Read all sorts of commentaries and tips across a range of racing disciplines on the most popular horse racing blog in Britain, from staff and guest writers.

Four Racing/Betting Books You Should Read

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I love both reading and betting so combining the two is time well spent, writes Tony Keenan. More than any other subject, I tend to reread books on racing/betting in the hope that 0n the second or third run-through I will get more out of them. Below are four of my favourite books on the subject and feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section below or on Twitter @RacingTrends; I’m always on the lookout for the next good one.

 

‘A Fine Place to Daydream’ – Bill Barich

Racing people and writers often exist in a bubble where ways of thinking become ingrained; sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to draw interesting stuff from insiders because they look at things in a different way. Recent interviews on Newstalk with racing figures like Davy Russell and Willie Mullins support this view and Bill Barich is another example.

Barich is an American writer with an interest in the turf if not an obsession and his account of the 2003/4 National Hunt season in Ireland shows what a fresh set of eyes can do for a topic. After landing in the country with his new partner Imelda, the author is drawn into the jumping scene and moves through all the big meetings from October to March, starting at Down Royal for their November meeting onto the Open at Cheltenham and Leopardstown at Christmas, the Thyestes and back to Leopardstown before ultimately finishing up at the Festival.

The book is populated with great characters: Moscow Flyer and Jessica Harrington, Beef Or Salmon and Michael Hourigan, the nascent perennial Champion Trainer Willie Mullins, Tom Costello, Father Breen, Noel O’Brien. In truth, it is all pure nostalgia at this point; written in 2005, before the 12-month Cheltenham news cycle and the arrival of super-trainers, I love – if time permits – to reread it before the Festival if only for the sheer romance of it all.

 

‘Beyer on Speed’ – Andrew Beyer

You should read anything by Beyer and despite the fact that he hasn’t written a book since 1993, his four efforts – ‘Picking Winners’, ‘My $50,000 Year at the Races’, ‘The Winning Horseplayer’ and ‘Beyer on Speed’ – remain relevant. There is a confidence that borders on arrogance in Beyer’s writing style as he moves from one uncompromising account to another and none of jockeys, trainers or the integrity of the sport are spared. But that self-belief comes from being a long-term winning bettor and basically inventing the modern speed-figure so all is forgiven.

His approach to betting is a mix of objectivity and subjectivity and if you don’t learn something you are probably reading it wrong. Beyer gets across the aspirational side of gambling and the idea that the pursuit of profit is a worthwhile use of your time is never far from his pages. ‘Beyer on Speed’ is my favourite of his canon at present as I’m using times more and more in my betting, but they are all excellent.

 

‘The Undoing Project’ – Michael Lewis

‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahnemann (with more than a nod to the deceased Amos Tversky) is apparently a bible of sorts to many modern professional punters; it might be a must-read but it can be a struggle. If you want to take an easier approach then Lewis’s biography of the two men is a more palatable version and covers many of the main ideas in their fields of behavioural economics and prospect theory.

The opening two chapters barely mention the two Israeli economists however as the focus is on Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets basketball franchise. This is familiar ground for Lewis, author of ‘Moneyball’, and he looks at what mistakes Morey tries to avoid making when evaluating talent which are very similar to the ones we should steer clear of when betting. For instance, Morey has banned comparisons of young prospects to players of the same race by scouts in his organisation which can be applied to racing; all too often we lazily compare horses to other horses that have run in same colours or are with the same trainer. There is also a hilarious description (and a warning against judging too much by appearance) when he tells of how some scouts vastly misjudged the talent level of All-Star Marc Gasol because he had ‘man boobs’ and just didn’t look like a basketball player!

We’re more aware of thinking biases than ever now with ‘recency bias this’ and ‘confirmation bias that’ thrown around everywhere but that doesn’t mean we are a whole lot better at avoiding them. Constant refresher courses on the subject are needed and Lewis’s book is an excellent one.

 

‘Tony10’ – Tony O’Reilly and Declan Lynch

Aside from its subject matter, ‘Tony10’ is a brilliantly written book from outset when Lynch describes O’Reilly’s upbringing in Carlow and how the town revels in its own nondescript nature. After that, it has a three-part structure: O’Reilly’s early life in the provincial town, a period of what could only be described as intense degenerate gambling and finally the time spent in jail and life afterwards. You simply cannot stop reading the middle section as it captures a life spiralling out of control with the ratcheting up of stakes, the betting on obscure sports, the nights spent punting on the computer as O’Reilly’s wife and new-born slept in the next room.

It is a masterpiece of ‘show, don’t tell’ as the reader is allowed to draw their own conclusions about what unfolds in the narrative and while most of this is utterly foreign to people who take gambling seriously and are trying to win, it is an important reminder to be wary of the compulsive streak within most of us. And even if we don’t have such a trait, perhaps we should watch out for it in others.

Lynch himself has been on an interesting journey with gambling, starting out with his 2009 book ‘Free Money: A Gambler’s Quest’, essentially a diary of his own punting, through ‘The Ponzi Man’, a 2016 novel about a pathological gambler whose pyramid scheme has come tumbling down, and now to this. He has become polemical in his anti-gambling stance and while that might be too much at times, there is an argument that Irish society with its outdated gambling laws needed to be given a shake.

Rereading books like these is great fun but it does point to something else: there haven’t been too many good racing/betting books penned in the recent past. I enjoyed Paul Jones’s ‘From Soba to Moldova’ though for more experienced punters it may be considered more refresher course than anything else, carried by the author’s inimitable style. Things have changed so much in the modern betting landscape (or that horrible word ‘space’) with statistical models, account restrictions, automated betting and rapidly moving prices among the issues that deserve a fuller treatment. There is interesting material being covered on YouTube and podcasts with Simon Nott’s interview series and the ‘Business of Betting’ with Jake Williams standing out but there is definitely space for a book or two as well; consider that that the challenge laid down!

- Tony Keenan

p.s. which one (or two) books would you add to this list? And, importantly, why? Leave a comment to help build the bibliography!

The Importance of Pace in 5f Handicaps: Part 3

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In my first two articles I looked at pace in five-furlong handicaps focusing primarily on courses, writes Dave Renham.

Part 1, which then links to Part 2, can be found here.

The data suggest that some courses offer a much stronger pace edge than others. However, all the research points to the fact that front runners in 5f handicaps have a definite edge almost regardless of where the race is being run. When I say ‘definite edge’ perhaps I should clarify that front runners win far more often than statistically one might expect.

To recap, when I talk about pace my main focus is the initial pace in a race and positions the horses take up in the opening couple of furlongs. As mentioned before the Geegeez website splits pace data into four groups - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. These groups are assigned numerical values – led gets 4 points, prominent 3, mid division 2 and held up 1. When I used to tip ‘back in the day’, I created similar pace figures, but used values from 5 to 1, and also used the last six runs rather than the last four. I don’t think there will ever be a ‘perfect’ method for creating pace figures, but I am sure the Geegeez method is as good as any.

Horses on the Geegeez racecard pace tab (data view) have their last four UK/Ire runs highlighted, with the most recent run to the left and each horse has an individual total for their last four runs. Hence the highest last four races pace total a horse could achieve is 16 (four 4s), while the lowest is 4 (four 1s). This is assuming of course that they have had at least four career runs.

With such an advantage in 5f handicaps it makes sense to investigate ways of trying to successfully predict the front runner. One starting point would simply be to look at the horse’s combined pace figures in the race in question and choose the horse with the highest figure. Let us look at a recent example to help make this idea clearer to the reader. The race was run on the 31st May at Hamilton – it was a 5 furlong handicap with 7 runners. Pre-race the 7 runners had the following pace totals:

 

5f sprint pace tab example

5f sprint pace tab example

 

One difficulty for predicting the front runner in this particular race was that you had three horses at the top with very close figures. Also none of the runners had led a race early in more than one of their last four starts meaning that they were not ‘out and out’ front running trail-blazers. As the race panned out, the three most likely front runners took up the first three positions early on: Jabbarockie led narrowly to Jacob’s Pillow who in turn raced just ahead of Dapper Man. Hamilton’s 5f favours front runners reasonably strongly, as can be seen from the green pace ‘blobs’ in the image, and not surprisingly perhaps the winner and runner up came from these three.

As we can see, this race panned out in a very similar way to how the pace figures had predicted it would. However, correctly predicting the front runner of the top three rated was clearly not ‘a given’. This of course is one of the problems with blindly going for the highest rated pace horse. Having said that, one would expect the highest rated pace horse to lead far more often than the lowest rated pace horse! My aim is to look at this idea in more detail in the future.

For this article I am using a slightly more simplistic approach. I am focusing on the most recent race only. To begin with I looked at horses that gained a pace figure of 4 (by leading early) last time out in a 5f handicap to see what pace figure they achieved in their very next run. I was hoping of course that a decent percentage led early on next time out. Here are my findings:

Pace figure

(next run after leading over 5f LTO)

 4 3 2 1
% of runners 42.5% 39.2% 8.3% 10.0%

 

This is quite encouraging with 42.5% of runners leading on their very next start. In addition less than 20% of them raced midfield or further back in the pack early on. At this juncture, it should be noted that horses that were taken on for the lead last time out scored slightly lower in terms of leading next time (led roughly 34% of the time). These are the horses that gained comments such as ‘with leaders’, ‘disputed lead’ etc – for the record these runners still gain a 4 score for these comments.

I then looked at the data for horses that had gained a 4 pace score last time out in 6f handicaps. 6f races are still considered sprints, and the front runner generally has an edge in these races too. However, this edge is less strong than it is over 5f. I was intrigued however to see how the next time out figures panned out – would last time out front runners, lead again? This is what I found:

Pace figure

(next run after leading over 6f LTO)

 4 3 2 1
% of runners 31.0% 44.4% 12.5% 12.1%

 

Down to around 1 in 3 who managed to lead next time, although 75% either led or tracked the pace (which I guess can be taken as a positive). The figures for horses that were taken on for the lead last time out again scored lower (just 21% of these runners led next time).

It seems sensible given this initial data to concentrate on 5f handicaps for the remainder of this article. This does not mean we cannot gain a pace edge over other race distances too, but I feel the front running bias works best over the minimum distance of 5f.

My next port of call was to look at horses that had gained a pace score last time out in 5f handicaps of 1 – these are the horses that raced at the back of the pack LTO. I was hoping to see that they predominantly raced at the back of the pack early on in their next run, or at least did not lead early very often. This is what I found:

 

Pace figure (next run after a pace score of 1 LTO over 5f) 4 3 2 1
% of runners 7.9% 35.5% 22.1% 34.5%

 

Interestingly a pace score of 3 has been achieved the most, although a score of 1 was not far behind. Pleasingly from a research point of view only 8% of runners that were held up at the back LTO scored a 4 and led early on their next start. The stats suggest therefore that horses that gained a 4 pace score LTO in 5f handicaps are over 5 times more likely to lead next time out than horses that gained a 1 pace score.

There are of course many factors that determine how likely a horse is to lead – not just their pace score over their last four runs, or their pace score LTO – but as I have alluded to earlier the pace competitiveness of the other runners in the race. One huge factor that has to be taken into account is the draw at certain courses. If we look at Chester over 5f one can see that it is extremely difficult to lead from a wide draw. In handicaps with 8 or more runners horses from the top third of the draw have managed to take the early lead just 13% of the time. This drops to a measly 7.5% when there have been 10 or more runners. Chester is not unique in that respect either – Beverley in 5f handicaps (10 runners or more) has seen the top third of the draw lead early just 16% of the time whereas the bottom third of the draw has assumed an early advantage 52% of the time. Thus the draw must be factored in at some courses.

I looked next at whether leading in a bigger field made it more likely you would lead next time – my theory being that to lead a bigger field would need more early pace than if you were running in a smaller field. I looked at 5f handicaps with 12 runners or more, and it should be noted that if the race had split into more than one group, I chose the overall leader only. However, the figures virtually matched the overall 5f figures as the table below shows:

Pace figure (next run after leading over 5f LTO in a 12+ runner race) 4 3 2 1
% of runners 42.4% 39.8% 7.6% 10.2%

 

My next port of call was looking at horses that had won a 5f handicap LTO by making all the running – these runners earn comments such as ‘made all’, ‘made most’, ‘made virtually all’, etc. My theory was that horses in form that had led LTO were more likely to lead on their very next start. This time, the data backed up the theory:

Pace figure (next run making all or making most over 5f LTO) 4 3 2 1
% of runners 51.2% 36.8% 4.8% 7.2%

 

For the first time we exceed the 50% mark in terms of horses that lead.

Perhaps at this juncture it is worth elaborating on why being able to predict the front runner in 5f handicaps is worth the effort. It has been noted that front runners win more often than they should statistically, but the key point is that they potentially offer huge profits. Now clearly you are never going to be able to predict the front runner all the time, but the higher percentage you achieve, the greater your chances of making decent long term returns.

Finally in this article I want to offer another approach in terms of trying to predict the front runner in 5f handicaps – this is simply focusing on individual horses that traditionally have shown a desire to lead early. Now, this is likely to limit your potential bets considerably but if you were able to create a list of say 25 such horses you would have a good chance of turning the stats in your favour. Let me look at one such horse – Bosham. At the time of writing (June 1st 2018), Bosham has raced 67 times in his career and has led early in 41 of those races – this equates to 61.2% of the time. We can improve upon this by digging a bit deeper into his record: it improves to 63.8% in 5f races; in 5f races in single figure fields (9 or less runners) this improves to 71.4% (from 21 races); in 5f races running round a bend this improves to 76% (from 25 races).

Bosham last raced on the 31st May at Chelmsford over 5f. This race was also a good example of when the Geegeez pace stats for the last four runs have worked perfectly. These were the runners in the race with their pace totals:

 

Bosham was a very likely leader on a speed-favouring track, and prevailed at 7/1

Bosham was a very likely leader on a speed-favouring track, and prevailed at 7/1

 

Bosham looked the most likely front runner having led in each of his last four starts and so it proved. Of course if you had looked at his career record this would also have pinpointed him as a likely front runner. Another positive was that he had a decent draw in 4 which meant he was close to the favoured inside rail. As it turned out, Bosham led early and went on to win relatively unchallenged at 7/1. For the record the joint-second rated pace runner, Crosse Fire, a 16/1 shot, raced in second early on before fading into fourth in the final furlong.

The data in this article cements the fact that early pace is be a highly significant factor in horseracing, and 5f handicaps in particular. Geegeez Gold offers users the insight for any race within the Pace tab, and subscribers are strongly encouraged to take some time to get to grips with it. Such time investment is quite likely to generate a robust financial return.

