A few weeks back I relayed an article about a profitable little angle in regards to backing favourites in Class 1 races throughout the UK Flat turf season.
This involved a simple three bet process with a 1-2-3pt staking plan reverting to 1pt when we get a winner. Also reverting to 1pt if we fail to hit a winner in the 3 bets. Of course you can set your 1-2-3pts staking at £10 – £20 – £30 in monetary terms.
My article grabbed the attention of one very diligent reader who is well into the stats side of racing. Mr Wiseman and a wiseman indeed… with his excellent dissection of my profitable little angle and what profits could be derived.
You can see the original article here.
And you can see what Mr Wiseman found here…
Hi Andrew/Clive,
This perked my interest so I thought I would delve a bit deeper and share what I have found
If we look at all Group 1 races since 2012 on the turf in UK & Ireland and look at Fav performance we come up with the following figures.
A 41% winning SR which is better than the 35.22% (for every fav in every turf race over the same period – see below)
No profits could be made straight backing or laying the system with -18.38 points to SP and -5.86 to Betfair SP (Lay -18.05) and the A/E (Actual Performance v Expected Performance) is a very efficient 0.94 (where 1.0 is break even in terms of expected performance) the same as all Favs in turf races meaning the odds compilers have pretty much got the markets correct as a whole.
The staking plan mentioned however could give an edge with that 41% win SR so let’s look at more detail:
We can see from the losing runs that a maximum of 9 has been hit at any given period suggesting that the gradual increasing staking plan could work well so let’s apply this to a spreadsheet and charts.
After dipping into the red initially, steady growth has been made over time before settling at 67.58 points profit to SP and 128.27 to BFSP (exc commission) turning an unprofitable level stakes strategy into a profitable one.
An Alternative Approach Based on Odds
Looking at the selections in more detail there are many short price favs with 123 starting at odds on, with 58 of these going on to lose, in fact we would make a loss at level stakes for anything up to 2.75.
The chart below shows what it would look like if we just focused on favs at 2.75 SP or bigger.
As we can see the SR drops to 28.81% but the A/E increases to 0.98 and we make a wee profit at SP of 0.74 and a bigger one at BFSP of 7.86.
I was interested to see how the above figures would work with the same staking plan and the results are 18.81 points profit to SP and 89.87 to BFSP so surprisingly what turns out to be a weaker level stakes system still outperforms this one but both are profitable long term (full breakdown of results are on the spreadsheet)
Of course with the higher odds comes a lesser strike rate and longer losing runs with 14 being the most to date.
Conclusion
A solid workable strategy that will keep most casual punters interested throughout the flat season and with a good profit increasing each year what is not to like.
Thanks once again to Mr Wiseman for that great piece of analysis and can you imagine running 2 or 3 of these type of methods together? The profits would certainly accrue.
Finally, if you want to avail of Mr Wisemans services in regards to data analyzation and potentially seeking out profitable angles, he can provide any data research you require for horse racing which can’t be found in any normal publication for…
- Performance of last time out winners on their next run at differing odds
- Performance of trainers with different horse ages at different tracks.
- Trainers who use certain claiming jockey’s for success in handicaps
- Sire data for differing distances, tracks and going or combination of performance of any odds range over any distance or going
- Performance of trainers in different class ranges, types of race, distance of race etc..
So please drop me a line if the above service could help you and I will put you in touch.