at the median prices as another guide and the median price from 2004 to 2013 was 9/2 (5.5); from 2014 to 2023 it was a point lower at 7/2 (4.5).
Now, if we examine the average prices of just the winners, we see an even sharper drop:
Going back to 2004 punters were aware of the draw bias at Chester, but the understanding of the strength of the bias was far less concrete than it is now. This is the main reason why the prices have shortened over past two decades. Any value that was around in 2004 is long gone – or so it seems.
We see this type of initial profit then loss with some of the best horse racing systems of bygone times. Systems that initially make a profit eventually start to lose money as the betting market eventually cottons on. With the good ones it is not usually down to strike rates deteriorating, but rather than the prices on offer diminish. For any specific win strike rate to make a profit, the prices need to big enough to make that happen: strike rate and available odds are a partnership perpetually operating in tandem.
The similar strike-rate examples I have shared should help punters whose primary focus has been on strike rate to consider that metric in a broader context. It is the price in relation to the actual percentage chance of a horse winning that we all need to evaluate; because to make money at betting, VALUE is the most important thing, not strike rate. We need the percentages to work in our favour.
As an example, if we could get better odds than Even money on the toss of an unbiased coin, we would naturally take the bet because the odds are in our favour. Unfortunately, the odds in horse races are rarely in our favour mainly because bookmakers have a profit margin built in for them. This is called the overround. To explain overround let me share a worked example. Imagine there is a five-runner race with the following prices available for each horse:
I have added an ‘implied probability %’ column which is the percentage chance of each horse winning according to the individual odds that are being offered. Adding the five implied probability percentages the total is 105.56%. A perfect/fair betting book should add up to 100%. In this case the book is not perfect as we have an overround of 5.56% - the difference is the bookmaker’s profit margin. The bigger the overround, the bigger the edge for bookmakers and hence the harder it is for punters to make money.
Finding Value via Actual/Expected
Of course, finding ‘value’ is not easy. Also, we will rarely know for sure if we have got value on any of our selections. We may have a good idea, but horses are not machines and horse races rarely pan out exactly how we expect them to.
One way to assess ‘value’ is by using the A/E index. The A/E index is a type of impact value stat. The ‘A’ stands for Actual whilst the ‘E’ stands for Expected and therefore the A/E index stat is an index of actual winners divided by expected winners. By 'expected' we mean as implied by the odds available. More on that in a second.
If the A/E index stat has more actual winners than expected ones, then we have found a value scenario. If the stat has fewer winners than expected, then we have found a poor value scenario. To calculate the A/E index we need to know the actual number of winners and the expected number of winners. The first part is easy as this is the number of horses that actually won. Calculating the expected number of winners is more time consuming as we need to sum up the odds of all the runners.
To do this, firstly calculate the probability or odds of winning of each runner. This is not the odds of the horse, such as 4/1, but the percentage chance of winning for the 4/1 shot. We use the following formula to work out the percentage chance:
Odds Chance of Winning = 1 / (price + 1)
For our 4/1 horse, then, the percentage chance of winning (probability) = 1 / (4 + 1) = 1 / 5 = 0.2 (20%)
For a horse priced at Evens the percentage chance of winning = 1 / (1 + 1) = 1 / 2 = 0.5 (50%)
Once we have calculated the odds of each runner we then add all those figures up to obtain the expected number of winners.
Here's a simple example based on 100 horses sent off at 4/1. The percentage chance (in decimal terms) of a 4/1 shot winning, as shown above, is 0.2; so adding all 100 of those together sums to 20. Thus, with 100 horses priced at 4/1 we would expect 20 of them to win. If 25 of them actually won, then the A/E index would be calculated by dividing 25 by 20 to give an A/E index of 1.25. Anything above 1.00 can be said to represent ‘value’ so a figure of 1.25 suggests very good value.
We need to be aware that by calculating A/E indices in this way does not take bookmaker’s overrounds into account so one could argue they are not 100% perfect. However, they are still a very useful barometer and focusing on A/E values of, say, 1.1 or 1.15 will account for most if not all of the bookmakers' margin. As an aside, if you are comparing A/E indices ‘like for like’ – e.g. one trainer versus another – then overround is not an issue.
Regular readers of my work will know I mention A/E indices in virtually every article I write. This is because they are an important piece to be considered in any profit/loss/value consideration.
But the A/E index is not the ‘be all and end all’. You can be profitable with an A/E index under 1.00, likewise you can lose money with an A/E index of above 1.00. However, it is a very useful metric and one we should try to use when analysing results.
Essentially then, if we can obtain value prices when we bet, we will make money in the long term. This can be achieved with a strike rate of 50% but could also be achieved with a measly strike rate of 5%. It should be said that from an emotional / discipline perspective, it is far easier to keep your head in the game with a winner every second bet than one in twenty; this is not a mathematical notion but very much a harsh reality for all of us when we're staring down the barrel of a losing streak!
Another point worth making is that it is important to be aware that profit/loss figures, like strike rates, can be misleading. Imagine a trainer has had 1000 runners over a five year period and has made a £150 profit to SP and a £400 profit to BSP. Do you decide to back this trainer in the future based solely on this evidence? Hopefully your answer is ‘no’. Ultimately you need to do more digging. If during your digging you find that the trainre had two winners during this period both priced at 100/1 SP (paying 200/1 and 250/1 BSP), you will appreciate that when removing these two winners the remaining 998 runners would have made a loss to both SP and BSP. We can see that ‘no’ was the right answer!
Let me share a couple of real life examples. Here are two trainer/jockey combinations that have made a decent profit between 1st Jan 2016 and 12th Feb 2024 (when I penned this).
On the face of it we have excellent figures for both. It is rare to get these sort of profits using Industry SP. However, look at what happens when we split their ROI%s into different price brackets. First Moffatt and Jones:
As can be seen, the partnership have been profitable across all price brackets. The 14/1 or bigger results are the highest and it will come as no surprise that they have had a few big priced winners together. However, these bigger priced winners are not the reason for the overall profit. It has helped, but they have produced excellent returns in every other price group (all above 40p in the £).
Now let’s look at the Lacey/Sheppard splits:
Here is a much more scattered distribution. Three of the price groupings have made a loss. In fact, the 15/2 to 12/1 price bracket produced dreadful figures – losses of over 90p in the £ due to just one win from 99 rides. As we can also see, the bulk of the profits have come from the bigger priced group. Indeed, digging deeper I can realte that the pairing enjoyed a 200/1 winner which has obviously skewed the 14/1+ profits.
Therefore, if you were considering backing one or other of these trainer/jockey combinations in the future, the Moffatt/Jones partnership looks to be a far more reliable proposition. Whether their performance will be replicated in the years to come is impossible to say, of course, but this type of extra analysis should pay dividends for those punters who are prepared to go the extra mile. For the record the A/E indices for the combos were 1.48 and 0.97 – the better value by far was for the Moffatt/Jones results.
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It is an obvious thing to say but making money from horse racing is not easy; and finding value is not easy. Ultimately, we as punters generally want to make a profit – and ideally a long-term one. Strike rates are not the answer as we have seen although, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, they do have their place in certain circumstances.
I believe the main takeaway from this piece should be this: it is useful to know roughly how frequently something happens; but it’s crucial to know where the value lies.
The A/E index can help with ‘value’, but it is still only one piece of a rather complex puzzle!
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/BenGodfrey_830x320.png320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2024-02-21 14:29:342024-02-21 14:29:34Why Strike Rate is Not the Only Metric in Town
If you’re wondering why “Hey! Student” is the title of my latest meanderings, well, two reasons, the first of which is obvious enough, writes David Massey. What follows is about Haydock’s Student Day, which took place at the weekend, and for which I was working in the ring; and secondly, I’ve always wanted to crowbar a The Fall song into the title of one of my pieces. For those that care, which I am aware is very few of you, it was originally called “Hey! Fascist” but rebadged once Mark E Smith realised he disliked students more.
There’s barely a workman alive that won’t have done a racecourse Student Day at some point. They tend to vary from course to course, with some allowing mingling with the crowd to those - like Haydock’s - where the students are penned in to their own area, presumably as much for the safety of the annual members who, it is safe to say, would have limited knowledge of the dubstep classics that the DJ bangs out between races.
The key piece of kit today is the card machine. If you haven’t got a working card machine, prepare to have a very quiet afternoon. On a normal, civilian, raceday the split of the take would be around 85% cash, 15% on the debit card on average. On a student day, you can pretty much reverse that. The younger generation do not believe in “cash is king”, instead “tap ‘n’ go” is very much the phrase that pays.
The weather forecast is playing a part, too. Most are suggesting some rain after 4pm, which will mean the last two races could be a bit of a washout. If it’s no worse than that, then we can just about live with it. If it comes earlier, that could badly affect business.
Which would be a shame, as it’s a card of two halves - the first four races, small fields with some odds-on chances, but bigger fields for the handicaps in the second half which give you a chance of taking better money and getting a result.
An early-ish start of 8.15 (the nights are starting to get longer, aren’t they?) and the fact I’m now on a diet (lousy high cholesterol) mean that the McD’s breakfast is foregone in favour of two Shredded Wheat and some toast. For snacks later in the day; one apple, one orange, and one Tunnocks chocolate wafer, my treat for the day. Welcome to my new, joyless, world of food.