***Part 4 can be viewed here***

- Dave Renham

p.s. if you're not yet a Gold subscriber, you can get a taster of the pace functionality either by registering as a free user and checking the pace in our free Gold races (up to six daily), or you can take a 30 day trial for £1. Click here to start your trial.

geegeez.co.uk, GDPR, and You: An Outline

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Hi, it’s Matt here with a geegeez update on GDPR, the big new privacy rule you’ve likely heard a lot about lately. Specifically what it means for you as a visitor to geegeez.co.uk...

Data protection: Why you're getting so many emails about privacy

 

You'd be forgiven for thinking those privacy emails you've been getting are all because of the recent Facebook scandal - but you'd be wrong.

From Facebook to booking.com, your favourite restaurant to your internet or broadband provider - you will have noticed they've all been in touch.

That's because a BIG new statute is about to become law.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), passed by the EU and applicable to all businesses operating in that collective, was scheduled long before the Cambridge Analytica bombshell hit the news.

 

Why am I getting these emails?

Ppretty much every email list you've signed up to (including this one, if you were directed here via a geegeez email), ecommerce shop you've bought from, or website you're part of (including geegeez.co.uk) stores information about you.

In almost all cases, there is nothing sinister about this: it absolutely doesn't mean they've done anything with your details that they shouldn't have. Geegeez obviously hasn’t. But this new regulation, which replaces the Data Protection Act 1998, is designed to give you, the customer, better control over who has what data.

In a nutshell, you have the following rights as an individual:

 the right to be informed;
 the right of access;
 the right to rectification;
 the right to erasure;
 the right to restrict processing;
 the right to data portability;
 the right to object; and
 the right not to be subject to automated decision-making including
profiling.

These emails you've been receiving - and this article - are essentially telling you that they've rewritten their terms and conditions to account for the above rights of the individual, i.e. you.

 

What's new?

Those labyrinthine terms and conditions pages that you probably scrolled straight to the bottom of, because they are really long and legalistic, now need to be written in language that's easy to understand. Geegeez's terms have always been pretty clear, and can be found here.

You, as the individual, must also specifically 'opt in' to receive emails, or to allow your data to be shared, and can ask for it to be removed at any time. Given that every email on our mailing list was permission-based, i.e. you opted in if you're on there, and given that in ten years online we have never shared and will never share your data, there is nothing new from a geegeez.co.uk perspective except to tell you about GDPR and our obligations.

There's lots more information on GDPR here if you want it.

 

Do I need to do anything?

No, unless you want to. It's obviously worth knowing which businesses are storing your data and the emails you’ve been receiving are a solid pointer to that.

Plus, it's a really good time to spring clean your inbox. If you're getting emails from people you don't much care for any more, then take the opportunity to unsubscribe.

Naturally, we hope you’ll remain part of the geegeez community, but you retain the right – as you’ve always had – to opt out by clicking the link at the bottom of each email we send you.

 

All fine, but what data exactly do geegeez.co.uk collect?

Good question, and the primary purpose of this article, in fact. Apart from the more obvious data such as your email address (provided by you for the purpose of communicating) and your user account details (provided by you for the purpose of accessing permission-based content, i.e. member services, on geegeez.co.uk). we also store the following:

- Your Gold preferences (so you see the views and data you choose to see)

- Pages you visit on geegeez.co.uk – we use this in a general sense, via Google Analytics (i.e. not specific to you) to understand content that is hot (we’ll produce more of that in future) and content that is not (we’ll produce less of that in future)

- Facebook pixel – from time to time we advertise some of our content on facebook. The idea is to introduce geegeez.co.uk to people who may not have heard of it – there are more of these guys than you might think! But we do not follow you around the internet, like some companies do. I can’t honestly say we’ll never do that, but I can say there are no plans for us to do it, and we certainly won’t be doing it in 2018. Clearly, if this position does change, it will be broadcast and our terms amended accordingly.

- Social media connections – we use a bit of code to make it easier for you to share our great content with your mates on social meejah. It connects, with your permission, to your preferred social account(s) and posts, when you click send/post/like, to that account.

 

What if I don’t want some or all of that to happen?

Here at geegeez.co.uk, we take your data privacy very seriously. We always have. I personally operate on the basis that I don’t want to waste people’s time who don’t consider hanging out with me/us/geegeez a pleasurable way to spend time.

That’s why we’ve always had opt out links in our emails; and why users can request deletion of their unwanted geegeez website account(s) (we purge unused accounts after two years, also).

Those elements listed above are the only data we store on our servers. Payment information is not stored by us but, rather, by our payment partners at PayPal.

Cookie info is stored on your machine locally, and you can delete that at any time via your browser’s privacy settings.

Ultimately, we have always looked after our subscribers’ rights, and we always will. You continue to have complete control over your data, and if you have any questions about anything in this note, please do contact me/us. We’ll be happy to help clarify anything.

 

Thanks for reading this. It may be a little 'boring' in one sense, but the behaviour of some of the biggest digital companies in the world in recent years has fully justified, indeed necessitated, it. As a matter of fact, I was so incensed by what facebook did that I changed my profile to be a 113-year-old woman with no other personal data stored (except for a link to geegeez.co.uk, and an obligatory email as a means of having an account there - see image below) - I get very few ads on there now, and those that are presented to me are... interesting (see below below).

geegeez.co.uk ain't no facebook. And, happily, nor are most businesses whose profit can be measured in smaller denominations than billions. But the GDPR is a good piece of legislation in my opinion, which will help protect us all from automated scumbaggery by the mega-wealthy autobots.

Matt

Interesting profile...

These are the ads that get served to me...

Yup, as a 113-year-old I'm keen to better understand my mood... and I'm certainly keen to "feed my fashion hunger"!

Instant Expert v2.0 is LIVE

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It's live, the new Instant Expert v2.0. Or maybe we'll just continue to call it Instant Expert, eh?

Most importantly, if you're in the Remain camp, do nothing and Instant Expert will continue to display the data as ever it did. However, if you're an Instantexpiteer (see what I did there? Not great, granted) then you'll want to have a watch and a listen to the below videotape, which explains all...

There is also an updated User Guide that outlines the changes. You can get that from the link on the My Geegeez page.

Part 2: The Importance of Pace in 5f Handicaps

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In my first article I looked at pace in 5-furlong handicaps focusing on the running style bias angle. The figures clearly showed a huge difference between the front running chances of horses depending on which 5f course he/she was running. In this second part, we will revisit the course angle and aim to offer a more complete picture.

To recap from the first article, when I talk about pace my main focus is the early pace in a race and the position horses take up early on. The Geegeez website splits pace data into four groups - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. These groups are assigned numerical values – led gets 4 points, prominent 3, mid division 2 and held up 1. On each Geegeez racecard these figures are assigned to every horse in the race going back four UK or Irish runs.

We can use these numerical figures to create course and distance pace averages. I have done this by adding up the pace scores of all the winners at a particular course and dividing it by the total number of races. The higher the average score, the more biased the course and distance is to horses that lead early or race close to the pace. Here are the 5 furlong handicap C&D pace averages for all turf courses in the UK.

 

Course 5f pace average 5f Pace Rank
Lingfield (turf) 3.33 1
Chester 3.3 2
Epsom 3 3
Catterick 2.97 4
Ripon 2.97 5
Redcar 2.88 6
Chepstow 2.86 7
Hamilton 2.85 8
Nottingham 2.84 9
Thirsk 2.82 10
Windsor 2.78 11
Musselburgh 2.77 12
Newbury 2.73 13
Beverley 2.72 14
Leicester 2.72 15
Pontefract 2.69 16
Goodwood 2.64 17
Ayr 2.63 18
Newmarket 2.58 19
Haydock 2.57 20
Wetherby 2.56 21
Bath 2.54 22
Doncaster 2.51 23
Salisbury 2.5 24
Sandown 2.5 25
Brighton 2.49 26
Carlisle 2.49 27
York 2.47 28
Ffos Las 2.38 29
Yarmouth 2.24 30
Ascot 2.24 31

 

Lingfield (turf) tops the list, but in truth they have very few 5f handicaps so we perhaps out to take this figure with the proverbial pinch of salt. Chester comes next which is no surprise based on the stats from the previous article. In that article Chester had exceptional winning percentages for front runners and very poor percentages for hold up horses. A 3.3 C&D pace average is huge, so let us look at Chester 5f in more detail.

Running style

Chester 5f

 Wins Runners Strike rate (%) IV
Led 31 88 35.23 3.38
Prominent 21 194 10.82 1.04
Mid Division 5 109 4.59 0.44
Held Up 4 194 2.06 0.20

 

As can be seen, 52 of 61 Chester races have been won by horses that have either led or raced prominently. Essentially these figures indicate that the winner is almost six times more likely to be racing in the front half of the pack early on, than the back half.

Epsom are third on the list but they have only had 25 races so, as with Lingfield turf, the data is limited. Let us instead look at the Catterick who lie fourth on the list. Catterick have had 145 races so a bigger sample to breakdown:

 

Running style

Catterick 5f

 Wins Runners Strike rate (%) IV
Led 47 196 23.98 2.51
Prominent 65 672 9.67 1.00
Mid Division 15 175 8.57 0.93
Held Up 18 473 3.81 0.4

 

The stats for Catterick are not in Chester’s league in terms of pace bias to front/prominent racers, but the tendency is still strong. Front runners especially have a very potent edge. Digging deeper, if we focus on races at Catterick with 12 to 14 runners the pace bias does increase significantly:

 

Running style Wins Runners Strike rate (%) IV
Led 15 66 22.73 2.88
Prominent 22 227 9.69 1.23
Mid Division 5 88 5.68 0.72
Held Up 4 201 1.99 0.25

 

37 of 46 races were won by early leaders or horses that raced prominent early. The winner is roughly four more times more likely to be racing in the front half of the pack early on, than the back half.

 

At this juncture I decided to dig a little deeper looking to see whether the going made a difference to the overall 5f course pace averages. In the past I have heard two contrasting theories connected with front running horses which would potentially affect the course pace average on a specific type of going:

Theory 1 – horses that lead on softer ground are difficult to peg back because horses find it harder to accelerate from off the pace on such going;

Theory 2 – horses that lead on firmer ground are likely to get less tired at the front due the faster conditions and this accentuates their front running edge. (Plus on quicker ground the race is likely to be run in a shorter overall time again meaning the front runner is expending less energy).

So which one is true – or is neither true? If front runners do have a bigger edge under certain going conditions it will push up the overall course pace average.

I decided to split the results into two – races on good or firmer; and races on good to soft or softer. Here are the course pace averages for all 5f handicaps split into these going types:

 

Going Course Pace average
Good or firmer 2.72
Good to soft or softer 2.67

 

As we can see the difference is minimal and not statistically significant. I plan to look at more extremes of going when I have time – looking at soft or heavy versus good to firm or firmer. However, looking at these initial figures, I am not expecting to see a huge variance.

My final area of research in this article is concerned with ‘class’. There is an argument, which I believe is a fair one, that the higher the class, the harder it is for horses to lead from start to finish – due to the more competitive nature of the opposition. Hence, at courses that run more higher class handicaps one might expect their course pace averages to be lower as a result. How to calculate ‘class’ at a particular course is difficult – do you use class levels, prize money, average Official Ratings across all races? I have decided to use a relatively simplistic approach by creating average class levels for each course by adding the class levels for each race and dividing by how many races there were. Hence, for example, if a course had had 10 class 2 handicaps and 10 class 3 handicaps their class average would be 2.5. Here are the course class averages for 5f handicaps (lowest class averages at the top):

Course Course Race Class Average Course Class Rank
Chepstow 5.47 1
Hamilton 5.43 2
Catterick 5.32 3
Brighton 5.26 4
Ffos Las 5.12 5
Beverley 5.11 6
Yarmouth 5.08 7
Bath 5.03 8
Carlisle 5 9
Nottingham 4.96 10
Redcar 4.95 11
Lingfield (turf) 4.92 12
Musselburgh 4.85 13
Ayr 4.77 14
Leicester 4.67 15
Ripon 4.57 16
Wetherby 4.56 17
Pontefract 4.53 18
Salisbury 4.45 19
Windsor 4.44 20
Thirsk 4.09 21
Goodwood 4.04 22
Newbury 4 23
Sandown 4 24
Doncaster 3.85 25
Haydock 3.79 26
Newmarket 3.64 27
Chester 3.02 28
Epsom 2.81 29
York 2.8 30
Ascot 2.62 31

 

As you would expect, most of the Grade 1 courses are near the bottom of the table. Three of these courses - Ascot, York and Epsom - have the most competitive 5f handicaps in terms of class.

To see if there is a correlation between course pace averages and average course race class I have ranked both lists next to each other, and produced an average rank. For there to be a strong correlation you would expect the majority of the courses to be in similar positions in each column – in other words the higher course 5f pace averages should correlate with the lower course class averages; likewise the lower course pace averages should correlate with the higher course class averages.

 

Course Course Class Rank (low>high) 5f Pace Rank Class / Pace Average
Catterick 3 4 3.5
Chepstow 1 7 4
Hamilton 2 8 5
Lingfield (turf) 12 1 6.5
Redcar 11 6 8.5
Nottingham 10 9 9.5
Beverley 6 14 10
Ripon 16 5 10.5
Musselburgh 13 12 12.5
Brighton 4 26 15
Bath 8 22 15
Leicester 15 15 15
Chester 28 2 15
Windsor 20 11 15.5
Thirsk 21 10 15.5
Ayr 14 18 16
Epsom 29 3 16
Ffos Las 5 29 17
Pontefract 18 16 17
Carlisle 9 27 18
Newbury 23 13 18
Yarmouth 7 30 18.5
Wetherby 17 21 19
Goodwood 22 17 19.5
Salisbury 19 24 21.5
Haydock 26 20 23
Newmarket 27 19 23
Doncaster 25 23 24
Sandown 24 25 24.5
York 30 28 29
Ascot 31 31 31

 

At both ends of the list, sorted by Class/Pace Average, we have the most valid correlations. For instance, Catterick, Chepstow and Hamilton all strongly favour front-runners and all host a majority of low grade five-furlong handicaps.

Meanwhile, Ascot and York, as well as to a lesser degree Sandown, Doncaster, Newmarket and Haydock, all generally host high class sprint handicaps where the early pace holds up less well.

I hope you have enjoyed this second instalment and, as always, comments are welcomed.

***Part 3 can be viewed here***

- Dave Renham

The Importance of Pace in 5f handicaps

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This is my first article for www.geegeez.co.uk and before I start I would like to share with you my racing background, writes David Renham. I have worked for the Racing Post as a Spotlight writer and the Racing and Football Outlook as a trends ‘expert’; I have also written several books, mainly on draw bias, back in the early 2000s. And I have been a tipster with some success – and some failures! In all, I have written over 700 racing articles for magazines, newspapers, and websites.

