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Galileo Gold wins at Royal Ascot. Sectional times tell us how good a performance this was.
One of the more surprising stories to emerge from Irish racing in the past few weeks was a revelation from Johnny Ward of the Racing Post that SIS plan to back the establishment of sectional timing at all Irish tracks from the start of 2017, writes Tony Keenan. This news was unexpected on a number of levels, not least because Irish racing is essentially backward in nature, and whether it comes to fruition or not, be it in 2017 or beyond, remains to be seen.
But I for one would be strongly in favour of not only their use but the idea that they could be widely disseminated to the betting public and it is hoped this initiative is not a pipedream. The reasons why sectional times matter have been covered many times before, and often by bigger and better brains than mine, but even so it is worth restating their benefits here, if only to put my views on record. Much of the focus of these articles is on punting as that is the perspective I feel best qualified to represent but for this one I have tried to keep the focus away from mere gambling and look at the industry as a whole.
Reading Races Better
The central cog to the sectionals argument, the one that most the other benefits stem from, is that these times allow for much better race reading. Pace is a vital component of any race, as even the most limited club runner who has gone off too fast or finished with running to give in a 10k race can tell you, and the naked eye simply cannot capture as much about pace as a number can. From my own perspective, my understanding of a how a race has unfolded is enhanced greatly by using sectional times to such a point that I now find that my reviews of races without these times are missing something.
There are a number of punters currently either taking their own sectional times or using Timeform’s archive of the same and they have an edge; from experience I can say that sectional upgrade horses are often underbet in the market now. The public availability of these times, and the eventual understanding of what they mean, could erode this edge to a degree but punters who want it to continue as such are being selfish; a strong sport is better for everyone.
Moreover, this sort of data-rich sporting landscape is exactly what the modern fan wants, indeed expects. Analytics may have been born in America with the likes of Baseball Prospectus and Football Outsiders, but such methods are over here now in soccer (yes I do call it soccer) through people like Michael Cox of Zonal Marking; and bringing something similar to racing would surely attract more followers to this most complex of sports.
Early Talent Identification
The fact that a number of racing yards, not least Ballydoyle, already use their own sectional timing in training their horses speaks plenty about how useful they can be and it can certainly help those go-ahead stables in ascertaining what they have from an early stage. This applies on the track, too, where horses like Golden Horn have stood out from an early stage on the clock. So, while it is only one method of talent evaluation and may get horses wrong, it seems as reliable as any purely visual approach: indeed, it would be best if both methods were combined.
If we can understand a horse’s sectionals within overall times we are able to place them in a historical context and get a sense of where they might fit in terms of ability, for instance by looking at all the sectionals at a given track over a period of time. This would not only help punters but also owners, trainers and breeders. The owner might spot an undervalued horse he wishes to buy; the trainer might become better at rating his horses from an early stage and thus place them more appropriately; and the breeder can know what sires or dams might be over- or underrated.
Accurate Rating of Jockeys
One of more interesting developments in American sports analytics has been the idea of WAR or Wins Above Replacement, a number that rates how superior a player is to a limited (or replacement level) alternative and is basically one of the best ways of evaluating how good a player is. I have a dream that we will one day have a WAR statistic for jockeys that will allow us to properly discuss their respective skillsets and abilities, because so often analysis of riders now boils down to the ‘how many winners have you ridden’ argument.
Sectionals could play a part in this sort of analysis and, over the course of Royal Ascot, they were able to inform on a number of poor rides that the oft-unimpeachable Ryan Moore gave over the few days: importantly, with the substantial logic to back this up. Of course, there is more to evaluating a jockey; these figures would not be able to put a value on how good a jockey is at riding work or dealing with connections or providing feedback on a horse. But to say that such numbers are useless would be as wrong-headed as to say they are everything.
Not only would such times help us to properly rate jockeys but they might even improve race-riding as jockeys become aware of mistakes they are making. Every jockey gives bad rides as race riding is simply too dynamic for anything else, but we have far too much preciousness around criticising them at present. Arming ourselves with the facts and not personalising these critiques would go a long way to building a proper analysis – and development – framework for jockeys.
Improvements in Integrity
If sectional times allow us to rate rides better, then surely they can also be used for integrity purposes, providing the authorities with facts and data - rather than the current opinion and conjecture - to support their battle for a cleaner sport. The Turf Club have suffered some high-profile defeats in integrity case appeals this year and it is ironic that one of the central arguments that saw Barry Geraghty and Tony Martin exonerated in the Noble Emperor case came from sectional timing as Donn McClean explained how the horse was making up little to no ground on the winner late on.
It is bizarre that the defendants rather than the prosecution was using this approach and it makes sense that stewards on the track would have access to such data at the time rather than merely after the event, perhaps comparing them to historical events. Rightly or wrongly (and it’s wrongly if you ask for my view), Irish racing has a reputation for skulduggery, a sort of nod-and-wink conspiracy that we’re ok with horses being none too busy. Sectional times could certainly play their part in improving this perception and making our racing more appealing.
Opens New Data Horizons
There is a sense from some racing people that it’s cool not to be interested in sectional times, or times of any kind for that matter, and it is almost as if the ‘sectionals boys’ are being set up against the traditionalists, much like the scouts and the data nerds in ‘Moneyball.’ Even the term ‘sectional boy’ is dismissive and I find it disappointing that many in the industry, not content with adopting an ‘each to their own’ philosophy, seek to actively block developments in this area.
I am for more and more data and sectional timing is part of this; if you want to know about wind operations and weights of horses then already having gotten the sectional times can only help you get this information. Data begets data. With all this information, people can then decide what they do and don’t want to use; maybe ten-year trends are your thing: if so, good luck to you, I won’t stand in your way.
The establishment of sectional times in Irish racing would demand higher standards around going reports and measurements of race distances both of which are badly needed and could eventually lead to the sort of next level data that makes modern sports analytics so interesting. But only if we in racing allow it…
In September of last year, I published an article on iesnare - aka Reputation Manager - a piece of software that bookmakers deploy on the machines of unsuspecting visitors to their websites to collect data. They do this without permission, and with little or no reference to any such behaviour in their terms of service.
That article has been viewed over 43,000 times since, highlighting the interest in the subject. And, at the end of last week, I received an email from a fairly regular correspondent outlining his experiences. That is published in full below.
As well as his story, he urges us not to sit on our hands and tolerate this corporate machiavellianism; and he shares a specific approach we can adopt to shine a spotlight on such behaviour.
Over to B...
So... where are we with this privacy abuse?
This is no ordinary third party cookie: it is extremely intrusive software, some would say a virus that is totally unnecessary unless fraud is already suspected on a betting account.
Nevertheless, due to modern online bookmaking paranoia and their habit of assuming bettors are guilty until proven innocent; its use has become ubiquitous. This is no exaggeration, as I’ve discovered.
About me…
I’ve backed horses for over 40 years. It’s a hobby; betting mainly in ‘tenners’, but I do like a puzzle and I certainly try hard to win. As you all know, it’s very, very difficult to make any money backing horses over a period of say six months if you don’t subscribe to excellent ratings/race cards and/or have access to a ‘nod’ in the right direction now and again, so I usually lose (but not much). On-course bookmakers and my local independent bookmaker have been perfectly happy with this situation, meaning for 38+ years I was never refused a bet.
Two years ago, this forthcoming September, I opened six online accounts: My aim to take the best price offered on my selections, on a morning, when work allowed. I use Peter May’s NH speed ratings (which are published on Geegeez from September to April, the main season).
September was a good month. By mid-October I only had two accounts left that were unrestricted and still open. I’d won about £700 spread between six companies. For a supposedly fairly bright and informed bloke I had no concept that this would happen. Even worse, I was made to feel like a criminal; the last straw being a demand for a ‘selfie’ stood next to my UK passport to ‘prove’ my identity.
I began to read the betting forums and soon realised that I was not alone. More worrying, I began to gain an insight into the lengths online bookmakers were going to profile their customers. I own an online education company, so I asked a couple of my IT guys to take a closer look at the methods being employed. What they found cannot be explained by any better word than ‘spying’. After re-reading the UK and EU regulations covering online privacy I believed that some of the methods employed were illegal. I simply could not believe that regulators were allowing it to go on.
Anyway, to cut a very long story short; I’ve had many disappointments and I soon realised that the regulatory and arbitration services for gambling (UK Gambling Commission) had no interest whatsoever in customer ‘spying’. In fact, I got the feeling that I was a bit of an irritant, maybe even raising things that would be better ‘left in the dark’, so I decided to approach other relevant national regulators.
It took eight months and a lot of hours gathering and providing evidence, but I’ve now been proven right as the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has recently found against a bookmaker and for me in a case of illegal use of ‘iesnare’ (Reputation Manager).
It is a landmark decision and one that bettors should be aware of / take advantage of. Who the bookmaker was is irrelevant, because all bookmakers who choose to use ‘iesnare’ do so in the same way; and, in some cases, what they are doing is even worse.
Crucially all are breaking the Data Protection Act (1998) based on this ruling.
It is not for me to comment on whether merely providing advice to an offender on how to improve is a valid sanction when a major company is breaking the Data Protection Act.
How You Can Help…
Any online bettor (i.e. you) can help by complaining to the ICO about a bookmaker who uses ‘iesnare’: The ICO has said they will take further action if this happens.
So, if you want to rid the UK and the European Union of this unacceptable privacy intrusion their telephone number is 0303 123 1113: Get ringing, after obtaining and copying some correspondence with your chosen bookmaker (see later list of names).
This latter aspect is important; because it is likely the ICO helpline will ask if you have done it before contacting them. The simplest way to get this information is using the bookmaker’s ‘live chat’ feature.
State that you are aware that the company you are on ‘live chat’ with uses ‘iesnare’; that you have found it on your e-device and that you would like to know the information the company is holding about you and your equipment.[It is unpredictable what response you’ll get, but you can be pretty certain the information won’t be forthcoming at this point. In fact, it is more than likely that the customer service advisor will claim to know nothing about what you are referring to].
2. End the ‘live chat’ by saying that unless they provide the information by email within 24 hours you will be contacting the ICO.
[You may get the information within 24 hours, but this is unlikely, either way you can now ring the ICO saying the information has not been provided or that it has and you are appalled that this amount of detail has been stolen without your permission].
You will need to mention the bookmaker with whom you have an issue when you ring the ICO. Unless you know how to block ‘iesnare’ (see this article) you can be 99% certain that if you have accessed the website of any of the following companies as a customer and placed a bet via your PC, laptop or tablet, that device will have been ‘tagged’:
Betdaq, Betfair, Betfred, Boylesports, Coral, RaceBets, SkyBet, William Hill. This list is not at all inclusive, but it gives plenty to go at.
To be clear, ‘iesnare’ is NOT illegal (I believe it should be and probably will be soon).
Rather, this case was won because the bookmaker did not make it clear to the customer that they were using it and what it actually does, i.e. steal the identity of your e-device and store the extensive information about that device in a database that can be accessed by any/all corporate subscribers, e.g. other bookmakers, etc. To my knowledge no bookmaker tells their customers about their use of the product, so as already mentioned all bookmakers are potentially guilty under this ruling.
When you ring the ICO, you simply need to say that you have found ‘iesnare’ on your e-device and you have been made aware it is used to steal the identity of e-devices. Importantly, say that you were not told clearly it would be downloaded on to your e-device and that you are shocked/appalled that the identity of your e-device has been stolen, without your knowledge or consent, and when you have done nothing wrong. Mention that you know about the controversy surrounding this product and ask for your complaint to be put on a list for general consideration by the ICO investigative team.
Please do not take the easy option and do nothing.
Maybe the next two paragraphs will motivate you, because it outlines what has been stolen from you, without your knowledge. Nobody, including the ICO truly knows what happens to this stolen information and what bookmakers (and other even less scrupulous companies) do with it in combination with everything else they collect about individuals. All that is certain is that the information appears to be available to all subscribers to the database.
In my opinion, it is semantics whether this amounts to personal data sharing or not, but presently the ruling is that it is on the right side of the law. However, the process of collecting it is not…
What is collected?
Screen resolution, Device Type e.g. PC, MAC, etc., Operating System e.g. Windows, OS X, Linux, etc., Device Time Zone, JavaScript on/off, Flash on/off, Flash installed?, Flash Version, Flash storage enabled/disabled, Browser Cookies enabled/disabled, Browser Type, Browser Version, Browser character set, Browser Menu Language, Browser Configured Language, IP Address, IP Geolocation: City, IP Geolocation Country Code, IP Geolocation Proxy Flag, IP Geolocation Country Name, IP Geolocation State/Region, IP Geolocation Time Zone, Internet Service Provider (ISP), ISP Organization; Fully-qualified domain name, CPU Count, CPU Speed, Operating System Version, System Model, Component Serial Numbers, MAC Address, Device Name (MD5 Hash), Device Identifier, Device Locale, Device System Version, OS Build Number, Kernel Version, Kernel Build Number, Flash System Capabilities.
The best way to think about this, if you are not an ‘IT geek’ is:
Imagine being at the police station and suspected of a crime. The police would take your fingerprints after asking you; 'iesnare' does this to your tablet, laptop or PC, but you have not committed, nor are you suspected of, any crime at this time. It assumes you may be, so enters your equipment into a database where subscribing companies can enter other information about your machine, e.g. machine suspected of fraud.
The difference between the police station and ‘iesnare’ is that it is impossible to find out what is logged in the database, a list of exactly which companies share the database information, and that the information is stored permanently with no personal rights to have it removed.
Many tracking cookies are used by bookmakers, some of which have a lifespan until 2038 (!). Companies claim they cannot identify customers’ specific internet activity outside of websites within their corporate group, but they can see it through trackers like Google Analytics; however this data is pooled, i.e. not identifiable to an individual.
We have to assume this is true, because if companies did otherwise, it would be illegal.
Nevertheless, it is possible to buy software that takes Google Analytics’ pooled data and following clever programming will identify an individual’s specific internet activity. It is not for us to guess whether this has happened or not, or to know what the ‘iesnare’ database contains exactly: that is the job of the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and similar regulators throughout the world.
You don’t have to be a detective to work out that unless a customer is suspected of fraud, what is being done is completely unnecessary; so why are most of the major bookmakers doing it? You can form your own opinions on this, because unless the ICO legally force ‘iovation’ (owners of ‘iesnare’) and bookmakers to reveal exactly what is stored in totality and analysed we are never going to know.
The ‘big finish’ is an insight into the secret world of big data collection. Some companies on the list outlined above are not only stealing the identity of the e-devices of their customers, they are doing it to anyone in the world who simply visits their website home page with no privacy or cookie warnings. A friend and I are in possession of a letter from the legal department of one of the largest bookmakers in the world admitting fault and stating that they would ensure their processes were updated following their ‘mistake’ being pointed out to them. Ten weeks later they have done nothing, meaning they are still stealing information on a massive scale, i.e. from every website visitor who does not know how to block ‘iesnare’. The job required to update their processes would take a good website programmer about 15 minutes.
In the near future there will be a series of short videos available at www.justiceforpunters.org informing bettors how to search for ‘iesnare’ downloads (my IT advisors actually regard it as a virus), how to ‘cure infections’, how to stop re-infection and how to stop other nasty intrusions into your online privacy. All this used to be quite difficult, but not anymore; a bit of patience and perhaps a little help from someone tech-savvy is all that is required.
If you do feel aggrieved by this unthinking and potentially damaging corporate behaviour, PLEASE DONOT FORGET TO RING THE ICO.
Don’t forget that other online bookmakers are also ‘spying’ on you. If a company does not use ‘iesnare’, it doesn’t mean that they are not using another type of ‘fingerprinting’ software or other intrusive type of ‘cookie’. The word ‘cookie’ and a phrase like ‘3rd party cookie’ covers a whole range of products - most perfectly innocent but some sadly not - so always make sure your e-device is as secure as possible whether on a betting website or anywhere else online for that matter.
I'm not really sure why I started trying to assign a score to jockeyship. The notion hatched on the rattler to Salisbury last week, where I was going to meet David Probert, geegeez.co.uk's sponsored jockey. I guess, then, that is why...
My apprehension was - and remains - that jockey performance is so dependent on two other major actors, the horse and the trainer, that it is very difficult trying to pare the incidental from the coincidental.
