Geegeez Gold Case Study #1
I received an email yesterday from a subscriber, Jack, who was struggling to make Gold work for him. He had a fairly set way of doing things on another site (absolutely fine, of course) and the migration to Geegeez was a challenge. Of course, we humans largely resent change - I certainly do!, so there's needs to be a good reason for making the switch. I like to think that we offer a plethora of such good reasons.
Anyway, in answering Jack's email, I thought the content might be useful to others, so I've reproduced his questions and my responses below. I will try to do occasional case studies like this to help introduce the various elements of Gold, and how you might incorporate them into your own betting.
OK, here goes - Jack's note first, and then my reply:
Hi Matt
Thanks for taking the time out for this. As I said to Chris I don't know how you guys manage to fit everything in to 24 hours/day!!??
Anyway here goes.
I use Classes 3 - 5 handicaps up to 1 mile on the flat and Classes 2 & 3 handicap chases up to 3 miles over jumps. Prefer to see no 3YOs in flat races and so prefer the 4+ races to the 3+ but they're a bit scarce after the first month or two. 3YOs can make big improvements as they grow stronger with age and gain experience but unfortunately there's no way to calculate that.
On the flat I like to find horses which have previously run well at the course and distance and have a chance when comparing today's OR to their last few runs and hopefully their run/s at today's CD, using the admittedly over-simplistic 1lb/1pt OR for each length beaten no matter the distance. I prefer the race to be at the same class or below that of it's usual races.
As an example if we stick with Joegogo in the 7.45 at Chelmsford on Thursday I can immediately see that 6 runs ago it ran in a class 3 over CD and came 4th of 6 but only beaten 2L, that it is now 6pts OR better off in today's race and, hovering over the race to bring up the comments, I note that it led in that race, faded late on and lost 2 places. I would expect it to do better in this weaker race so should at least make the frame. Looking at its last 3 races there are conceivable (admittedly a bit feeble) excuses for all of them! 3RA Wolves - came after a break so maybe not completely wound up, 2RA Southwell couldn't get the lead, LTO Lingfield, not a course brilliant for front runners and faded in final furlong over 6f. Now back at 5f.
Will be interesting to see if Adam Kirby again takes the ride although I would prefer a good apprentice to a) take a bit of weight off and b) hopefully deflect the bookies/other backers away from the horse - Adam's presence on it's back would probably lose a couple of points but would at least point to the horse being fit and well and having a chance.
All the above takes me only a minute or two, having done it for so long.
I would then switch to GeeGeez Gold to check the draw, pace and to quickly find out how the other runners in the previous Chelmsford race did as well as its last 3 races. Unfortunately this can only be a rough guide as without digging deeper there's no way of telling if those that have run since did so in better or worse races. If a horse/s still looks promising on Gold I would then go back to the RP to do the deeper digging.
Over the jumps I simply look for horses which have been running in better class races than today's. Not too bothered about the OR. Look to back those which have previously done well at the same type of course as todays, if not having run there before e.g. tight left/right handed, left handed galloping etc. So if a horse has been running well at say Market Rasen, Ludlow and Taunton I wouldn't be in a rush to back it at a left handed galloping course. Having backed horses since Blakeney won the Derby back in 1968 I know all the courses by heart so that only takes a couple of seconds. I don't bother over much with either the distance (as long as it's under 3m) or the going over jumps as I've missed winners doing that. I think the 'sloggers' come into their own once past 3m and find it difficult to evaluate those races.
In both codes I don't check how the trainer's doing - if badly then maybe today's runner will be the catalyst for a revival in stable fortunes! And if a 7lb claimer hasn't scored yet then maybe today's the day! So maybe I look a bit too much on the bright side! Also, as Gold has good info on trainers, jockeys and combos etc, I do realise that I'm not using it to its full extent but think that sometimes simple is better.
As I mentioned before all the above does not take long on the RP site as I've been doing it for years and I can fairly quickly go through all the runners in a race but it seems much slower for me when I use the Gold site. Maybe it's just a case of getting quicker as I use Gold.
The other thing that bothers me about Gold is that sometimes the draw advantage seems to come from relatively few races, especially when compared to FlatStats as I mentioned before. I like the way FlatStats lays it out e.g.'472 horses from 44 races analysed. Date range: 11-Jan-15 to 06-Dec-18' and followed by the charts. As it's free for this I tend to use it quite often.