Matt asked me to write on an ‘ad hoc’ basis which suits me as I have a full-time job outside racing at present. I hope you will find my articles interesting, useful, and ultimately lead to some profitable betting opportunities. However, as we all know, making money from backing or indeed laying horses is not easy. You need a combination of many things I believe – hard work; a good understanding of what you are trying to achieve; some sort of specialism as I feel there is simply too much racing and too many horses to gain a handle on if you don’t specialise; and, last but not least, a bit of luck.

For this article I am going to discuss pace in a race. When I talk about pace my main focus is the initial pace in a race and the position the horses take up early on. One of the many useful aspects of geegeez.co.uk is the pace section and the stats I am sharing with you in this article are based on the site’s pace data (found in the Pace tab on the racecard).

The pace data on Geegeez is split into four - Led, Prominent, Mid Division and Held Up. Let me try to explain what type of horse fits what type of pace profile:

Led – essentially horses that lead early, usually within the first furlong or so; or horses that dispute or fight for the early lead;

Prominent – horses that lay up close to the pace just behind the leader(s);

Mid Division – horses that race mid pack;

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

So after each race all the horses are assigned points in regards to what position they took up early in the race. Leaders get 4, prominent runners 3, horses that ran mid division 2, and those held up score 1. Geegeez has over 1,059,000 runners’ pace comments scored, from a total of about 1,100,000. [The others are things like unseated rider at the start, or where there is no discernible pace reference in the comment].

If you click the pace tab on the website you are presented with pace data regarding the specific course and distance of that race, and pace data for each horse covering their last four UK or Irish runs. For this article I am concentrating on the course data and creating pace figures for specific course and distances – namely handicap races run over 5 furlongs. I have always been a fan of sprint handicaps and early pace in sprint handicaps generally gives a bigger advantage to front runners than races over longer distances. In addition to this, some courses offer a bigger advantage to front runners than others as you will see.

The first set of data I wish to share with you is the overall pace stats for 5f turf handicaps (minimum number of runners in a race 6):

Pace comment Runners Wins SR%
Led 3450 637 18.5
Prominent 9987 1078 10.8
Mid Division 3187 235 7.4
Held Up 8465 567 6.7

Horses that led, or disputed the lead early, have a huge advantage in turf 5f handicaps. So, if we could predict the front runner or front runners in each race we should be ‘quids in’, and indeed would be. Unfortunately, it is not an exact science and how best to do this I will leave for a future article.

Best performing 5f handicap tracks for front runners

My aim for this article is to show you the differences in the course figures for 5f handicaps and how some courses are more suited to early leaders/front runners than others. Here are the courses with the best strike rates (minimum 40 runners):

Course Front Runners Wins SR% P/L SP IV
Chester 88 31 35.2 120 3.38
Catterick 196 47 24 177.71 2.51
Hamilton 170 39 22.9 130.29 2.04
Beverley 197 44 22.3 167.29 2.51
Epsom 50 11 22 45.5 2.96
Nottingham 219 48 21.9 224.08 2.32
Leicester 88 19 21.6 60.75 1.91
Windsor 160 34 21.3 100.31 1.9

 

Chester has amazing stats for early leaders: the tight turning 5f clearly suits front runners and, when combined with a good draw, front runners are clearly hard to peg back. Another round 5f, Catterick lies second with excellent figures also. Keep in mind that the average strike rate is 18.5% for all courses over this minimum trip.

Worst performing 5f handicap tracks for front runners

At the other end of the scale here are the courses with the poorest stats for early leaders/front runners in 5f handicaps:

Course Front Runners Wins SR% P/L SP IV
Newmarket (July/Rowley combined) 88 12 13.6 -8.37 1.19
York 106 14 13.2 21 1.78
Haydock 146 18 12.3 -18.17 1.25
Sandown 119 13 10.9 -19.37 1.04
Yarmouth 96 10 10.4 -39.58 0.86
Ascot 98 8 8.2 -30.5 0.99
Doncaster 90 6 6.7 -32.5 0.81

 

It is interesting to see York in this list – York is often considered a decent front running track, but not according to our figures.

 

Chester performance by number of runners in race

Looking at Chester in more detail, we can split the data by number of runners:

Runners in race Front Runners Wins SR% P/L SP IV
6 to 8 36 18 50 90.5 3.65
9 to 11 35 11 31.4 23.5 3.22
12 to 14 17 2 11.8 6 1.46

 

Here at geegeez.co.uk, data regarding number of race runners is calibrated slightly differently to my table, but you are able to change the figures on the site to suit your own personal requirements.

 

Overall performance by number of runners in race

As we can see from the Chester figures, the smaller the field size, the better it has been for front runners. The general perception of punters I believe matches the Chester data – in other words most punters believe front runners are more likely to win in smaller fields. It makes sense I guess as there are less rivals to pass the leader. However, is this really the case? Here are the data:

 

Runners in race Front Runners Wins SR%
6 to 8 1214 264 21.7
9 to 11 1205 223 18.5
12 to 14 624 106 17.0
15+ 407 44 10.8

 

The stats back up the basic theory, but a 17% win rate for early leaders/front runners in 12 to 14 runner 5f turf handicaps is a strong performance, especially when you take into account the likely prices of such runners. Hence, one could legitimately argue that the best front running value lies in the 12-14 runner range.

 

Best performing 5f handicap tracks for hold up horses

Of course, early leader/front runner stats are not the whole story when trying to build up a ‘pace’ picture of each course. We need to look at the stats at the other end of scale – those for hold up horses. Firstly a look at the 5f courses that offer hold up horses the best strike rates:

Course Hold up horses Wins SR% P/L SP IV
Yarmouth 195 27 13.8 -33.04 1.16
Bath 332 41 12.3 -9.5 1.1
Brighton 258 30 11.6 -68.97 0.89
Newbury 99 9 9.1 -31.92 0.82
Salisbury 66 6 9.1 -23.5 0.8
Leicester 178 16 9 -51.87 0.79
Carlisle 192 17 8.9 -55.25 0.82

 

Interestingly you would expect these courses to match those that have the poorest stats for early leaders/front runners (see above). However, only Yarmouth appears in both groups. Hence the importance of not just looking at the ‘led’ data in order to appreciate pace biases at particular courses.

More materially, perhaps, all courses are firmly negative at SP, and most have an impact value of less than 1, meaning such types are less likely than horses with other run styles (1 meaning the same likelihood).

Worst performing 5f handicap tracks for hold up horses

Now a look at those courses with the worst strike rates for hold up horses:

Course Hold up horses Wins SR% P/L SP IV
Chepstow 187 10 5.3 -104.42 0.5
Musselburgh 746 39 5.2 -346.17 0.5
Ripon 200 8 4 -122.42 0.38
Redcar 307 12 3.9 -200.92 0.41
Catterick 473 18 3.8 -312.17 0.4
Epsom 113 3 2.7 -98.25 0.36
Chester 194 4 2.1 -160.5 0.2

 

Chester, Catterick and Epsom appear in this table – courses that appeared in the top 5 for front runners. However, once again the correlation between good courses for front runners / poor courses for hold up horses is not as strong as one might expect.

What can be said with a degree of confidence is that these tracks are graveyards for hold up horses and such runners make abject bets in the main.

Summing Up

So how should we use the data discussed in this article? There are numerous ways to do this, some of which I will elaborate upon in a future article. Ultimately however, it is important to appreciate the differences between each course and distance in 5f handicaps, especially their configuration and favoured run styles, points which should inform your betting when you decide to use pace data as part of your betting strategy.

For example, if you feel you have found two ‘nailed on’ front runners in two different 5f handicaps, at say Chester and Yarmouth, you need to appreciate that whoever front runs in the Chester race, has, according to past data, over 3 times more chance of winning than your Yarmouth trailblazer. Of course your ‘nailed on’ front runner might not lead early but that is not really the point I am trying to make!

I hope you have found this article interesting and potentially useful from a betting perspective. If you have yet to use the pace data on geegeez.co.uk, I hope I have sown some seeds of interest and that you may start to think about how to incorporate pace handicapping into your betting armoury.

- David Renham

** You can read Part 2 of this series here **

Stat of the Day: The 2017 Review

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We recently (well, just over 7 weeks ago : I actually forgot to do this piece back then!) came to the end of the sixth full calendar year for Stat of the Day, which was Geegeez' first real venture into daily tipping, which was launched to our unsuspecting readers more as a daily pointer rather than an actual tip back in November 2011.

We know that we acquire lots of new subscribers every year thanks to previous years' successes from this service and also due to more savvy punters looking for better data, information and racecards than they'll find anywhere else on the 'net, so a brief overview of SotD is as follows...

Whilst form and other variable parameters come in to play when normally making a bet, SotD's first port of call is find runners who fit a stat (or usually a number of stats) suggesting they will go well.

We aim to have the selection online in the early evening before racing (around 6-7 pm) where possible but occasionally due to home-life, travel plans and/or holidays, it can be later, but there's a selection every day except Sundays and we don't take Bank Holidays, Easter nor Christmas off!

We try to find runners priced around the 3/1 to 6/1 mark at BOG prices and look for some value in the odds achieved, but sometimes we have to stray outside those parameters a little. A large proportion of our selections run at much shorter odds than we advise and constantly beating SP is a key in making long-term profits. Basically, our profit figures aren't massaged by some freakishly long priced winners, nor is our strike rate bolstered by a string of odds-on jollies.

What we do have is a consistent approach that aims to highlight one value selection per day and although this "one-a-day" stats-based approach to bet selection suffers all the obligatory peaks and troughs associated with betting on horses, we did manage to make a decent profit yet again in 2017.

Without blowing the collective trumpets of myself, Steve and of course, Matt, we're very proud of the figures accrued to date and we can safely say there aren't many (if any!) better services around. In fact, most paid-for services would kill for our figures.

Where possible, we'd like SotD to cover your subscriptions to Gold, making the rest of the site free to use as you see fit and in 2017, a level stake of £2.65 was all that was needed to cover a £297 per year annual subscription. This was achieved via 10 profitable months from 12 (we lost 2.75pts in July and 4.37pts in August)

A full month-by-month analysis of SotD's results can, of course, always be found at
http://www.geegeez.co.uk/stat-of-the-day-month-by-month/ , but the overall picture for 2017 was as follows:

Number of bets/selections/pts wagered: 294 (exactly the same as 2016!)
Winning Bets: 83 (up from 70 in 2016)
Strike Rate: 28.23% (2016 = 23.81%)
Average payout from winning bet : 3.89/1 (2016 = 3.86/1)

Yearly Profit: 112.05pts (2016 = 46.24pts)
Profit on Stakes Invested: 38.11% (2016 was 15.73%)

These are pretty impressive figures considering we give a selection every day rain or shine, if we say so ourselves and we'll be doing our level best to maintain our success in 2018, although we're very well aware it'll be a tough ask!

That said, the first seven weeks of the year have gone well and with profit already guaranteed for February, we'll now have made money in 18 of the last 20 months. The challenge now, of course, is to maintain that consistency.

Thanks for sticking with Geegeez and SotD,
Chris, Steve, Matt and the whole Geegeez team.

***Stat of the Day is just one component of the excellent package available to all Geegeez Gold Members, so why not take your £1/30-day trial now?

Click here for more details.

Horse Racing People to follow on Twitter

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Original post published 26th March 2012. Latest revised list published 1st February 2018

The Racing Post last Friday published a controversial list of 'Racing's Top Tweeters'. It listed the top hundred racing personalities, by number of followers.

So why was it controversial? Well, in my opinion, anything which is based on quantity over quality must be flawed. I mean, imagine if there was a 'racing's top blogs' based on the same notion. geegeez would be very close to the top... I rest my case! 😉

As an example, the number one racing personality according to the Racing Post, was Michael Owen! Yes, you know, the occasional footballer and occasional racehorse owner, Michael Owen. Number four was Alex Hammond. Very attractive, especially as a twitter-follower-magnet... but adding value? Come off it.

So, partly in rally against such a lazy piece of journalism (in my opinion), and partly because I'd love to encourage a few more of you into the tweet space (for reasons I'll share at the end of this piece), here is my strawman top twenty-t'ree Twittery tweeters.

By strawman, I mean this is intended as a starting list, which is up for discussion. It is based on a subset of the people I follow, and of course there are squillions of others out there, many of whom will also be worth following. So, where you see a glaring omission, leave a comment, and I may update the list. It's my aspiration to create some sort of living guide to the top tweeters.

I should say that I've deliberately omitted any trainers or jockeys, largely because anything they say which is worth knowing gets re-tweeted by some of the below. And trainers and jockeys generally tweet a load of old crap around the occasional important snippet. (There are probably exceptions but I've yet to find any. I welcome suggestions in this space).

[Note, with respect, I'd encourage you to suggest other people's twitter feeds rather than your own. Thanks!]

To sign up for a Twitter account, just go to https://twitter.com/ and follow the (very simple) prompts.

As and when you're a registered user, you can follow my suggestions below - should you so wish - by clicking their @name, and then clicking the 'Follow' button that appears in the newly opened window. Simples, as a certain fictional meerkat of dubious origins might say.

OK, to business. Here's my starter list...

Official

@BHAPressOffice

They say: The official twitter feed of the British Horseracing Authority (BHA).
I say: what they said! A great resource to keep abreast of top table goings on in British racing.

@BHAStewards

They say: Official feed of the British Horseracing Authority Stewards. Enquiries, notices and raceday information.
I say: A one stop shop for stewards' reports, jockey changes and other important/instructive raceday updates.

@RCAGoingReports

They say: Daily going reports across all tracks from the Racecourse Association. Information correct at time of posting.
I say: My first port of call each morning when I'm having a bet. Latest going as of the morning of racing.

@HBFBritain

They say: Horseracing Bettors Forum. Officially recognised voluntary body representing views/concerns of those who bet on British horseracing.
I say: Increasingly credible lobby group for British punters. Good source of news updates on progress. [Full disclosure: I have been a Forum member since its inception]

@PJAOfficial

They say: The PJA supports professional jockeys and promotes, protects and represents their interests and welfare.
I say: Useful source of jockey-related info, usually at the general level.

Media

@geegeez_uk

They say: Geegeez is the #1 independent UK racing site, with its Gold service offering leading edge form tools, and a proven profitable tipping service.
I say: Yes, all of that. And so much more.

@LydiaHislop

She says: Racing fan. And journalist. Stalker update: Lie Forrit, Taws & Djakadam are used to it. Beware, Vanishing: you're my latest fixation. I miss Antigua Sunrise.
I say: Articulate, honest, passionate, knowledgeable. Everything I believe a racing journo should be. Top class. Easy enough on the eye too… (can I say that?!)

@RacingTrends

He says: Irish Horse Racing punter. Form, pace, video analysis. Write for ,  and . Contrary bastard.
I say: Top scribe, always thought-provoking, always data-driven, often found on the virtual pages of geegeez.co.uk.