What to measure?
The first question to answer then is 'what to measure?'
Number of wins or places is too simplistic. So is percentage of wins or places. Profit and loss is no more than a basic indicator, which can be heavily skewed by a single big-priced winner.
No, none of these will add much value, if indeed any value can be added from such figures.
Better barometers are percentage of horses beaten and / or performance against market rank.
But perhaps better than all of those is performance against market expectation. For example, even money shots win roughly 45% of the time. Thus any jockey winning on more than 45% of even money shots can be said to be performing above expectation (assuming the sample is of a reasonable size).
There is an inherent problem in that last sentence, one of sample size. Carving all results up into constituent starting prices, such that 10/11 is a different group from even money which in turn is a different group from 11/10 will do little towards achieving remotely representative sample sizes.
Instead, it makes sense to bracket odds together into groups. This will necessarily be arbitrary, but hopefully you'll see the general logic of the groupings.
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Parameters
I focused on UK flat racing during the 2014 and 2015 seasons, breaking the runners up into the above odds bands. For a jockey to appear in an odds group, he/she had to have ridden at least ten horses with odds in that bracket.
For each odds bracket, we can see the runs, wins, win percent, level stakes loss, places, place percent, number of races, and ROI
I've highlighted three columns - win %, place % and ROI - which will act as baselines.
So, for example, in the 4/1 to 13/2 bracket, horses at those starting prices win 14.37% of the time, place 39.56% of the time, and have a negative ROI of 14.31%.
We can now compare the performance of jockeys to these baseline data, with only those whose record betters at least one of the trio of baselines appearing in the tables.
The Shorties...
Let's first look at the shortest odds groups, comprised of odds on and even money chances. In each grouping, I've highlighted in green the columns where the jockey's performance is better than the odds bracket benchmark. For the shorties, though, there is not a great deal of data to go on...
These are generally small samples, and there is little to note with the possible exception of Paul Hanagan's excellent showing across 40+ rides.
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11/10 to 7/2
Slightly more data now, so a touch more optimism about the meaningfulness of the results.
Plenty of jockeys with a double positive for all three stats here, notably Paul Hanagan (again), Joe Fanning, Adam Kirby, Richard Kingscote, and Paul Mulrennan.
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4/1 to 10/1
Into the bigger datasets now, and this is a group where some riders will reveal themselves as potential punters' allies.
Those appearing in both lists this time are Charles Bishop, William Carson, Paddy Mathers, Frankie Dettori (again), Paul Mulrennan (again), James Doyle, Robert Winston, Ted Durcan, Paul Hanagan (again again!), Harry Bentley, and David Nolan.
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15/1 to 25/1
Now, just for fun, let's take a look at the bigger priced horses, from 15/1 (or more traditionally 16/1) to 25/1. This table is susceptible to fluke results - one big winner can skew a rider's performance - and should not be taken at face value. Still, it might throw up one or two interesting niblets.
In the context of what's gone before, it is interesting to note the presence as 'triple green' entries of Paddy Mathers, David Allan and James Doyle (all again, having featured at least in the previous section).
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All good fun, but so what?
At the end of the day, the above reveals something and nothing. It is a circuitous route to demonstrate the lies and damned lies of jockey statistics, with various riders appearing at once brilliant and moderate, depending on which table one focuses.
However, some names do crop up repeatedly. Paul Hanagan and James Doyle could lay claim to being close to the pick of their peer group, based on this means of scoring at any rate; while Frankie Dettori also comes out well. Likewise Joe Fanning and Adam Kirby are seemingly more reliable than many.
Meanwhile, if looking for jockeys on the up - or currently under-rated - these data suggest the likes of Charles Bishop, Paddy Mathers and David Allan all deserve at least a second glance when jocked up.
They are, like the vast majority of jockeys, dependent on the form of their retained stables - in these cases, those of Mick Channon, Richard Fahey and Tim Easterby respectively.
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At the end of the day, the difference between a horse winning and losing is probably not very often down to the rider, in my opinion. It should certainly be a given that the ability of the horse (duh!) and the trainer - both in conditioning and placing the horse - are of more importance.
Nevertheless, some jocks are better than others, and actual versus expected is a very good way of gauging jockey ability in the market context. In other words, whether jockeys might be profitable to keep onside (regardless of whether their performance is a function of horse and/or trainer form).
Geegeez Gold publishes jockey stats for four different periodicities:
14 Day Form
30 Day Form
Course 1 Year Form
Course 5 Year Form
For each, users can view both the Actual vs Expected (a figure greater than 1.0 implies a rider's runners are sent off at bigger odds than they should be) and Impact Value.
Impact Value attempts to state the likelihood, compared to the average, of a jockey winning. This is market agnostic (i.e. it doesn't consider the odds in its judgment).
A rider with scores greater then 1.1 for both A/E and IV on a meaningful number of rides is one to keep onside. Here's an example from the racecard, for Paul Mulrennan:
This view is available to all users of geegeez.co.uk racecards, even those not registered on the website.
For Gold users, our jockey report is a single view digest of all riders competing on a given day, and can be viewed by any of the four periodicities mentioned above.
Here's a filtered example of Monday's riders. In it, I've selected the Course 5 Year Form view, and I've added some filters (100+ runs, A/E and IV of 1.00 or greater)
I clicked on J(immy) Fortune's entry to reveal, inline, his rides today. Clicking on any of those line items will take you directly to the race in question. Of the trio, Northern Thunder was a non-runner, Great Fun was second and Irrevocable was a 10/1 third. So, no dice for Jimmy today, but he competed well, as his numbers suggested he would.
Note at the bottom of that quintet of pilots the name of David Allan, the only one with positive figures for both win and each way profit/loss. He's a name I'll be paying closer attention to, albeit towards the end of my form deliberations rather than as a starting point.
From the tables above or, better yet, from the daily jockey statistics report, you can start forming your own educated opinions on the riders worth a few extra pounds, both in terms of weight carried and stakes wagered!
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/jockey_odds_0.5orless.png160468Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-05-16 21:02:192020-04-15 22:01:04Creating Jockey Ratings: A Few Thoughts
In November 2013, I wrote the post below. It remains as pertinent today as it was then. I have, however, updated some of the information - including my own betting profit and loss - to make it current. It's a really important piece, in my opinion, and I hope you get something from it.
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I've been reading a book by a young Irish fellow called Kevin Blake. It's about betting on horses, and specifically it's about how he made over £40,000 from betting on horses this year on Irish flat racing.
The keys, you may not be surprised to learn, were discipline, selectivity, discipline, form study, discipline, specialization, and discipline.
The book, "It Can Be Done", is a good read and it's full of strong insights.
But it might be a bit lacking in fun.
Most pro backers are serious types who spend much of their time studying the form book and video replays to eke out their profit. In fairness to Kevin, he doesn't fit that archetype at all.
If that sounds a bit dull, then I have some good news. The book was a catalyst for me taking an early look at my own betting profit and loss for the year (I normally do this at calendar year end), and the results were as pleasant as I expected.
In a nutshell, I'm showing a profit of £6,186 [2013 figure] £4,574 from my betting so far this year, 2016, on a turnover of almost exactly £20,000 [2013 figure] £6,871 (which excludes most of a thousand still sitting in accounts). Please note three things:
1. The numbers are shared as context, not (obviously) to gloat (if indeed you might consider them 'gloatworthy')
2. I love a bet, and I have lots of action bets, and I have fun with my betting.
3. I do not bet massive amounts, in terms of stake size.
I want to remind readers of my unshakeable contention that betting for fun and profit is possible, and that these two are not mutually exclusive. And I'll share some of the keys to my philosophy, such as it, in this post.
Key Principle #1: Have fun!
Firstly, I do not set profit targets. My target is to have fun. I set enjoyment targets. That doesn't mean I don't want to win. Of course I do. But if winning is at the cost of entertainment, then I might as well get a job. (You know, a proper job, not goofing about on the internet scribbling a few paragraphs about whatever tickles my fancy).
No, it starts with fun. I'll bet almost every day. Some days, especially on Mondays when the racing is generally desperate, I might have one little bet in the afternoon, or do a placepot for a bit of interest while I'm doing whatever else I'm doing.
On Saturdays, I generally don't bet much because racing outside of the festival meetings is never more competitive than it is on a Saturday.
But on Sunday, and from Tuesday to Friday, I take a keener interest in what's happening.
Key Principle #2: Get V-A-L-U-E
If you still don't 'get' this, you're completely and utterly doomed. Betting 3/1 when you could have bet 4/1 is just plain unfettered idiocy. And, forgive me, if you're still doing this, you're either very rich and are keen to become less rich; or you're a plain unfettered idiot.
Look. You cannot can't CANNOT win if you habitually take under the odds about your fancies, no matter how smart you are. (And, in case you didn't get my, ahem, inference in the above, you're not very smart if you habitually take under the odds about your fancies).
geegeez trumpets the best bookmaker offers because the very best chance you have of winning is to avail of any concession you're still qualified so to do.
Let me put it another way, and this is becoming something of a catchphrase for me. "Any fool can bet 30% winners".
Just grab a betting slip, or pull up a bookmaker site, and etch onto it/tick the box which says 'Fav'. Simple. Dull. Uninspired. And a little bit sad.
It will also ultimately cause a financial death by a thousand cuts. Slow. Insipid. Inexorable.
Actually, in Britain since the start of 2015, that number is up to 35%. So, Any fool can bet 35% winners !
Now don't get me wrong. There are plenty of occasions when a market leader can be a value bet. But simply backing the 'fav' is a mug's game. It's the ultimate mug's game. And if you do it, you're a mug. Get over it, and try something different. You might surprise yourself.
So what is value? Well, you've heard the coin toss example probably a million times. The problem is not 'what is value?', but rather 'how do I identify value?'
And here's a thing: that's an open book of a question. There is no right answer.
Many people say to quantify value, you must create your own 'tissue', or forecast betting odds. That's all well and good, but on what do you base those odds?
I've done it a few times, and it's an interesting exercise for sure. Comparing your tissue with the actual starting prices will tell you what sort of a handle you have on the market.
But generally, I determine value by feel. If that sounds cheap - perhaps even a cop out - then so be it. The fact is, I don't have all the time in the world to review the racing. I run a business akin to a (very) small iceberg, the main visible element of which is this site.
It takes a lot of maintaining. There are a lot of people involved. I have a young son and a lovely partner with whom I want to spend time. And I like beer. Not as much as I used to, but I still like it.
Time is limited for me, as it is for most people. But that doesn't mean we can't bet profitably, and enjoy the process as well. Value is key.
A Shortcut to finding value
By far the biggest blind spot in the early markets is a recency bias. Specifically, a bad run last time out can double a horse's odds. Take Bobs Worth as an example. He was 5/2 for the Gold Cup before disappointing in his prep race. He drifted out to 5/1. Had his chance halved as a result of that seasonal setback?
[From the original article]: Well, time will tell of course, but to my eye he has so many more positive runs to that one negative effort.
And, here's where the concession thing comes in, if he runs poorly again he might not even go for the Gold Cup. So, backing him at top price with a bookmaker offering non-runner free bet, feels like a smart thing to do. My entire Cheltenham ante-post portfolio so far - which is only about six or seven bets - has been struck with BetVictor, with no bet bigger than the £50 limit on that free bet concession.
Why would I bet anywhere else if they're matching the top price? To do so shows at best a lack of value acumen, and at worst, plain unfettered idiocy. 😉
The point: look beyond a bad run, especially if there's a probable reason for the bad run. Ground, trip, fitness, pace setup, missing the break, whatever. If a horse failed to get his normal luck in running - or ideal race conditions - last time, there's a good chance the market has under-estimated that horse's chance today, assuming race conditions are more in its favour this time.
[Post script: Bobs Worth didn't win the Gold Cup, but he was sent off the 6/4 favourite. 5/1? About a 6/4 shot? Any and every day, please.]
Another shortcut to finding value
Check the bookmaker concessions. Check the best odds available. And be sure to bet at the best odds available, and the best concessions. For as long as you can before they close you down.
I've got a good few winning accounts, and a few losing accounts. For whatever reason, I've only got one restricted account. [Update: I've got several more restricted accounts now]
If you don't currently have an account with the firm offering the best price, open an account with them. Here are three reasons why:
1. You'll get the best odds on your fancy today
2. They'll almost certainly give you some free bet bait to sign up (always great when you were going to sign up anyway)
3. Next time they're top price, you won't have to faff about.
Key Principle #3: "Let The Bet Make You"
There's this American bloke called Michael Pizzola. He writes about racing, and he lives in Las Vegas, and he lounges in the racebooks (betting shops) there. He writes very, very articulate and compelling books, and some of his core ideas are generic. One I really like is his strap line, "Let The Bet Make You".
What he means is simply that if you don't fancy something in a race, don't have a bet. You don't have to bet. You won't stop breathing if you don't bet. Most days, you won't even have to wait more than ten minutes for another wagering opportunity.
If you really must have a bet when you don't have an opinion, make it a very small bet. When it wins, you can buy a cup of tea and a sticky bun. When it loses, you won't kick yourself too hard.
That's the thing about discipline: it doesn't need to be a straightjacket. It's your leisure pound, and you can spend it as freely as you choose. But once it's spent, it's spent. Unless you backed a winner. Bet more when you have more of a view. But never bet too much.
Key Principle #4: Contrast is Key
Have you seen the Instant Expert reports on this site? You know, the traffic light thingies, with loads of numbers on them. The idea is that they'll help you see, at a glance, horses in a race which are suited by today's going, class, course, distance and field size, and that may be handicapped to win.
The amber and red box outlines are deliberately similar colours, in order to accentuate the dark green boxes which symbolize a positive profile.
The ideal situation is a horse which has a line of dark green in a race where very little else can offer much, if any, of that verdant hue. Next best is one with green and amber where most are red or grey. Here's an example from later today, 10th May 2016:
Double Czech looks well suited to conditions, while plenty of others may not be...
With the ground having changed to good to soft, soft in places; and with more rain forecast, it could easily be soft by race time. Double Czech should relish that, and has great course form too. He also has the best speed rating in the field, though that's irrelevant for the purposes of this example. Let's just stick to the colours. DC is green and amber all the way. His rivals are almost all red with occasional blobs of amber (and Zaria's impressive 3 from 3 course record).
Double Czech is 7/2 as I write. He might not win, but that looks too big. I've had a cheeky £20 on him with a Best Odds Guaranteed bookmaker. He might be favourite. I've backed the favourite. He looks a value bet, irrespective of the outcome.
Summary
The point of this piece was/is not to gloat about winning at betting. After all, the tools on this website make winning from betting a distinct possibility.
And anyway, let's face it, there are plenty of people out there with far more to gloat about than me (though most don't have nearly as much fun 😉 ).
Rather, what I've tried to outline is a vague blueprint for profitable and enjoyable betting.
Profitable and enjoyable betting.
Those are the cornerstones of what geegeez is about.
Finally, in case you're interested, here's the summary of my betting activities, based on a sanitized download of my bank statement (i.e. I removed the occasional non-betting bank transaction - you know, like the mortgage, and the electricity bill).
N.B. The first image is from the original post, the second from May 2016's updated variant.
Betting P&L 2013
2016: a good year so far...
There may be some who don't believe these accounts to be true, and frankly I've long since grown tired of the trolls that hide behind their screens in cyberspace, so I won't be saying anything further than that I can assure you this is the full and complete record of my wagering deposits and withdrawals...
...except, as I mentioned above, that it doesn't include things like the £1,000-odd I have in various bookie accounts, or the £500 of unsettled football bets I have to come (placed last year, so 'kind of' irrelevant in this context anyway). 😉
I use Geegeez Gold. Obviously. I built it to suit my needs as a recreational punter who likes to win.
It seems to suit the needs of these guys, too...
And these guys do as well...
I have over 100 such emails in a file, and probably twice as many again that I've not captured from email into images.
People like you are using Gold in lots of ways to have fun...
...and they're backing big-priced winners. And they're making their betting pay.
Good luck with your betting. First and foremost, enjoy it.
And if you've any tips for readers on how to improve their own bottom line or fun factor, leave a comment below, and share your investment advice!