It’s all quiet on the Preston front when we get there, with the first of the coaches not due until around 11.30, but that gives us plenty of time to get the first pitch up (we’re running two, I’m single-manning the second one) and make sure the card machine is in working order. It is. We get going and straight away a few lads want a bet. In the meantime I’m putting the second pitch up and once I’m up and running, there’s a steady trickle of lads and lasses having a flutter.
Unsurprisingly, quite a few need a crash course in how to place a wager, and I’m happy to oblige. A bit of a chit-chat with a few reveal many of them are from the Manchester universities, which is where my kids are. (Neither are here.) When I tell them my daughter is also at Manchester Met, one of them asks what halls she’s in. I honestly haven’t a clue. I think about sending my daughter a text to ask but as any of you out there with a teenage daughter knows, if you send them a text, you’ll get a reply around four days later. If you’re lucky. To be fair to my daughter she replies to my query within five hours, which in her world is almost instantaneous.
One lad, who appears to have been on the ale already, tells me he has to have a tenner on You Wear It Well as “it’s his cousin’s horse.” Now, I’m not saying his cousin isn’t Sir Chips Keswick, but… well, he isn’t. Later, the same lad will perform a quite incredible acrobatic feat as he careers down the steps in the stand, loses his balance, somehow jumps down three steps in one go, not spill a drop of his beer as he regains his balance and runs off in the direction of the burger van.
I take 40 bets on the first race for the grand sum of £300. You can work out the average bet size yourself. Stainsby Girl is actually popular with those having their fivers on and gets an enormous roar as she wins. Because they’re all betting on cards but getting paid in cash means you need plenty of money on a day like this, too.
After the first it busies up and there are queues waiting to get on. Almost every bet I take is either a fiver win or fifty bob each way, and whilst the processing time for each punter is a bit longer than normal, there are no complaints and the banter is good-natured. In fact, perhaps to my surprise, I’m quite enjoying the day, despite some terrible dance music between races.
And what’s this? “£150 win Salver, please.” Cash, as well. Where’s he come from? “He can’t lose!” he tells me. I’m rather fretting that whether Salver wins or not will determine if the lad can eat properly next week, or if he’ll be living off 20p packs of noodles for the foreseeable. I needn’t have worried, as Salver does indeed win with a bit in hand, and the £50 profit he picks up will buy another round or two. He even offers to buy me one. What a lovely lad.
Butch is very popular in the next. One young lady comes waving her ticket at me, proclaiming “I’ve won, I’ve won!” When I point out to her that they have another circuit to go, her mates rightly laugh at her, and she sheepishly wanders back to the stands.
And then, disaster. The weather forecast is wrong. The rain arrives a good hour earlier than predicted, and the waterproofs are reached for. It’s such a shame, as the afternoon was building up quite nicely, with the better races to come. It quickly turns to heavy rain and the umbrella goes up. Only thing is, the firm have packed the wrong umbrella. Instead of the big mush, I’ve got the tiny rails umbrella. I might as well stand on the joint with a colander on my head. I have to cover everything, laptop, printer, card machine, money, as the rain comes in sideways. It kills business stone dead.
I’m now taking half of what I was, and with each race it gets less and less. Worse, the card machine packs up. This is game over. By the time we get to the seventh, the boss tells me to pack up, as it’s pointless carrying on. Everything is soaked, and that includes my clothes, as the waterproofs are now starting to leak too. I pack the kit away, and go and help out on the main pitch for the last race. Behind us, one bookmaker, also packing away, drops the lightboard on the floor as he tries to pack it away. It’s so wet it slipped out of his hands, and crashes to the floor. That could be a very expensive mishap, as a new board will cost him well over a grand - even the cheap ones - if it’s not working.
By the time we get in the car, at half five, there’s barely a word being said as we’re all so knackered, tired and wet through. It hasn’t stopped the students partying - after the last the music cranks up another five notches, and I offer the paracetamol around.
A genuine shame that what was promising to be a good day for everyone has fizzled out. And it isn’t as if I’ve anything nice for tea to look forward to. Broccoli, anyone?
It’s tough to sneak into the leading trainers’ groupings pretty much anywhere in the world, writes Tony Stafford. In the UK and Ireland, the same few names finish atop both the flat and jumps tables year on year, and on the flat, certainly, it takes an upstart, such as George Boughey, and a massive intake of horses and major owners to break into the top ten.
He had 163 horses listed for last year’s campaign which brought tenth place in the table, but ironically fell 33 wins short of the 136 of the previous year. That earlier explosion was the catalyst for the massive increase in George’s string.
In jumping, the top ten have a familiar look about them both in Ireland and the UK. We know it’s Mullins, Elliott and De Bromhead with few recent encroachers making the list in Ireland, although Emmet Mullins has the look of somebody who can be making his way higher up the standings. Helps when, like Gordon Elliott, you train a Grand National winner early on and Mullins (E) did just that with Noble Yeats two years ago.
In the UK, apart from Olly Murphy and Joe Tizzard, neither of whom started from scratch, there’s nobody else. Ollie had considerable family buying power from the start, and Joe took over lock stock of father Colin’s team. Gold Cup wins and the memory of them have kept Joe in the limelight and dad is still around when needed. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose, as the French say.
Higher up, indeed sandwiching now the hitherto private battle at the top between Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson, is Dan Skelton, who also needed the start provided financially by show jumping father Nick, and the schooling for several years as assistant to Nicholls.
When brother Harry gets off a winner, and no doubt probably also one that didn’t run up to expectations, he has no hesitation in declaring potential upcoming races for the horse, whether Dan is there or not. This is a family operation par excellence and nicely bedded in now.
The other perennial challengers for the title cannot be there for ever you would think. Nicholls at 61 has so much drive and ambition that one would hardly think he would be reducing his energies towards training jumpers; indeed he has been recruiting at the top end of the market for the partnership headed by the considerably older (even than me!) Sir Alex Ferguson.
Henderson, despite being 73 is similarly unlikely to be withdrawing from the daily grind as long as he has horses of the calibre of Constitution Hill, Shishkin and Jonbon in his care. However well or otherwise that high-profile trio fares at Cheltenham next month, he has the four-year-old Sir Gino as the horse likely to become his eighth winner of the Triumph Hurdle and, if he wins, all the future that status predicts.
Given the depth of competition, especially after a spell where a decent proportion of the better meetings have succumbed to the weather, it must have been rare indeed for a stable outside the top echelon to land a hat-trick of winners on a single Premier Raceday card.
At Ascot on Saturday, Ben Pauling had five horses entered, two in one race. Neither of those got the call, although first string Bad would have done if not on the wrong end of a heads-up, heads-down winning-line dance.
The other three individual representatives all scored, for a combined treble return of 730/1. If Bad, the naughty boy who had his head up at the wrong time, had instead been on better behaviour, the resulting four-timer would have stretched to 4,020/1. All four horses were ridden by Ben Jones, benefiting from the absence through suspension of first jockey Kielan Woods.
Big Ben, he’s well over 6ft, rather than the jockey, and his owners collectively won £78k for linking a novice hurdle, Pic Roc, 11/2, beating a Nicholls hotpot; the Grade 2 Reynoldstown Chase – fast-track often to Cheltenham glory – Henry’s Friend, completing his own hat-trick, 13/2; and a handicap hurdle with Honor Grey, 14/1, a horse coming back from almost two years off. Bad’s race was very tough, too.
In the middle of the time since departing Nicky Henderson’s yard, where he had been joint assistant along with Tom Symonds, Pauling had a couple of campaigns when his horses were afflicted by viral problems. Last season’s tally of 80 wins, almost double his 2021/22 score, suggested that the worrying period was behind him.
Pauling will need another 24 in the remaining nine weeks of the present term to match that, and a couple of hundred grand in prizes to pass the earnings figure. He would have been much nearer it had jump racing not lost so many fixtures to the weather.
Nevertheless, standing in the table on 11th place and with £728k doesn’t have anything near the impact that his all-televised Saturday Ascot trio (and a near-miss) undoubtedly had. Many more people watch ITV racing on a Saturday than the number that assiduously study the Racing Post stats I would imagine, let alone buy the ‘paper every day.
Pauling has invested shrewdly in his future, moving a few years ago to the Naunton Estate, 20 minutes by car from Cheltenham and close to Nigel Twiston-Davies. The Paulings bought a property which adjoined a golf course, and which is now part of the family business.
It necessitated redirecting a couple of the holes to accommodate one of the gallops, but now it’s as though – apart from the stable area looking so spic-and-span – the yard had been there for decades.
You would think, golf-loving owners with runners at the Festival (or not!) might be checking in next month for nine holes and breakfast before making the last leg to Prestbury Park. Saturday was a landmark day in his development The seven entries in the early-closing races might not have the look of potential winners but you can be sure that when the handicap entries come out, he will be one of the UK trainers aiming to make the sort of impact that Dan Skelton has done in recent seasons.
Another former Nicky Henderson assistant was making a mark last week at Sandown, and as he described it, “it was a wonderful day for me in my own little world”.
The self-effacing trainer responsible for those words was Jamie Snowden and, looking again at the list of trainers, he stands 14th coming up towards £600k.
Why his “own little world”? Jamie had just followed winning the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown three weeks earlier with Farceur Du Large, over the same course and with the same ex-Irish horse, in the Royal Artillery Gold Cup.