@LegLockLuke

He says: Muck out, ride out, and talk about horses on radio and television for a living. Just started producing, filming and editing on my own and loving it....
I say: Luke Harvey. Lovable joker. Occasional buffoon. Deservedly won the 2017 HWPA Broadcaster of the Year award.

@TonyPaley

He says: Guardian and Observer racing editor
I say: A bit ‘establishment’ perhaps, but then he has a serious day job to jeopardize. Also a hopeless PNE romantic (as all fans of lower league football should be).

@ClaimsFive

He says: Write about horse racing for The Guardian. Just looking for the next winner. "A journalist of no doubt good repute" (BHA barrister)
I say: One of the most determined journos in the game (apols for damning with faint praise somewhat), and a solid value judge to boot.

@Greg_Wood_

He says: Racing correspondent. Brighton & Barca fan. Love baseball too. All views mine.
I say: The third brain at Guardian. Strongly held views, always well articulated. Covers much of the overseas action for his 'paper.

@LeeMottershead

He says: Racing Post hack generously voted racing journalist of the year by some ever so nice people. A lover of the gee gees, Strictly Come Dancing and home baking.
I say: Just about the only Racing Post journalist worth reading (sad but true), and surely not long for that world as the bright lights of TV will tempt him away. Eloquent, erudite, and just a little bit soft. Lovely.

@MCYeeeHaaa

He says: TV presenter on Attheraces and ITV Racing. 2010 HWPA Broadcaster of the Year. Winner of the 2010 Racing Post Broadcasters' World Cup.
I say: Matt Chapman. As you can see from his blurb, not shy when it comes to self-promotion. And of course not shy when it comes to broadcasting. Extremely well-connected modern day Thommo, which is probably the biggest back-handed compliment I can pay anyone. In any case, an occasional guilty pleasure. I do enjoy his opinionated candour.

@Tony_Calvin

He says: Freelance betting journalist/consultant/tipster./broadcaster.
I say: Opinionated. Lover of value longshots, and sometime guardian of the betting markets.

@HonestFrank

He says: Journalist. Interests include horse racing, football, Olympics.
I say: Francis Keogh. The sort of feed for ‘you heard it here first’ news, often in the wider sporting context.

@DavidJAshforth

He says: ex-various things.
I say: Unquestionably one of my favourite racing journalists ever. Now dealing with serious illness, and sharing the bittersweet battle in typically sanguine fashion. Top tweeter. Terrible tipster. 😉

@Helynsar

He says: Timeform Radio pundit, Cheltenham resident, new husband, hopelessly optimistic broodmare owner.
You say: Rory Delargy. Knows his nags, not a prolific tweeter but always makes sense

@kevinblake2011

He says: Ex-Timeform/J R Gask. Now freelance racing journo (RP, Irish Field etc), horse breeder, business owner and kickboxer. Topped the 2011 Irish Field Naps Table.
You say:  Very knowledgable, outside-the-box views, ATR blogs worth a read

@NickLuck

He says: Broadcaster and Writer...  ; Director ; 
I say: Consummate broadcaster, establishment voice, perennial gong-winner

@GCunning12

He says: The Racing Club, Hong Kong.
I say: Former RUK stalwart, currently exiled in Hong Kong. Often pithy interjections on UK racing, Man City and rugby league

@SurfnTurfRP

He says: Associate editor at the Racing Post. Facilitating exponential change (nice one that, got it out of a mag). Opinions etc
I say: One of the wittiest racing writers you probably don't know about. Always worth looking out for his weekly column.

@RacingPost

They say: Keep up to date with the latest racing news & enjoy our great competitions. Followers must be 18+. 
I say: A great account to keep up to date with the latest racing news.

@AtTheRaces

They say: The biggest horse racing channel in the UK and Ireland - on TV, online and on our award-winning app
I say: Some really good video snippets, as well as updates on ATR-covered racecourses

Form judges

@RowleyFileRRR

He says: Freelance racing writer and form/time analyst. Chips into: Timeform, ATR, Irish Field, others. Chair HBF. Fellow RSS, Judicial Panel.
I say: Simon Rowlands. Some very interesting analyses of racing from outside of the usual spectrum of interpretation, as you'd expect from one of the top number-crunchers in the game. Colleague (chairman) on Horseracing Bettors Forum.

@DavidJohnsonTF

He says: Horseracing mainly, work as Flat Editor for . Enthusiastic only about running these days, despite perennial injuries. My views, not my employers
I say: Obviously sound judge of flat racing.

@EddieTheShoe

He says: Racing, football, occasionally cricket.
I say: Eddie Fremantle. Former Guardian journo, now freelance with RUK and others. Fulham fan and forthright racing analyst.

@Bickley14

He says: Full time sports punter/analyst and writer/broadcaster on RUK. Most sports esp racing, NFL, cricket, rugby league and football. Former Betfair staff.
You say:  Tweets plenty of interesting stuff and because he travels to different meetings each day is good for updates on travel problems and any other live snippets from the course. Very good on the NFL too, if you like that sort of thing.

@FinalFurlongPod

They say: Horse Racing's favourite Podcast previewing the biggest races with an array of special guests.
I say: Excellent craic, strong opinions, and generally thought-provoking as well as laughter-inducing.

Bloggers

@Mattbisogno

He says: Horse racing publisher, syndicate manager and punter. Creator of the Geegeez Gold next gen formbook... Opinionated, vocal and frequently wrong. AFC Bournemouth.
I say: You don’t need me to tell you what I’m like. You already know well enough! My Twitter presence is a bit more ‘snapshot’ (i.e. less considered) than most of my blog ramblings. Might be worth a look though.

@TenEmbassy

He says: Writer of the Daily Punt, monthly writer for Betting Insiders, bits & pieces for Radio Winchcombe, Normally mooching on a racecourse somewhere.
I say: Smart guy. Funny guy. Nice guy. Eminently readable output!

@NarrowTheField

He says: Author of Horse Racing Trends book 'Narrowing The Field - Using The Dosage Method to Win at National Hunt Racing' - Member of the Twitterati, owners of Trending.
I say: Ben Aitken. ‘Hairy Ben’ as I call him. Dosage guru, trends analyst and all round hairy man. Prefers jumps to flat, but then, don’t most people?

@HawkWing2002

He says: Lucky enough to have worked in Ballydoyle, studied Equine Science in U.L & now working with ATR. Blogger for Paddy Power. Big sports fan too, Man Utd & Tipperary.
I say: Declan Rix. Interesting perspectives on Irish horses, and the sort of chap likely to reply to your questions. Twitter should, in my opinion, be about access / information, and Declan fulfils the remit.

@TonyMacRacing

He says: Trends compiler. Highlights are The Festival and York Ebor meetings. Proud to have owned a winner in MISS WIZZ.
I say: Tony McCormick. Trends analyst, and owner of Irish Big Race Trends. (Strong) opinions, and also writes the popular Each Way Double Dutch thread on the Gold Forum…

@MalcolmBoyle2

He says: I wrote the first book ever written about betting on football Win At Fixed Odds Football Betting back in 1993 with nine subsequent horse racing books penned.
I say: Our own placepot and stats man, Mal tweets  some interesting snippets on the racing most days.

@AntepostPunter

He says: Managing to eke out a profit in the clandestine world of UK racing. Any info provided is given in good faith but in Racing things can change at short notice.
You say: Very, very useful! Reveals declarations

@AdamWebb121

They say: Average racing fan. Work for the Press Association. One For Arthur's biggest fan. Views my own and not of my employer.
You say: People with such a passion are always worth listening to and Adam looks at things differently.

Others

@Rods_Tweet

He says: CEO of Great British Racing & British Champions Series Ltd. Husband. Dad . Seagull. Avocado farmer. Runner.
I say: Rod Street. The man behind Racing For Change and Great British Racing. Partly responsible for racing’s recent renaissance. Rod is a keen tweeter, and often shares interesting titbits from the wider world. Just fancy that!

@GeorgePrimarolo

He says: Law and horse racing.
I say:  Tongue in cheek generally, and from good Italian stock (or, at least, Italian stock!)

@JamesAKnight

He says: Racing. Betting. Other.
I say: Coral head of racing trading. Frequent tweeter, often deliberately antagonistic. Usually gets a bite from somewhere...

 

 ********

As I said, I'm keen for more of you to dip your toe into the warm Mediterranean waters of Twitter, and savour sound bites in easily digestible format from your favourite racing bods, and perhaps even me! 😉

To sign up for a Twitter account, just go to https://twitter.com/ and follow the (very simple) prompts.

As and when you're a registered user, you can follow my suggestions above - should you so wish - by clicking their @name, and then clicking the 'Follow' button that appears in the newly opened window. Simples, as a certain fictional meekat of dubious origins might say.

And if you're already connected on there, do leave a comment/suggestion below as to who you reckon is well worthy of a 'follow'.

Thanks!

Matt

Tony Keenan: The Bookmakers’ Perspective

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The bookmaker-punter divide is one where the boundaries are permeable with many people playing both sides, writes Tony Keenan. Ian Marmion is one such example: Ian has worked with a number of the big betting companies as well as punting professionally for a time; and, along with some friends, he has a few horses in training, not least Ch’Tibello with Dan Skelton.

Much of what I write for Geegeez tends to be punter-centric but it is worth remembering that there are multiple sides to any story. With that in mind, Ian was kind enough to give me his thoughts on the state of the betting industry at present as well as on how racing interacts with it.

 

Let’s start with some biography Ian, what’s your background and how long have you been working in the betting industry?

I suppose I was always a keen punter and got into the industry with various jobs like a cashier and betting shop manager.  I then worked in the raceroom at Paddy Power before moving to Victor Chandler where I progressed through the company, coming back to start operations in Ireland in 2005 when we go some pitches and shops. I thought I was home for good but one day I was over in Gibraltar for a meeting and having been very critical of the firm’s trading policy (which I felt was antiquated) I was asked by Victor to sort it out!

In truth, I was a mug punter up to that point, though I was strong numerically and had a good eye for product. We had a lot of high-stakers and lead accounts, which is very different to how that firm operates now, and I was able to educate myself on how to win. We were aggressive punters in the market and I was following others’ opinions but learning plenty. Over a period of years it got to a point where I was making more money punting than working and having had a tempestuous relationship with Victor I thought I was good enough to give it a go full-time.

I reckoned my bets were coming from about 30% what I got in Chandler’s, 40% other contacts I had made along the way and 30% my own opinion though I probably got that pie wrong! It started badly as I had two consecutive losing months for the first time in a long while but it soon turned around and I was at it full-time for five years.

My skill was getting money on, that’s what I was good at. I was doing business for warm punters with about 10 lads in shops. They’d be ready to go at 10 in the morning, know what shops to do at 10.15, get the message what to bet at 10.30 and have everything done by 11. Getting on is as important a skill as picking winners.

 

You’ve since come back into the betting industry proper; what was your reasoning for stepping back from the punting and joining BetStars as trading director with their sportsbook?

There were a few different reasons. With the punting, I was getting a bit sick of it and some of the developments in the game weren’t helping. It was certainly harder to get on with overnight pricing killing a lot of what we did in the shops in the morning, and the machine [Betfair] was definitely getting more of a grip on Irish racing. Where once we were getting twelve monkeys [£500 at 12/1] at half-ten in the morning, now it was three hundred at 7s. With BetStars, PokerStars were launching a sportsbook and it was going to be based in Dublin; I thought if I turn this down I’m never going back to Ireland and I’m here three years in which time the punting has taken a back-seat.

 

The elephant in the room is account restrictions so we may as well deal with that. When I talk to punters, rightly or wrongly, it’s the only issue they want to discuss. Now maybe there’s some selection bias there as I talk a bit to people who have an idea what they’re doing but restrictions are happening. What are your thoughts on them, both from a work perspective and personally?

With BetStars, we are a new sportsbook so we’re trying to attract customers and inevitably you attract sharp business first. Our horse racing runs profit to 4% return after Best Odds Guaranteed, 7% before BOG which is reasonable and we’ve restricted about 6% of customers this year. Recreational customers have a typical profile. They bet in or around your average stake, they play a good mix of singles and multiples, they tend to do multiples early and singles off the show and they tend to play on higher grade racing. As a new entrant we get a lot of customers that fall outside this typical profile. We don’t have many punters who bet in or around our average stake of €xx [redacted] who we have to restrict. Typically there will be a blatant reason to restrict them and more often than not that blatant reason will be they are arbers.

I’ve been both sides of the fences and for many reasons – cost and technology for example – undoubtedly the quality of trader is not what it once was. There is a part of it where ‘arbers’ is just an excuse where a trader doesn’t want to make a difficult decision, playing lads that aren’t inside the model. That said, I don’t think this is a problem for the tenner and score punter in shops and even online but outside of that, there’s a nervousness and good punters do get caught up due to lack of skills in trading rooms. However, bookmakers have no obligation to feed money to pros or non-recreationals, arbers or bonus abusers.

When I’m looking at it, there are a couple of reasons I wanted to bet a punter. Firstly, when I had a fair chance of beating him and secondly if he told me something I didn’t know myself and that includes bets to a reasonable size.  I didn’t want followers or people just following the machine; you’re not going to beat them and they’re not offering you anything. You can have some winning accounts but you don’t need to pay everyone for the mark.

As for the punting side, a friend says to me that people who can’t get on don’t work hard enough. If you’re that serious and hard-working about it, you’ll get around it. There aren’t as many recreationals as we know it left and, while everybody always criticises bookmakers in saying that they won’t lay without looking at the machine, nobody ever says that the same is true for punters who won’t strike a bet if it is bigger on the machine. We’ve reached a point where nearly every single bet we strike is borderline with the machine price, which is basically borderline zero margin price.

 

Let’s go into a little bit more detail on some of these things. Line tracking seems to be the new term for arbing and people at it are copping plenty of flak. Is there much of this going on and can it be done with computer programs?

Punters can do this robotically with programs like OddsMonkey which flag up arbs and automatically places the bets for you. [I ask at this point doesn’t this business stand out a mile.] The biggest industry that has grown up around it is the show arbers, playing off show not earlies. There’s a significant time lag on show and machine prices, where you might have someone backing a horse at 5/2 that is 3.4 on the machine and that business can look square.

I actually think it’s impossible to lose betting show arbs on the front two or three in market with best odds guaranteed as the bookies are betting overbroke. And that’s a scourge for the ordinary punter that people don’t really think about. Recreational punters have to lose to enable some of that money to be distributed to the winners.

 

Some people have suggested that a minimum bet or lay-to-lose guarantee could be a way to go. How would the maths of that stack up?

We have to ask ourselves if can we sustain a minimum bet guarantee without altering the experience of the ordinary punter and I don’t think we can. If minimum bet guarantees came in then best odds guaranteed would have to go and margins would have to increase. Ordinary punters have never had it so good and the fact is that most punters never reach a limit. Increasing margins might well satisfy people who aren’t the typical punter but you would have to remove concessions too. Maybe those who are better than the market would be better off but the ordinary punter won’t be.