Matt
p.s. Although I love the buzz of backing a good winner, especially one that most people could never find in a hundred years, I also enjoy converting profit into good times. That 2016 number above - £4,574 - had already booked a two week family holiday for my family to Lake Garda in the Summer (yes, I'll be trying to take a few days off!).
And last night, it booked my flights to California for the Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita later in the year. It's not 'profit': it's hotels, flights, days out, calorific dinners, extravagant bottles of wine, and so on.
Again, indulge me for the point, please. The first thing is to enjoy betting on horses. The second thing is to stop losing so much, then to stop losing. After that, it's all gravy. Or jus if that's your thing.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/buratinobeatsairforceblue.jpg320790Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-05-10 09:52:052017-06-23 15:19:55“Any fool can back 35% winners”
The horse's name, the colour of the jockey's silks, a favourite number. These are all legitimate ways to choose a horse to bet. Sadly, they are all destined to be long-term losers for the committed (i.e. should be committed) follower.
As a reader of geegeez.co.uk, you obviously already know that, and are probably adopting a more scientific approach - occasionally if not consistently - to your handicapping endeavours.
In this post, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the handicapping process: on how to find a horse to bet. The key word in the title is the smallest word in it - "an" - for there is no right or wrong way to handicap a horse race. There are better and worse ways, most being better than names, colours and lucky numbers.
Whilst on the subject of definitions, let me touch on what I'm trying to achieve with "the handicapping process". I'm not trying to find the most likely winner. I'll write that again, to be clear: I am NOT trying to find THE MOST LIKELY winner. Not necessarily, at least.
Rather, I am trying to eke out a long-term profit from backing horses whose chances are under-estimated by the market. In other words, I'm looking for VALUE. There will be no lecture, or even expansion, on the concept of value in this post - it has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere, including on this blog here (amongst other entries).
A better question than "What is value?" is always "How do I know if I've got value?". The answer to that second, more real world, question can be found on the balance of your betting ledger after a year. If it is positive, chapeau, you're on your way. If not, fear not, but pledge to work on your handicapping technique.
So, here follows an approach to the handicapping process. It is not the only approach, nor will it be the best or even necessarily an optimal one. But it has worked for me, and it may work for you too.
Why we need a handicapping process
As soon as one engages with the handicapping process, it is no longer enough to pick from the top two or three in the market based on the string of numbers to the left of a horse's name. A majority of horse racing punters have been conditioned into that by the presentation style of race cards in newspapers and on-course race day literature since forever.
It's just not that simple. It can't be, can it? Sure, if you don't keep score that will provide enough winners to convince the self-delusional that they're in front. But here is the cost of following the head of the market, in cash terms, since the start of 2015 in all UK and Irish races.
The wagering equivalent of self-harm.
Backing the top favourite in all UK and Irish races since the start of 2015 would have led to a winning bet bang on one in three wagers. And a loss of 8% will give you plenty of fun before you inevitably go skint.
As can be seen, the second and third market choices win roughly the same amount of races combined as does the favourite. But the financial cuts are deeper: self-mutilation versus punting masochism.
That is not to say that there is never value at the top of the market. On the contrary, there may often be more value there than anywhere else in the list of runners and prices. It is how we sift that decides our degree of success.
For many, bizarrely, the need for winners is predominant. A need for vindication, to be proven correct, to solve the puzzle, trumps the quest for profit. There are thousands - probably millions - of punters who are happy to "BOOM!!!!!!!" after 'nailing' a 4/6 winner (that should have been even money in any case). If you need confirmation of that, just search 'boom' on twitter any afternoon during racing.
The good news is that, for those of us who prefer to eat less often, but gorge ourselves when we do, figuratively and relatively at least, those bombastic boomers butter our bread.
A Process of Four Parts
The approach I'm about to set out consists of four elements. It starts in a place where most punters don't go. And it ends in a place where most punters - casual punters at least - start.
The four parts are thus:
- Race
- Horses
- Actors
- Market
By looking at the race conditions, its shape, and its apparent competitiveness, we can take an early view on whether it is playable or not. Although that view will sometimes be incorrect, choosing the right battles is of paramount importance.
A bookmaker has to price up - or at least lay pre-race market odds - on every race. As punters, we can be as discerning as we wish. Only if we like the look of a race do we have to step forward to look more closely at the horses.
When looking at the horses, we can split them into three main groups: OBVIOUS contenders, CONCEALED possibles, and UNLIKELY winners. Note that there is no "no hoper" group. Any horse can win any race: our objective is to measure a proposition in terms of price and prospects.
Or, to put it another way, to establish if a horse is over- or under-priced against the chance we perceive it has.
Where a race is comprised of horses with many form lines already in the book, most of the evidence can be found therein. However, in races where there is less form - maidens, novice events, and early forays into handicap or Group class - a consideration of actors should be made.
By "actors", I mean trainers especially, but also jockeys and, sometimes, owners. What do we know about their past performance that could impact on the ability of a horse to show a different level of form in today's race context? As a consequence of this analysis, our three groups - obvious, concealed, unlikely - may be re-shuffled.
Finally, a decision to bet can only ever be based on the availability of a compelling offer in terms of the horse's or horses' perceived chance(s). Thus the market is the final arbiter of whether a bet is struck or not.
We are far from the realms of rocket science at this stage, but the steps in the process - and, importantly, their sequence - are worth the time to outline. Having done that, let's step through things in a touch more detail.
Step 1: The Race
Understanding race parameters is a crucial first stage in the handicapping process. Race distance, class, the going (especially in changeable weather), are just some of the more obvious factors to bear in mind. So the first question to answer is,
"What do we KNOW about the race?"
We know the course it will be run on.
We know the race distance (give or take a few yards for unadvertised rail movements, etc)
We know the class of the race
By post time, we will know the number of runners (barring very late withdrawals).
Everything else, we perceive. We think we know. And that's fine as long as we know we don't absolutely know. If you see what I mean.
We perceive the state of the ground. The going is arguably the most important least scientifically recorded element in horse racing today. Whilst most people who bet even remotely seriously think that needs to change - as do horsemen and, well, anyone who doesn't run a racecourse - the official going remains a very unreliable piece of 'data'.
So what do we know about the going? Well, we know the weather forecast for the day, which can help us understand going changes before they're announced. And, after race one, we will know both the race time and the horses who performed well and/or poorly. From that we can make some educated guesses as to the state of the surface. In the land of the blind, and all that...
As you'll have noted, there is actually very little we can unequivocally 'know' about a race. Even things which ought to be unambiguous - the race distance, the number of runners, and, to a lesser degree, the going - may not be quite as they seem.
Happily, predicting the outcome of horse races rarely involves a microscope or an atom-splitter (whatever one of those might be). Thus, reasonable approximations normally suffice:
If there were ten runners but one was withdrawn at the start, it will likely only affect the rate of return on a successful bet (unless that horse is a key to the pace of the race - more in a mo). If the race was advertised as six furlongs, but a rail movement added ten yards, only in the closest finish will that have a material impact.
When it comes to going, we should rely on our own awareness more than the official report. If the going is reported as good, but we know it has been raining for three hours in the morning (or is forecast to do so), then we do not need to wait for the revised going statement after race one, nor for the further revision after race two. Successful handicapping is about leading not following, and about taking calculated risks others might not take.
"About what can we have a reasonable opinion in the race?"
There are three things about which I want to have a reasonable opinion if I'm betting in a race. First, competitiveness: how many horses are coming into the race with obvious credentials? Are there horses with 'back class'?
Based on the first point, do I think the favourite/head of the market is opposable?
Unrelated to points one and two, is there a distinct shape to the pace in the race?
Looking at your average race card, either in the newspaper, race programme, or online, won't reveal much. But there are some tools - and of course Geegeez Gold is one - that offer a lot of answers to these questions.
Competitiveness
The answer to the competitiveness question can be found on this site most simply in a view called Instant Expert. Here's an example of a competitive-looking race. [N.B. What looks competitive may not transpire that way; and, of course, the converse is also true].
Lots of green and amber suggests many are suited by conditions
This is a form profiling tool which aims to visualize the historical performance of all runners in a race against today's conditions. The presence of a significant amount of green and amber implies that this could be a competitive race, whereas what we may ideally be interested in are races that look uncompetitive at first glance. As I've said, they may not turn out that way, but it is a better starting point, especially when the market leader(s) is/are not ideally suited to conditions.
Here's an example of an ostensibly less competitive race:
Lots of red, not much else, implies one or two might be better suited than the rest.
In this instance, one horse - Most Honourable - looks significantly better suited to conditions than its rivals. Note that the example is based on 'win' data, where 'place' data may give a more rounded perspective.
At this stage it is important to say that I don't restrict my betting solely to uncompetitive races, for two reasons: firstly, there are plenty of other ways to whittle a field; and secondly, I'd have no problem with backing more than one horse in a race, if the prices were right.
The next opinion I want to form is whether the top of the market should sensibly be opposed. The key to value often lies in spotting a weak or false favourite. If there are solid reasons for looking beyond a 2/1 market leader, there could be plenty to go at elsewhere in the field.
We're wandering into element two, horse form, here so let's sit tight a while longer but, as you can imagine, the elements are intrinsically linked.
Race Shape
It is amazing to me that, even in 2016, most British and Irish punters don't give the shape of a race a second thought. Some will talk about draw bias in flat races, but generally without any real awareness of the difference between draw, pace and track biases.
Most however won't even go that far. Again, as a geegeez.co.uk reader, you can consider yourself ahead of many putting cash into the market, and you are hopefully already looking at the influence of pace in shaping a race. Geegeez Gold has two tools currently - soon to be improved/combined - for looking at pace and draw.
Let's take a look at some draw data for the five furlong distance around Chester's famously tight bullring circuit.
A very strong draw bias exists at the five furlong distance around Chester's track
The top chart and table displays the draw information in thirds, the bottom view shows the individual draw output. Both reveal an almost linear relationship between proximity to the rail and chance of, in this case, getting placed (note the dropdowns on the charts are set to place%).
A low draw then can be considered an advantage at Chester, especially when amplified by a pace-pressing run style. The Geegeez Gold pace tab reveals the early running position of the field in their last four UK or Irish races. Here's the Gold pace view for the same race, sorted by draw.
A low draw and prominent run style is favoured at Chester
This view looks complicated but it's really not. It shows, on the left hand side, the runner number, draw position, recent form figures, silks, horse name, trainer and jockey names; and on the right side, the last four pace scores (LR = last run, 2LR = second last run, etc), the total score, the percentage of the pace in the race, the master speed rating, and current odds.
Pace scores are from 4 to 1, as follows: 4 led, 3 prominent, 2 mid-division, 1 held up. Thus a horse may be scored from 16 (led in each of its last four races) to 4 (held up in each of its last four races) for four completed UK/Irish runs.
The above shows us that one of the (almost) guaranteed pace horses - Seve - is quite well drawn in stall five. Meanwhile, the other habitual front runner, Green Door, has been allotted a car park stall in 13: probably unlucky for him.
Three things worth noting in this particular example are:
The market looks quite strongly influenced by draw. Boxes 1-4, those closest to the rail, are the first four in the betting, while 12-15, those furthest from the rail, are the outsiders of the field.
Horses that do not normally chase the early pace may change their run style given a favourable draw. In that context, the likes of Roudee, Mukaynis and Kimberella could be gunned from the gate in order to take best advantage of their inside draw.
Although the race does not look overloaded with pace on the face of it, the prospect of inside duels could set things up for a later running horse. Based on a cursory look, I don't expect that to happen, but it is something to keep in mind when framing races like these.
In any case, what I would be reasonably confident of is that Seve, with a slow starter on his inside, will be on or close to the pace at the first turn. That alone could make him moderately interesting at around 14/1.
Step 2: The Horses
By now, we understand something about the race - how competitive it is, whether the favourite looks vulnerable, and how the early part of proceedings might pan out. It's high time, then, that we got our hands dirty with the form book, drilling down into the horses themselves.
You may remember I referred to three groups of runners in my introduction: OBVIOUS contenders, CONCEALED possibles, and UNLIKELY winners. A horse from any group may win the race, but this is about a rough classification of their prospects.
OBVIOUS Contenders
As the name suggests, these will generally be horses whose chance screams from the pages of the form book. As such, odds will generally be somewhat compressed. Generally, but not universally. Examples of OBVIOUS contenders include last time out winners running under similar conditions; horses reverting to well-touted favourable conditions; and runners from big stables and/or ridden by high profile jockeys.
Let's look again at our example race, that five furlong heat from Chester.
An open handicap, but some runners are more 'obvious' than others...
This is quite an open race, if the betting is any measure, with best prices showing 6/1 the field. The OBVIOUS horses in this race might be the well drawn winners within two starts Roudee, Mukaynis, and Avon Breeze.
With no Frankie Dettori or Ryan Moore, and no Sir Michael Stoute or Aiden O'Brien, there are no jockey/trainer entries of a very obvious nature. But that trio of well-drawn in-form horses merits closer inspection at the prices, especially given what we know about the mountain wide drawn horses typically have to climb in this context.
Roudee first. Here, I've used the new Full Form Filter version 2.0 (or FFFv2 for short) to look at course and distance form. [Click on any image to view full size, and without blur]
Roudee has very solid course and distance form
As you can see, Roudee has won over course and distance, and been placed second twice, on a range of going. Indeed, the win was at this meeting last year off a rating of 85. Today's mark is 94, nine pounds higher. However, it is worth noting the running line for Roudee that day: he ran loose to post having unseated the rider, and was drawn widest of the five runners. He still managed to win. That suggests he had a fair bit in hand.
And again, when second last June, he was drawn second widest of the seven runners. He has led too, so it looks as though a lot is in Roudee's favour in spite of that high rating.
Mukaynis comes here off a second place last time out and a win on his final run of 2015. He's run twice at Chester, over six furlongs and a mile, the mile effort (three years ago) proving the better effort. However, in four more recent spins over this trip, he's finished 4142, the second placed finish being the only turf start.
With a tendency to fluff the start on occasion - something which is hard to overcome at Chester - he's not as attractive a proposition as the inside drawn Roudee.
As for Avon Breeze, she's won five of her 16 five furlong turf races, including two of her last four at that range. But all her Class 2 form - today's grade - has been over six furlongs and she may just found herself outpaced early, and possibly crowded out as a consequence. Her quote of 10/1 just about accommodates that concern, but with little latitude to my eye.
So I'd still be interested in 6/1 about Roudee of the OBVIOUS horses at this stage.
CONCEALED Possibles
The next bunch are the CONCEALED possibles. They are usually made up of two types of runner: those near the head of the market with no recent form - in the image two up, ordered by market rank, look at Growl, Kimberella and Lexi's Hero; and those whose chance becomes evident from a look at form profiles or the race shape.
That latter angle throws the pace-pushing Seve into the CONCEALED possibles group, along with Blithe Spirit.
Scanning through these, I can quickly see that all of Growl's placed form has come in fields of six or fewer runners. This double digit cavalry charge won't obviously suit him, and at 5/1 or so he's overlooked in spite of the Doctor (Marwan Koukash, owner and huge supporter of Chester races) Factor. It's worth noting that he's generally tardy at the gate and has never run over five furlongs before. Whilst he could improve for it, the worries make him no sort of price to be finding out.
Kimberella is a course winner at a furlong further, and has won at York over this trip. He's reasonably treated on his best form, but five and a half furlongs might just be his best trip, and he also has a slovenly tendency when the stalls open (though he did ping them when winning at York). 6/1 is unappetising to my palate.
Most interesting perhaps is Lexi's Hero. At eight, he's getting on a bit now, and his form last season - debut win aside - was pretty moderate. However, that 2015 debut win was over course and distance - in this race in fact - and with similarly 'nothing' form figures. Rated 87 then, he's down to 83 now, with Sammy Jo Bell's three pound claim a further lightening of the load, to 80. But he was drawn four then, and is in box nine this time.
11/1 recognises all of those truths, and a charmed run will likely see this occasionally talented lad go close.
Seve has no recent form but may get the run of things on the front end. Trained, like Roudee, by local handler Tom Dascombe (of whom more shortly), Seve is three from ten at the trip, and has been placed in six of those ten runs. His two Chester efforts comprise a maiden win, and a close fourth in a Class 3 handicap, both at today's minimum distance.
Although well beaten in his most recent pair of runs, he has had a nice break and went well on his only prior start after two-plus months off. He'd be on the shortlist at 14/1.
