Horse Racing Betting Angles: Part 3a, Query Tool Examples

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This series of articles and videos has been designed to help inquisitive racing fans to understand more about the sport they love. Whether for betting or another, perhaps breeding research, purpose, there is much intelligence to be gained from looking beyond headline numbers; and Query Tool is a feature of Geegeez Gold which facilitates just such digging.

In the first part of this third part - part 3a - it is time to get into some examples. The angles highlighted have been selected in such a way that they provide a small amount of statistical 'nutrition' in and of themselves; but I hope their real value is in leading the viewer to conduct his or her own research along similar - or very different - lines.

I very much hope you enjoy it.

Matt

p.s. I strongly encourage you to take a look at the first two parts before diving into this one.

You can find Part 1 here

And you can find Part 2 here

p.p.s. the subtitles took a very long time to add, but that doesn't mean they're useful. Please do leave a comment and let me know if they enhanced your enjoyment or were irrelevant. I'll not be offended - far from it, if I don't have to spend another nearly six hours of my life doing that again, I'll be delighted!

 

Full video transcript

So before you start pressing or clicking any buttons in anger the first thing to think about is a scenario.

What we essentially want to do is test hypotheses or theories or ideas that we have.

Using the Query Tool

So what kind of scenarios can you see?

A few examples would be trainers in certain situations like maybe early season trainer form or trainers.

Maybe trainers by jockey, maybe big trainers

Not their number one.

What about the impacts of wind surgery? We can look at that, we can look at first time after a wind op.

Any number of times after wind op. We could look into the sires or jockeys or racecourses from a draw pace perspective. There really are any number of possible scenarios to dig into.

In the remainder of this video what I'd like to do is highlight some

examples of a given scenario. So for instance,

I will evidence one trainer and we'll find a jockey to go with that.

But you of course you go away and look at...

With trainers there are any number of UK and Irish trainers who have had

400-500 runners per year so they have big sample sizes to work with and you won't always find

valuable angles. Sometimes, very often, you'll come up dry but the whole point is if you if they were all profitable then everybody would be at it and the fact that we have to work a little bit harder not a lot as you'll see but a little bit harder represents a barrier to entry for a lot of people as well of course as not having

ccess to a tool like Query Tool

Ok.

One other thing that I want to say before I start I've been asked a couple of times about parameters how should I set things up Matt? What sort of win strike rate should I look for? Where should I be with A/E and IV? What kind of return on investment should I be looking for?

The answer to this question is it's up to.

The key thing to think about win and to a lesser degree place strike rate they basically tell you how long you'll

go between drinks. A lower strike rate will mean you need a bigger bank and more discipline: if you can't handle losing runs you need a high strike rate to keep you

in the game as it were, and so there's no point researching an angle with a 10% hit rate because you could very easily go 35

qualifiers without a winner, and that's not going to work for you.If you normally bet quite short and you need lots of winners to keep you engaged then you're going to be looking you need to be.

The win percentage maybe 25 or 33%, you need to set it high

to suit your tastes.

Likewise if you want something that wins often you can use IV and say one and a half on IV and that's going to give you certainly relative to the peer group it'll give you

those qualifiers who win

one-and-a-half times or more than average. The point I'm trying to make, and it is a really important point,

worth taking time with upfront, is that

the angles that I show you,

and the angles that you research,

they might be exciting in terms of their profit or their ROI...

But if they don't fundamentally suit the way you bet,

you're going to give up on them.

This applies to any system or service you might be interested in trying as well: if the fundamental metrics of that

angle or system or service are not aligned with the way you see the betting world, with how you want to...

you appetite for risk,

the number of bets you want to place, another one is your tolerance for losing runs.

If the metrics don't match up against

those things which are personal to you

the angle is going to fail for you. Not necessarily because it's a bad angle or a bad system or service, but because it doesn't meet your personal requirements.

I hope that makes sense. It's a really, really important point and, actually, if you take nothing else away from this video, please take that away because that will stand you in good stead going forward. You need to find something that suits you. Not everything will.

Ok good right now let's crack on the first thing I want to look at then I'm recording this on the last day of March we are in a lockdown this year 2020 you might be in 3 years time content will remain valid in its conceptual form the data will obviously move on I hope I hope we have some racing in the next few years so for the 31st of March is traditionally,

in any normal year we would have just had

Doncaster and the Lincoln.

And we'd be started in the flat turf season.

I'm going to kind of pretend that the flat turf season has started and I want to look at early season trainer form.

So to do that I'm going to

MONTH and I'm going to choose March, April, May.

That's my early season.

I'm going to go to the RACE

box, just going to look at UK for now but obviously we could do this in Ireland as well.

RACE CODE, Flat Turf and Flat AW.

That kind of gives us a look at those trainers who in the month of March have been in good form on the all-weather which

gives us hope that they will take that early season form into the turf, but it also doesn't preclude those who don't bother with AW and go straight to the grass. So that's that, race code, so I'm going to change it two years as well.

I'll just click GENERATE REPORT and see where we're at.

And we've got 27,000 runners there.

Just a reminder of the filters so far we got lost two years March April May flat races in the UK.

Ok.

