The Statman
Now before I hand you over to Chris, I would love to hear from anyone who would like Chris to tackle a specific group of stats, or a specific statistical database for them, be it in football, greyhounds, or any other sport. You provide the stats database, and The Statman
will do the number-crunching. So email me at the usual address. In the meantime, it’s over
to The Statman who this month takes us through profiting from jockeys, and jockey and trainer stats…
For those that know me, you’ll be aware that I’m not a great fan of systems.
Why?
Because generally they don’t work too well, and those that do, often only work for a season or two.
Either that or they are so complicated that you need my database or several hours a day to find the selections!
The Top Jockey System
Even though I’m no fan of systems, it doesn’t stop me collecting and studying them.
Over the years I have collected hundreds of systems. Some were simple, some complicated and most UNprofitable! I collect them purely because the better ones are based around sound stats, and if I can find an angle that I can turn a profit to, I will.
Anyway, the other week I was going through my collection of systems and one jumped out at me. “The Top Jockey System”, is what it is creatively called (for those fans of systems I’ll give you a review of the system at the end of this article).
This system focuses on “Jackpot Jockeys”.
This got me thinking again about why trainers select or book certain jockeys for certain races on certain horses, and if I could use this information to help spot when a trainer had a horse ‘ready for the races’ so to speak.
There are a number of reasons why a trainer may book a jockey for a particular horse in a particular race.
Maybe the trainer needs the jockey’s weight allowance.Or the Jockey’s big race experience.
Maybe the trainer just plain trusts the Jockey to bring the horse home in front of the rest, who knows?
What I do know, however, is that certain jockey – trainer combinations DO regularly bring home the bacon.
Back to the stats
To compile these stats I have looked at 10 years worth of data, as before, but I have also looked at the past two seasons’ data individually as well. The reason for this is that as apprentices, for example, lose their weight allowance they may fall out of favour with certain trainers, or as jockeys improve and gain more big race experience then they may become more highly sought after. There are really a number of reasons why jockeys either fall out of favour or become more sort after, so although ten years worth of data does give sought after us more stats to work with, some of this data may not be relevant for the current season.
Now these statistics throw up some very interesting combinations.
However, when a top jockey is riding for a top trainer the betting public jump on the combination as if it were a sure thing. As a result the starting prices for these combinations will be artificially low and thus a profit is very hard to come by, even though the win strike rates are above 60% for some, yes 60%! So what I have done is split these stats into two sections, the “profitable” combinations and the “high strike rate” combinations, some of which are far from profitable.
In the tables below as well as the stats for the three sets of data (the past two seasons and 10 seasons) I have also included the jockey and trainer win strike rates for last season so you can compare how the strike rates rocket when the two come together.
At the time of writing the most profitable combinations above would have produced a 21.5 point profit with an 80% ROI so far this flat season.
Beware the jockey switch!!
The Jackpot Jockeys system referred to earlier looks at jockey/trainer combinations where there’s a jockey change. What I mean is where today’s jockey is different to the Jockey in the previous race that horse had run in.
Does this filter make a difference?
Boy does it make a difference
Just think about this for a moment and it all starts to make sense. A trainer prepares or aims a horse for a particular race, one that the trainer is confident that the horse will win. On the run up to the race the Trainer will need to get a couple of runs under the horse’s belt, so to speak, to improve fitness, get race experience, etc. Particularly if the race in question is a handicap race the trainer may want to run the horse to reduce its handicap mark. In these preparatory races the trainer uses his everyday Jockey or an apprentice but when it comes to the big day the trainer changes the Jockey to the favoured jockey, the one that the trainer knows will produce the goods! Bingo! We now have a signal that the Trainer has a horse at the races ready to win; this is what we are looking for!
Of course this theory may just be “pie in the sky” – but the stats say different!
Now filtering out those runs where the jockey rode the horse in the previous race as well as the race in question does reduce the number of selections, but the win strike rate, profit, and ROI are all way up. In fact, backing the above combinations with the change of jockey filter would have produced a profit of 11 points with an ROI of 187% so far this season, that’s winning back almost twice what you’ve bet!
As tempting as it is for me to apply more and more filters, I’m going to leave it there as promised, simple, straightforward and quick to spot stats! Before I sign off for this month, here as promised is the system that prompted me to have another look at jockey/trainer combinations.
“The Jackpot Jockeys System”
The system was originally called “The Top Jockey System” but I feel that a more inspiring name always gives a system a little more panache.
Rules:
1) The horse must be returning to the track within four days of its previous race.
2) The previous race must have been a class three or better race.
3) There must be a change in jockey from the previous race.
4) Today’s jockey must be one of the top 10 Jockeys based on win strike rate from last season.
The top 10 jockeys are selected by using the previous season’s stats. Each jockey must have had over 50 rides, and it’s the top 10 based on the win strike rate. The information can be found on the Racing Post website, in their Stats section (http://www.racingpost.com/horses/seasonal_stats_home.sd). However, you will have to go through a couple of pages to find the top 10 as they only have the facility to sort the stats based on the number of wins and not the win strike rate. That said, it only took me 10 minutes to do by hand to get the top 10 jockeys from last season. This list only really needs to be updated at the beginning of the flat season, with the stats from the previous season.
To save you the effort here are the top 10 jockeys from last season:
Hills R
Kinane M J (retired)
Dettori L
Moore Ryan
Hughes R
Murtagh J
Manning K J
Ajtebi A
Scott A
Bruning J
Finally, is this system any good? Well, I’ll let you decide that for yourselves… here are the results from the past five seasons.
| 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | Total | |
| Bets | 2 |
19 |
28 |
16 |
9 |
7 |
81 |
| Wins | 0 |
5 |
3 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
13 |
| Profit/Loss |
-2 |
15.13 |
16.5 |
-1.63 |
-5.25 |
-3 |
19.75 |
| Strike Rate | 0% |
26% |
11% |
19% |
11% |
14% |
16% |
| ROI |
-100% |
80% | 59% |
-10% | -58% | -43% | 24% |
Not too bad as systems go, but it’s the statistics behind the system that are the real gems and not the system itself!
Take note when a trainer changes the jockey, chances are there is a very good reason behind it especially if the new jockey/trainer combination has a descent win strike rate. Until next time, my friends, I bid you farewell and as always punt profitably!
Chris James – THE STATMAN
TalkingRaceHorses.wordpress.com
All the data that you need to find these selections is available free of charge on a number of websites or in your chosen daily paper (www.racingpost.com and www.sportinglife.com are the obvious starting points).
The Trainer and Jockey names:
Can be found on the standard racecard, the trainer’s name is normally the one following the name of the horse and the jockey’s name is normally on the far right (on the Racing Post website the jockey’s name is on top and the trainer’s name is below).
The Days since the last race:
This is the number that follows the horse’s name on most standard racecards.
The Previous Jockey names:
Clicking on the horse’s name opens up a second page (on both websites) where the jockey for each previous race is listed.
The Class of the previous race:
Clicking on the horse’s name opens up a second page (on both websites) on the Sporting Life website the class of the previous races is listed in the table that is displayed. On the Racing Post website the class of previous races is listed under “Race Conditions” and the first part of the text after the bold text starting “C” (Not 8Gd C6Hc 1K – This would have a Class 6 race the part highlighted).