A former soldier, Jamie had tried in vain to win either race since his retirement as an amateur jockey, having claimed both races from the saddle four times. He might say it was his own little world, but I used to love going to both days’ racing in the old days, always meeting up with my old pal, the late Broderick (The Cad) Munro-Wilson.
He used to ride his own horses in those races and the other two military events that now are offered to professionals, from the 1970’s, and his style of riding always amused the experts in the stands.
Munro-Wilson always loved Sandown and rode loads of winners there. I think he was a territorial rather than a career military member and made his money in the City. He had one unbreakable theory about Sandown: “You jump the Pond (three out) and however well your horse is going, take a pull! Seeing how he got horses to rally up the hill when seemingly having lost their race, with arms, legs, and anything else he could bring to the party moving at full pace, remains in my memory after all these years. As an aside, Sally Randell, who is Fergal O’Brien’s partner and assistant, was one of the very good riders around Sandown and she didn’t start riding in races until she joined the army.
Farceur Du Large was the object – I assume – of some very thoughtful planning. The upper limit for qualification for the two races – both weight-for-age events – is 130, a mark the nine-year-old had dropped to from a peak of 136. He had been owned by Gigginstown House Stud having run unsuccessfully in the Irish and Midlands Grand Nationals along with the Galway Plate. Off since that race, Jamie had him primed for the Grand Military.
Appreciating the drop in class, steady pace and the effective riding of Major Will Kellard, he romped home for RC Syndicate II before reappearing under a partnership of 12 Regiment Royal Artillery and RC Syndicate.
The Rules in my early days, when literally many hundreds of men resplendent in immaculate uniforms would stroll the lawns and enclosures, were strict. Gradually, to qualify as owners, leases became the way to go and it seemed that even anyone who had ever eaten their breakfast egg with soldiers just about qualified.
Whatever the future of Farceur Du Large, he has allowed Jamie Snowden to tick off a large item on his wish list. A winner with You Wear It Well at Cheltenham last year, he hoped for a pre-Festival warm-up win for her at Haydock on Saturday, but she made one bad jump that stopped her in her tracks. That left Coquelicot to pick up 2nd and 6k, making this column’s editor happy that he had made the dash back from a skiing holiday, arriving just in time.
In this article I am going to do a deep dive into last time out winners, writes Dave Renham. The focus will be on National Hunt racing in the UK with data taken from 2016 to 2023, and I am going to concentrate on horses that have already had at least three career runs.
There are two reasons for this: firstly, these animals have at least some form in the book; and secondly, later in the piece, I will be looking at some data which is concerned with two and three runs ago. All profits / losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price less 5% commission.
NH Last Time Out winners overall
When most of us look at horse form, our eyes are initially drawn to where a horse finished last time out. It is the most relevant performance being the most recent. We perceive that the most recent form is the most important and this is true, especially when considering the percentage chance a horse has of winning. The following graph shows strike rates for different last time out (LTO) positions:
As can be seen, horses that won LTO have managed to repeat that success more than 21% of the time. Also, as we move down the finishing positions (2nd through to 7th or worse) the percentages decline. It is worth noting that horses which fell or unseated LTO score more often than horses that finished 5th or worse. Horses that were pulled up LTO have the lowest win percentage next time out.
Sticking with LTO winners, despite their good strike rate this group would have lost around 5p in the £ betting all of them blind. In other words, for every £100 staked you would have £95 returned, losing £5. I have mentioned many times before that strike rates are just one part of the story, and not the most important; a high strike rate does not guarantee profitability.
One indicator of ‘value’ is an A/E index so let's compare those in terms of position LTO:
LTO winners have a reasonable A/E index of 0.91 – the second highest of all the finishing positions shown. To offer some context, the average A/E index for all runners is 0.87. Before moving on, it is worth noting that horses that unseated LTO perform much better in their next race than I suspect most people would have thought.
So, can we improve upon these LTO winners by looking at some different subsets? Very probably. Let's see...
NH Last Time Out winners by age
Below is a breakdown of NH LTO winners by age:
Once we get to horses aged eight or older, we see the strike rate dropping. However, despite this it is the LTO winners aged nine and ten that sneak into profit. Once we hit the veterans - 11+ - such LTO winners look best avoiding, with a low strike rate (in comparison to the other ages) of 13.6%, a poor A/E index of 0.83, and losses of over 12p in the £.
NH Last Time Out winners by Gender
A look at the sex of the horse next. As we know male horses win slightly more often than female horses but when it comes to last time out winners, we see that females have just edged it as the table shows:
We can see that female last time winners have been much the better value, with a higher A/E index and a near break-even scenario compared to losses of 5.86% for their male counterparts.
NH Last Time Out winners by Starting Price
It is time to split the LTO winner results up by price. I have used Industry SP for this comparison:
If we look at the A/E indices, it seems the better value lies with the shorter priced runners, especially those 6/4 or shorter. The 16/1 to 25/1 group has made to profit to BSP, but the figures are skewed somewhat as eight of these winners started between 40.0 and 63.37 on Betfair. What did surprise me slightly was the number of last time out winners that started at a big price on their next run – nearly 4400 LTO winners started 11/1 or bigger.
NH Last Time Out winners by Last Race Odds
I thought I would look at the odds horses were sent off when they won LTO: my thinking was that bigger priced winners would have been a surprise and hence more likely not the type of runner to follow up next time. Well, that was my theory! Here is the breakdown – I have used slightly different price groupings to those above to illustrate some patterns:
If we look at the numbers, the strike rates go down as the LTO price increases, which shows that the LTO price is extremely relevant in terms of win percentage chance next time. As a rule, the returns get worse as the LTO prices increases; likewise, the A/E indices trend downward also. Hence, when taking the LTO price data as a whole, it suggests that the shorter the LTO price the better, even if profits are not directly forthcoming.
NH Last Time Out winners by Trainer
One area I always try to look at, assuming it is relevant, is trainer data. Are any trainers particularly successful in terms of backing up a last time out win? Let us first look at the trainers that have the highest A/E indices with LTO winners. To qualify they must have had at least 100 qualifiers during the period of study. Here are the 15 trainers that have the highest figures:
The A/E indices range from 1.05 to 1.26. Generally anything above 1.00 is considered ‘value’ and, to provide a benchmark, the overall A/E index for LTO winners is 0.91. Hence all these trainers are well above that mark. Most of the trainers would not be considered the absolute top tier in terms of their peer group, but this cohort does I believe warrant close scrutiny when sending out a LTO winner. Indeed, all 15 have produced blind profits to BSP as the table below shows (trainers ordered by strike rate):
These are excellent figures correlating well with their A/E indices. Digging down into a few of these trainers, there are some interesting additional stats to share:
Kim Bailey has fared especially well with LTO winners who are coming back from a break. Horses from his stable that have been off the track for 70 days or more after a LTO win have scored in 20 races from 59 starts (SR 33.9%) for a BSP profit of £17.82 (ROI +30.2%).
Peter Bowen'a chasers that won LTO scored again 32% of the time returning a very impressive 86 pence in the £.
Henry Daly has a good record in lower level races. In races classified Class 4 or lower (i.e. Class 4-6) his LTO winners have managed to record another win on their next run 27 times from 72 (SR 37.5%) for a BSP profit of £39.43 (ROI +54.8%).
In my series on jockeys I highlighted that Charlotte Jones has a very good record riding for James Moffatt. This is certainly the case when Jones is riding a LTO winner from the Moffatt stable. They have combined to score 22 times from 61 (SR 36.1%) for a BSP profit of £52.74 (ROI +44.3%).
Now, if we have several trainers with good records with LTO winners, conversely, we are going to have trainers with poor records. Below are the trainers whose A/E index lies under 0.80 which is extremely low for this type of runner.
As can be seen, we have some low strike rates and very hefty losses to boot. The average win SR% for all trainers with LTO winners stands at 21.5%; this subset sees their SR% range from 18.7% down to 12.3%.
Some of the ‘bigger’ named trainers are yet to be accounted for so here is a selection of their figures for horses that won LTO (ordered by A/E index):
Most of these trainers have a higher-than-average win strike rate, which is to be expected, but as is shown, all bar Harry Fry have produced losses to BSP. Again, this is a good reminder that strike rate is far from the ‘be all and end all’. Generally, the market adjusts to the fact that these trainers are likely to win more often than the average trainer.
NH Last Time Out winners: Last Three Runs
My last port of call for LTO winners is to look at the previous two starts before the win. I want to compare LTO winners that finished in the first three on both of their previous two runs, with those that finished 4th or worse in both of their previous two runs. Here are the splits:
It seems that the ‘in form’ horses (those that finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd in both of their two previous runs prior to their LTO win) are the ones to keep an eye out for. Losses are minimal (1p in the £) and one would hope that a further researched subset of these runners could prove to be profitable.
Indeed, one profitable subset of horses that finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd in both of their two previous runs prior to their LTO win are those returning to the track within two weeks. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. The results are positive: 357 wins from 1067 runners (SR 33.5%) for a profit to BSP of £156.32 (ROI +14.7%). This group has been consistent with six of the eight study period years turning a profit and the two losing years seeing the very smallest of reverses.
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It is not easy to profit from last time out winners, but certain trainers highlighted in this article have certainly managed it over recent seasons. Also, LTO winners that finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd in both of their two previous runs prior to their LTO win, have been profitable when focusing on those that are returning to the track within two weeks of that LTO success.