Last in the CONCEALED group is Blithe Spirit. A veteran of seven course and distance sprints, this lad has form of 2411491 in that context. Drawn eight - sub-optimal but not impossible at the right price - he was down the field in this race last year, but his overall profile begs for a second chance. 16/1 grants it.
UNLIKELY Winners
The rest - Confessional, Noble Storm, Masamah, Lucky Beggar (a non-runner in any case), Lexington Place, Green Door and Snap Shots - are bracketed together in the UNLIKELY winners group.
In the case of Confessional, Noble Storm and Masamah, it is the combination of very poor draw (15, 10 and 12 respectively) and the passage of time that undermines their chance. Masamah and Confessional actually won this race in 2010 and 2012 respectively, the latter also running second last year.
Lexington Place has run well in defeat in his only two class and distance races, though probably wants the ground a touch faster. Snap Shots is a third string to Dascombe's bow, but he ran poorly on his only start here when eight lengths behind Roudee. Stall eleven hardly assists his claim.
Green Door has been unlucky with the draw, Robert Cowell's early speedster getting stall 13. Still, his gate speed should enable him to grab something of a position and, if he can break more alertly than Masamah on his immediate inside, there are five habitual late runners inside of that one. That could give him a midfield sit, and this former Group 2-winning juvenile (when with Olly Stevens) has plenty of 'back class'.
A winner of his last five furlong race in Britain (he's been running without much success in Dubai through the winter), the draw issue is clearly a big hindrance to his chance. But, with a fair shot at getting a reasonable early position, 33/1 might justify a piece of a portfolio wager (i.e. a bet covering a number of horses in the race).
**
Phew! Recap Time
This is a long post, because I want to talk theory and practice. If it seems involved, well, to some degree it is. If you want to make good bets, based on a solid understanding of the race, the runners, the actors and the market, it takes time. But with tools specifically designed for the job, it doesn't take that much time.
In fact, if I wasn't writing and explaining my way through this, I reckon I'd have spent little more than quarter of an hour to get to where we are so far.
And remember, the first thing we do is look at the race and make a call on whether we want to take a deeper dive. Generally speaking I'd leave a race like this alone, unless it was part of a big placepot pool I was targeting (as it will be - hint hint 😉 )
But it makes for a great example race, so that's that.
OK, things move a little quicker now.
Step 3: The Actors
Step three is about the 'actors': trainers, jockeys and sometimes owners. For the most part this is about trainers for me. However, at quirky tricks like Chester's very tight oval, jockeyship can be more important than at more run-of-the-mill circuits. And at this particular track more than most, one owner - Dr Marwan Koukash - is hellbent on getting winners.
Trainers first, and let's take another look at the Geegeez racecard:
Trainer pointers galore, both inline and at-a-glance
Firstly, have a squint at the trainer/jockey column. Notice the little green alphanumeric combinations? They denote trainer form, 14 day, 30 day, Course 1 Year, Course 5 Year - and are an instantly digestible measure of who is hot.
Next, look at the horizontally highlighted box. That contains the underlying data from which the green form icons are generated.
In a less Geegeez-specific, more handicapping process-generic focus, we are trying to ascertain whether any given trainer performs especially well at the course, and/or is in good form right now. The level of information here shows overall performance, but form students might care to look specifically at trainer performance with sprinters (or whichever distance range is relevant) or, on extremes of going, with runners on that type of test.
In the example above, Tom Dascombe has a lot of Chester winners, but historically they've failed to pay for the losers. This is a microcosm of the perennial punters' challenge: do you want winners? Or profit?
Dascombe will deliver winners at Chester, as sure as night follows day. But we need to know if they will pay for the losers, and leave a bit over to butter our bread. The answer over five years is that they won't, Tom D's 24 winners coming from a whopping 206 runners, for a level stakes loss of 53.54 points.
More recent evidence, however, offers greater hope. He's done well in the last year and, materially, he's in good form right now.
In some instances, a trainer's form - either current or long-term at the track - can be a stronger pointer to a horse's chance than the horse's own form. In this case, it is probably slightly positive to the chances of Dascombe's trio of runners, without adding notable ballast to the form credentials of those horses. However, importantly, nor is his form a negative.
Contrast that with the form of Dandy Nicholls and Kevin Ryan, as seen below.
In form, or not? Actors are important factors in the handicapping process...
Nicholls has had just one winner from 17 runners in the last fortnight, is 0 from 7 at the track in the past year, and three from 62 in the last five years. His place record at the course hardly offers hope either.
Kevin Ryan has a less than 8% win record in the last fortnight, though his place form is consistently fair (only fair, mind). Importantly, note the sea of red in the P/L columns, and the A/E (actual vs expected) of, generally, a lot less than one. These are complementary pointers to the general lack of value in these trainers' runners.
In the future, we are planning to introduce more contextual form into these inline boxes, covering things like the trainer's record first time in a handicap, or off a layoff, or a trainer switch, or with an unraced horse, or with a trip increment, or with a last time out winner.
The form line will only display when it is relevant - e.g. if a horse won last time, the trainer's record with last time winners will be displayed; if it didn't, it won't.
Trainer form is always important. When a trainer is hot, it can be a solid supplement to a middling horse's prospects. When it is cold, it can be, well, cold water to pour on the warmest fancy. Pay heed to stable form.
**
This same information is available on geegeez.co.uk for jockeys, and most of it is available for no charge. At Chester, it is quite well known that Fearless Franny Norton is the 'go to' guy. His winner record emphasises that.
Fearless Franny, Chester's main man...
He has both course icons, and a closer inspection of the inline form box shows he's actually in pretty good recent form too. Of course, he's riding for Nicholls, so one has to balance the various forces and make a judgement call on which is stronger when they're not pushing or pulling in the same direction, as this pair are not.
In this case - in most cases - it will be the price that determines which way to go. 6/1 is a no thank you for me, Franny or no Franny.
Dr Koukash has three in this race, and he'll have thirty-odd runners in three days on Chester's Roodee course, his eleven entries on the opening day attesting to that. Owner angles are not really my thing, except to look out for well-supported horses when connections are known to like a punt.
Sadly, this info is not available on geegeez.co.uk - nor anywhere else to my knowledge - but we are starting to gather data which could be used to this end, at some point.
Trainer form is especially important in races where there is little or no horse form - maiden races, unexposed handicaps, and the like. There, how a handler has performed in the specific context is often a huge 'tell' as to whether a horse might step forward markedly on previous racecourse evidence. This post about handicap first-timers is a must read if you've not seen it already (or even if you have - it's one of the best I've written, for what it's worth).
Step 4: The Market
If you pay more than you should, you'll go skint. I could leave it at that, but allow me to expound on that somewhat pithy statement. It is basically about getting paid a fair rate for one's endeavours.
Here's a question: when you spend twenty minutes, or an hour, or however long, researching a bet, how much do you want to get paid for it?
Let's say your normal bet size is £10 (it doesn't matter what it is, it's all relative), and you have the option to get paid £50, £60 or £70, which would you choose? I think you'll probably be with me and want £70 if you have the option.
And now what if you could get paid £70 flat rate, or £70 with a possible bonus for good (counter-market) research; which would you choose then?
Naturally, you'd opt for the potential of a bonus, all other things being equal. So, please tell me,
WHY THE HELL DON'T YOU HAVE ALL THE AVAILABLE BOOKMAKER ACCOUNTS AND ALWAYS USE BEST ODDS GUARANTEED WHEN YOU CAN?!!
Note: I know many of you do, and I know many of you can no longer avail of such concessions. But, for those who can but don't, this is like "winning at betting 101". If you continually under-value your efforts in this way, you are sabotaging your own bottom line. It's stupid and you shouldn't do it. So, please, for your sake, don't.
*puts soap box away (somewhere close by, will need it again soon)*
BOG is not the only option in town, and betting to win is not the only wagering option either. It is not within the province of this post to talk about 'bad each way', bookmaker arbitrage, or any of the other free money opportunities that will get you barred faster than a rocket-powered penguin (don't ask me, I was looking for a metaphor on google...)
But you should know that there are other marketplaces outside of bookmakers. If you don't need to get on early for fear of missing the price, then exchanges are a very good option, with plentiful liquidity in the immediate pre-race period. Tote pools are less attractive, for win and/or place betting at least. But they do have their, erm, place.
Exotic bets are an excellent way to compound value, by overlaying one opinion (say, the winner of a race, or a horse to make the frame in a race) with other opinions (the second horse in the race, to make an exacta; or a horse to place in five further races, a placepot).
The more you can balance the probable with the possible, the better your chances of long-term success. That is to say, the more you can recognise the strength (or weakness) of market leaders, and consequently when to go deep and when play tight, the better the punter you will become.
But it is all for nought if you fail to take the very best odds available to you.
Let's return to our example race, and the shortlist I tentatively drew up...
These prices are all Best Odds Guaranteed so, if I wanted, I could dutch them (i.e. back them all to achieve the same return, regardless of which one wins) at very close to 13/8 (£10 total stake returns £26.24).
In so doing, I would achieve a minimum profit of £16.24 for my example £10 stake. With BOG in my corner, that figure would grow if the starting price was greater than the price I took about any of the quintet.
But I don't think they each have an equivalent chance, and nor do I think they all represent the same value proposition. So I'd rather gear my stakes towards those I prefer: those I think have a greater disparity between their market price and their true chance.
I actually quite like Roudee (cue terrible run!) and think he should be closer to 4/1 with so much in his favour. From the same in-form stable, Seve appeals, as well, and I'd be happy to get the lion's share of any profit jam from that pair of well-berthed Dascombe dynamos.
So why not dutch this pair with £8, for a profit of £28.18 if either wins (total return, £38.18), and split the other £2 between the rest. Dutching that trio would guarantee a profit of £1.66 (return of £11.66) for a winner.
Now my preferred pair are worth £28.18 to me, as opposed to £16.24 in the first example. Of course, the lesser fancied trio barely cover the cost of the tea bag, let alone the hot water, should one of them prevail, but they do at least preserve the bank.
It was not really my intention to go into staking, so the above is what it is: an example of how one could play the shortlist. You might choose to back Roudee, as the main fancy; or to bet another each way, or to play an exacta combo, or whatever.
This is about the shortlisting process - the handicapping process - and it is but one approach to that infinitely-faceted conundrum.
Final Thoughts / Summary
Handicapping horses takes in as many elements of the narrow and broad fields of vision as the player chooses. For me it majors on four elements - the race, the horses, the actors, and the market.
Some people swear by ratings. I do not. Some people follow the money. I respect it, but generally have little desire to attend a wagering funeral having missed the wedding. I will, however, look to understand why a horse might have been backed.
Others follow the top of the market, or trainer form, or favourite jockeys, or last day winners, or whatever, in isolation.
But handicapping horse races effectively is a symphony performed by an orchestra of different sections, each bringing something significant to the composition, none especially pleasing of themselves. Together, there can be harmony - and sometimes discord - but the sum of those four sections is usually greater than any individual contribution.
The above may seem complex to the casual bettor, but with the right tools, and even average race selection in step one, the process will quickly become second nature.
I built Geegeez Gold to support this handicapping framework. With help from a small but dedicated development team, and suggestions from you, our passionate user, we are continuing to build.
This week sees a big change and a couple of small changes. The introduction of Full Form Filter v2.0 - showcased briefly in the above - is a size 13 step forward in terms of filtering form for all of horses, trainers, jockeys and stallions. Less significant but still useful, we're finessing our draw output; and have finally accounted for non-runners on the pace tab, updating the pace percentages accordingly.
In my opinion, the handicapping process should be fun. There are too many dry arses in racing for my tastes. (There, I've said it!). But that most definitely does not mean it cannot be profitable. More and more Gold users are finding their way into profit, and enjoying the journey as well as the destination.
I hope there has been at least something in this outline that you can take away and try. Thanks a lot for reading, and good luck with your betting, however you arrive at your selections.
Matt
p.s. Geegeez Gold is an evolving computer form book, with beautifully presented data/feature-rich racecards, form tools, and a suite of reports. You've seen some components in this post, and if you'd like to try it for yourself, you have two options:
If you haven't already, register a free account here. That will give you daily access to Races of the Day, which include ALL of the Gold features for those races. You'll also get a daily Feature of the Day - which might be a report, or a tool, or a tip. That register link is here.
Or, if you'd like unrestricted access, sign up for a ONE MONTH trial for just £1, and have a play with everything we have to offer. After your month is up, you'll be billed £36 monthly, or £360 for a full year. Naturally, you can cancel at any time, and we'll even sort you out if you forget for any reason. We're good like that 😉
Value betting is the most mainstream concept in the modern betting landscape, writes Tony Keenan. It has passed into the lexicon of gambling and there can hardly be a punter around that hasn’t heard of the idea. We’ve reached a point where Tom Segal, the public face of value betting, is on The Morning Line more often than Tony McCoy and it has even spawned parody comments like ‘value loser’ and ‘you can’t eat value.’
For most, value betting means one thing: big prices. While a value bet can theoretically be a 1/3 shot that should be 1/10, in the main such examples aren’t referenced and the typical comment about a favourite in much racing writing and programming can be summed up as ‘he’ll probably win but he’s a bit short.’ Rarely do we hear mention of the odds-on shot that should be even shorter.
But perhaps the pendulum has swung too far the other way and the runners that appear short, far from being priced lower than their real chance of winning, actually aren’t short enough. This favourite-longshot bias certainly seemed at play over the recent Cheltenham Festival with some of the Mullins hotpots but it’s not just that; the place markets on the exchanges for the Grand National on Saturday were wildly out of sync with the same place odds available in an each-way bet with the bookmakers, the favourites seemingly bigger than they should be and the outsiders representing the flip-side.
I think this applies far more in day-to-day racing now than it used to and we need to be aware that markets are fluid and don’t remain the same: it is important to zig when most people are zagging. And that can be a problem for an old-style value punter who is used to looking on shorties with scorn. In fact, many of these punters – and I include myself here – would have personal betting rules like ‘never bet odds-on’, tenets that might have served you well in the past but have become outdated. As we’ll see later, taking that approach to the current Irish national hunt season would have meant there were 311 odds-on shots (judging on BSP) that you refused to back; 195 of them have won so you were taking out a large chunk of possible betting opportunities.
In the tables that follow, I will look at the fortunes of odds-on shots, defined as having a Betfair Starting Price of 2.0 or shorter, in recent Irish jumps campaigns. Using Horse Race Base, I’ve put together the numbers to see if there are any patterns emerging. When I refer to actual over expected in the final column of the table, it is done to official starting price rather than the Betfair equivalent as this is the method used on Horse Race Base.
Let’s first look at the number of odds-on shots to run over jumps in Ireland in each season since 2008/9:
NH Season
Bets
Wins
Strikerate
Level Stakes
Actual/Expected
2008/09
164
104
63.4%
+3.16
1.02
2009/10
217
125
57.6%
-16.23
0.93
2010/11
180
109
60.6%
-3.89
0.97
2011/12
227
130
57.3%
-21.69
0.91
2012/13
272
162
59.6%
-19.37
0.92
2013/14
250
159
63.6%
+1.36
1.00
2014/15
303
184
60.7%
-18.06
0.95
2015/16
311
195
62.7%
-10.00
0.97
The first thing that jumps out is the gradual rise in the number of odds-on shots; again, punters who are excluding themselves from betting in races with money-on pokes are ruling out a hell of a lot of races. We see that prior to last season, there was not a campaign with more than 272 odds-on shots but there were 303 last year and already we are at 311 in 2015/16 and there are three weeks of the season left. The other notable feature is that backing all these odds-on shots, though not profitable, has come close to breakeven point in each of the last three seasons judging by the actual over expected. Given that those figures are worked out from official SP suggests there is an edge here; Betfair SPs are typically bigger even allowing for commission while many of these winners will have been available at bigger prices before the off.
I suspect at least some of this edge is down to the attitude punters approach the market with, i.e. they want to oppose the fancied horses as they are perceived as too short. There are other reasons though. The concentration of talent in the Mullins yard has played a big part as has that trainer’s approach in that he tries to keep his horses apart as much as possible to maximise the number of races won, rather than run them in what might be seen as the most logical races. Racing has facilitated much of this with a greatly expanded programme book and I’d be in the camp that competitiveness has suffered because there is too much racing. Competitive racing, of course, produces much fewer odds-on shots.