 

You’ve mentioned overnight prices earlier. What are your thoughts on them?

They’re the single biggest tool in the bookmakers’ armoury at present as they’re getting to 10am when they typically increase limits and open shops and have prices right for two-eighths of nothing. No one is getting on to any size bar a few VIPs who are big long-term losers and in effect they adjust after every bet and keep adjusting until they get it right. The firms don’t win on overnights and even pre-10am bets and are actually happy to lose as when the limits are upped they are more confident about their prices. Remember, the vast majority still play on the show with the breakdown being roughly 70% show, 30% earlies.

 

On the subject of punters beating you are there any cardinal sins that they can avoid or that make them stand out? And if you don’t like their business, do you think there would be any point in having a yellow card-type system where they are warned about how they are operating?

Customers who consistently beat the Betfair SP are impossible to beat long-term. They are buying something for a dollar and selling it for a dollar ten. Followers who are price sensitive and just follow warm money either because it drops under on the machine or because they work in a trading room offer no long term value. Customers who abuse antiquated systems like traditional each way terms or Rule 4 are no good to you either.  On the subject of bad each-way, a lot of that is a problem with the system and the rule 4 model is broken too, completely out of date. If I had my way, I’d get rid of each-way terms and have separate win and place books. There would be a correlation between the win book and the place book but there would also be changes depending on the make-up of the race. The each-way system is too entrenched though and another thing we’d be better with is decimal pricing as 6/4 to 13/8 is too big of jump, what about 2.55 or 2.6?

I don’t mind anyone having the conversation about how they are betting. We don’t do this well as an industry and this is where the skill deficit is coming into play. You should be good enough as a trader to look at an overall basket of goods to see he’s getting the better of me overnight but not overall. So I can’t let him win the lot overnight but you can have more on the show. The problem is when you get restricted with most of the firms, BetStars included, it doesn’t matter what you want to bet on, whether it is the Gold Cup or a seller at Lingfield, which makes no sense.

Technology has contributed to this in a big way. More and more firms don’t have a call centre and make hard and fast rules about limits to be applied online. A few have an over-ask tool that allows you to request bigger bets but it’s generally not afforded to non-recreationals.

 

In the past year or so, regulation has become a much bigger deal in the UK. How do you think the industry is responding to this?

Responsible gambling has become a massive part of our industry though I do think it’s important to say that being a high staker and being a problem gambler are different things. For some people, big stakes are normal. There are plenty of important developments going on in UK at the moment including staking limits on FOBTs, the Gambling Commission and firms being held accountable for responsible gaming.

As an industry we’ve been let get away with too much for too long. I had a boss who used to say ‘never feel sorry for them [punters]’ but in this day and age that’s not acceptable.  Gambling is 24/7, and punters have access to so many opportunities to feed an addiction. I know it sounds hypocritical of me to say I’m anti-FOBTs when I get my living from people losing money but I’m not a fan of them. They prey on a demographic that shouldn’t be preyed on. There’s a counter-argument that they can go online and do it just as easily but I’m not so sure they can as you need debit cards and access to funds in a bank account.

I remember reading an article about FOBTs where a manager in a William Hill shop said ‘I’ve never seen anyone play them happily’ and that about sums it up for me. Obviously they are an incredible money-making machine with over half of Ladbrokes’ profit from them and you saw the impact of reducing the stake limit had for the GVC bid for Ladbrokes Coral. Personally, I’d much prefer to see 1,000 punters lose a tenner than one lad lose €10,000 as it’s just more sustainable. Stuart Kenny [one of the founders of Paddy Power] was an absolute visionary in this regard as he wanted the punter to go away thinking he got value for his few quid, it was something he intrinsically believed and it was him who came up with money back specials and such like.

 

Racing remains a big part of your life, Ian, and you have a number of horses in training, not least Ch’Tibello with Dan Skelton. I always thought it was a little unusual that you opted to have your horses trained in the UK rather than at home in Ireland, allowing that Skelton is excellent. What are the reasons for that?

There are two reasons. When we got into them, we were abroad and it didn’t matter while latterly, it’s too hard to win a race over here. Dan has trained about 105 winners this season for 40 different owners but with the stranglehold the pair of boys [Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott] have over here, Ch’Tibello would struggle in graded races so there is a better chance of him winning one in the UK.

The punting opportunities are better too. It’s impossible to get on in the mornings in Ireland but you have half a chance of getting on in the UK. We landed a small touch with one last January and got to back him at midday when he was still 25/1 which would never happen in Ireland.

I was at Fairyhouse for Bar-One day earlier this month and there was a great crowd and atmosphere but it was like Jebel Ali with the same colours going around race after race. Maybe I’m being negative but I can’t see us winning graded races over here; though it must be said that what Elliott has achieved is incredible and we all should have stood up and noticed when he won the Grand National way back.

 

What do you think racing is doing right at the moment and where do you think it could improve?

For one, we’ve so much more wrong with the game than the declaration of wind ops. I think racing and betting are one and the same and we need to look at changing the demographic of who is going racing. In Ireland, we’re not too bad at it but in the UK you have silly stuff where they won’t let you into the owners and trainers without a tie. I would abolish enclosures and some of the entrance prices in the UK are ludicrous.

From a betting point-of-view, integrity is still an issue. With Douvan and the Tingle Creek, Altior and Nicky Henderson it is more transparency than integrity. Racing is competing for the betting euro with sports that have 24/7 transparency or at least the perception of such, football being the main example. If that is their expectation then it’s important that we try to emulate that. The ordinary guy in the street thinks racing is crooked to start with, which he doesn’t think that about a football game, and racing needs to work against that notion. The younger trainers are much better at this but we need to reach a level of transparency where when an owner tells a trainer to stop a horse, the trainer tells him to eff off.

The bad racing during the week has integrity issues. Battle-hardened punters know how to factor that into equations and to use it in the decision-making process but if we’re trying to attract an ordinary guy to spend his leisure pound on us, it’s never going to happen. Maybe racing just doesn’t have a product that it can sell to a punter Monday to Friday. Football is the one that is targeting the betting pound more than any other with the good stuff spread out over the week, group races most days in racing parlance, where we’ll have dross Monday to Friday.

I don’t know if this is practical but perhaps we should have a more concentrated programme, less racing but better racing. Some of the issue is horses rated 45 on the flat that are simply useless; what are they even running for, they shouldn’t be able to get into races. If they were not able to get into them, they’d as soon not be bred and the industry would be better off in the long-term after a period of pain.

 

I know you’re not a fan of the bookmaking firms using trainers and jockeys to provide content through blogs, and your horses with Dan Skelton don’t run under the Ladbrokes sponsorship that his yard has. What’s your thinking here?

I don’t think from a transparency point of view that bookies should be sponsoring trainers and jockeys. For the ordinary guy in the street who don’t forget thinks racing is bent anyway, this looks terrible; how many guys told you Ruby jumped off Annie Power? Optics is the big word at the minute. Nor do I buy the content argument that they are providing material that engages people in racing; if that were so, why aren’t they doing it for Geegeez or the Sporting Life or for free? It’s for money.

The firms are doing this for marketing first and foremost, you are associating your brand with something premium which is always a plus. Bwin did this well with Juventus and Real Madrid a while back and people believe in you instantly when you associate your brand with another premium brand. I don’t take any of them seriously as I don’t believe you’re ever being told anything significant.

 

Let’s wrap up with a final question: Where do you see the industry going in the future? I listened to a podcast recently with Marco Blume of Pinnacle where he said e-sports were their sixth biggest market which I couldn’t believe. Is this the case and what else is coming down the line?

I think the e-sports stuff is a lot of spin. I don’t believe in them as a fixed-odds betting product, it’s like badminton in terms of turnover. Pinnacle might be trying to popularise it, Marco Blume has a background in that area, and to be fair the age of your typical e-sports punter is lower than that of football, 27 and 40 in our case. It makes sense trying to make a go of it in that regard but I don’t buy it. Mind you I didn’t think cash-out would work so I’ve not exactly got a strong pedigree in this area!

There are massive changes coming in football around how markets are done and presented. The whole Request-A-Bet stuff will be automated and we need to remember that football betting looks the way it does because that’s how a football coupon looked in a shop 40 years ago. We still tell punters what they want to bet on but in 6 months’ time punters will tell you what they want to bet on. They will be able to drag in what they like to bet on. The maths isn’t the most difficult aspect of this, it’s the tech that is the hard part with issues of how you present it and do it quickly.

We are all trying to convert betting into gaming where the punter can circulate his money, bet on next corner, throw-in or goal. Nobody has got this right yet but it’s coming.  The thing is when a punter has a bet on the win-draw-win in football, he is dead for 2 hours. I’m not sure how this would work with racing, perhaps with punters who miss the off or are waiting for a bet to settle or have had a faller in a race and want plough back in again. This appeals to the young demographic who want things quickly. We are a world that doesn’t read anything anymore and is so used to 140 characters, and punters are naturally the same.

The views expressed above are the personal opinions of Ian Marmion and not necessarily representative of The Stars Group.

Tony Keenan (twitter: @racingtrends) was talking to Ian Marmion (twitter: @marmobet), sports book trading director for BetStars

New to Gold: Report Angles

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Today, I'm pleased to introduce you to the latest Geegeez Gold feature, Report Angles.

As part of our commitment to extend greater flexibility and configurability to Gold users - in plain English, to let you do more of what you want to do! - we've created an aggregator for all reports. You can set it up as you wish, or not at all if that's your wish.

More details are in this video, and in the article beneath.

N.B. All angles are turned OFF by default. Read/watch on to discover how to turn them ON.


Report Angles: Overview

 

Report Angles highlight content from Gold’s existing set of reports against today’s runners as displayed on the racecards.

That is, for each report, there are now – as of December 2017 – a group of pre-set parameters which, when matched, will be flagged against a runner on the racecard.

Using the example from above, the Trainer Statistics report might have the following pre-set parameters for its Type 1 (i.e. 14 Day Form) sub-report:

  • 10+ runs
  • 30%+ wins
  • A/E 1.25+

Where a runner satisfies those criteria, it is highlighted on the racecard as such. There will be pre-sets for every report sub-type, e.g. Trainer Stats report will have four pre-sets, one each for 14 Day, 30 Day, Course 1 Year, and Course 5 Year.

Users will be able to select any or all of the pre-sets to be displayed on their racecard views. They will also be able to edit or restore to default the pre-sets. However, a user may only have one custom view of each report sub-type.

Report Angles are automatically built into the ‘My Report Angles Settings’ page. Users have the ability to activate, deactivate, amend or restore to default each Report Angle. They cannot create new Report Angles, however.

 

Report Angles: My Settings

Users can select, de-select, amend and/or reset the Report Angles configuration on the My Report Angles Settings page. However, users cannot create or delete Report Angles, though they can disable/enable them.

The page is found at https://www.geegeez.co.uk/reports/my-report-angles-settings/ and looks like this:

The Report Angles Settings page displays the report titles (i.e. TJ Combo, etc) on the left-hand side, with settings displayed for the selected report sub-types (e.g. 14 Day, 30 Day, Course 365 Day, Course 5 Year).

For each report/type combination, there are editable parameters as per that report’s individual report page. For example, below are the editable parameters for four sub-types of TJ Combo report:

N.B. Different reports have different parameters – users are advised to check each one individually, at least the first time they configure the settings.

At the bottom of the screen are three blue bars. The first, “Save Settings”, enables a user to save any changes made within the selected report.

The second, “Reset Defaults”, reverts the selected report to the ‘factory settings’. The third, “Reset All Defaults”, reverts all reports and sub-types back to their default settings.

N.B. These defaults are NOT optimal. Rather, they are presented as a balance between limited data and too much data appearing in the report. Users are encouraged to experiment with the settings to find the appropriate volume of report output.

Each report sub-type has a tick box next to its name. Selecting/de-selecting the ticks will include/exclude a sub-type from the report and racecard view.

Clicking the on/off buttons top RIGHT will select/de-select all tick boxes for a report.

Clicking the on/off buttons top LEFT will select/de-select all tick boxes for ALL reports.

 

Report Angles: The Report

Once a user has selected and/or activated report angles and parameters, all qualifying runners will appear on a report on the My Report Angles screen. The report looks like this:

 

Each row in the report table is clickable, and will open the race in question in a new window. All columns are sortable to enable users to configure the view to suit personal taste.

 

Report Angles: Racecard Inline

The racecard has been updated with a new ‘report’ icon, containing a numerical indication of the number of angles matched. Clicking the icon will reveal inline the qualifying Report Angles, as in the below example.

There is also a new icon with a ? in the top icon menu. Clicking this icon will open Report Angles in the card for all runners. Clicking again will close them.

 

Getting Started with Report Angles

By default, all Report Angles are switched off. To turn them all on, use the 'ALL On' button top left on the Report Angles Settings page. Alternatively, and preferably, take a few minutes to set the Angles up as you would have them.

The default settings, when all Report Angles are switched on, can be seen in the below table.

 

Report Angles are intended as an aid to successful betting; they are not to be used as an end in themselves. That is to say, Report Angles may highlight interesting elements about certain runners but, as with all other approaches, a more holistic consideration of the puzzle will always yield better results.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy this new feature as much as I have been during the testing stage.

Matt

10 Things I think about the Betting Industry

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The betting industry has been getting about as much coverage as Brexit negotiations in the past month or so and at times it seems about as complex; so if you’re expecting a unified view on the subject you are in the wrong place, writes Tony Keenan. That said, I’ve tried to read most of the coverage and have thoughts on a number of areas within the subject that might be worth mentioning so I’m going to ramble on and see what comes back from readers.

 

One: The Issue

Aside from any views I have on the content of the betting industry coverage in recent weeks, it is a good thing that the area is being addressed at all. In this period, there has been discussion on the AtTheRaces Sunday Forum and with Bruce Millington on Racing UK’s Luck on Sunday along with articles on account restrictions, the work of the UK Gambling Commission, the David Evans/Ladbrokes case and so on.

This cannot be a bad thing as there are lots of punters, winning and losing, who have issues with how the industry is being run. It is difficult to make any progress without discussion and hopefully this media engagement with the industry will continue.

 

Two: Who cares about restrictions?

There is a belief out there, perhaps propagated by bookmakers, that few people have any interest in the workings of the betting industry, particularly with regard to restrictions; we are often told that the vast majority of punters get their bets out without issue and it is only a few vocal customers who have been restricted who care about the issue. I could not disagree more with this.

Maybe it’s naïve of me to think so but I’ve always believed that bookmakers, to some degree at least, are in the business of selling hope, whether it is the hope of having one’s opinion validated or the hope of winning money. Even the most unprofitable punter hopes that one day he will win and the thought that this may be impossible due to restrictions is not an appealing one.