I hope this article has given you a better insight into LTO winners and what to look for, and what not to look for. Until next time...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Rex_Jepeck_830x320.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2024-02-14 07:04:552024-02-09 14:10:37Analysing Last Time Out Winners
I realise that most people nowadays might not have more than a passing acquaintance with the 1960’s musical, The Sound of Music – although it’s part of the TV schedules every Christmas – but over this weekend I’ve had two of its best-known songs going constantly through my head, writes Tony Stafford.
Firstly, with the Festival now only four weeks away, there’s the title song which begins, well slightly amended: The hills are alive with the sound of Cheltenham.
And secondly and more appropriately for UK trainers: How do you solve a problem like Willie Mullins? (Maria, of course, speeding up problem!).
As ever, one name sticks out as the home antidote to the Willie Mullins epidemic of winners. That’s Nicky Henderson, now the wrong side of 70 but as he showed at Newbury on Saturday, he can see off the Irish maestro when he has the right horse.
Mullins didn’t bother to tackle Shishkin in the Denman Chase – it was left to a couple of Sir Alex Ferguson partnership horses, trained respectively by Paul Nicholls (Hitman) and Dan Skelton (Protektorat) to follow the Ascot-errant and still unforgiven for it Seven Barrows horse home.
From being an outstanding novice hurdler and then chaser, Shishkin has the Mullins-like career tally of 14 wins from 20 and would have made it 15 if he hadn’t lost his concentration and unseated Nico De Boinville at a messy penultimate-fence incident of which he was blameless, in the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day.
Willie kept his big boys at home, preferring instead to run most at the Dublin Festival last weekend. Gold Cup titleholder and next month’s favourite Galopin Des Champs stands firm at the head of the market at around even-money after his Irish Gold Cup win over Fastorslow, but if not quite breathing down his neck, Shishkin as a 9/1 shot doesn’t seem bad value each-way.
Mullins’ challenge for the Betfair Hurdle was a triple one and, of them, a newcomer from his favourite talent pool, ex-French Ocastle Des Mottes made a bookie-terrifying first run for the stable after a lengthy absence, but the 7/2 shot gave no indication on his French form that he had such a chance, running like it to finish only eighth. The other pair, Onlyamatteroftime, one of the best-backed on the day at 8/1, finished 18th while Alvaniy was pulled up.
Resplendent at the front of the race were the J P McManus colours, often connected to Mullins horses, but equally well-accustomed as representing Henderson. They came to the fore approaching the final flight of the Betfair Hurdle in the shape of Iberico Lord, and caught and outpaced Dan Skelton’s L’Eau Du Sud, a 28/1 shot and another in the Ferguson syndicate. They shelled out €740k for bright prospect Caldwell Potter last week. Sir Alex seemed to think they’d got a bargain - I suppose it might seem so compared with the cost of footballers these days or indeed tickets to last night’s Superbowl! Paul Nicholls will be training him.
This was the fifth win in the race for Henderson and considering he doesn’t blatantly lay out horses to benefit their handicap marks in the way that many trainers are obliged to given the state of UK prize money, he still wins stacks of them. Like Iberico Lord, they continue to improve through experience. lberico Lord has now won four of eight races and is sure to be in the field, and may be favourite, for the County Hurdle at Cheltenham. The runner-up will be at the meeting too, Dan Skelton being a wizard at winning Cheltenham handicaps, often under the noses of legions of Irish horses who clearly have been laid out for them.
I was surprised to see, on my latest excursion into the pages of Horses In Training 2023 – I always pick up the new one at Cheltenham – that while J P has 12 horses listed under the Henderson team, that represents only 8% of the trainer’s total of 142.
The next two Sound of Music songs I think apply to the same Nicky Henderson horse, not seen when expected for a warm-up race as he attempts to defend his Champion Hurdle title. Obviously for owner Michael Buckley, Henderson and De Boinville, you could say Constitution Hill is one of Their (My) Favourite Things and has Climb(ed) Every Mountain. As to Edelweiss, I’ve no idea how it fits in, except it’s a white flower and Buckley’s colours feature a white jacket.
I think my quick look through the races already priced up had nine Mullins horses at the head of their respective markets, although Ballyburn and Fact To File both have a second option. If the seven won – never mind any of the later closing races – that would be enough to take him past the century of winners at the Festival from his mark of 94.
Henderson stands 2nd on 73 and can be very hopeful with Royal Gino in the Triumph Hurdle after his easy demolition of Burdett Road in their trial over course and distance last month. The six Mullins juveniles that ran at Leopardstown last weekend have yet to show anything like that form.
Chances are spread over the four days for him, too, with Constitution Hill the banker. I cannot remember any horse being 4/1 on with a month to go in any Cheltenham race. That said, I believe he’s the best we’ve seen, so why not and the bookies are betting non-runner no bet, with no potential injury safely-value to fall back on. All set for Champion Hurdle number ten for Nicky and eat your heart out, Willie and State Man!
After the big two, Nicholls has had 48 Festival winners, but even though his stable is very solid and his jockey Harry Cobden gets the best out of everything he rides, he’s not the force of the Kauto Star/Denman era. Who could be? The old-time trainers used to spread the winners around a lot more when Cheltenham was three days of six races. Best of those was Fulke Walwyn on 40.
Next from today’s vintage comes Gordon Elliott on 37 and he will still be boiling after losing Caldwell Potter and quite a few more of his stars at the private disposal sale of the 29 horses owned by Andy and Gemma Brown, all sold without reserve at Tattersalls Ireland a week ago.
The Browns, who have a young family, have had some success over recent times but also devastating losses through injury and are taking some time out. Elliott did his best to get back his most treasured prospect, bidding €720,000 for Gigginstown House Stud, but Anthony Bromley stayed the pace to set a record for a jumper in training.
Getting back to the roll of Festival honour, of present-day trainers Jonjo O’Neil has 26, Henry de Bromhead 21 and Philip Hobbs 20. From Martin Pipe down – 34 wins – apart from Jonjo O’Neill on 26, it’s a parade of the great old-timers, showing it was never easy to win at this meeting, even more so with the fewer opportunities in their day.
Fred Winter had 28, Fred Rimell 27, Tom Dreaper, Arkle’s handler, equals Jonjo on 26, Vincent O’Brien 23 along with Bob Turnell and, from an earlier era, Ivor Anthony had 22, which bar the War would have been considerably more.
What is interesting is that Mullins has had 65 in the last ten years, which means only Henderson’s career tally matches that. The wonder is that he hasn’t done the brave thing that his peerless predecessor and compatriot Vincent O’Brien did and switch to the flat, although that could be because Ballydoyle hasn’t been available!
Vincent basically targeted the big races over jumps in the UK between 1948 and 1959, before opting out. He won three successive Champion Hurdles (all with Hatton’s Grace, 1949-51); four Cheltenham Gold Cups, three in a row 1948-50, and again in 1953 with different horses and three in the Grand National, a hat-trick from 1953-5. In the post-War years, the present-day Supreme Novices Hurdle was run in two divisions as the Gloucestershire Hurdle. Between 1952 and 1959 O’Brien won ten!
If he’d have continued until the 1990’s rather than becoming the best flat-race trainer in the world, he would probably have set a target even Willie Mullins would never have managed to match!
TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Shishkin_DesertOrchid_December2021.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-02-11 20:06:462024-02-11 20:06:46Monday Musings: The Sound of Music?
As I write this opening salvo, I have yet to undertake the number crunching for what will follow so I can be as candid as possible, writes Dave Renham.
Have you ever wondered if there is an optimum or near optimum number of runs a horse should have in a year? I must admit I hadn’t really thought about it until the other day when I was pondering potential new angles for research. My educated guess was that sweet spot in terms of number of runs would be different for each race code, perhaps lower for National Hunt compared with the flat or all-weather. My reasoning for this was relatively straightforward, and hopefully logical, in that National Hunt racing is more demanding and hence horses would need longer breaks between races. Longer breaks between races means fewer races in a campaign. That particular question will not be answered in this article as I am going to focus on National Hunt racing only. Soon I will revisit this idea for the flat and then we'll test the hypothesis.
Thinking about National Hunt only then, I was edging towards around five to six runs as the likely optimum before I started my research. The argument I made to myself was that most National Hunt horses run for a particular portion of a year: a good number will run primarily between October and April which comprises the main NH season. Of course, there are summer jumpers who tend to ply their trade in the off season, as it were. Both types are likely to race for between five and six months of the year; and, working on a premise of roughly one run per month, that is where I came up with my five to six runs prediction.
For this research, data has been taken from UK National Hunt racing spanning from January 1st 2017 to December 31st 2023, a period of seven years. Also, to clarify, ‘horse runs in a year’ means the number of runs a horse has had in last previous days. Any profit/loss figures will be quoted to both Industry SP and Betfair Starting Price (BSP).
OK, with that said, let's combine all horses and review by number of runs, focusing first on their strike rate.
N.B. I have excluded debutants from all the findings – hence the cohort of horses with zero runs in the last 365 days only contains horses that had run before, i.e. more than a year prior. Now, this is the only group for which I have made that adjustment. This means therefore that you may get a runner, say, in the ‘three runs in a year group’ that has had precisely three career starts. I have not tinkered with this ‘one run or more’ data in terms of considering career starts for a variety of reasons. One reason was because it was by far the easiest way to collate the data. Doing it any other way would have caused me so many problems / questions it would not have been worth the time and effort. Another key reason was because I did cross check a few parts of the data in terms of considering how many career runs a horse had in relation to their last year's number of runs. It made virtually no difference to the overall strike rates, A/E indices, etc. So ‘if it ain't broke’ etc.