Well that's enough of my ramblings and please don't spend much of your precious time looking for ways to help - I'm probably beyond help anyway!
All the best
Jack
Some really good and interesting points - and here is my reply...
Hi Jack
There is nothing in what you do that cannot be done on Geegeez. Regarding race selection, you can use the filters on the cards menu – I’ve filtered for C3-5 flat handicaps today in the first image below.
Race card menu filters for handicap, race code and race class
Course and distance form: best view is Full Form, where you can select the ‘course’ and distance’ filters. Joegogo Chelmsford example below. I’ve also checked Proximity Form there, which gives a traffic light view of how well the horse ran based on race distance and beaten lengths. Also on Full Form, you can see DR and RS columns: they tell you the draw – in this case six (of six) – and run style, in this case Led. Filtering a horse’s form by wins and/or places often highlights a pace preference/requirement; it also offers clues as to whether a horse ran well from a poor draw, or poorly from a good draw, etc. Finally, at the right side of the form line in Full Form, you can see that the race in question has R W P W% P % - that shows the subsequent form of the race. In this example, 18 runs, 0 wins and 3 places. So not spectacular in truth.
Full Form with Proximity form, Course and Distance checked
Checking Instant Expert will reveal overall form at the respective course, distance, class and field size (going too). The final column compares today’s OR with the horse’s last winning OR in this code. Again below is Joegogo, where we can see he’s four pounds below his last winning OR on the all-weather. (I have my settings to last 2 years form, and race code/hcap contextual – i.e. when it’s a handicap, this view is only showing me handicap form, and when it’s all-weather, it’s only showing me all-weather form; when it’s both, it’s only showing my AW handicap form).
Instant Expert shows form against the race conditions, and also an OR comparison against the last win in this code
For the jumps, you could use the Class Move report as a starting point – it’s here – and sort by those dropping in class. See image below. The reports are a treasure trove, and it’s worth spending a little time messing around with them, as you’ll discover all sorts of ‘ins’ to various races.
Class Move report can be sorted to show those horses stepping down (or up) the most in grade today
Regarding looking for horses which have done well on today’s type of course, again Full Form has filters for course direction, general profile and specific profiles, so you can easily see how your potential class droppers have fared on similar tracks. I personally think trainer form is more important than you do (!), but I always check the place percentages as well as the wins. They tell far more of a story than the headline win numbers. (We have green and red form indicators on our racecards, but I never use those without checking the place data, as I say).
Going for me is only important when it’s heavy or good to firm (jumps, firm on the flat). Extremes isolate the proven types, and I have a ‘rule of two’: once may be a fluke, twice almost certainly was not.
On the matter of draw, I think one needs to find the right balance between enough data in the sample, and the data being relevant to today’s race conditions. For example, looking at seven runner races is not useful when considering a 16 runner race. Looking at all data is not terribly useful when considering a soft ground flat race (the draw bias can change almost 100% from firm to soft at some tracks). We have dropdowns on our draw tab, but more than that we have ‘guide lines’ which show ‘all going’, ‘all field sizes’, and ‘all races’, so you can see how the ‘micro’ dataset relevant to today’s going and field size maps against the bigger (but less specific/relevant) datasets. I’ve included an example from Southwell today, where you can see that the overall draw data (fainter lines) would mislead you when compared against the specifics for today – also note that I again tend to use place data as it is more comprehensive.
The fainter lines show that the overall draw data might mislead a bettor. There is very little bias against today's conditions.
I do appreciate it’s a fair bit to take in, and obviously it’s different from RP because there’s a heck of a lot more on our site. But I think you’ll be able to absorb these different elements quickly enough if working on them one by one. Gravitate to Geegeez rather than trying to do it all in one go, that’s my suggestion.
Hope that’s helpful,
Matt
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And that was that.
It won't be possible for me to go into such detail for all who want some pointers - and, naturally, the first port of call is the User Guide and/or the videos I recently recorded. All of that helpful content can be found on your My Geegeez page.
But I will try to occasionally share something like the above.
If you're not currently a Gold subscriber and you've read this far, you must be interested in what you might be missing. Hopefully this has been an appetising little taster. If you've never tried Gold before, you can get access to everything for your first 30 days for just £1.
Good luck!
Matt
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Excellent Matt, a great idea to do this.