Furthermore, stories of trading practices that may be less than ethical or at the very least skirt into grey areas are interesting for the wider, non-betting public to read about. Bookmakers and their various hues of blue, red and green are ubiquitous on our high streets with betting becoming big business and now more socially acceptable than ever; the demographic of your local betting shop has likely become more diverse in the last few years. When I speak to non-betting people about the idea of restrictions, they are invariably fascinated and surprised by the practice and to say that this is a non-story is a gross misrepresentation of the reality.

 

Three: Insiders

I have never worked inside the betting industry with the closest I came to getting a job in one of the companies when I got sacked from a cashier’s job with Sean Graham before I even started; there was confusion over the date of first day rather than anything more sinister! Thus everything I write here lacks insider knowledge and is inevitably biased towards the punter. The one thing I find irritating however is when punters suggest a change in the industry only to be told by those working inside it that their ideas could never work.

Perhaps they are correct but many of these industry insiders are less willing to put forward ideas that might help improve their product and can become quite uppity when challenged on this; it’s almost the ‘how many races have you traded’ argument! On a related point, one of the most interesting things to emerge from Bruce Millington’s appearance on Luck On Sunday was his comment – and I paraphrase – that the betting industry is not set up to write monthly cheques to former employees of the bookmaking firms. I sometimes think that these sorts of punters might be about the most dangerous for the bookies in the modern betting landscape; they know the systems and models used but more importantly they know their weaknesses and are really playing anything but a fair game with the layers.

 

Four: Winning recreational punters

Another thing that piqued my attention in the Millington interview was his comment about the ‘clued-in, recreational, price-sensitive punter’ who should be permitted to win somewhere between two and five grand in a year. I realise Millington was on the spot and likely pulling figures out of thin air but perhaps he has thought deeply about it and believes these are valid numbers and I certainly wouldn’t disagree.

They are far from outlandish in terms of profit and I strongly suspect that such a punter would give plenty back to racing in terms of things like subscriptions to TV channels and digital media, purchasing a Racing Post a few days a week or simply going racing. In short, they are exactly the sort of enthusiastic customers racing wants. I would however by very doubtful that such punters are avoiding restrictions and, speaking to other gamblers, it does seem to be the case anecdotally.

 

Five: Self-Regulation

Ireland and the UK are two different betting jurisdictions and have different levels of regulation, with the level of control in the latter becoming much stronger through the Gambling Commission who have made some major rulings on things like terms and conditions and treatment of customers who self-excluded. There is no such body in Ireland though HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh has recently called for something similar here.

The one thing I cannot understand, in the UK but especially in Ireland, is that the major firms have not gone down the road of some form of self-regulation and are essentially leaving themselves open to the whims of government. The current political setup may be inclined towards the industry but there are more left-leaning parties who are much less in favour of racing and by extension gambling and might indeed take great pleasure in installing draconian measures on the industry. At the moment there seems to be a free-for-all but that period without regulation could come to an end at any point and bookmakers may regret not installing some of their own measures of control when that time comes.

 

Six: Irish Racing Integrity

In a recent interview with Johnny Ward in The Times, Brian Kavanagh commented that ‘it would be fairer to all’ if bookmakers would not restrict bets on Irish racing. Personally, I would love that but it is a very strange comment and one that seems to take no cognisance of the integrity issues, real or perceived, that dog Irish racing.

There has to be some give-and-take with the HRI and the bookmakers and I suspect that our horse racing rulers have much more of a take-and-take approach to the big firms, constantly appealing for betting tax increases but offering little in return. The share of betting turnover in Ireland that is actually on Irish racing is relatively small and I would question what HRI have done to grow this market.

They have promised sectional times at all tracks in January 2017 and they remain undelivered, seemingly failing to understand that richer data gives betting markets more solidity. The new running and riding regulations (applied by the Turf Club) are often challenged and overturned, and rules around drug testing remain unsatisfactory. With Irish racing, the issue is perception and, while I think our racing is much straighter than many believe, what the wider betting public believe is important and you have to try to do something to redress the balance.

 

Seven: FOBTs

We are constantly warned not to conflate the argument about FOBTs and restrictions on horse racing which is fair enough but I do find it hard to get past a visceral, deep-seated loathing of these machines; as a horse racing punter who wants to play a gambling game of skill, I find these games of chance pointless as you simply cannot win over a period of time.

FOBTs are not in Ireland and there seems to be little appetite for them here though it is worth pointing out that society in general is becoming more automated; Paddy Power shops all over the country have recently been fitted out with more betting terminals though in this case they are used for sport only which is obviously fine.

There are those who argue that there is no reason why Irish shops should not have FOBTs, taking a libertarian view that people should be allowed to spend their money in whatever way they wish provided no one is harmed. Sometimes however people need to be protected from themselves and that is what a proper society should do, paternalistic though that may seem.

 

Eight: Too many markets

As of last Thursday at 5:16pm, there were 63,524 markets available to bet on with 888Sport across 37 sports, though admittedly almost 51,000 of those were on football; the reason I choose this company was ease of calculation as they tell you how many markets are up in each category but the number of betting opportunities is hardly unusual for the big firms.

It is not unreasonable to wonder what is the point of all these markets and who do they serve? Many of them are derivative and take little effort in terms of creation; a team total in a US sport is derived from a combination of the spread and overall total while a without the favourite market in horse racing simply comes from removing the market leader from the betting. Yet even so, one has to suspect that some of the bookmakers are on a hiding to nothing with these and they could be ripe for exploitation allowing that many will have low limits and hefty overrounds; from the point of view of sheer numbers, they have to be difficult if not impossible to monitor.

One of the best podcasts I listened to recently was an interview with Marco Blume, Director of Trading at Pinnacle Sports, on the Business of Betting where he basically said he had little or no interest in endless sub-markets, pointing out that the vast majority of their business came in the big three markets of outright, handicap and total.

The Pinnacle model has proved hard to replicate and likely is impossible in horse racing where wild price moves are common but his views on the huge number of markets seem valid. No bookmaker can reasonably trade thousands of markets and it seems they are only trying to price them up because everyone else has. Herd mentality in bookmaker business seems deep-rooted.

 

Nine: Line-tracking

Line-tracking seems to be the new buzz concern for bookies; for those that are unclear on what line-tracking is, it means taking a priced with a fixed-odds firm when the selection is trading below those odds on the exchanges. Simon Clare on the Sunday Forum implied that there is an army of these methodical line trackers out there, ‘a sea of punters’, some real and some robotic, seeking to take advantage of this approach.

That may be the case but it is easy to see how an ordinary punter could be misclassified as such; in effect, we are all line-trackers as it essentially means being price-sensitive which can hardly be seen as a sin. For instance, let’s say I fancy a horse that is running later in the afternoon and I decide to wait until later to back it, holding off until liquidity enters the exchange markets or I can get to a betting shop. That plan goes out the window when a major tipster puts up the selection, someone like Andy Holding or Gary O’Brien with a big following, and I need to make a move now to back it or else I will miss the price entirely.

The selection was my own but if I think the odds are wrong then it is more likely others will too and I am being lumped into the bracket of a line-tracker which isn’t accurate, at least in the sense that these line-trackers are systematic in their approach.

 

Ten: Patterns of Play

The whole idea of betting fair is a fascinating one and it seems the Gambling Commission are interested in this area, looking to set down some rules about what is acceptable in terms of patterns of play. We all know things that are likely to be frowned upon by bookmakers from exploiting bad each way to trying to grab stale prices. But what might be seen as ok seems more difficult to define.

Simon Clare commented on AtTheRaces that punters need to be original in terms of their selections if they want to avoid restrictions, but I have already pointed out in the line-tracking section that there are problems with this sort of view. Punters may do their best to be original – that is certainly how I tend to construct most of my bets – but the issue is that the bookmakers may simply have made a mistake in terms of pricing the race and most punters are spotting the same error and wanting to back the same horse. Rather than the bookmaker being punished for poor odds-making, too often it is the punter who bears the brunt of their error, made to pay in terms of restrictions.

- Tony Keenan

Mythbusters: Five Racing Adages Under The Microscope

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True or False? Busting racing myths

True or False? Busting racing myths

This post was originally penned in Summer 2015 and, as part of a Throwback Thursday, I revisited the adages to see if the data still held as it did two and a half years ago...

Racing, like every other sport, has its clichés. It also has its conventional wisdom.

Alas, rarely do such 'accepted as true' statements get put to the test, so how is the average punter on the street to know whether he's making a good or poor investment?

Simple. Look at the data!

In this post, I'll put five racing adages to the test, starting with that hoary old chestnut...

1. "Back the outsider of three"

The first thing to say is that for all five adages, I've used all UK races since the start of 2011. That is, nigh on four and a half years worth of data. Stage set, to business...

It's rare that you'll be in a betting shop or watching racing on the TV and not hear the phrase, "back the outsider of three", just after the market third choice has prevailed in a three horse race. But what do the numbers say?

Of the 578 three horse races in UK since 2011, 80 (13.84%) were won by the outsider. Backing them blind would have lost you money. But wait. It would have lost you £7.29 for a £1 level stake, a negative ROI of just 1.26%.

Compare that with backing favourites in all races blindly, which had a negative ROI of 6.82% and you'll see that it's actually far from the worst strategy in the world.

Indeed, let's use the -6.82% ROI as our barometer. Obviously, any number with a minus sign in front of it won't turn a profit. But if we can score better than blindly backing the favourite, then we can suggest there is at least some merit in the adage. After all, most tipsters - and most punters for that matter - can't do better than the unnamed favourite over time.

Backing the outsider of three since 2011 at Betfair SP would have returned £50.80 for a £578 stake, a positive ROI of 8.79%.

Before anyone charges off to religiously back the rag in three horse races (no, I know you wouldn't, but I'll say this anyway...), note that year to year it's a pretty volatile picture: healthy profit in 2011 (+83 at SP!) and 2013, but steady losses in the other years.

Still, there are worse ways to slowly burn through a bundle of cash than this. As we'll see...

True or False? TRUE (just about)

Late 2017 update: since 14th June 2015, when this post was first published, there have been another 323 three-horse races in Britain. 54 of them (16.72%) were won by the outsider, for a starting price profit of 25.54 units, and a BSP positive return of nigh on 50 units.

Revised True or False? STILL TRUE

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2. "Never bet odds on in novice chases"

Novice chases. The most precarious of punting propositions. Or are they? The received wisdom is that "it's a mug's game" backing horses in novice chases at shy of even money. But is that true? Again, let's look at the data.

The favourite was sent off at odds-on in 414 UK (non-handicap) novice chases since the beginning of 2011, and won 258 of them (62.47%). A pound on each would have lost you £11.76 at starting price. That's an ROI of -2.84%, which again is considerably better than backing favourites blindly.

Moreover, backing odds-on in all other race types (flat and jumps) since 2011 would have lost you 5.92% of stakes, a much less appetizing situation.

Interestingly, perhaps, exchange players seem to be on to this - or there's no latitude to beat the commission - because backing novice chasers at odds-on with Betfair would have still lost money. Just 1.4% of stakes (or £5.81 on turnover of £414), but a loss nevertheless.

Again, though, this is a lot safer premise than many people believe.

True or False? FALSE (just about)

Late 2017 update: since 14th June 2015, when this post was first published, there have been another 278 odds-on novice or beginners' chasers in non-handicaps. They won 178 of their races (64.03%) but LOST 13.94 points. At BSP, the loss was 9.13 points after commission. A loss is a loss but you'll stay in the game long term, if never getting your nose far in front, adopting this particular brain-dead approach!

Revised True or False? TRUE (just about)

*

3. "Back the longest traveller"

The longest traveller. A trainer sends a horse 300 miles up country (only to have to drive 300 miles back again afterwards) for a tin pot race. Surely it must be off for its life, no? Surely?!

Erm, actually, this is a bit of a disaster area for reckless punters. Backing the clear longest traveller in each race since 2011 would have lost 22.67% of stakes. Ouch!

This was so bad I actually tried to qualify it and improve the situation. But, even focusing only on those horses being sent 300 miles or more by their trainers returned an eye-watering, bank-crippling 14.65% loss on stakes.

If someone tells you they've got a system based on longest travellers - with the possible exception of a few ultra-shrewd trainers who wouldn't run their horses past the post office in the village unless they actually were "off for their lives" - run a mile. Or 300.

True or False? FALSE (EPIC FAIL!)

Late 2017 update: since 14th June 2015, when this post was first published, there have been another 2538 runners to have travelled 300+miles to the track (or from overseas) as the furthest traveller in their race. They've won 410 races (16.15%) and lost a whopping 247 points at SP. However... at Betfair SP, they WON 215 points. That was in part down to a couple of 110 BSP winners (66/1 and 50/1 at SP). This would be an extremely volatile 'method' for punting, and certainly not for the faint of heart or small of bankroll.

Revised True or False? FALSE (in spite of the BSP bump)

*

4. "Follow a filly in form"

It's a popular expression, though a tad harder to quantify than the first three. What constitutes being 'in form'? At its simplest, we could say that a filly (or mare, a female of the breed at least) that won last time out is 'in form'. Why not start there?

Last time out female winners follow up 17% of the time, or about one in six, for a negative ROI of 16.61%. That compares with male winners who follow up 19% of the time, for a negative ROI of 14.6%.

Or, to put it another way, it compares unfavourably both with the un-fairer sex and with the bottom line.

What about fillies/mares who won their last two races?

This time, the girls completed the hat-trick 20.19% of the time, for an ROI of -14.09% (just -4.32% at Betfair SP); while the boys notched the treble at a rate of 21.57% for an ROI of -18.15% (-10.49% at BSP).

The girls did slightly worse in strike rate terms, but a good bit better in ROI terms. That's relative to the boys, of course, because both would have cost fortunes to blindly follow.

Incidentally, that supplementary about expecting fillies to improve/blossom in the autumn is dealt a blow by the knowledge that, in strike rate terms, September was only the seventh best performing month, and October was the eighth of the twelve calendar months.

The top five months for fillies and mares to record hat-tricks, in ROI terms at least, include the sequential May to August quartet (April was sixth best, December - a notably smaller sample size - the interloper in the Spring/Summer sequence).

So here's something with which to tread very carefully:

 - Back fillies or mares on a hat-trick between May and August

That group managed 162 wins from 759 starts (21.34%) for a £1 level stakes starting price profit of £12.82 (1.69% SP)

Taking BOG early prices where you can, or backing at Betfair SP would improve the position somewhat. Indeed, BSP returns were a profit of £108.71 (14.32% ROI), which is pretty tidy.