It is always important to be transparent when analysing data – sometimes there is no perfect way, or the route to perfection doesn't justify the additional effort. You just have to go with the method that in your opinion works best.
Reverting to the graph, the zero runs in a year group has comfortably the lowest strike rate at 6.4%. One would have expected this as I am guessing being off the track for so long means most of the runners in this group would have likely had at least a small setback, possibly quite a serious one. The highest strike rate (13.4%) is for horses that had raced five times in the past year, but there is very little difference between the groups of four to twelve runs. At least my five to six prediction lies within this grouping!
It should be noted that the sample sizes start to diminish once we hit nine or more runs in a year. Hence, I have grouped 9 to 10 runs together, 11 to 12 together and 13 or more together. Also, it should be noted that if I had split the 13+ group into subgroups the graph would have continued in a downward direction. Knowing this, if we added a couple of extra bars to the chart we would see a typical bell-curve distribution. As we know, win strike rates are only part of the story, so let's take a look at the win & placed (each way) strike rates as a comparison. Here are the findings:
As can be seen there is excellent correlation with the win only strike rates. One would expect this to be the case, but datasets do not typically match as well as this.
Time to look at A/E indices, which is one of the key indicators of ‘value’. Here is another bar graph, then, this time comparing the A/E:
Given the numbers A/E indices generate, we again have a similar pattern to the two previous graphs. It may be slightly less obvious, perhaps, but the highest figures lie once more between four and 12 runs. The 0, 1, 2 and 13+ indices are again the lowest four as previously seen looking at the Win SR%s.
It is now time to examine the results by runs, wins, profit/loss, ROIs. Here are the breakdowns:
Losses are steepest in the 0 to 2 and 13+ groups. Again, this correlates well with all the pointers given from the previous stats. It is interesting to see the 9 to 10 and 11 to 12 groups edging into BSP profit, but as you would expect there is the occasional huge-priced winner which skews this.
The returns produced again suggest it is best to concentrate on the four to 12 run group, although it could be argued that if focusing on ‘returns’ we could also include horses with three prior runs in the year.
In an ideal world, at this juncture I would have liked to see if there was much difference in terms of whether we were dealing with hurdlers or chasers, but this was too complicated to test thoroughly; the reason being that there were too many horses which switched from hurdles to chases or vice versa within that 365-day time frame. What I could look at, though, were individual trainer performances, so let me share that with you.
In the table below I have compiled the win strike rates pertaining to the number of runs in a year for a selection of trainers. I have also included their overall National Hunt win strike rate (excluding debutants) to offer a baseline, and the tables have been ordered by these individual win percentages (starting with the highest).
I have also colour coded the tables so anything in green shows an above average trainer performance in relation to their overall SR% while considering the average SR% figure for all trainers; anything in red represents a below average performance in relation to their overall SR% while considering the average SR% figure for all trainers.
I have had to split the table into two due to the amount of data. Hence, the first shows the number of runs in the last 365 days of between 0 and five, the second table looks at six or more runs. Where there are empty cells, the sample size was too small to give a meaningful SR%.
This makes for interesting reading for certain trainers. Here are five handlers I have noted for one reason or another:
Harry Fry has performed extremely well with horses that have had 0, 1 or 2 runs only in the last 365 days – he bucks the overall trainer trend with such runners.
Dr Richard Newland has excelled with horses that have run at least eight times in the last year / 365 days. With this group of runners he has secured a strike rate of close to 24%, compared with his overall strike rate of 17.6%.
Peter Bowen’s runners seem to improve steadily the more they run in a year. He has a poor record with the 0 to 2 runs group, the 3 to 5 group hit at his average win rate but, when we get to six runs or more, they generally exceed his average win rate. Horses that have run 11 or more times in a year have won 33 races from 149 runs (SR 22.2%) – nearly 8 percentage points higher than his overall SR% of 14.5%.
Paul Nicholls has a poor record with horses that have not run at all in the last 365 days – losses to BSP amount to -£29.21 which equates to 35p for every £1 bet. However, with all the rest, his strike rate is very consistent ranging from 21.7% to 25.7%. Just a 4% differential between highest and lowest.
Runners from the Christian Williams generally improve the more they race. Horses that have had 0, 1 or 2 runs only in the last year have produced woeful win figures, losing backers over 75p in the £ to SP; 65p in the £ to BSP. Whereas once we get to seven runs or more in a year we see much better results – much higher strike rate and close to a break-even betting situation.
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This has been an interesting area to look at; as I mentioned at the beginning this is something I had never properly thought about before, let alone researched. It certainly has uncovered some data I will use in the future especially when it comes to horses that have not run many times in the past year. Also, being aware of individual trainer patterns is surely going to be helpful moving forward. It was not the easiest idea I have researched, however, it has certainly made me want to look at similar data for flat racing – something I will share with you in the future.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Cookie_Ascot_2022.jpg387830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2024-02-07 09:01:152024-02-07 10:19:38How does exposure impact performance?
We’ve just had the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, and the excitement of the course commentator when he announced that Willie Mullins had just completed a clean sweep of the eight Grade 1 races over the two days, finally sent me to sleep, writes Tony Stafford. More of that later…
Instead, I will start on a very different tack, following up a piece here last summer in which I revealed I had been stunned by the enterprise and success of Sophie and Christian Leech’s small stable near Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire. They were at it again at Leopardstown on Saturday, with the only English-trained runner on the entire card. There were two yesterday, one finished eighth, the other pulled up.
In the piece I told the tale of an itinerant eight-year-old who had spent time in several of the best stables in the UK and Ireland, but how said gelding, Lucky One, only came to his peak when sent from the Leech yard to compete in very valuable hurdle races in France. He had just picked up €69k in one race and has since finished sixth (for the second time) to France’s best hurdler, Theleme.
I thought I’d start yesterday morning by looking at their team in Horses In Training 2023. Twenty were listed, and I reckon you’d go a long way in any serious horse racing country to find a similar-sized yard where the youngest occupant was a single five-year-old. Seven of the rest, starting at the top were 15, 14 twice, 13, 12 and 11 twice. The 15yo did not run last year but won his last race as a 14-year-old the previous summer. His name? Applesandpierres.
Another five of the newcomers in the total of 18 to run in the UK this jump season are aged 10 or older and Via Dolorosa, now a 13-year-old, won two races and 60k in France last October..
So what, you might ask, would they do when they get a proper horse to train? Sophie gives the credit for travel plans and overseas race planning to husband Christian and son Ed, and they also clearly keep an eye out for talent spotting when the possibility arises.
Not in the way of Mullins, who had secured five of his six runners in Saturday’s Grade 1 juvenile hurdle at Leopardstown, by reputedly paying massive sums privately for the most part for horses that usually have won a single maiden hurdle. The odd exception will have run on the flat in France.
The Leech collective eye settled on a 2m1.5 furlong claiming chase for four-year-olds at Auteuil in early October. The horse in question, Madara, a son of State Man’s sire Doctor Dino, had already won two steeplechases either side of his fourth birthday, when a 4/1 shot and a faller in a €60k to the winner Grade 3 race at Compiegne.
At the same time, his trainer David Cottin, previously a multiple French champion jumps jockey, son of a great trainer and now making an incredibly successful second career, had lost his licence. Four of his horses, including Madara, were involved in having had banned substances administered. Madara found his way to Yannick Fouin’s stable and, second time out, he was entered for the claimer.
He finished a neck second to a horse called Romarius and Sophie claimed him, paying €25,555, a hefty increase on the nominal 18k he was in to be claimed for. A bit like it used to be here 40 years ago.
Switched to Bourton, with chase wins already in his locker, the Leech’s didn’t waste time sending him over fences. His form was good enough for a 66 jumps rating, equating to 145 over here. The starting point for the first of three runs in late October (just 20 days after the claim), November and December was outlined.
Unseated and then sixth in the first pair, he then showed terrific speed to run away from his opponents in a 20k chase at Cheltenham’s December meeting. I can’t remember many four-year-olds winning handicap chases at Cheltenham. After that, the plan was laid to run in the €59k to the winner Ryanair Handicap Chase (Listed) over 2m1f.
French-based James Reveley was booked and, watching the race, this now five-year-old was cantering along easily in the front five on the inside rail all the way round. You could see James never had a problem and even though there were four in a line coming to the final fence, he showed the suggestion of a sprinter’s pace to surge around five lengths clear before James eased him markedly at the finish.
I know to all intents and purposes Madara can be regarded as a French horse even now, despite four runs for his new connections, and that French jumping-bred horses start practising over small obstacles even as early as yearlings. But this hard-working team is far from being the only trainers with that type of raw material.
I had a quick look down the races run over fences at the three UK cards on Saturday along with Leopardstown and then Musselburgh and the Dublin course once more yesterday.
In all 128 horses ran in chases at Wetherby, Sandown, Musselburgh and Leopardstown over the two days and only one other five-year-old, apart from Madara, ran. That was a horse trained in Ireland, running at Musselburgh on Saturday. He finished last of five to get round.