Next, we have the record of odds-on favourites by month and instead of going back as far as 2008/9 here, I’ve worked from 2010/11 to the present day in the hope this will provide a better picture of the current state of the markets.
Month
Bets
Wins
Strikerate
Level Stakes
Actual/Expected
January
174
107
61.5%
-11.31
0.94
February
144
75
52.1%
-30.36
0.80
March
126
71
56.4%
-11.97
0.89
April
79
46
58.2%
-5.97
0.92
May
115
72
62.6%
+2.63
1.02
June
50
25
50.0%
-8.06
0.82
July
83
55
66.3%
+1.72
1.04
August
128
73
57.0%
-9.21
0.92
September
67
50
74.6%
+14.74
1.22
October
155
104
67.1%
+6.37
1.05
November
206
129
62.6%
-8.81
0.96
December
216
132
61.1%
-11.42
0.95
The findings here are surprising. One might expect odds-on shots to do best in the traditional jumps season from November to April when Willie Mullins has his best horses running. In fact, the opposite is true as betting the odds-on over summer jumps is [much] more profitable with the exception of June. It may just be a quirk of sample size – there are fewer jumps races at this time of the year – but the pattern is still quite marked and it offers food for thought at least.
Different types of Irish national hunt race are also worth considering:
Race Type
Bets
Wins
Strikerate
Level Stakes
Actual/Expected
Chase
413
261
63.2%
-0.63
1.00
Hurdle
849
513
60.4%
-54.64
0.94
Bumper
281
165
58.7%
-16.38
0.95
Again, the results here are unusual. One might expect chases to be the least predictable of the three disciplines as fences bring in a great possibility of falling but the opposite is true as odds-on shots here do best and come very close to making a small profit off level-stakes.
Finally, the record of trainers with odds-on runners since 2010/11 and for the purposes of the table I’ve looked at those with at least 20 such qualifiers. The table is in alphabetical order.
Trainer
Bets
Wins
Strikerate
Level Stakes
Actual/Expected
H. De Bromhead
56
39
69.6%
+7.80
1.14
C. Byrnes
29
16
55.2%
-2.90
0.89
G. Elliott
128
74
57.8%
-10.76
0.91
J. Harrington
51
29
56.9%
-3.97
0.92
T. Martin
38
20
52.6%
-6.96
0.83
N. Meade
71
49
69.0%
+5.31
1.06
M. Morris
20
10
50.0%
-4.03
0.82
W. Mullins
640
403
63.0%
-32.68
0.95
E. O’Grady
31
20
64.5%
+0.83
1.04
D. Weld
36
23
63.9%
-0.16
0.99
Willie Mullins has had just a staggering number of odds-on shots; in fact, in the period covered he has sent out 41.4% of the total odds-on favourites. Finding an edge with Mullins is difficult – though betting his shorties at the Cheltenham Festival makes sense – and I prefer to look at other trainers. Henry De Bromhead is one that stands out. He comes out best both on overall strikerate and actual over expected and the best spots to back his short-priced horses are in graded races and over fences and ideally a combination of both. Noel Meade also does well; his 69% return his hard on the heels of De Bromhead and, along with Edward O’Grady, they are the three trainers with actual over expecteds of greater than 1.00.
From a brief glance at the figures for the flat in Ireland, the rise in odds-on shots seems nothing like as marked but it is something I may return to over the summer. For now, be wary of opposing short-priced runners in Irish jumps races for the sake of it and, indeed, don’t be afraid to back some of them; though starting the project at Punchestown might be a little too brave as the meeting can produce some surprising end-of-season results.
It's something which has been long overdue, my own personal prejudices preventing its earlier arrival. But, finally, I'm pleased to report that draw data is now available to Geegeez Gold subscribers for all UK and Irish flat meetings. You'll find it under the 'Draw Beta' tab, and below is a 'ghetto video' explaining how it might be used for profit.
In the video, I cover the D + P + S = £ formula, a combination of information snippets that can be very powerful (and profitable) when used together.
If you can get past the first 40 seconds (!), I think you'll find this video very informative.
p.s. if you have a problem seeing the draw data, please refresh your browser cache - this link explains how.
**
I have updated the User Guide with draw information, too. You'll find that on your My Geegeez page, along with some other video links. Oh, and reference a couple of links in the video.
The first, an introduction to pace, can be found here:
If you have any questions or comments (about anything other than my singing voice - the less said, the better), please add them below, and I'll be happy to help.
Matt
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/drawtab3.png320830Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-03-21 21:33:132020-05-16 19:49:45NEW: Gold Draw Data
Killultagh Vic was the first high-profile Irish horse to miss Cheltenham with injury but you can be sure he won’t be the last, writes Tony Keenan. We are in that horrible space between the conclusion of most of the trials and the start of the Festival where owners, trainers and, yes, punters live in terror of hearing that their horse will miss the meeting with a late setback.
It makes sense that injuries should occur at this time. No more than a human athlete getting ready for a career-defining event, the revs are being cranked up to the max in preparation and it is inevitable that a gasket or two will blow in the process. Some trainers has succeeded more than others in avoiding – or preventing – the last-minute injury; Willie Mullins stands out in terms of getting his Cheltenham horses to end point and punters can rightly have faith in backing one of his runners ante-post at a short price in the relatively safe assumption that they will get to post. But other handlers have not been so fortunate (though perhaps fortunate is the wrong word as it is surely a skill to keep horses sound).
Predicting which trainers’ runners will make or miss Cheltenham by looking at data is difficult if not impossible and it makes more sense to look at a more global sense of how successful they are in keeping their horses sound from season to season. In the table below, I’ve focussed on the top 15 Irish trainers in terms of winners sent out in the six seasons from 2009/10 to 2014/15, leaving out those who are no longer training, i.e. Dessie Hughes and Charlie Swan.
I found every horse they had in that period that acquired an Irish official rating of 130 or more and went through their racing career in totality regardless of whether it began before 2009 or continued beyond 2015. I was looking for how many ‘full seasons’ they had in their careers and I took a very loose definition of what a full season was: a season in which a horse ran twice or more in the Irish National Hunt campaign which takes the Punchestown Festival as its start and end point.
To my mind, this is quite a lenient definition of a full season – many owners would want their horses to run far more regularly – but I was giving trainers the benefit of the doubt and I didn’t penalise for a horse only running once in their first season as trainers often want to start them off slowly. With the number of full seasons and missed seasons I worked out a figure called ‘attrition rate’ which expresses as a percentage how often a trainer’s horses miss a season in relation to their career as a whole.
Take Tony Martin as an example. In the period covered, he has 131 full seasons from his 130-plus rated horses and six missed seasons; I add the two together to get a total season figure which is 137 and then divide the missed season number into it to leave an attrition rate of 4.4%. As a back-up figure, I also added in how many runs a trainer’s horses averaged per season over that period.
This methodology is far from perfect. Firstly, it looks only at horses rated 130 or more, but the data was so overwhelming that were I to look at them all I’d struggle to have it finished for Cheltenham 2017! It also supposes that every National Hunt horse threads the same campaign trail, starting its season in the autumn and running through to the late spring/early summer. This is not the case with summer jumpers and many horses will have a winter break to avoid the worst of ground.
Using my method, horses could miss two calendar years but only one racing season. Monksland, say, missed 730 days between December 2012 and December 2014 but raced three times in the 2012/13 season and the same in 2014/15 campaign so is only penalised for being absent in 2013/14.
Furthermore, trainers are not penalised for horses having a short career of a season or two but they are hit for getting a horse back off an absence of a season or two for just one run, despite the fact that this could be a major achievement if that horse has had serious problems. Despite all this, I think there is enough in the data to make it interesting to look at, if not necessarily of vast predictive value.
Trainer
Horses Rated 130 Plus
Attrition Rate
Average Season Runs
C. Byrnes
19
15.9%
5.4
C. Murphy
13
10.3%
4.5
N. Meade
53
8.8%
5.0
W. Mullins
171
7.0%
4.2
R. Tyner
6
6.7%
4.7
M. Hourigan
16
6.5%
7.3
M. Morris
17
5.6%
6.0
T. Martin
39
4.4%
5.4
G. Elliott
58
4.3%
6.1
H. De Bromhead
36
4.1%
4.7
P. Nolan
22
3.2%
5.2
E. Doyle
7
2.6%
6.3
J. Hanlon
8
2.4%
5.6
E. O’Grady
27
1.6%
5.4
J. Harrington
31
1.6%
6.1
We’ll start with Willie Mullins as we generally do. He has a highish attrition rate and the lowest average season runs so comes out quite badly on these numbers though I doubt Rich Ricci, Graham Wylie et al will be moving their horses in light of them! In fairness, he has improved recently with most of his absentees coming in the early part of the period covered though it must be said that he has quite a few horses that are in danger of missing this campaign, the likes of Abyssial, Jarry D’Honneur, Champagne Fever and Analifet all on the easy list at the moment.
Charles Byrnes has a very high attrition rate, 5.6% higher than the next highest, so perhaps landing gambles takes its toll! His achievement in bringing the nine-year-old Solwhit back to win at Cheltenham and Aintree in 2013 was a notable one but it seems significant that so many of his best horses have missed chunks of time, the likes of Mounthenry, Pittoni, Trifolium, Weapons Amnesty and Our Vinnie all having stop-start careers.
Colm Murphy is another that comes out poorly on the numbers, having not only a high attrition rate but also a low average runs per season, though the reason behind this could be one discussed in a previous article of mine on fall/unseat rate where he came out as one of the highest in the country. Falls and unseats will clearly cause plenty of injuries.
One trainer who does quite well is Gordon Elliott, his horses generally sound and running often, and it needs to be pointed out that he gets quite a few stable switchers. That can be viewed positively or negatively; either someone else has done all the hard work or you have to rectify another trainer’s mistakes.
Noel Meade is having a torrid season in terms of injuries, with Road To Riches having a curtailed campaign and Apache Stronghold out for the year. His attrition rate, third overall, would suggest this is not uncommon. One thing to admire with Meade is that no one else comes close in terms of openness around his horses’ health and he must be praised for that.
In terms of positives, Jessica Harrington stands out as having a low attrition rate and a high average number of runs. I would put this down to two things: she tends to mix flat and jumps campaigns, the former clearly less attritional than the latter; and she will often give her horses mid-winter breaks to avoid the worst of ground, something she frequently references in stable tours.
Edward O’Grady has the name of being hard on his horses but the numbers suggest otherwise, coming in the equal of Harrington in attrition rate. Henry De Bromhead has relatively a low attrition rate too, albeit with not many average season runs, and tends to do well in keeping older horses sweet. Sizing Europe is the daddy of them all but the likes of Sizing Australia and Darwins Fox are further feathers in de Bromhead’s cap.
Finally, mention must go to Michael Hourigan. His attrition rate percentage is only average but he is brilliant in terms of getting runs into his horses, his average of 7.3 a full run per season better than anyone else. I won’t say his horses are always in form but at least they’re out there competing and it is notable that eight of his 16 horses rated 130 plus raced at least 30 times. There are some real heroes in there like Dancing Tornado and Church Island and of course A New Story who ran an amazing 110 times, often over staying trips, and was still racing at fifteen.
- Tony Keenan
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Killultagh-Vic-Ltown-06-e1455629662277.jpg320500TonyKeenanhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTonyKeenan2016-02-16 13:35:542016-02-16 13:35:54Attrition Rate in Irish National Hunt
I don't usually like to "blow my own trumpet" about how useful, and profitable, the features in Geegeez Gold are... ...but yesterday I received an email from a Gold subscriber that I really wanted to share with you all.
It's not intended to gloat (of course), but rather, there are some very good pointers in there about how to use this particular report...
Hey Matt,
You might remember I emailed you a few months ago with some questions about your excellent Trainer / Jockey Combo report. I'd landed a 16/1 and 14/1 winner from 3 bets in a single day and was having to pinch myself after collecting £540 from my £2 each-way doubles. I wondered at the time if this was some kind of freak result, but I'm happy to report that it certainly wasn't!
Over the last few months I've continued to follow this report religiously and it's amazing how many big winners I've had from it. My best was a 25/1 shot, but I've had dozens of double-figure winners and at times I've managed to catch two or three of them in doubles and trebles too.
I've attached some screenshots for you to look at just from the last couple of weeks. This is by no means the best period I've had, but I'd been intending to email you anyway so started taking screenshots every day to give you something to back up my claims.
Each of the screenshots shows the selections I've chosen for the day opened up in the report. I tend to look for a strike-rate of around 30% and a place strike-rate of 50%+ wherever possible and I'm rarely interested in runners that are priced at 2/1 or under. You might see days on these reports where I don't have something with a high strike-rate open - this is usually because they're a non-runner, or the meeting was abandoned, which has happened a lot lately.
Something else to note is that I rarely touch the Irish racing. That's just a personal preference and I find that I usually get enough action every day from the UK racing so just haven't bothered too much with that. It might be equally profitable, but I can't say for sure.
I've written a little ditty for you to explain what happened each day...
22 January 2016
22nd January - 3 selections - All Body And Soul was backed from 16/1 into 11/2 and won. Barton Lodge won at 7/1 and the other was second at 5/1! I picked up £600 that day from £10 e/w singles and £2 e/w doubles and trebles! If the other one had won it would have been over £2500 - sigh!
26 January 2016
26th January - 4 selections - Some of these either didn't run, or were too short for my liking, so I only backed the 4 big priced ones. Dartford Warbler was backed from 25/1 into 10/1 and finished a decent 2nd. For a while I was thinking it might actually do it, but alas it wasn't to be.
27 January 2016
27th January - 2 selections - A quiet day, but He's A Dreamer was backed from 5/2 into 2/1 and won. The other was backed from 8/1 into 6/1 and finished a close second, only beaten 3/4 length.
28 January 2016
28th January - 4 selections - Three Colours Red was backed from 14/1 into 8/1 and finished 2nd. Guapo Bay finished 3rd at 9/1 and Reilley's Minor finished 3rd at 4/1. The other I should have left alone, because the place strike-rate wasn't really high enough, but hey ho.
29 January 2016
29th January - 3 selections - Logarithm finished 3rd at 7/1, Ragner was too short for me, Glan Y Gors was backed from 3/1 into 2/1 and finished 2nd and Wicked Spice was backed from 16/1 into 9/1 and finished 3rd. A decent profit made just from doing e/w singles and an e/w double on the bigger ones that day, but a bit of luck and it could have been so much better!
31 January 2016
31st January - 4 selections - These are the kind of days you remember. Cantlow was backed from 5/2 into 11/10 and finished 2nd. Askamore Darsi won at 5/1 from 11/2. Card Game won at 8/1 from 9/1 and Firth Of The Clyde won at 4/1 too. My £2 Yankee on the four returned over £900 and then £10 singles on top, but if the shortest priced of the lot had done the business the Yankee would have paid the ridiculous sum of... drumroll please... over £4,400!!!
By the way, even my (normally just Placepot loving) wife has been bitten by the bug and on Sunday she placed a £1 yankee and a few small single bets on each of the selections...
Including the £32 she got back for the placepot, she collected £599 for an outlay of £63, so between us we lifted over £1,700 on Sunday. That will keep me in the good books for a while mate! 😉
1 February 2016
1st February - 1 selection - Just one selection to kick the month off and Wavelet drifted from 2/1 to 3/1, but could only manage 2nd place. After the results from the day before, I wasn't too upset!
3 February 2016
3rd February - 3 selections - The day was off to a flyer with Prideofthecastle winning at 8/1 and I was full of anticipation, because I actually quite fancied the other two, but two 2nd places at 4/1 and 9/2 (from 6/1) was all I could manage. Still, an 8/1 winner every day would be nice!
Of course, not every day is a winning one Matt and some days I struggle to find anything worth backing at all, but I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know how impressed I am with my subscription to Geegeez Gold and especially your Trainer / Jockey Combo report.
Just in the last couple of weeks I've paid for my subscription 10 times over!
All the best,
Andy
Pretty good, eh? I love hearing about subscribers' success, and this was a cracker of an email!
Remember you can sign up to Geegeez Gold for just £5 for your first 14 days and that will give you complete access to everything on the site, not just the Trainer Jockey Combo report, so why not do yourself a favour today and click the banner below to join now...