Again, before anyone goes piling in (not that anyone would, I'm sure), keep in mind that the three years (2008-2010) immediately preceding the sample period (2011-present) were loss-making; and also that 2015 thus far has been negative equity territory.

Anyhoo, to the question: "Back a filly in form"

True or False? FALSE (in quite a big way, though the data mutton can be dressed as profit lamb, as we've seen)

Late 2017 update: since 14th June 2015, when this post was first published, there have been another 451 hat-trick-seeking ladies between May and August. 96 won (21.29%) but it has been car crash territory in terms of the bottom line, with a negative ROI at SP of 27%. Even at BSP it's -22% ROI. Ouch.

Revised True or False? FALSE (big time, no dressing up the data this time)

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5. "The bigger the field, the bigger the certainty"

Last but not least is the ultimate contrarians' maxim, "The bigger the field, the bigger the certainty". Put another way, short priced horses in big field races are a good bet. It seems quirky, but does it hold water? As ever, the truth lies not in the sound bite, but in the murky guts of a racing database.

Framing a question for a database around this one is, again, less straightforward than some which have been covered already. But it is far from impossible.

The biggest 'certainty' in any race - in general terms - must be the horse at the top of the market, i.e. the favourite. So we'll use that as a starting point for the 'certainty' element.

With regards to big fields, let us arbitrarily choose 16 runners, the point at which a handicap pays four places to each way backers. (Not that any intrepid 'big field cert' evangelists are looking to bet the place..!)

Favourites in UK races of 16 or more runners since 2011 won 19.53% of the time for a loss at SP of 13.96% of stakes. At Betfair SP, the picture is slightly less morose at 'just' -7.04%.

But perhaps when one says 'certainty' one has only the shorter priced jollies in mind. Overcoming the temptation to arbitrarily introduce a threshold, we can instead review the data as a whole. An interesting picture emerges...

The (small) group of horses sent off at odds-on were loss-making, to the tune of about 17.5% ROI. As brutal as that sounds, there were only 44 such horses in a four and a half year period; and the wider vista offers cause for optimism.

Specifically, it seems that profitability can be eked - and I do mean eked - up to a starting price of around 9/4. In ROI terms it's minimal, at 6.46% (£16.74 for level quids) on 259 bets, though some considerable way ahead of 'all favourites' in big fields.

This piqued my interest to take a look at the handicap/non-handicap split. I can report that the big field (16+ runners) handicap shorties (9/4 or less) performed better than their non-handicap counterparts, though unsurprisingly from a smallish sample of just 65 runners.

Because of the small sample size, I looked at the longer term dataset, and found that if one had...

- Bet the favourite at 9/4 or shorter in handicaps of 16+ runners

...one would have done better than acceptably well. Looking at the above rule, and using the Betfair SP data I have from 2007 to the present, this approach would have yielded a profit of £37.33 at BSP (£29.33 at SP) on 209 bets, for an ROI of 22.63%.

NB Although 9/4 is a 'convenience cut off', the approach still operates at break even up to 10/3, so I'd be happy enough with this. (You can judge for yourself whether it works for you!)

True or False? TRUE

Late 2017 update: since 14th June 2015, when this post was first published, there have been another 35 short-priced (9/4 or lower) jollies in 16+ runner handicaps. 11 won, for a loss at SP of 3.73 points, and a negligible loss at BSP. If one loosened the odds filter to 10/3 as above, the story becomes more favourable (33 from 109, +7.43 at SP, +15.27 at BSP). Whilst one could accuse the writer of contrivance here - and you'd get little in the way of a defence! - the general point that short-priced favourites in big-field handicaps are a reasonable bet is maintained

Revised True or False? TRUE (just about)

*

Summary

This little exercise, which is hardly more than a bit of fun, has at least shone a dim beam on some of the more popular adages within the racing space.

We've seen that backing the outsider of three is no worse than harmless fun, and could yield a small profit. And that betting odds on in novice chases is unlikely to be the death knell for your ledger either. Caution is advised when backing fillies in form through the Summer (and it is simply bad practice to do this generally).

More materially, perhaps, we've learnt that backing the longest traveller is the shortest of our five ways to the poor house.

And we've unearthed the rudimentary basis of a profitable approach by betting big field handicap jollies up to around 3/1.

Inevitably, not all of the five maxims lend themselves to unequivocal investigation - after all, it is to some degree their vagueness that has sustained their popular credence over the years - so I've taken license and attempted to portray a broader array of situations which could lay claim to fitting the bill. Others will doubtless interpret some of the adages another way.

Regardless of how you interpret them, the key is to test that interpretation against a data source. It is, after all, never too late to stop losing money and/or start making a few quid from your wagering antics.

Hopefully this has put into context some of the more loosely bandied phrases that are part of the furniture of British racing punditry. The next time you hear these trite bites you'll at least have a bit of data ballast on which to rely: that's almost certainly more than the speaker has!

Dual Purpose Yearling Syndicate: Last Two Shares

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A few times a year, I syndicate a horse to run in the geegeez.co.uk colours. When I do that, I first offer it to existing syndicate members and then to the wider community of geegeez readers. The last couple of syndicates have been entirely taken up by existing members so this is the first time I've offered new 'syndicateers' the chance to join us.

Now, before I go on, it is important to say that racehorses make very poor investment vehicles as a rule. They do however make for exciting days out, interesting learning experiences, and can from time to time offer the chance to dream a big dream. So, with caveat emptor in place, there are two remaining shares (and one more on hold currently) in the following syndicate. This is how I shared it with the group:

Hi all,

FOREWARNING: THIS IS A LOOOOONG EMAIL 😉

You may or may not be aware that I purchased a yearling filly in France earlier this week [note, early last week] at the Arqana sale. Accompanied by both Anthony Honeyball and Ron Huggins (owner/breeder of Jukebox Jive), we had a shortlist of horses for potential acquisition to go into training with Anthony, and this filly was top of the pile.

THE HORSE

Very happy to have secured this little corker.

She's by Soldier Of Fortune, an excellent dual purpose stallion, out of a mare called Moscow Nights. Mum has already thrown a star, in the form of Heartbreak City, a six-year-old who won the 2016 Ebor (Europe's richest handicap) and was a close up second in the Melbourne Cup a few months later. Prior to that he'd won a competitive handicap hurdle at the Galway Festival.

In other words, Heartbreak City is almost the ultimate dual purpose horse.

And here we have his half-sister to syndicate. Same mum, different dad. Soldier Of Fortune is the dad: he gets very good flat and hurdle runners. Most recently his son, Soldier In Action, won a Class 2 handicap off top weight (and a mark of 106) at Kempton earlier this week. Also in the last month, and as if to emphasise the dual purpose nature of the stallion, a horse called Early Doors won first a maiden hurdle and then a Grade 3 hurdle.

[Update: Mercenaire, the most recent Soldier Of Fortune progeny to run, bolted up by 25 lengths in a juvenile hurdle on his UK debut on Sunday].

Our girl is, according to Anthony, a lovely filly; a beautiful mover; and has travelled to her new home without incident. She's been on the walker this morning, and will be broken and ridden away in the near future.

THE SYNDICATE                              

I would like to offer you, as an existing syndicateer (!), the opportunity to get involved with this gorgeous unnamed filly. Her pedigree can be viewed here.

Settling into her new yard well. Pretty young thing, isn't she?

The syndicate will comprise of twelve equal shares, and the plan is roughly as follows:

Now: She'll be acclimatised at Potwell Farm and broken / ridden away. She'll then get a little rest most likely to think about what's happened and to grow.

Early next year: As a two-year-old, she'll start working towards some proper graft, and will train alongside AJH's other yearling project(s).

Summer/Autumn 2018: Some time next summer, probably late summer, she'll run in a 2yo maiden. Most likely, unless she's showing loads at home, this will be to gain experience. Both of last year's 2yos managed to get three runs on the flat before having their winter rest.

April/May 2019: Early in the 2019 flat season, as a 3yo, our young lady will begin her first full racing campaign. She'll compete either in a maiden or, if awarded a handicap rating already, in a handicap. From there, she'll race as often as makes sense, before...

October/November 2019: Juvenile hurdling becomes her game. Having gained experience of racing and, hopefully, a win or two on the level, she'll tackle hurdles in public for the first time. By now, with a favourable wind, we'll have had a lot of fun - and that, to this point, may just be the start of it!

The plan is based on an established blueprint which Anthony and Ron have successfully deployed with both Black Prince and, especially, Jukebox Jive. Both have already won on the flat, even though their long-term game was always expected to be over hurdles. BP ran second on hurdles debut - performing some way above his flat level - and JJ won nicely on his debut and only hurdle start.

Whether we can replicate that, and what will follow on from there, remains to be seen of course. But that's the plan.

And, additionally, because she's a well bred filly, there will be at least some residual resale value as a broodmare down the line.

 

THE COST

She's already a good size, and has plenty of filling out to do

The hammer dropped at €26,000 to which is added a 6% sales tax, making a total of €27,560. In GBP at the current rate, that's £24,650 or thereabouts. The cost of transportation hasn't been shared with me yet, but I'm given to understand it'll be around £700 (nice game to be in!). Insurance is anticipated at around £1,200 to end of next year, training to end of this year (i.e. a month and a week or thereabouts) is roughly £2,000, making an approximate start up cost of £28,500.

Startup costs, then, per 1/12th share will be £2,400. That will cover a share in the horse, sunk costs in getting her to Dorset, insurance for year 1, and training to the end of 2017.

Thereafter, it will be £165 per share per month. My massive preference is for the 2018 fees to be paid in one go but if that's not possible there is a quarterly option - see below.

In summary, then, your investment will be:

- £2,400 buy in for a 1/12th share

- £1,980 training/running fees to end 2018

Total £4,380 if sent in one go up front. Or you can split the initial buy in, payable now, from the 2018 training fees, payable in January.

 

As mentioned, if full payment to end 2018 is a stretch, the alternative is £2,400 now, then 4 x £495 payable on January 1st, April 1st, July 1st and October 1st.

I will contact syndicate members at around this time next year to arrange for the 2019 expenses to be covered.

 

THE TERMS

Usual terms will apply, in line with existing syndicate agreements you have for other horses I've syndicated - and a specific agreement for this filly will follow shortly. The syndicate will run for at least two and a half years, unless a majority decide to sell/dissolve before then. This will be covered in more detail in the agreement.

[Note, please contact me if you'd like to view a copy of one of my syndicate agreements - the actual one for this filly will be available by the end of the week and will be closely related to the one I'll share on request]

WHAT TO DO NOW

Even before 'officially' advertising this syndicate - which I'm doing to you, existing members, first - there has been strong interest. Whether that converts into buy in, I don't know, but I am expecting it to be a popular 'project'.

The nature of this particular proposition is that it is not quite so 'point and shoot' as some I've put together, and prospective members should be aware of that. The flip side is that we will have fun across the codes and, if we can match even Black Prince's exploits to date, we'd be a consistent performer - and a winner - on the flat, and an ascendant juvenile hurdler with more to come.

With that said...

If you are interested in the Soldier Of Fortune/Moscow Nights syndicate, PLEASE REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ASAP EMAIL ME AT MA**@********CO.UK ASAP.

And, naturally, if you have any questions, likewise, hit reply and ask away.

-

I have to say that, on a personal level, I've been very taken with the new girl (as you can probably see from the picture above). Anthony has done nothing to dissuade me from that impression. She's a lovely looker, and a great mover. Really looking forward to seeing what she can do in due course.

Thanks for reading this necessarily long note, and I wish you a great weekend whilst pondering the above.

Best,

Matt

p.s. this will be the last syndicate I plan to put together for the foreseeable future. We have quite a few up and running now, and each takes it toll in terms of admin time/brain ache. Whilst I love it, I do run them at cost and I have to put bread (sourdough round here!) on the table. So, anyway, last one for a while, I think...

****

Since sending that email this time last week, I've filled eight of the twelve spots, and have solid interest in two more. So I have at least two shares remaining, and possibly as many as four.

The vibes from the yard remain very positive so, for anyone with the patience (and finance) for a project like this, it could be very exciting. Drop me a line if you're interested, and/or if you have any questions.

Matt

 

 

Jump Jockeys: How Are The Mighty Fallen?

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How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

- Samuel, 1:25

Perhaps more so than the terrific performances at Cheltenham this past weekend, or the death of National Hunt benefactor Alan Potts, jump racing's headlines have been hogged in recent days not by horses or owners, nor even trainers; but, rather, by the riders.

First Paddy Brennan was sensationally 'jocked off' Cue Card, sweetheart of so many fans of the winter game, after a tumble too many; then Sam Twiston-Davies broke his elbow in a fall at Sandown before, this past Saturday, Ruby Walsh broke his leg in what was, remarkably, his third fall of the afternoon.

It is of course the very essence of the National Hunt jockeys' existence to face down danger between ten and twenty - and as many as 32 - times per race. In that context, falls are a natural by-product of race outcomes. But what is a reasonable rate for a rider to become separated from his or her equine partner?

Let the data speak.

 

Fall/Unseat Rates: The Five Year Macro Data

Below are the faller rates for the last five years in UK/Irish chases by a number of the top jockeys, one notably since retired. To be clear, this is for steeplechase falls and unseats (FU's) only, and the table is sorted by number of rides.

 

Jockey Rides FU's FU %
R Johnson 1552 88 5.67%
S Twiston-Davies 1484 93 6.27%
N Fehily 1003 59 5.88%
P Brennan 999 56 5.61%
D Russell 800 57 7.13%
B Geraghty 740 40 5.41%
AP McCoy 724 41 5.66%
R Walsh 651 53 8.14%
J Kennedy 258 24 9.30%

 

To add more global context to this subset of superstars, the average fall/unseat rate in the last 10,000 starters in UK and Irish chases has been 6.59%. Solely in Irish chases, the last 10,000 starters there fell or unseated at a rate of 7.84%, presumably because of the heavier turf on which they predominantly race (a subject for another, wetter, day). It may then be fair to say that anything lower than that is outperforming the average, and anything higher than that is under-performing against the average.

But not all chase rides are 'average'. The likes of Ruby Walsh and Jack Kennedy are more frequently engaged in the kind of skirmishes for victory which may demand firing a horse at the last, or an earlier fence, in a more aggressive fashion than, say, a rider popping round for fourth place.

If that is to mitigate, the disparities in the table cannot be so simply swept from view.

We can see i the table that, on a large number of rides, many of them with winning chances, Richard Johnson, Sam Twiston-Davies and Noel Fehily have all kept their fall/unseat rate below 6.5%. So too have Paddy Brennan, Barry Geraghty, and the now retired Tony McCoy.

But across the Irish Sea, look at Davy Russell, who leads the Irish jumps championship this term, and his hitherto closest pursuer, Ruby Walsh. Note also Jack Kennedy, number one jockey at Gordon Elliott's powerfully ascendant yard.