After Saturday’s race there was plenty of talk between connections about which Cheltenham Festival race they would be going for. Sophie and Chris (and of course their oh so happy owners, stable stalwart Brian Drew and friends) don’t look further than the Grand Annual. He’ll win it pulling a cart!
*
4/1 about an eight-timer – how exciting!
I’m sure bookmakers would have been inundated with multiple bets over the two days’ action, usually on singly-named horses in each leg. Not many of those will have got past the first race. Willie always helps the enemy with multiple runners doing their absolute best. The first three wins on day one all went to second or even third choices for the yard each ridden by Danny Mullins rather than Paul Townend who was on the stable first-choices.
I thought it would be salutary to try to work out the true combined odds for his runners in each race, or somewhere near, so here goes. On Saturday the first race comes out at 2/7, the even-money favourite beaten by the great man’s 16/1 no-hoper; race two, six juveniles lined up, five bought from France in the manner of Lossiemouth last year and all either having a first or second run for Willie, the 7/2 second-best beat the 9/4 favourite. The combined odds of the six comes out at 92%, so say 1/12; In the one race of the eight where Mullins didn’t have the favourite, Barry Connell’s unbeaten long odds-on shot ran a stinker, his trio including the 6/1 winner total 40%, so 6/4; and finally In the Irish Gold Cup, Galopin Des Champs (1/3) and one other made up to a 2/9 chance.
Yesterday opened with a Mullins match, the wrong one won; the wonderful Ballyburn, owned by David Manasseh and Ronnie Bartlett, enjoyed a seven-length Sunday stroll, despite four more Mullins beasts including Ebor winner Absurde. The winner was 10/11, the quintet combined at 1/3. Next, El Fabiolo (4/11) had three stablemates among four opponents. The odds amounted to 104%, so another no bet. Finally in the Champion Hurdle, State Man (2/5) plus two of the other three, came out at 95%, so 1/20.
Buoyed by the 6/4 because of the eclipse of Marine Nationale in the novice chase on Saturday, the other five only represent around 2/1. Even then, would you have bet against it? Great horses admittedly, and Mr Mullins will have added – hey let’s have a reckon up! I’ve had a quick scan and make it his 30 prize-earning runners made a combined €1,190,00. Wonder how much it cost just to buy the six juveniles that represented him on Saturday?
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At a much more realistic end of the business I was delighted for Fionn McSharry, who trains in West Yorkshire, not far from Leeds, home of Keith Walton, her mentor. Keith is a form student, boxing coach, former pro fighter and conditioner of many northern jockeys, and was also thrilled when Fionn’s Berkshire Phantom won at Wolverhampton. The four-year-old, sourced from the HIT sales from the Andrew Balding yard for 28k last October, came good with an easy win and It won’t be his last victory. I’m equally sure that for the dedicated Fionn, it will be the first of many.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Madara_Leopardstown.png320829Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-02-05 08:21:562024-02-06 12:49:27Monday Musings: Leech Mad For It
It’s 6.50am on Saturday morning, and the alarm has just bleeped its way through the first of three wake-up calls (copyright D. Thompson), writes David Massey. The other two, which will come at 6.55 and 7am, signify the start of what has become known among jumps fans as Trials Day, but the good lady is having her own trials at the moment, torn between wanting to come for a day at the races with me, and the immediate warmth and comfort of a lie-in.
“Eh, what, errrr, what?” is the reply I get when I ask if she’s tagging along. Unsure of whether this is a yes, no or maybe, I give her another five minutes to make up her mind before she decides that yes, she’s coming along for the entertainment. I know this means I’ll be driving home tonight in silence, as her falling asleep on the way home is now the nap of the day. Quite literally.
We’re out of the house for eight, as I have to be there for around ten due to working on the rails today. It’s the usual stop-off at the Maccies two miles from our house for breakfast and it’s the usual muck-up with the order too, as somehow they manage to put cheese on both of our bacon rolls. Now I like cheese, and I like bacon, a lot, but just not together. One of these times, they’ll get the order right. (Wrong coffees last time. More trials…)
So, after an early start and the wrong food order, you can imagine the good lady is already in a cracking mood. I turn the radio up, which seems like a good idea.
Driving down, we can see how the floods have receded around the Worcester area. Last time we drove this way the Avon had flooded badly, and the fields were lakes, but most of it, all bar a bit just before Strensham where there was still some low-lying water, has disappeared. Amazing how quick the ground has recovered.
The morning call comes in from my writing colleague Rory Delargy as I drive down. Rory, as many of you will know, is working in Riyadh half the time at present. At the weekend he flies into Dublin to do the PP Podcast on a Monday with Ruby Walsh before flying back. He’s spent more miles in the air than your average Arctic Tern this winter.
He’s also in the bad books of the good lady after forgetting the time difference between Riyadh and Nottingham the other morning, and ringing me at precisely 5.56am. I know this, because the good lady looked at her alarm clock before asking the not unreasonable question “who the f**k is ringing you at 5.56am?” I saw it was Rory, immediately realised what he’d done, and declined the call. He called back at 5.58am, which only made a bad situation worse.
We make good time and are there for just before ten, which means I get time to say a few hellos to some fellow press and photographers. “Going to Yarmouth this year?” asks one of the snappers. He knows full well I’m not, which is why he keeps asking every time he sees me. I tell him I’m having a badge made that says “NOT GOING TO YARMOUTH” that I can point to every time he asks me.
Anyway, the pick is made at 10.30 and I’m stood next to Pinno, so it’ll be an afternoon of him asking me questions that all end in the words “Davey Boy.” “Can we get this jolly beat, Davey Boy?” is the first of them. He’s referring to Burdett Road, who was the favourite when he asked, but they flip-flop and Sir Gino then heads the market. It’s normally slow to get going but not today: it’s lively out there, and in comes a grand on Burdett Road at 11-8. That’s followed by a £200 on Sir Gino, and clearly this is a race that’s divided opinion. As it should! We go the right way with Sir Gino and we’re off to a good start.
The next, though, is not so good. We go 9-2 Ginny’s Destiny near the off, having not taken much for it, and I’m filled in good and proper. Bets are flying in at me, 40s and 50s, a 200 win and a 400 win. I can just about keep up. Two out I think we’ve a chance with Es Perfecto, but by the time the last comes around, it’s game over. A 3k+ payout, which not only hits your float hard, but the line to get paid out is long, and doesn’t help my business for the next.
Here’s Tracy, one of my favourite punters. A Cheltenham member, she has a fiver on every race and if you followed her blind, you’d not go far wrong. Always cheery and smiling, she has a fiver on Ga Law for the next. A minute later, I take a 300ew at 7s the same horse and when that romps home, that’s my float done. I go and ask the boss for more money. “Try to stop laying winners, that might help.” I’ll write that down, might come in handy.
Capodanno is a better result for us and stops the rot, but now it’s Jonbon time. I’m betting with and without the jolly, and there’s plenty want to back Nube Negra without the favourite at 4-1. I do NOT take an each-way bet on Jonbon - a first - but one lady wants £2 on him just so she can say she backed a winner. I don’t need to tell you how that went.
I have a group of young lads and lasses not far in front of me at the off. Whilst Jonbon runs, they’re all taking Insta photos of one another with the track behind them. None of them has any interest in what's going on. When Jonbon clouts four out and raises a big “wooooh” from the crowd, it barely registers with them. Does it depress me? I’m afraid it does.
Elixir De Nutz is all but a skinner. One person has had a tenner with me, and that’s it. When he picks his money up and informs me he actually backed the wrong horse… I tell him that, as he’s told me this information, I get to keep the winnings. For a split second I think he believed me.
The flip side of a skinner, particularly when you’ve another odds-on jolly in the next, is that it kills business off. We’re all stood around looking at one another for much of the next half-hour. I go off to fetch some chocolate which I intend sharing with Joanne, three doors down from me, working for Ken Howells. We often share biscuits and cakes and the like and when I return, she’s deep in thought counting money. I just stand there, holding the Mars Bar, and she bursts out laughing. “What are you laughing at?” I ask. “Because I know what’s coming, and I’m trying to concentrate!” she says, and I split the Mars in half. She doesn’t refuse.
The crowd want Paisley Park to win, of course they do, and he nearly gets up in the Cleeve. We’re glad he didn’t, but I think we’re the only ones that are. That’s saved another long payout queue. Before the last I see my good friend and fellow Derby County supporter James, who informs me the Rams are one down. And his punting has gone badly. I also know he’s all-in on the Ravens to win the Superbowl. I’m guessing he’s had better weekends. Always tomorrow.
Gidleigh Park is actually a fair result in the last. Business picked up for it but they all wanted Antrim Coast and Johnnywho, both of whom are well beat.
And finally, the nap gets beat, as the good lady remains wide awake for the whole of the car journey home. Derby turn it around to win 2-1. And I've backed the first winner at Kempton. The journey home always seems shorter when you’ve had a winner. Scientific fact.
Next stop, well, maybe Sandown this weekend. See you there. Probably.
- DM
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SirGino_TriumphTrial.png319830David Masseyhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDavid Massey2024-01-31 18:57:352024-01-31 18:57:35Roving Reports: “Are you sure?”
In November 2017 Matt published an article that looked at five well established horseracing adages, writes Dave Renham. He tested them by looking at data going back to 2011 and he split his findings into two comparing an earlier data set to a more recent one. You can find the link here.