[Oh, and keep in mind that TJ Combo is free to all registered users every Saturday - you're welcome 😉 ]
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/profit-from-geegeez-gold.jpg320830Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-02-04 09:57:452018-05-09 16:52:40Just One Way To Profit From Geegeez
Multiple bets are sometimes viewed as the preserve of the desperate, with wise heads pointing out that there is nothing lucky about a Lucky 15, writes Tony Keenan. But, on occasion, punters can multiply their value rather than boost the bookmaker’s edge. Related contingency bets are one such example.
By and large, these bets are not allowed by bookmakers: in this Sunday’s Super Bowl, for instance, one cannot back the Denver Broncos to win and Peyton Manning to be MVP in a double at their current quoted odds, as the performance of the team’s most important player, the quarterback, is intrinsically linked to the outcome of the game. So instead of multiplied odds, a punter has to take a watered down price on both events happening, similar to that offered on a double for a team to win Euro 2016 and that side’s main striker to be the tournament top scorer as they are also linked.
Yet at Cheltenham next month, you can do just that. By backing two or more representatives of the same form line to win separate races you can multiply the strength of your opinion on a race being a hot piece of form and there are many examples of this happening at recent Festivals. Take the two and a half mile Grade 2 novice hurdle run on Festival Trials Day at Cheltenham in 2013 where At Fishers Cross narrowly beat The New One, the latter in front too soon, with Grade 1 winners like Coneygree and Whisper in behind. Two months later, the pair won the Albert Bartlett and Neptune respectively at the Festival and those watching back the Trials Day run could have, rightly as it turned out, assumed that one horse would be suited by going up in trip while the other would enjoy competing at the same distance on better ground where his speed would be seen to better effect.
An even better example occurred last year when the Grade 2 novice hurdle run at Leopardstown on the Irish Champion Hurdle undercard produced three Cheltenham winners; the second Martello Tower won ‘the run for the spuds’ (Albert Bartlett); the third, Killultagh Vic, won the Martin Pipe (benefitting from some lenient handicapping); and the fourth, Windsor Park, won the Neptune.
Perming those horses in multiple bets, even allowing that the Leopardstown winner Outlander would surely have been included, would have produced a bonanza, the trio returning 14/1, 7/1 and 9/2 (659/1 treble) with bigger prices available in the weeks beforehand.
Both examples were novice races which isn’t the greatest surprise. Connections of the beaten horse(s) can want to avoid the winner next time, and at the Festival they have the option to do so with races over further and shorter, as well as the handicap route and now even a mares’ alternative. There aren’t as many options for those competing in open company who may have to face off with the same opponent again, however.
Furthermore, value is created by a bias against beaten horses in novice races in particular. Punters want to be with last time out winners and especially sexy, unbeaten animals in novice events despite the fact that horses that were beaten last time may have run better in defeat, the idea here being that a horse that was failed to win last time won’t be winning any race at the Festival.
You don’t just need to focus on a single form line either as you can get a good idea of the strength of a crop of horses from a series of races. In 2012/13, the Irish novice chasers over middle distances and staying trips looked a decent group and Lord Windermere and Lyreen Legend fought out the finish of the RSA that spring after Boston Bob fell at the last; needless to say, I backed Texas Jack in the JLT that year, a horse I believed was the best of the lot, and he made no impact in the finish! A year later in 2014, the Irish hunter chasers proved a deep crop and provided the first three in the Foxhunters and were five lengths clear of the fourth; perming the four Irish horses that weren’t complete no hopers (those priced 40/1 or shorter) would have produced a tricast of £1812.28.
This type of thinking doesn’t apply to multiple bets alone as forecasts and tricasts can be used to produce the same related contingency end. Punters who fancied Sire De Grugy to win the 2014 Champion Chase, but wanted more than his SP of 11/4, may have cottoned onto the fact that it was Somersby in the Tingle Creek that gave him his closest race that season and it was the same horse that chased him home at Cheltenham at 14/1, the forecast paying £40.57, which was generous in light of that one’s tendency to run well without winning. While not a related contingency as such, you could also have backed both Sire De Grugy to win and Somersby without the favourite. Those ‘without’ markets, once the preserve of Irish on-course layers only, are something we might all need to be wise to at this year’s Festival with Willie Mullins rolling into the meeting with a number of short-priced favourites.
Finding the strong form lines, what American writer Steve Davidowitz calls a ‘key race’, is the difficult part but there are some sensible places to start. Form that is working out is an obvious point, though perhaps too obvious, and times, sectional and overall, might be of more use or at least be more hidden to the wider betting public. It boils down to good race-reading and sometimes the logical spots are best; meetings like Trials Day at Cheltenham or the Hennessy card at Leopardstown this weekend make sense as does the Betfair Hurdle meeting at Newbury.
As for this year’s possibilities, the Yanworth (Neptune) and Shantou Village (Albert Bartlett) double rather jumps out after Saturday; there are reasons for believing the second is better than the form with his run having come off a break and the ground against him. The sense that a horse can shape better than the form in defeat is a big angle and it could be for a number of reasons be it fitness, distance or ground, the last-named perhaps of most significance given that many of the trials will have taken place on ground vastly different to that encountered in March.
The Ivanovich Gorbatov maiden hurdle at Leopardstown at Christmas looks strong form and Let’s Dance, the second who seemingly went into the race with a massive reputation, could be worth looking at in forecasts with the JP McManus favourite in the Triumph; while those further down the field like Lagostovegas and Tocororo could pitch up in the Fred Winter. Long Dog and Tombstone on their run on the same card is an interesting combo with that pair likely to take in different Festival targets. In light of Vroum Vroum Mag dismantling the English mares at Ascot recently, with the likeable but limited Jennies Jewel chasing her home, looking at Irish mares to perm with Annie Power in the David Nicholson could be interesting and the market hasn’t really taken cognisance of this with the shortest priced Irish entry in the race outside the Ricci pair being 20/1.
One form line I am looking to follow at the meeting is the Clarence House Chase from Ascot. I think we saw the best version of Un De Sceaux thus far and Traffic Fluide was unlucky not to finish closer, not brilliant at the third last, conceding first run to a degree and barely getting a hard time to get within a short head of Sire De Grugy. The presence of the fourth Vibrato Valtat gives substance to the belief that Sire De Grugy ran his race as they’d been mixing it all season and suggests that Traffic Fluide, with improvement to come, may already be better than not only his stablemate but also Sprinter Sacre as that pair are closely matched. Another factor is the time argument – both Sire De Grugy and Sprinter Sacre have been underwhelming on the clock this season – and I want to be with Traffic Fluide in exotic bets at the Festival. The concern however is that he might run in the Game Spirit beforehand, win easily and thus become the biggest danger to Un De Sceaux in the market so it could be worth seeking out some ‘without’ prices at this point (as recommended in this Champion Chase preview).
- Tony Keenan
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ivanovitchgorbatov-e1454349284817.jpg319790TonyKeenanhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTonyKeenan2016-02-01 17:55:262016-02-01 20:42:37Related Contingencies at the Cheltenham Festival
Ask any Cheltenham member what the course’s best day’s racing outside of the Festival is, and you’re likely to find the Saturday of November’s Open Meeting nominated by far the most often, writes Rory Delargy.
While that’s probably true in terms of excitement and atmosphere, it’s a dubious claim in terms of the number of subsequent Festival winners who run there. The Open Meeting as a whole tends to get horses launched high up the ante-post leader boards, but the old golf adage is drive for show and putt for dough: those who peak too far from the track’s showpiece fixture have a poor overall strike rate in March.
On the other hand, those who have their last prep run on late January’s Trials Day tend to fare much better, which may be no surprise given the timing. It often comes up in discussion that horses who have run in the calendar year have a much better record than those coming back from longer layoffs, usually because the latter group have had a less than smooth preparation that has stopped them getting an appropriate prep race.
In recent years, Willie Mullins has been bucking this trend (in lots of ways), and the Master of Closutton seems to give his novices a specific number of runs before establishing their place in the pecking order. It’s rarely a negative for one from this yard to have less experience than seems ideal, or to return from a lengthier break than would be expected. He’s a law unto himself, and should be treated as such.
Cheltenham Festival Runners in Grade 1 Races by Days Since Last Run Range (last ten years to £10 level stakes)
DSLR
RUNS
WINS
PLACES
WIN A/E
P&L @ BSP
43-56
332
35
48
1.23
£340.70
57-90
264
23
44
1.05
£83.10
29-42
363
27
58
1.00
-£384.70
91-150
116
3
15
0.34
-£991.30
As you can see from the above, there’s a considerable advantage to having had a prep run in January, although that is clearly affected by the vagaries of the racing calendar. The programme book provides the best opportunities for horses to have a prep run within two months of the big meeting, and those who either haven’t been ready to run, or have had to get a late outing in to ensure fitness/qualification, tend to struggle. This isn’t meant to be mind-blowing, of course, it’s merely common sense.
There are two other obvious factors which punters can use to their advantage in March. Strike rates tail off badly as SP increases beyond 20/1 (bookmakers give little away and most 33/1 shots should be ten times that price), and that is also the case with age, with it being very difficult to win with horses who are regressive and/or fully exposed. The caveat here is with outstanding champions, who remain vulnerable as they get older, but can still outclass their opponents in certain circumstances.
Finally, a Trials Day prep run is about fine tuning, not getting back to square one, so those who run poorly/fail to complete should be ignored. Using horses who completed and were beaten twenty lengths or less seems a fair measure.
That leaves us with a list of horses aged eight or younger, who prepped for Cheltenham on Trials Day by finishing within 20 lengths of the winner, and are likely to go off no bigger than 20/1 on the day. Given those filters, here is the performances of such horses in the last ten seasons.
Trials Day Runners at Cheltenham Festival (given above parameters – profit to £10 level stake)
CODE
RUNS
WINS
PLACES
WIN A/E
P&L @ BSP
HURDLES
48
11
13
1.65
£472.90
FENCES
27
4
5
1.33
£105.50
There is a notion that very soft ground on Trials Day should mean that contrasting conditions in March should render results invalid. That’s illogical, though, as several of those who qualify above would have been running on unsuitable ground in January, and could therefore show improved form come March.
Horses don’t run here primarily because the ground is suitable, but because the timing and the track are suitable, and that should be borne in mind. In 2015, Cole Harden, Irish Cavalier, The Druids Nephew and Peace And Co all improved on the form they showed on Trials Day when winning at the Festival on what was generally quicker ground. That’s an important consideration to look for, and is the reason why we shouldn’t just be following winners in such circumstances. The New One and Sprinter Sacre similarly showed markedly better form at the Festival when racing away from testing ground.
Finally, we shouldn’t just focus on the winners at the Festival, but also on the horses who were placed, as this is a measure of how robust the logic is. Winners and placed horses should be roughly in line, and a big differential between the two should be a warning sign as to how reliable the win percentage is.
By the same token, a poor win record allied to a bigger than usual place record should mean you look more kindly on those individual figures. Once again, this is not intended to be a system as such, but a general guide to which horses we should expect to be competitive at the Festival given their appearance this weekend. It may prove beneficial to concentrate on those who are unimpressive without being well beaten, and have a marked preference for better ground, as that remains the conditions most likely to be faced in seven weeks’ time.
Rory Delargy
00helynsarhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pnghelynsar2016-01-28 15:12:412016-01-28 15:12:58Trials Day as a Source of Festival Winners
Last month, Tony Keenan offered a view on fallers in Irish chases in his excellent article here. In it, he showed which courses had the highest percentage of fallers, and which horsemen had had the most 'misfortune' in this regard.
That made for fascinating reading for Irish tracks, so it was a logical next step to conduct a similar exercise for UK tracks. For the purposes of consistency, I've used the exact same parameters as Tony did, though obviously overlayed against British courses, trainers and jockeys.
As a starting point, let's remind ourselves of the year-by-year faller rate in Ireland and UK, presented in a slightly different format from the Irish piece.
There has been a marked drop in the percentage of chase fallers in the sample period. A shrinkage in the average number of runners contesting chases is likely to be a significant factor here: less runners equates to a generally slower pace and to less crowding at fences.
In Britain, various measures have been taken to address ostensible welfare issues, most notably the redesigning of Aintree's Grand National fences.
And, looking at the data on a course by course basis, one can see that Aintree's fences have indeed taken a heavier toll than any other track in Britain (and Ireland for that matter). Not by a fine margin either. Aintree's chase fall/unseat percentage, covering both the Mildmay ('normal' chase fences) and Grand National courses, is above 20%.
The highest in Ireland is 'just' 15.2%, and the next highest in UK - Fakenham - is 12.85%.
Put another way, Aintree has a more than 60% higher faller/unseat rate in chases than any other UK track.
If that is the overview of the theatres, what of the actors? The performance of trainer and jockey are often related, a point which should be kept in mind when perusing the following. Trainers first...
The first thing to note is that none of last season's top 25 trainers has a higher fall/unseat rate than 10% during the seasons 2009/10 to 2014/15. While the range within this relative peer group extends from 5.27% to 9.55%, it may be worth comparing the top end with their Irish counterparts. There, 13 trainers had a 10%+ fall/unseat rate, with the 'most unfortunate' trainer almost matching Aintree's 20% attrition.
The likes of Brendan Powell, Colin Tizzard, Tom George, Charlie Mann, recently retired Richard Lee, Peter Bowen, Jonjo O'Neill, and Venetia Williams deserve praise for the consistency of their jumpers' jumping; which is not to pass any negative judgement on the rest of the top 25, all of whom fall into the realms of relative acceptability when set against the most logical 'control', Ireland.
Finally, turning attention to jockeys, and again looking at the five season performance of last season's top 25 riders, we see a similar story of relatively acceptable fall/unseat rates.
As with trainers, the range is from roughly 5% (precisely 4.46%) to roughly 10% (precisely 10.05%). And as with trainers, the jockey figures compare favourably with their peer group across the Irish Sea; though this time the disparity is less marked.
While twelve of the 25 UK jockeys have a fall/unseat rate lower than Mark Walsh (6.4%), Ireland's most 'sticky' rider, Richie McLernon's UK sample high of 10.05% has just four Irish riders parting company at a more frequent rate, and none higher than 11.6%.
****
So much for the data, but what do they all mean?
Firstly, it is right to acknowledge that this two-dimensional glance at a three-dimensional puzzle is severely restricted by data limitations. There is no comparison with the wider riding/training communities, and no review of whether/how the figures have improved/regressed through the period, by course, trainer or jockey.
Despite those limitations, some inferences can be drawn.
For whatever reasons - likely a combination of field size, stiffness of fences, state of going, and yes, perhaps even horsemanship (whisper it) - fall and unseat rates in Britain are more palatable to the casual observer than the lateral snapshot from Ireland. Certainly they are lower.
The flagship racecourse - Cheltenham - has a commendable 9.55% fall/unseat rate over the course of the dozen seasons in the sample, a period where the average number of chase runners was 11.82. Given that the average chase field size in all UK chases during that time was just 8.08, all concerned deserve plenty of praise.
Of course, Britain has a louder and better (or, probably more correctly, more) accommodated animal welfare lobby. Looking at data from Aintree lends credence to the calls of many outside the sport (and, in fairness, some within) to act.
One, possibly coincidental, observation is the number of sharp tracks with higher faller rates. Fakenham, Windsor (no longer jumping), Catterick and Taunton all share the top (bottom?) five slots and all are nippy little tracks where the fences might be jumped at greater speed than other more galloping venues.
In terms of the UK horsemen and women, all within the sample can be content with their faller rates, with a solitary rider breaching the 10% threshold, and even then by a negligible 0.05%. James Reveley, from a fine racing heritage and a man who spends a lot of time riding in France (which may or may not be relevant), has the lowest fall rate of all at just 4.46% during the period.
And perma-champ, AP McCoy, was bested by just six riders on this count, his fall/unseat rate being an excellent 5.69% across over 1650 chase mounts during the five season period. That bare figure is better than all of the top 25 riders from Ireland, though again, caution is taken not to under-estimate the macro differences between the two jumping jurisdictions.
At the other end of this microcosmic spectrum, it may be more than coincidence that five of the seven 'fallingmost' jockeys in the list ride on the northern circuit. I have no obvious or logical suggestion as to why this might be, so it may not be more than coincidence!