Russell's tumble rate of 7.13% is on the high side compared with Britain, but not wildly out of kilter with the pan-national average and in the green zone against his domestic peer group. The same cannot be said of Jack and Ruby. Although the former is young and arguably still learning his trade - arguably because he's had many more rides than plenty of jockeys five years his senior - the latter especially looks a surprisingly precarious pilot. Now, before the hate mail starts, obviously I recognise that Ruby Walsh is one of the great jockeys of our time and that this is but one barometer of a jockey's ability.

But, all the same, if I want to bet at a short price - and his rides are almost exclusively offered at prohibitive odds - I need to know that I have to factor a higher than average likelihood of my selection not passing the post in a chase with the rider on its back. With Jack Kennedy, he's almost 20% more likely to be dumped on the turf than the Irish average.

Let me be clear again: this is not about Ruby or Jack or anyone else. I'm far too selfish for that. No, this is about me as a punter knowing what I'm up against. About being forewarned and, therefore, forearmed.

 

Fall/Unseat Rates: The One Year Snapshot

Five years is a long time and it makes for some statistically significant (in the context of racing's generally small samples at least) inferences. But how do we compare jockeys with themselves? One way is to look at a snapshot - a subset - of the overall dataset. For punting purposes, the most current subset seems the most sensible. Below then are the last twelve months for the same jockey grouping, again sorted by number of rides.

 

Jockey Rides FU's FU %
R Johnson 301 20 6.64%
S Twiston-Davies 300 16 5.33%
D Russell 210 9 4.29%
N Fehily 206 12 5.83%
P Brennan 182 7 3.85%
R Walsh 124 13 10.48%
J Kennedy 123 12 9.76%
B Geraghty 105 9 8.57%
AP McCoy NA NA NA

 

Whilst even more care needs to be taken not to make bold claims on the basis of flimsy sample sizes, there remain elephants in the room.

First, let's look at Paddy Brennan, recently relieved of his supporting role atop the gorgeous Cue Card. His 3.85% fall/unseat rate in the past year is comfortably the lowest in the group and almost 1.5 times better than his five year average. Was he thus unlucky to lose such a coveted ride? That depends entirely on whether you're a macro sort of guy or you have the nuanced eye to make decisions based on the specifics of a handful of rides. I certainly don't consider myself qualified in the latter context and can see arguments for and against the rider switch.

The British Champion Jockey, Richard Johnson, has seen his tumble rate increase in the past twelve months, though possibly not materially. It has crept above the 10,000 runner average of 6.59% by a tiny margin: Johnson's renewed appetite to forage for every ride will have introduced a greater element of quantity over quality to his diet and the variance may perhaps be explained in such a way.

Noel Fehily has been remarkably consistent while Sam Twiston-Davies, who amazingly (to me at least, he seems to have been around for a long time) has only just turned 25, has retained his partnerships on a notably more frequent basis according to the most recent evidence. Tough luck then to break his elbow earlier this month; he actually rode in a subsequent race, attesting to the no-safety-net trapeze swing between heroism and stupidity that many in the weighing room unquestioningly fling themselves.

Meanwhile, Ireland's champion jockey-elect, Davy Russell, is 27 winners clear of his nearest challenger if one excludes the sidelined Walsh from calculations. Russell is approaching veteran status, though still in his late thirties, and has courted controversy this year in the manner with which he attempted to correct a recalcitrant mount. That episode deserves no more than a footnote in a piece the focus of which is elsewhere, and it will indeed be a shame if a man shunned by his major employer less than four years ago does not receive the praise he deserves if/when winning the jockeys' championship. Fair play to him.

To the elephant or, more precisely, the trio of elephants, in the room. Barry Geraghty first. He is one of the best jockeys I've seen and, in his time at Nicky Henderson's, was a man never to be dismissed. But, since taking the green and gold coin of Team JP, misfortune has followed him like a very bad smell. Since last July, he has broken both arms, in separate incidents; cracked a rib and collapsed a lung on another occasion; and recently (late August) fractured a shoulder blade. You have to be tough to be a jump jockey - far tougher than to look at numbers and write words about the subject - but my admiration starts to wane when riders persist in the face of mounting fragility.

It's no more my place to suggest to a rider about when to retire as it is for a rider to enquire on the number of winners I've ridden. So I won't. All I'll say is that I imagine the partners and families of jump jockeys rejoice the news of their loved one's cessation of getting legged up in a similar vein to that of the partners and families of professional boxers on hearing of gloves being hung for the final time. And I sincerely hope BJG has a long, uninterrupted and fruitful spell between now and whenever he pursues alternative employment.

Yet still we've to address the figureheads of Closutton and Cullentra, Ruby and Jack. In the last twelve months, Kennedy has come unstuck a dozen times from 123 chase starts. That's as near to ten per cent, and as near to 25% above the Irish average, as doesn't matter. Walsh has fallen or unseated once more than Kennedy, from one more ride, in the same period, a ratio above 10% and almost 33% greater than the norm.

It seems churlish to kick a man when he's down - Ruby faces a race against time to be back for the Cheltenham Festival and, like all fans of the sport, I hope he makes it - so I'll let those data speak for themselves. All I will add is that, to my eye - and keep in mind I've never ridden a winner - Ruby takes too many chances with fatigued animals late in races. Mounting (or, cynically, dismounting) evidence seems to support that.

The pressure in the Elliott and Mullins camps must be enormous, not just from the trainers, but from owners, other jockeys in the yard and, increasingly, the omnipresence of (social) media. Much of the latter is unworthy of attention, but when you're accustomed to being told how good you are, the sharper brickbats probably leave a weal.

 

Final Thoughts

There is an inherent selection bias in the tables above. Each of the jockeys therein has earned his place by being at the top of his peer group; such elevation comes only from taking chances when they're presented, and occasionally fashioning them when they may not absolutely be there.

As sports gigs go, riding 600kg animals over five foot fences (apologies for mixed metric-phors) around fifteen times per race on average is down there with the worst of 'em. It would never be for a wuss like me. Although not big on machismo either, I have a robust respect for these turf-eating gladiators as a collective.

But when the wallet comes out, they are individuals. And I want to know which individuals will support my bottom line, in the same way that these jocks want to know which horses will provide the winners to propel them up the championship table. It's every man (and woman) for themselves. Nobody is more or less selfish than the next, either in the punting or riding ranks; and nor should they be.

To that end, the frailties of otherwise tremendous jockeys with enormous (and, in the main, well deserved and hard earned) reputations are power to the contrarian punters' elbow.

Ruby has won aboard 30% of the chasers he's ridden in the last five years. That's open water clear of the next best (McCoy 22%, Daryl Jacob and Noel Fehily 20%, Sam T-D and Paddy B 19%, Richard Johnson 18%). But, from a punting perspective, his negative ROI of 18.86% at SP during that time is surpassed by absolutely nobody in his Premier League peer group. Some of that, of course, relates to his stable's form with chasers, most of it to the over-exposure of the Mullins/Walsh/Ricci PR machine; that's neither here nor there in terms of wagering.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, the unfashionable Paddy Brennan not only wins at a 19% clip, he's also secured a profit of almost 60 points at SP in the same time frame, regardless of the Cue Card fallout.

Backing horses is not a beauty contest, nor is it about fashion. On the contrary, the value lies wherever the spotlight doesn't. And, even in the halogen glare of the media beam, punting pearls are left for those with peripheral vision. Always be asking questions, take nothing on trust. The data is here. Use it. It rarely lies.

I genuinely hope Ruby gets back in time for the Festival, and I further hope he has a fantastic time of it. But I'll not be touching his chase mounts there, or pretty much anywhere else. That's unlikely to trouble him, of course. Devil take the hindmost!

Matt

Tony Keenan: Ten NOT To Follow

/in /by

Horses to follow lists are a staple of this time of year, much more so than at the equivalent period on the flat in March and April. Whatever it is about national hunt racing, people get enthused about the months ahead and no one can be derided for that. They can’t all deliver on their potential however and I wonder if a more useful approach might be to collate a list of horses to oppose.

The power of the negative is underrated in horse racing analysis and I’ve long found one of the best ways into a race is to find a favourite you dislike and work back from there, the theory being that if it is underpriced there will be value somewhere amongst the rest of the field. Having a few horses in mind that are overrated or at least likely not to match market expectations could be useful as we start into the winter.

One final point on this: my opinion on any of these horses could change after they have had a run or two. One can have views at this point of the season but becoming hidebound to them is a mistake and I am a firm adherent to the John Maynard Keynes approach: ‘when the facts change, I change my mind.’

 

American Tom

There is a school of thought that horses who jump to their right or left are best-suited to racing at tracks with that configuration but I am more inclined to view it as a physical problem of some sort. That seems to be the case with American Tom judging by comments from connections and his fencing was certainly erratic in his novice season. He returned at Naas on Saturday but having travelled best, hitting a low of 1.62 in-running, he found little and finished third to Ball D’Arc. Some will argue this was a creditable return for a horse off for 10 months but he was getting 9lbs from the winner who really wants further and he could be one to oppose in two-mile chases this winter. I can certainly see him being put in short for such events in Ireland which, outside of Douvan, look paper-thin as we saw in Sunday’s Fortria.

 

Bristol De Mai

Though he won well enough in the Charlie Hall earlier this month, there has to be doubts about the value of that form; Coneygree was out of the race early while Cue Card fell when going pretty well, leaving Bristol De Mai with only Blaklion to beat. Cheltenham does not seem to be his thing and furthermore there is a concern that Bristol De Mai’s best efforts seem to come at Haydock, a track that can produce freak performances. He does at least get to go back there soon for the Betfair Chase but a win in that event could be the high-point of his season rather than a signal of better to come.

 

Let’s Dance

Failure is rarely seen as a positive but when Let’s Dance went without a win in four runs in juvenile hurdles it was a blessing in disguise as it left her with a significant experience edge against the novices last season. That was a campaign where she was well-placed to win five races on the bounce and, while it could be argued that she won against the geldings in January before landing the Dawn Run, holes can be picked in those runs: the Leopardstown win came when half the field jumped poorly while she only beat Barra at Cheltenham. Augusta Kate – herself no star – beat her afterwards and she has a long way to go to compete with the best mares like Apple’s Jade and Limini.

 

Paloma Blue

For whatever reason, our culture has a tendency to get carried away with the achievements of those that die young with the assumption being that their potential was certain to be reached. That seems to be the case with Fayonagh who has already been crowned a second Dawn Run since her demise, and fans of the mare may be inclined to overrate the horses that finished behind her last season. Paloma Blue is an obvious one for this treatment having finished second to her at Punchestown, but that looked a weak race with only seven runners and the winner was a clear victor; the third also makes this list while Someday simply didn’t run to form. The value of Paloma Blue’s previous bumper win is questionable, allowing that Henry De Bromhead doesn’t really train his horses for such races, and his jumping on hurdles debut was ordinary. He will likely be able to win a maiden hurdle somewhere but graded class may prove beyond him.

 

Petit Mouchoir

Evidence suggests that horses that spend an extra season over hurdles are less likely to become top-class chasers even when they have been very good over small obstacles and in the main I’m looking to oppose these horses with ones that have improved for fences all winter. Petit Mouchoir certainly didn’t look like he had any issue with fences on his chase debut but that slight niggle persists and more than that he has had a small setback which is likely to keep him out until early 2018. That puts him on the back-foot with a view to races like the Arkle, for which he remains second-favourite, as he will give up match practice to horses that will have been running over the next couple of months.

 

Poli Roi

A £300,000 price-tag meant Poli Roi was always going to be one with a reputation and the starting prices in his four runs under rules thus far suggest he is well-regarded by someone at least. The evidence of those runs has been less compelling though; he looked quirky in winning first time before being put in his place in the Punchestown Champion Bumper, while his two hurdle runs have been marked by temperament, flashing his tail on the way to victory last time. In general, I don’t think opposing ungenuine horses is the betting angle it once was – the markets have wised up to it and trainers seem better at working around it – but there are still cases when it can create value.

 

Sub Lieutenant

It seems reasonable to ask what Sub Lieutenant is at the moment, be it two-and-a-half or three-miler. Regardless of trip, he has started 2017/18 out-of-form which isn’t encouraging given he was particularly good in the early part of the previous season; furthermore, he seems to have gone back from first to second run which is a negative for any horse. He put up some good efforts last year, notably when runner-up in the Ryanair, but a deeper dive into his form suggests he may not be up to winning another Grade 1 or 2. He is two from fourteen in such races, the first win coming in a race Milsean threw away, the second in an event confined to second-season chasers. Unfortunately for him, these are just the sorts of races he has to compete in with a mark of 157 and he could have a season of frustration ahead of him that may culminate with reverting to staying handicap chases.

 

Thistlecrack

A late starter to chasing raises alarm-bells straightaway, even for one as lightly-raced and talented as Thistlecrack, and then there is his tendon injury from last season. Thistlecrack also lost a little lustre in his Cotswold Chase defeat in January as prior to that he seemed one with unlimited potential, not a horse that could be beaten by Many Clouds, granted that one had ideal conditions. That put a lid on how far he can go and facing a host of impressive novices from last season along with the likes of Sizing John and Native River, Thistlecrack looks a weak favourite for the Gold Cup. Perhaps he will again prove the exception to the rule but I wouldn’t like to be betting on it.

 

Tombstone

Following a pair of impressive bumper wins in 2015, Tombstone hasn’t really built on his early promise and the temperament that first surfaced in the 2016 Deloitte (didn’t go through with his effort when coming to challenge Bleu Et Rouge) now seems to be a feature of his make-up. He did win a Red Mills Hurdle last season but that was against a ‘bouncy’ Jezki and he failed to back it up with short-priced defeats at Cheltenham and Fairyhouse. Chasing has gone ok for him thus far but there was again a less than strong finishing effort on debut last month before being gifted a race at Down Royal last time. Put simply, he’s a horse whose reputation outstrips his achievements and he appears less than willing to boot.

 

Total Recall

Already favourite for the old Hennessy (now Ladbrokes) at Newbury, Total Recall might be worth taking on there and not only because of Willie Mullins’s record in UK handicap chases; he is 2 from 113 in such races since 2003. Total Recall was very good in winning the Munster National but that race fell apart quite early with a number of the field failing to complete and the seemingly-back-on-track second, Alpha Des Obeaux, ran just ok next time. I am also sceptical about how much further Mullins can improve this horse; he went up 18lbs for Limerick, and Sandra Hughes, allowing that her yard was out-of-form last season, is a competent trainer, better than some who previously handled the other improvers for the move to Closutton. Perhaps Total Recall has already reached his level for his new yard.

 

As always, these are only my opinions. Feel free to agree or disagree – with your wallet or in the comments below; and if you have any ‘to not follow’ suggestions of your own, do share them below with a comment.

- TK

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