In this piece I will revisit his ideas whilst making a few little tweaks here and there. I will go back to 2011 like Matt did, but we now have an extra six years of data to add into the mix. Hence the research covers the time frame of 1st Jan 2011 to 31st December 2023.
Matt looked at UK racing only, which I will also do, and, in his piece, he lumped National Hunt, turf flat and all-weather racing together. I will do the same but will additionally focus on individual race codes when appropriate.
So let's get started with...
“Back the outsider of three”
This saying is a popular one, but what do the stats tell us? I have used Betfair Starting Prices (BSP) in three horse races to order the three runners in terms of market position. We'll begin by sharing the win percentages for all three market ranks:
These percentages are as one would expect with respectful gaps between each. Indeed, the favourite scores roughly twice as often as the second choice, who in turn wins approximately twice as frequently as the outsider. All well and good, but what about the bottom line? Here are those findings with both Industry SP and BSP figures shared:
As we can see, to Industry SP the returns are virtually the same. However, to BSP the outsider of the party has turned in a return of just under 6p in the £. This is an excellent illustration of the fact that we should not be lured in by high win strike rates. Of course, higher strike rates can turn a profit, any strike rate can. However, as punters we need to look for value because, ultimately, we are much more interested in profit than winners, right?
Now if we break the outsider of three data down by individual year big fluctuations in profit/losses can be seen, due mainly to sample sizes and standard variances. Hence, I am going to look at the annual data in a slightly different way using a method I first saw in Nick Mordin’s excellent book, ‘Winning Without Thinking’. He looked at data in five-year batches, which is a good way to try and compare things more effectively due to more reliable sample sizes. You can also see patterns changing more easily – if indeed they do change. Here is the breakdown including the Betfair profit and loss figures for these five-year groupings:
The strike rate has been consistent as one would expect given the bigger yearly groups. The majority of the five-year batches have seen a profit (six of the nine); and the three losing years showed only modest losses, with one of these losers (2019 to 2023) effectively breaking even.
Next, I thought it would be interesting to see how the outsider of three fared in different race codes so here are those figures:
A BSP profit for all three – it is interesting that the vast majority of three runner races occur over the jumps. So, while we're about it, let’s split the NH data into chases, hurdles, and NH Flat races:
Wow! That was worth doing. What a difference. Three runner chase races look to be the way to go. I am not sure why this is the case: I guess jumping mistakes become more significant in smaller fields so that could be part of it. Whatever the reason it certainly gives food for thought. I looked at the yearly breakdown for the outsider of three in chases and there were a couple of poor years, but nine of the 13 turned a BSP profit.
All in all, ‘back the outsider of three’ is an adage that seems to be TRUE.
There are plenty of worse betting approaches I can tell you!
“Never bet odds-on in a novice chase”
I heard this one in a betting shop when I was around 19 and just starting to dabble in the sport. You would think this one may be true given that novice chases are for horses with limited chasing experience and jumping mistakes are probably more likely. So, let’s look at the 12-year data:
It looks like the old adage is true given this initial data. Losses are quite small, but you would need a huge uptick in win percentage to get anywhere near a profit due to the short prices. If we look at the 5-year batch results, we see that all groupings produced a loss to BSP:
The losses range from just over 1p in the £ to just under 6p. I did also look at splitting the SPs up into groups to see if that would show us anything. Here are the findings:
The bigger the odds price the poorer the returns; it certainly seems generally worth swerving novice chasers priced between 4/6 and 10/11.
It seems for the second time in this piece we have a TRUE adage. At least it's fair to say we're edging towards TRUE over FALSE, especially at the odds-on prices closest to evens.
“Back the longest traveller”
This one does appear to have some logic behind it: why send a horse a huge distance unless you strongly fancy it, right?
To start with I looked simply at the ‘longest traveller’ – this includes joint-longest travellers, too. That's because distances are measured not only from individual stables but from training centres also (like Lambourn or Newmarket, for example). Therefore, we see a good number of joint-longest travellers. Here are the overall findings by race code. I have not included horses from overseas:
The strike rate for the 'all qualifiers' group (14.2%) is above the average for all horses in all races (average SR% is around 11%). However, despite this, losses are broadly in line with the average, both in terms of Industry SP and BSP returns. (Average ROI% for all horses in all races using Industry SP is –24%, BSP stands at –6%).
Before moving on, these 'ALL race' figures shared give you a baseline to judge any set of racing data / stats. They cover of 130,000 races in the UK since 2011 so we can be sure these figures are accurate.
Back to the longest traveller table and we can see that the turf flat group have fared slightly better than the rest in terms of returns, but those losses still rack up over a long series of qualifiers. Let's now examine the actual distance travelled by these longest travellers. Below is a graph showing the different win strike rates for different distance bands:
I have mentioned previously that strike rates do not tell the full picture, but it is noteworthy that the very longest travellers (300 miles+) have been by far the most successful group. Breaking the data down further we can see the profit/loss and returns for each travelling distance band:
The profit/loss figures make far more comfortable reading when we get to 250 miles or more. Both the 250–299 and 300+ groups have performed much better to Industry SP compared with the other groups and are close to breaking even to BSP.
It will come as no surprise that the 250-299 and 300+ groups had a few big-priced winners which of course will skew the figures, but all the other groups had similar high SP winners. In fact, the 300 or more group had fewer big-priced winners in proportion to the number of qualifiers than any other group. The longest travellers had just one winner priced over 100/1 (BSP 110.96) and one priced between 50/1 and 100/1 (BSP 53.85). Compare this to the 100-149 mile group which had ten winners returned above 100/1 including a BSP price of 880.09, and 15 winners between 50/1 and 100/1.
I would also like to share that horses which have travelled 300+ miles and were priced 7.0 or less on Betfair were not far from break even (loss of only 1.5% from 2497 runners).
When Matt looked at this in his article the adage seemed to be a strong FAIL – in that shorter time span at least. However, these longer 12-year stats are not as bad, especially if focusing on horses that have travelled 300+ miles. Using the 5-year results grouping technique, we can see that the figures have improved since the first piece was penned:
In conclusion, the adage ‘back the longest traveller’ looks still to be a FALSE one, but I suspect that adding a couple of extra filters, assuming they are logical and not back-fitted, may offer a chance of parity or even a small profit in the future.
“Follow a filly in form”
This is another extremely well-known saying. While the first three maxims we looked at were clear cut and obvious in terms of meaning and how to test them, this one is less so because it is harder to quantify the term “in form”.
In Matt’s article he focused initially on last time out winners including all female runners. That makes sense and I’ll start there as well. Hence, here are the overall stats for LTO female winners and splitting them by race code:
This paints quite a bleak picture for LTO winners despite decent looking strike rates. The all-weather returns are by far the worst of the three codes which should come as no surprise if you have read previous all–weather articles I have written where I've referenced female runners. In those I have shared data showing that females under–perform on the sand compared to the turf. To provide some numbers, let me compare the win strike rates of females on both surfaces – this is for ALL runners, not solely LTO winners:
There is a significant difference of 1.5% and this is a fair test because the average field sizes in both codes have been the same over the past twelve seasons. Not only that, the A/E indices are in favour of the turf runners too (0.87 v 0.82). Meanwhile, losses have been more than 7p in the £ worse on the sand (–11.9% v –4.7%).
Switching back to last time out female winners now, and it should be noted that fillies are female runners aged 3 or 4 so let me split the fillies’ data out from that for older mares (5yo and older). Mares have won slightly more often when attempting a repeat win (19.1% v 17.8%), and Industry SP and BSP returns have been similar too with a 1% difference for Industry SP and 0.3% for BSP.
With the age of these female runners not really making any difference to the stats, for the remainder of this section I will continue to look at both fillies and mares combined. There seems no obvious reason not to do this.
Onto to looking at female horses who have won their last two starts. Does that improve matters?
Once again, the AW bottom line is bad. However, back-to-back wins have certainly improved matters overall.
Indeed, females racing in flat races on turf have snuck into BSP profit. Looking in more detail at the turf flat data for these hat-trick seekers we find that figures are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not skewed by big-priced winners. There were 117 horses that started at a BSP of 35.0 or more and only one won – backing all 117 runners in this price bracket would have lost you £58.45 to £1 level stakes (ROI –50.0%).
Sticking with the hat–trick seekers racing on the turf, I decided to look at their two previous wins in terms of the surface they raced on. My hypothesis was that if one or both had come on the all-weather, then those wins on the sand would potentially be more significant and perhaps these horses performed even better when attempting the hat-trick. So, of the 2872 hat-trick seeking females racing on the turf, 748 of them had notched up either one or two of their back-to-back wins on the all-weather. Here is the full breeakdown for these runners:
It's nice when you are vindicated about a theory! Females who were able to win one or both of their last two runs on an all-weather surface have shown the profitable upgrade in performance I was hoping for whilst all but maintaining the turf win strike rate.
Before ending this section, I did quickly look at female runners who had finished in the first three on their last two starts and I’ll share them below:
What we can again take from this is that the bottom line is again much better on the turf flat compared to the all-weather (6% difference to BSP).
Taking all the data shared in this section the term “follow a filly in form” or to be precise “follow a female runner in form” is generally FALSE. The caveat is that hat-trick-seeking females racing on turf flat are possibly worth following if one or both of their previous two wins came on an all-weather track.