In the finish, the charts are probably more interesting than actionable; and the conclusions almost certainly more conjecture than empirical fact. But it was a fun little exercise and perhaps there is some fiery utility amidst the number smoke and mirrors.
What catches your eye in the data? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Matt
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/newgrandnationalfences.jpg465640Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2016-01-06 20:23:012017-05-16 08:08:20Why Horses Fall (Part 2)
Last Friday saw us reach the end of the fourth full calendar year for Stat of the Day, which was Geegeez' first real venture into daily tipping.
We know that we acquired lots of new subscribers over the year thanks to previous years' successes, 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 by the time most people rise for breakfast, where possible and it's usually done well before midnight the night before the meeting.
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. 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 have managed to make a profit yet again this year.
Without blowing the collective trumpets of both myself and 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, I'd like SotD to cover your monthly subscriptions to Gold, making the rest of the site free to use as you see fit and in 2015, a level stake of £3.32 was all that was needed to cover a £24 per month worst case scenario.
Number of bets/selections/pts wagered: 287 (a large number of non-runners this year) Winning Bets: 81 Strike Rate: 28.22%
Yearly Profit: 86.8pts Profit on Stakes Invested: 30.2%
This is no flash in the pan freak year, as the abovce figures take the last two years results to 165/592 (27.87% SR) for 175.18pts profit at an ROI of 29.59%, showing remarkable consistency over a sustained perod of time.
These are quite phenomenal figures, if we say so ourselves and we'll be doing our level best to maintain our success in 2016.
Thanks for sticking with us/SotD,
Chris & Matt
***Stat of the Day is just one component of the excellent package available to all Geegeez Gold Members, so why not take your free trial now?
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/stat_of_the_day_white_letters-e1460311997762.jpg319830Chris Worrallhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngChris Worrall2016-01-05 12:07:462020-05-02 06:51:54Stat of the Day: The 2015 Review
Data won’t tell you everything about why horses fall, writes Tony Keenan. There are too many intangible factors at play, variables that can’t be number-crunched. Race flow plays a big part; horses can be drawn into mistakes by how the race unfolds, be it the pace it is being run at or simply by being distracted by another runner jumping alongside it.
Physical issues can affect jumping; an underlying injury can be found out in the heat of battle while the effort of in-race exertion can cause a fresh problem. That’s not to mention mental issues: some horses seem unable to concentrate on jumping consistently or lack the self-preservation instinct to get from one side of a fence to the other.
But numbers can still tell us plenty, not least because of a large sample size of chases and fallers/unseats each season. Unless otherwise stated, I have looked at all Irish chases since the start of the 2003/04 season until the end of the 2014/15 campaign (in hurdle races, jumping just isn’t as important with fewer and smaller obstacles).
In that period, there were 4,932 chases with 57,626 runners; 6,107 horses fell or unseated, a faller rate of 10.6% with an average of 1.24 falls/unseats per race. When I refer to ‘faller rate’ I mean the combined number of falls and unseats.
Irish and UK Chase Faller Rate by Season
Season
UK
Ireland
2014/15
7.7%
9.9%
2013/14
7.1%
9.3%
2012/13
7.1%
8.7%
2011/12
8.3%
9.6%
2010/11
8.1%
10.5%
2009/10
9.3%
11.3%
2008/09
8.7%
11.9%
2007/08
9.1%
11.1%
2006/07
8.8%
10.3%
2005/06
9.6%
10.5%
2004/05
9.4%
11.7%
2003/04
10.4%
11.8%
The first thing that stands out is general downward trend of faller rate in the UK and Ireland over the period covered; there are some blips along the way as the table above shows but the broad picture is clear. On the whole, fences in the UK appear to be easier which isn’t the greatest surprise; the animal rights lobby, regardless of what you may think of them, are certainly stronger there than in Ireland.
The Grand National fences are the most high-profile example of this but another interesting case, albeit with a small sample size, was made by Matt Tombs in his recent book ‘How to Bet and Win at the Festival’. Tombs points out that while there were 22 fallers at the 2014 Cheltenham Festival there were just eight in the most recent iteration, a marked decline. Irish faller rates are dropping too, though they remain higher than the UK which may help Irish horses on their raids as they are more tried and tested jumpers.
Irish Chase Faller Rate by Track since 2003/4
Track
Faller Rate
Sligo
6.0%
Naas
6.5%
Roscommon
6.6%
Tramore
7.5%
Killarney
7.7%
Ballinrobe
8.0%
Wexford
8.2%
Kilbeggan
9.1%
Navan
10.2%
Galway
10.3%
Fairyhouse
10.9%
Punchestown
11.0%
Tipperary
11.0%
Limerick
11.2%
Leopardstown
11.3%
Gowran Park
11.4%
Downpatrick
12.0%
Clonmel
12.0%
Thurles
12.0%
Cork
12.6%
Listowel
12.7%
Down Royal
15.2%
Faller rates at the various Irish chase tracks produced surprising results, not least the bizarre mix of tracks that comprised the bottom five. Down Royal is a big galloping track with one of the widest circumferences in the country and a few tricky downhill fences that are met at speed, Listowel is flat and tight but they tend to stick close to the rail over fences and racing room is at a premium, Cork is flat and galloping, both Thurles and Clonmel have downhill fences but beyond that have few similarities.
Perhaps the most encouraging finding is where the main winter jumping tracks fall in the table. The big four of Leopardstown (eighth), Punchestown (eleventh), Fairyhouse (twelfth) and Navan (fourteenth) bunch around the middle which is a good sign as they host the majority of our graded races. These tracks should be fair, a test without being an ordeal, and the numbers suggest this is the case.
Down Royal is the outlier here. Not only is their chase track top in terms of faller rate, it is also 2.5% higher than any other track in the country and there is no bigger discrepancy between one track and the next anywhere else in the survey as there is between the highest and second highest. The fences at the Ulster course have long seemed ultra-stiff and it’s probably not the place to run an iffy jumper or even to start one off over fences.
Irish Chase Faller Rate by Trainer since 2009/10
Trainer
Faller Rate
R. Tyner
5.5%
C. Roche
6.9%
C. Swan
7.9%
H. De Bromhead
7.9%
N. Meade
8.0%
F. Flood
8.2%
D. Hughes
8.4%
E. Bolger
8.7%
G. Elliott
8.9%
E. O’Grady
9.0%
P. Nolan
9.4%
A. Moore
9.4%
M. Morris
9.5%
M. Hourigan
9.8%
J. Mangan
9.9%
J. Harrington
10.4%
O. McKiernan
10.5%
T. Martin
10.6%
P. Rothwell
10.9%
J. Lambe
11.0%
W. Mullins
11.4%
C. McBratney
11.6%
C. Byrnes
12.0%
L. Burke
12.6%
J. Hanlon
12.7%
J. Walsh
15.8%
J. Ryan
16.7%
C. Murphy
18.1%
There is a host of contributing factors to why a trainer may have a high or low faller rate. The type of horses they typically handle plays a huge part; if they tend to get national hunt types, their faller rates should be lower as such sorts are more physically able to jumps fences while forcing flat types to do the same is a somewhat Sisyphean task. Good schooling facilities have to help too as would access to good jockeys, both for homework and on the track.
This table takes into account the top twenty-five trainers in terms of chase runners since 2009/10. Colm Murphy comes out worst on these numbers and he’s been cursed by some of the worst jumpers around in recent times. Zaarito (five falls/unseats), Big Zeb (four) and lately Empire Of Dirt (four) have all tried his patience though whether this is randomness or something to do with the trainer is impossible to say. The numbers suggest that Willie Mullins horses aren’t the best jumpers and the visuals back this up; a few of his stable stars have had their issues over fences but it hasn’t necessarily stopped them winning.
There isn’t a huge correlation between those with low faller rates and high return in terms of winning chases. I looked at trainers’ success rate in various types of races last month and the bottom five here – Tyner, Roche, Swan, De Bromhead and Meade – have a mixed record. De Bromhead (18.0% over fences since 2010) does very well, Tyner (12.0%) and Meade (11.7%) do ok while Roche (9.3%) is below average.
Irish Chase Faller Rate by Jockey since 2009/10
Jockey
Faller Rate
M. Walsh
6.4%
B. Geraghty
6.8%
N. Madden
7.1%
T. Doyle
7.2%
P. Carberry
7.3%
A. Lynch
7.3%
P. Townend
7.5%
B. O’Connell
7.8%
A. McNamara
7.8%
A. Crowe
8.1%
R. Power
8.2%
P. Enright
8.3%
R. Walsh
8.4%
D. Condon
8.7%
D. Russell
8.8%
J. Cullen
9.1%
B. Cooper
9.6%
D. Casey
9.6%
M. Ferris
10.0%
A. Heskin
10.5%
S. Flanagan
10.8%
M. Darcy
11.2%
P. Mangan
11.6%
The sample size for fallers with jockeys is bigger than for trainers and their faller rates have nothing like as wide a spread. Like the trainers’ table above it takes into account the top twenty-five jockeys in terms of chase rides since 2009/10. The two JP McManus-retained riders come out very well, particularly the much-improved Mark Walsh who tops the table.
I certainly won’t get into jockey bashing here when you consider that one fifth of the riders listed above aren’t riding any longer; David Casey, John Cullen, Davy Condon, Andrew McNamara and Tom Doyle have all retired recently. One thing that emerges is the overall level of competency across the board; even the worst faller rate is only 1.3% higher than the national average since 2003/04.
Breeders' Cup XXXII, hosted for the first time by Keeneland racecourse, in Lexington, Kentucky, was billed as a homecoming for the franchise. As the birthplace of so many champions - Kentucky can boast to have bred 78% of all US-bred Breeders' Cup winners, and 64% of all winners since inception - this was a venue as fitting as any to host the end of season 'World Thoroughbred Championships'.
Romance and appropriateness aside, questions had been murmured regarding Keeneland's ability to accommodate such a vast jamboree. After all, this is no Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby annually welcomes 170,000 racegoers and revellers; nor is it Santa Anita, host six times since 2008 and nine in all, thus possessing a bombproof blueprint for staging the event.
Moreover, the last time the Cup was hosted outside of those two venues, at Monmouth Park in 2007, it was something of a disaster with rain and logistics making that year memorable for all the wrong reasons. It is surely more than coincidence that it took another eight years for a new venue to be chanced.
The main risks were perceived as the weather - as Bayern was winning the 2014 Classic in sunny Santa Anita, snow was falling in Keeneland - and those pesky logistics: could a track unaccustomed to 50,000+ crowds cope with such a phalanx of fans? As time soon told, there was little about which to fret.
*
One of the great things about racing, and about Breeders' Cup week in particular, is that horses are largely trained under public scrutiny on the track. What makes Cup week so special is that global equine superstars congregate in a single place, allowing aficionados unprecedented access to their horsey heroes.
So it was that this week, as well as the likes of Golden Horn and Gleneagles, familiar friends of European track dwellers, the best of the rest also strut their thang for all to see. Best of the best is a chap called American Pharoah, a home bred born and raised in the state of Kentucky - where else?
American Pharoah completes his final workout
Winner of the Triple Crown in America, the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 (and only the fourth since 1948), this fine fellow has enjoyed a special year, and was already assured Hall of Fame status courtesy of that terrific treble in the early part of the season.
A few moments before AP graced the training track, his main rival, a five-year-old mare called Beholder, also cantered a couple of circuits. Sadly, her interrupted preparation - she spiked a temperature during transit from California - caught up with her and she was withdrawn from the field.
If there were a few initial clouds of doubt regarding the venue for 2015 Breeders' Cup, there were no such reservations about the quality of the participants. The brain fails when trying to recall a deeper entry, as the winners of the Derby, Arc (Golden Horn both), 1000 Guineas (Legatissimo), and English, Irish (Gleneagles both) and French 2000 Guineas (Make Believe) all flew in to represent the European Classic generation.
A robust older, and younger, Euro contingent supplemented the established stars, and they in turn joined the biggest names on the US scene this year: Liam's Map, Private Zone, Runhappy, among many others.
The stage was thus set for what is a slightly lop-sided two day extravaganza, with four races on Friday little more than an amuse bouche ahead of Saturday's vast a la carte selection [personal preference would be for one further race - the Turf Sprint perhaps - to move to Friday making a slightly less unbalanced 5-8 split].
Friday Races
Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf
First up, the Juvenile Turf, and the word in McCarthy's, Lexington's obligatory Irish home from home, was that Hit It A Bomb could not get beaten. Strange then, in the face of such confidence, that he was sent off at 7.2/1 against 9/2 in the early running here in Blighty. The reasons for his market uneasiness were threefold: inexperience off just two lifetime starts, lack of Group race form, and a "parking lot" draw.
As it transpired, Hit It A Bomb had three things in his favour: a rapid early pace which strung the field out; Ryan Moore riding a perfect race (again); and his own incredible talent enabling him to surge to the lead in the last few yards having spotted a dozen rivals distance turning in.
1-0 to Europe and, with so many top-notch turfers still to come, hope swelled for a strong European weekend.
**
Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile
Little Euro interest in race two, the 'Dirty Mile', as the shortest priced favourite of the entire weekend, four-year-old Liam's Map, was 'expected'. And for good reason. Liam's Map had charted a course to five wins in a very light seven race career, including by a wide margin and with a career best Beyer speed figure in Grade 1 company on his most recent start.
Generally a need the lead type, the question here was that if he was taken on early how would he react? Missing the break was an unfortunate beginning, and then when forced to check numerous times on heels behind the pace-pushing pair of Mr. Z and Bradester it looked as though the shallow odds were in deep water.
Shuffled back to a boxed in seventh, albeit only two lengths off the lead, rounding the far turn, Todd Pletcher's grey colt showed all his class when the gap finally came, ceding first run but not first past the post to a game and clear second best, Lea.
In the circumstances, this was an effort that could be marked up and marked up again. Sadly, that will be for academic purposes only, as Liam's Map now travels the ten miles from Keeneland to Lane's End Farm's breeding sheds to begin his new career.
**
Juvenile Fillies Turf
The second of the two juvenile turf heats, this time for the girls, and with Alice Springs, Nemoralia and Illuminate in the field, Team GB/Ire looked promising. In the event, the raiding party again failed to deliver as it has done in all bar two of the eight renewals. It may be no coincidence that the two victories came in the two 'Lasix off in juvenile races' years (Lasix being an almost ubiquitously applied elixir in American racing to restrict horses' bleeding) of 2012 and 2013.
That was supposed to lead to a wider ban on the drug at Breeders' Cup but, instead - and perhaps partially as a result of Europe sweeping the board in the juvie turf events at those two Santa Anita meetings, the US horsemen revolted and the Breeders' Cup Committee reneged.
Still, before we get too morally pugnacious, it should be noted that most of the European team - including both of its winners - were deploying raceday medication. So was main Euro hope, Alice Springs, here. She ran a great race in second, possibly squeezed a little in the straight, behind by Canadian-based Mark Casse's maiden Breeders' Cup winner, Catch A Glimpse, and in front of Jeremy Noseda's all-too-late runner, Nemoralia. It was to be a great weekend for Casse.
**
Breeders' Cup Distaff
With Beholder's defection to the Classic, and latterly her defection from the meeting, the Distaff looked wide open and lacking in star quality. Five year old Wedding Toast was favoured, but she ran a lacklustre race having used plenty of petrol trying to secure her preferred front rank berth.
In the end it was a dirt double for Todd Pletcher, as he welcomed Stopchargingmaria into the winners' circle. She'd run a flat fourth last time out and had failed to better a 95 Beyer in 15 career starts. In beating Stellar Wind, a progressive three-year-old but one which had also failed to surpass 95 Beyer, this looked a moderate renewal. Indeed, every previous winner since 2005 had recorded at least 100 on that speed scale.
For the record, here's the tape.
**
A crowd of 45,000 watched the Friday action and, as one of them, I felt the track handled the numbers well. Queues for wagering, drinks, food and toilets were all shorter than at big UK race days, and there was the usual relaxed Breeders' Cup crowd vibe throughout. The sun even poured a beautiful sunset over Keeneland on Friday evening as a portent of what was to follow during its next arc.
The sun sets on Day One of Keeneland's Breeders' Cup
**
Saturday Races
Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies
A bigger crowd of just north of 50,000 were in attendance on Saturday, though many of them were yet to arrive as the young ladies prepared for the first of nine Cup races on Saturday, a nonet culminating with American Pharoah's bid for pole position in the pantheon of American racehorses.
Songbird, a winner of three, including two consecutive Grade 1's in dominant fashion, shipped east from California. Her form was in a league of its own, her speed figures were in a league of their own, she looked set to have her own way on the front again, and she traded commensurately short at 3/5.
As the gates opened, she catapulted to the front and never saw a rival, easing off to a near six length verdict over the pick of the East Coast entries, impeccably bred Rachel's Valentina (by Bernardini out of Rachel Alexandra). Songbird is the best winner of this I can remember. So, while Beholder (2012) went on to great things including beating the boys up this year before injury intervened ahead of the Classic, this filly could take on the lads much earlier, perhaps even having a tilt at the Kentucky Derby.
Her time here compared favourably with the Juvenile winner though, as we'll see, that one didn't have quite such a straightforward trip.
This is one to enjoy, as have all her races been, three of them Grade 1, which she's now won by a combined 22 lengths, for an average 5 1/2 length winning margin. She's a fleet-footed filly. Fact.
**
Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint
Next up, the Turf Sprint. Run for the eighth time, but the first time at the intermediate distance of five and a half furlongs, that proved to be the key to unlocking a big-priced winner. Mongolian Saturday was his name, and his beautifully swathed connections were a treat for thousands of appreciative spectators, many obliged in their search for selfies.
The perfect Mongolian Saturday... in Kentucky
Running free of Lasix, the son of Any Given Saturday was to kick off a noteworthy 'clean' Sprint double, the only runners in their respective races not on the 'juice'.
He'd been a tremendous servant to connections all season running some competitive speed figures and finishing in the frame in his previous ten races.
But back to that aforementioned distance key. Mongolian Saturday had won his only five and a half furlong turf race; and second placed Lady Shipman had won four of five turf starts at the trip. They were two of only four in the field with a strong record at the precise range which, in races decided by fine margins, may have tilted the scales in their favour.
Specifically in relation to the winner, he's run a sensational race, having been drawn on the wide outside, been gunned to contest a 22 second flat opening quarter, and hung tough in the straight to win by the proverbial fag paper. This was Florent Geroux's second Cup win of the weekend and his third in all after Work All Week's Sprint triumph last year. He's a name to note.
Mongolian Saturday was a 15.9/1 chance on the tote board, having been 25/1 here.
Here's the race: heart-breaking if you backed Lady Shipman, heart-warming if you were a North American racing fan based in Ulaanbataar!
**
Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint
Now eight years old, the Filly and Mare Sprint has still to welcome its first three-year-old winner, but that didn't stop Cavorting being sent off the warm 3.4/1 favourite. She ran pretty well in truth, eventually finishing fourth having been held up from her outside draw, but she was no match for Wavell Avenue.
That one, giving Chad Brown his first dirt winner at the Breeders' Cup and his sixth Cup win overall, reversed the form with La Verdad from Belmont's Gallant Bloom Handicap. If this race had been the same distance as that one - six and a half furlongs - the result would have been the same. But this was seven furlongs, and the visual impression of Belmont was confirmed at Keeneland, as La Verdad's stamina gave best to Wavell Avenue's late run.
La Verdad and Wavell Avenue ran the same races for 6.5f
Taris looked the unlucky filly, caught on heels for much of the home straight, and Simon Callaghan's Coolmore four-year-old can be marked up on this effort. This viewer thought Taris's jockey, Gary Stevens, was a tad lily-livered about making something happen and probably should have been at least second if he'd switched to the three path about a furlong and a half out. Uncharitably, Stevens blamed La Verdad for checking his run up the rail, but he was looking for a miracle gap and it was a poor ride, plain and simple.
Anyway, don't take my work for it. Judge for yourself...
**
Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf
Run for the first time over nine and a half furlongs, the shortest distance in the race's 17 year history, Europe had a very strong hand. Legatissimo has carried all before her on our side of the pond this year, winning the 1000 Guineas, the Nassau and the Matron Stakes, and running close seconds in the Oaks and Pretty Polly, all Group 1's.
Here she was sent off the 9/10 jolly, with a trio of further solid European Group 1 performers in Miss France, Secret Gesture and Queen's Jewel in support. The worry for Legatissimo, long season aside, is that she tends to take a while to hit her stride, something inconducive with the inside turf oval at Keeneland.
Concerns proved well founded, as Moore's firm rousting took a furlong to elicit the desired response, during which time Stephanie's Kitten had kicked in her more instant turbo and burned through a dream split between the fading trailblazers to put the race to bed.
This was a second Breeders' Cup success for six-year-old Stephanie's Kitten, who won the Juvenile Fillies Turf back in 2011; and she'd also run a game second in this race last year. Her 2015 victory took place just six miles from where young Stephanie was born and raised as a kitten, and it is to there that she will now be retired to the paddocks. This was a seventh BC triumph for Chad Brown, hard on the heels of his sixth in the previous race.
Queen's Jewel, with Lasix aiding her constitution for the first time, was hampered in the initial furlongs and ran home best of all in third. But it would be ambitious to suggest the early impediment was the difference between victory and defeat. It was not.
Irad Ortiz, Jr., architect of Secret Gesture's "taking down" in the Beverley D. had a dream trip through a packing field here to prove the scourge of Europe once again. He's surely used up two of his nine Kitten's lives in recent weeks.
**
Breeders' Cup Sprint
This looked a great race in prospect, and it was the fairy story of the weekend, though with a Roald Dahl (or Edgar Allan Poe if you prefer) ending. Trainer Maria Borell had been successfully tilting at windmills all season with her gorgeous three-year-old Super Saver colt, Runhappy. This young chap, and his young trainer, are very hard not to love. Both go about their business with passion and talent, and both wear their hearts on their sleeve.
Here, Runhappy was up against a much more battle-hardened foe in the shape of Private Zone, a six-year-old veteran of 30 races, against Runhappy's six prior outings. Private Zone had been invincible this season at seven furlongs, but was dropping back an eighth here, against a progressive long-striding six furlong specialist.
The fractions were ridiculous, Private Zone dashing out from stall 13 to share the lead through the first quarter in 22.05, and the half mile in 44.31. What a huge race he ran in defeat eventually yielding to Runhappy late in the last furlong in a finishing time of 68.58 seconds. That's an average seconds per furlong of 11.43. Whoosh! Track record.
Runhappy had a wide trip in the three path around the turn so he too can be marked up on what is already a phenomenal run. Moreover, this was the first time he'd sat off the lead, rating in third. It caused him little or no inconvenience as he bounded up the home stretch to win going away. He'll get seven easily, and may stretch out to a mile if that rating style can be harnessed.
There was to be the ultimate sting in the tail, however, as Borell learned the morning after "the best day of my life" that she would no longer be training the horse. This staggering bombshell was delivered as it emerged that there was a conflict of opinion between the trainer and the owner's racing manager about Runhappy shipping west to continue his racing career.
For a young trainer who has done nothing wrong - and a heck of a lot right, regardless of the raw ability of her horse - that must be so hard to take. Horse racing is a cruel sport at the best of times, but decisions like this beggar belief, and I trust the owner, a mattress salesman, continues to sleep soundly at night. I'm confident I wouldn't be able to.
Here's the unbridled majesty of Runhappy gunning down a gladiator...
**
Breeders' Cup Mile
The Mile has been about France and America since Ridgewood Pearl last claimed the prize for Britain or Ireland in 1995. That was 20 years and 50 runners ago, and that sequence extended to 52 runners here.
In truth, before the race it looked like one for the French, who had a fearsome line up of G1 scorers in Make Believe, Impassable, Esoterique and Karakontie. But, for whatever reason, they all misfired and misfired badly, running no better than fifth between them.
The winner, Tepin, had been clear pick of the domestic squad coming in to the Mile, having blitzed a massive seven length Grade 1 victory over course and distance (soft turf) four weeks earlier. She proved that career best to be no fluke, stalking obvious pace angle, Obviously (!), before finding herself five clear with a sixteenth to go.
As is often the case in the Mile, regardless of the host track, there was scrimmaging on the inside rail, the Gallics clambering all over each other. Mondialiste, held up as usual, saw daylight too late but flew home for a clear second for Danny Tudhope and trainer David O'Meara. Clearly my Friday night pep talk with the cuprous conjuror had worked its magic!
Tepin, 4.9/1 at the off but available at 14's just a few days ago in Britain, had the perfect position off a steady pace, and gave her trainer, Mark Casse, his second win of the meeting, and jockey Julien Leparoux his sixth Breeders' Cup win overall.
Here's the race again:
**
Breeders' Cup Juvenile
The antepenultimate Cup race of 2015, the Juvenile, looked a touch sub-standard on paper, and so it proved. Nyquist, one of only two unbeaten colts in the race, and one of only two unbeaten on dirt, had a tough post in 13 to overcome.
Things looked insurmountable as jockey Mario Gutierrez was forced six wide around the first turn. But that was down to three wide into the second turn, and Nyquist's stamina kicked in to forge the pairing into a three length lead in the straight. By the line, he was all out to hold another wide-drawn wide-tripper, Swipe, but hold him he did to reward backers at odds of 4.7/1.
The pair pulled more than two lengths clear of their field and, though it was probably a moderate field, this duo can be rated slightly higher than the finishing time for their efforts.
In what looks a wide open Durrrby year in 2016, both deserve their places near the head of the market, albeit at prices (20/1 Nyquist, 33/1 Swipe) that reflect the openness of the heat. Brody's Cause also had a shocker of a run, finishing caked in filth for a staying on third, and his 33/1 quote is moderately attractive too, this first loss on dirt perhaps down to inexperience as much as anything.
Songbird is the 16/1 favourite with British books, and there are surely worse 16/1 shots than her, notwithstanding that she may not take in the Kentucky Derby, and that it is very, very hard to win that race with her run style (only War Emblem, 2002, has led gate to wire since 1988).
A lot will change between now and the 'run for the roses' in the first weekend in May but, for now at least, this may be the best trial there has been so far.
**
Breeders' Cup Turf
The last of the six grass races is the immaculately-named Turf, a mile and a half contest. It has been an awful race for favourites down the years with highly-touted 'obvious' Europeans routinely beaten. Against that backdrop, Golden Horn - winner of the Arc and Derby this season, as well as the Coral-Eclipse and Irish Champion Stakes - attempted to buck the trend.
In opposition was a solitary further Euro, Found, a filly who has a propensity for close up defeat and who ran an unlucky five lengths ninth in the Arc in her only try at the distance. It was her general malady of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory rather than that Arc run which put this scribe off the 'wrong' Euro in a race I traditionally call wrong, and from which I am now considering self-exclusion.
Suffice it to say that, in the face of an ordinary enough challenge from Team USA and the presence of an only remotely interesting South American challenger, Ordak Dan, I wagered heftily on Golden Horn at what turned out to be a too good to be true local quote of 4/5. Way to return significant profits from whence they came!
In the race itself, Goldie Hawn looked to have few problems with his trip, likewise Found. Indeed, likewise all, so the result has to be seen as fair if not necessarily representative. After all, whilst Found over Golden Horn is credible, that the pair were no more than a length or so in front of Big Blue Kitten and, more notably, Slumber, implies one or both of the shippers ran some way below their best.
Maybe it was their long seasons, maybe the travel, more likely a combination of both. But the differential between Derby/Arc-winning form has to be more than a length superior to the pick of the local crowd, doesn't it? What is worth taking away is that both third and fourth were trained by Chad Brown, comfortably the best American trainer of Breeders' Cup turf runners, and a man to keep well onside going forwards.
For those who didn't back Golden Horn - especially if you did take some of the incredibly-generous-and-not too-good-to-be-true 6.4/1 on Found (exacta paid a whopping 20/1) - here is the re-run.
**
Breeders' Cup Classic
Despite a dozen races having been confined to the record, those Breeders' Cup propagandists had it bang on the money: "The Best Is Yet To Come".
The best was yet to come. Not the best race, you understand. That was probably Runhappy's cold-blooded assassination of the ageing warrior, Private Zone. But the best racehorse. A fellow by the name of American Pharoah.
The 'Pharoah' was a champion coming into the race, having won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes - the Triple Crown. He was the first since 1978 to achieve this mythical feat and he did it at a time when American racing was pleading for a shot in the arm of his ilk.
Since the Belmont in early June, AP had raced twice: first he confirmed superiority over his age group in the Haskell, but then... he... was... beaten. Gasp.
Just as tactics got the better of Golden Horn in mid-season, so the Pharoah was tactically mastered in the Travers. Not by a single horse, but rather a 'double teaming' whereby Frosted - a rival here - buttered him up on the speed before Keen Ice - another rival here - ran by in the lane. Not. In. The. Script.
But if gamblers love a golden child, they love a story of loss and redemption more. In truth, there was little to redeem, AP losing nothing in defeat due to his valiant efforts in the face of tough breaks. He was akin to a Tour de France champion being mastered by team tactics on an Alpine stage, but with General Classement victory assured.
Here, his task was simplified considerably by the late defection of Beholder. The clear main danger had not been herself since travelling to Kentucky, and she succumbed to the almost inevitable in scratching. Her absence made Pharoah's task easier than merely having one less horse to beat.
No, Beholder was a key facet of the tactical shape of the race, having been expected to ride on the shoulder of AP from half a mile and more out. In her, and also the bulky hard-to-keep-sound Smooth Roller's absence, there looked to be no pace contention for Bob Baffert's world beater, whose metier is to turn the screw from the front. To use the cycling analogy once more, AP is happiest when in solo time trial mode.
Here, off a steady first quarter mile, he led all the way, gradually increasing his cadence as his rivals wilted in behind, eventually running away from them by six and a half lengths in a time of 2:00:07. Two minutes and seven hundredths of a second. But for some supreme saddle posturing by jockey Victor Espinoza in the shadow of the post, American Pharoah would surely have ducked under the two minute barrier.
Still, as you can see, it was a GREAT photo opportunity, very well taken, and an image which looks sure to endure for generations to come.
Victor with a grin for the ages... (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
The race itself was without other incident, and it was without the need for other incident too, this being a glorious equine monologue, the final procession of a Pharoah: the American Pharoah.
The crowd had come to watch him strut his stuff and, in the face of no adversity, he did just that. His welcome was rapturous and, over the course of the season, wholly deserved.
Once the dust had settled, I snuck away from the madding throng to wave cheerio to, as NBC's fantastic race caller put it, "the horse of a lifetime", as he was led away from a race track for the final time.
**
Keeneland 2015 was one of the great Breeders' Cups. Perhaps the greatest of all Breeders' Cups. Certainly the best of the thirteen Breeders' Cups since 2001 that I've been lucky enough to attend.
Fears about the ability of Keeneland, and Lexington in general, to cope with the legion of racegoers were unfounded. The track and the town handled the influx comfortably. The weather was cool - sure, it's November, right? - and, for the most part over Cup weekend, dry. On another weekend it could have rained, and on another one still it might have snowed. But racing isn't always in sunshine, and not all horses train under nature's lights, so I say fair enough.
More importantly, for the Breeders' Cup itself, it basked in its own sunshine by bringing the American Pharoah out for one last glorious hoorah. From a selfish perspective, I hope this signals the start of a new confidence in pushing the boundaries of Breeders' Cup locations.
Keeneland, in Lexington, in Kentucky, is more than just a spiritual home for US racing. It is the epicentre of the breeding business, itself the lifeblood of the sport. After a Breeders' Cup where eleven of thirteen winners - 85% - were bred in the state of Kentucky, this truly was a homecoming for the ages.
Matt
p.s. the Breeders' Cup Compendium, which can be downloaded here, made a clear profit of over 21 points on stakes of just 16 points. It flagged winners at 25/1, 14/1 and 12/1 as well as a number of others at shorter prices; and it made for a very fun evening for subscribers 🙂
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/americanpharoahvictorespinoza.jpg6801020Matt Bisognohttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngMatt Bisogno2015-11-03 14:38:052016-09-20 08:54:48Breeders’ Cup 2015: A Homecoming for the Ages
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An update on ‘iesnare’ (Reputation Manager)