“The bigger the field the bigger the certainty”
Onto to our last adage. Again, it is not totally clear how this should be tested, but considering the word ‘certainty’, we should be looking at the clear favourite. How big though are we looking at in terms of the size of the field? Matt in his article chose 16 which is completely logical. For me, to begin with, I am going to look at it slightly differently and consider the favourite across all field sizes. This will hopefully offer some context. I have elected to group field sizes thus: 2 to 5 runners, 6 to 10 runners, 11 to 15 runners, and 16 or more runners. Here are the results for outright favourites:
The strike rates differ drastically but you would expect that given the number of runners. The ROI percentages for BSP are all within 0.6% of each other, but sadly the big field group (16+ runners) has produced marginally the worst returns.
Sticking with the 16 runners or more group because the adage states “the bigger the field”, let me split the favourite results by Race Code:
The turf flat and National Hunt have similar bottom lines, whilst there are very few AW races that qualified. How about splitting now by handicap and non-handicaps? Here is what I found:
A difference can be seen here with non-handicap favourites losing notably less. Indeed, to BSP they are within 1% of breaking even. On the flat non-handicap favourites with 16+ runners have just edged into SP profit.
Let me now break it down by the actual price of the favourite. One would guess / hope that the shorter priced ones would perform better, being more of a ‘certainty’ – well according to the price anyway! Here goes:
We seem to be getting somewhere here with the 9/4 or shorter jollies hitting a BSP profit and, obviously, no big-priced winners skewing the stats. So maybe this maxim has some veracity.
The penultimate test is to look at these 9/4 or shorter favs in 16+ runner fields where they were well clear of the second placed horse in the betting market. I chose an arbitrary measure of 3 points or more to see how that particular cohort did (e.g. if the fav is 2/1 then second fav must be 5/1 or bigger, etc). Here are the results:
A further improvement with Industry SP nicking a profit now, too, though we've wittled the sample size by a fair amount.
Finally, I want to take this cohort (9/4 or shorter, 16+ runners, 3 points clear of second fav) and split non-handicap vs handicap. When Matt looked at something similar to this, he noted the handicap results had proved profitable. Let’s see what these figures tell us:
The handicap stats do produce a positive outcome, hitting nearly 12p in the £ profit to BSP. For the record, virtually all the profit came from National Hunt favourites. Sadly, the sample size for these clear favourite handicappers is quite small, but there will be plenty of worse bets one could strike in future.
It seemed this adage would have been false until we considered shorter prices and differences in price between the favourite and market second choice. Hence, we can give this maxim a tentative TRUE if focusing on the 9/4 or shorter group.
*
This exercise has been enjoyable to work through, as well as hopefully building on previous research by Matt. Of course, you can interpret any of the adages in a slightly different way to me, and perhaps use slightly different research points. However, from the data I have shared in this piece I think there are plenty of interesting takeaways.
In many ways, Trials Day at Cheltenham 2024 did exactly what it said on the tin, writes Tony Stafford. But for one trainer, a successful, remunerative trial early in the afternoon had become a gut-wrenching tribulation half an hour later. Jamie Snowden had hardly finished celebrating Ga Law’s sparkling return to his Paddy Power Gold Cup winning form from December 2022, when his other stable star Datsalrightgino was stricken down with a fatal fall at the ninth fence of the immediately following Cotswold Chase.
I suppose plenty of our handlers can be described as target trainers, but the ex-Army man Snowden fits that description to a tee. Both his best horses had last raced on another major day, Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup meeting early in December, each going to post for the top race with uncertainty about whether they would stay the three miles, two furlongs at the headlong gallop the former Hennessy Gold Cup routinely becomes.
Both seven-year-olds (the ideal age for that race over more than half a century) at the time, Ga Law had been up with the pace until early in the straight second time round but faded and was thus brought back to 2m4f, the distance of his Paddy Power win.
This race carried less prizemoney, but £56k was decent enough. Like the slightly richer at £70k Cotswold Chase which followed, Paddy Power was again the sponsor, the handicap offering the nod to the firm’s Cheltenham Countdown Podcast.
In the Coral Gold Cup, Datsalrightgino definitively proved his stamina with a late-running effort under Gavin Sheehan. No doubt everyone was happy enough as the partnership sat at the rear of the small field on Saturday, anticipating a similar run through to Newbury’s. Sadly, though, in the manner of sound jumpers that had previously never fallen, his lapse proved fatal.
Over the years, a win or place in the Hennessy often signalled future stardom. Most glaringly, the 1992 runner-up Jodami, carried only 10st2lb yet won the Cheltenham Gold Cup the following March. The future had seemed to open with endless possibilities for Snowden and Datsalrightgino, who won the race under 5lb more and quite easily too.
That feast or famine setback was typical of racing in general and jump racing in particular. It came at a time when Snowden had been in a great run, winning a novice hurdle at Catterick with a potential Boodles Handicap Hurdle contender on Thursday and the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown on Friday with his stable newcomer Farceur Du Large.
A race he won as a rider four times, the Grand Military had eluded him until now but this ex-Irish 10-year-old who had achieved a great deal for Noel Meade until losing his form, admittedly in major handicaps over the past year, had slipped down to a rating of 130, the upper limit for the military race.
So, while not a handicap, but almost (apart from females) a level weights affair, it has become a nice target for horses like Farceur Du Large, that can meet vastly inferior opposition on much more favourable terms – not that his 11/1 starting price reflected his history or the fact that Jamie would have been ultra-keen to win it.
There were Festival hints throughout the weekend, including the hitherto invisible juvenile champion hurdler of 2022-3, Lossiemouth. Willie Mullins finally took the wraps off her in the Grade 2 Unibet Hurdle and the Triumph Hurdle winner from last March and then slightly less overwhelmingly superior at Punchestown in April, metaphorically laughed at Love Envoi to win by just over nine lengths.
Speculation naturally followed as to whether she would be offered up alongside older stable-companion State Man as opposition to Constitution Hill. The reigning champ missed Saturday’s race just as he had the re-scheduled Fighting Fifth at Sandown last month, this time for a slight training issue rather than the fear of too-testing ground.
In that race, Love Envoi had been a slightly lesser distance behind Not So Sleepy, as Lossiemouth on Saturday, but really it could have been a fair bit more. Hughie Morrison’s old Timer Not So Sleepy has put together an exceptional hurdles record over the years, often spectacularly so.
Lossiemouth was quoted as a 10/1 shot in Champion Hurdle betting, behind only last year’s one-two, State Man being at around 9/2 and Constitution Hill, naturally odds-on. If Mullins decides to go the mares’ route, Lossiemouth is similarly odds on to join six-time winner of the race Quevega. It’s hard to call it a substitute for the biggest prize. Admittedly, Honeysuckle stepped across to it last March to avoid Nicky Henderson’s emerging star rather than attempt to complete her personal hat-trick. I think she earned that little bit of latitude and understanding for her emotional farewell to the track.
In 2022, Marie’s Rock was a surprise 18/1 winner of the mares’ race for Nicky Henderson. Amazingly, she started joint-favourite at 9/4 with Honeysuckle for last year’s race when equally surprisingly she could manage only 7th of 9. There’s no sign to suggest the nine-year-old has any less talent than before as she showed in the feature race at Doncaster yesterday, the Warfield Mares Hurdle, Grade 2.
There, our old friend Coquelicot shared the pace for much of the way but, in the straight, class told and she had to be content with fourth place and just short of 2.5k for geegez.co.uk and Anthony Honeyball. It looked for a few strides that Marie’s Rock was about to be swamped for pace by You Wear It Well, winner of last year’s Mares’ Novice Hurdle at the Festival and attempting to bring a little joy to the Jamie Snowden camp.
Her stamina was unproven before the race, but now having got close to the Henderson mare, she will have more opportunities going forward. Dropping back to 2m4f at the Festival is a given for her and equally the winner, who showed just that little too much power for her on the demanding Doncaster run-in
The Gold Cup picture didn’t really look any clearer after Saturday. With Datsalrightgino not concerned in the finish, there was a Willie Mullins winner in Capodanno, but he is officially rated 21lb inferior to reigning champ Galopin Des Champs. Capodanno will possibly aim at the shorter Ryanair Chase for the Mullins stable, but there will be several ahead of him in the pecking order even for that race.
The latest episode in the on-going tussle between staying hurdlers Paisley Park, Dashel Drasher and Champ came in the Cleeve Hurdle. All three were in with a chance on the run-in at the end of the three miles and they finished in that order in second, fourth and fifth behind Noble Yeats, the 2022 Grand National winner.
Still only a nine-year-old, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t make a winning return to Aintree after his bold show under a massive weight last year and maybe stop off on the way in the Stayers Hurdle or even the Gold Cup as he did last year.
The excitement building that second-season trainer James Owen may have a potential Festival winner in his care will have cooled after Burdett Road was well beaten by market rival Sir Gino in the JCB Triumph Trial. Ten lengths was the margin about a horse that was pinched by Nicky Henderson from under the noses of the Mullins buying team (and other Irish connections, too) after it won a juvenile race in April last year at Auteuil. It’s easy to forget just how good Nicky is with juveniles and in the Triumph Hurdle, his seven wins in the race being a record.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SirGino_TriumphTrial.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-01-28 22:35:102024-01-28 22:35:10Monday Musings: Trials and a Tribulation
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'Caveman' Permutations