Now look at this data by

Trainer. I'm going to now look at RUNNER

I'll click the

TRAINER radio button, now this is the order by button. I'm sure I referenced it in part 2 but just as a reminder: the left-hand radio grey disc, if you select one of those in this case, TRAINER

And then hit GENERATE REPORT which I'll do in a second.

Summary box instead of just having this overview row

will have a breakdown by whatever you chosen to order by: in this case trainer. But it could be jockey, gender, it could be headgear, whatever, so let's hit the Generate

Report button and see what happens. It might take a few seconds to come back.

Because it's quite a big dataset.

And there we are.

All sorts of guys and girls in this list sorted alphabetically by surname we've got these with, like,.

two runs and three runs and they're not really any use to us so I'm going to apply some filters in this.

Anyway, these boxes here. Hopefully my cursor

is making a nice yellow circle where I'm clicking.

I'm going to say.

At least 20 runs, although that feels like not enough probably.

I'm going to set my win percentage at 15 which is roughly 1-in 7 and again you know that might be to low for some people; I'll set my each way to 33%.

And I'm going to do 1.25.for

A/E and IV which will all be familiar now because you checked out the information from parts 1 and 2 in this three-parter.

Ok so I'm going to click update and as you remember this is a list alphabetically ordered and it's alternate row shaded. When I click update it's simply going to

hide those rows of data that don't match my parameters here. It's not going to look as pretty as it's not re-ordering, it's just hiding them so I'll click update.

And you can see that we've now got a much

smaller subset of data

for the last 2 years.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to

extend that out maybe to the

last five years

And obviously this is

150 percent

bigger data set than the previous one. We've got a few more entries in here, now what I like to do as a starting point is I sort

Actual over

Expected, high-to-low, like this.

I can see something else that I haven't done.

Oh I have, yes, Paul Nicholls has had a few runs on the flat.

Hmm, interesting.

I am interested in

Karen McLintock.

I'm not sure Garry Moss is training anymore, his sample size is much smaller as well.

Philip Hide not training any more.

I think we'll just go with those for the minute.

I'd better make these 1, I'm not sure I got enough data in the set.

Obviously what I'm doing here is I'm

mucking about with the parameters

to get a bigger, slightly more to look at in the first instance.

I'm kind of interested in

most of those. I'll just stick with these top...

He's definitely not training any more, I don't think he is.

These are quite small sample sizes.

I'm going to leave it at that just with those three there.

What I'm going to do if I just go back to TRAINER on RUNNER and if I open this box up,

by clicking not on the radio, not this side just clicking anywhere in here.

You will see that

those +'s that I selected

have... those trainers have appeared

within the trainer selection box. So if I now click generate report it's just going to bring back those three rows.

It's really important to remember to clear these because all of a sudden you will be wondering where the data is and it is there but it's hidden because it's not satisfying these parameters at the top.

I've done that now.

So I've got 3 trainers that I'm

potentially interested in early season.

Now I'm looking at Paul Henderson,

it's a smaller sample, just 22 runners.

And there's basically no profit there.

For all that the A/E is strong, it's just not going to give enough action I don't think.

So I'll remove him and you can see that the tick's gone there and Generate Report to get rid, so I've got two trainers of interest and just to remind us of our filters.

We got the last 5 years.

UK flat races March, April and May.

And you could actually just set that up

as as an angle as is.

And when Karen McLintock and Adrian Keatley have runners in the UK on the flat

in the early part of the season you would get notified on your...

within the race cards and on the report, that's actually something else I wanted to touch on so let's quickly do that. In the previous video I told you about

how to check your QT

Angles qualifiers.

And I told you about the report.

Which I now can't find, of course.

I didn't mention and I wanted to touch on here.

Is how they show up in the race card. As you remember there's no racing at the moment, so I can't show you how they show up in the race card but this is what happens.

You will see something like.

You would see a number that isn't 0 in the blue number column.

In this case it's a 1.

When you click on that, it will show you the angle in question.

and the Profit/Loss. Basically the data/metrics from that angle.

Now if you can't remember what the parameters were for the angle, if you just hover over it as I am now.

This will happen:

It will bring up your parameters.

Just over it and it will show you, in this case I did the last five years up to 24th July 2018.

5 Furlong flat handicaps.

With these five sires. So I quite like sprint sires.

Obviously the title 'Turf Sprint Sires' is very helpful. I could have put 'Turf Sprint Handicap Sires' or whatever, but this is a little angle that I have saved.

I wouldn't necessarily be backing this horse; it would just be another piece of data that I would throw into the mix when I was looking at this race.

So that's something that I wanted to bring out: the QT Angles

displays on the race card with the

blue numbers. Clicking on them shows the angle in question, hovering over the angle shows the parameters that you set up for that angle.

OK, good.

Right, let's go back to it.

So what I'm going to do I'm actually just going to save that as it is. Now, some people...

Good discipline really is to say right that's my...

That is my five year data...

But why don't we have a look at that, before we save it, let me have a look at it by year.

And make sure that, for instance,

all of the winners didn't come in one season.

You just quickly...

I've selected year here.

Clicked Generate Report and I'm going to sort it by year.

And we can see that...

2015.

Very few qualifiers.

In the full years 2016 through 2019 we can see that there was an approximately, well, there was a 20 plus percent win strike rate.

The each way strike rate was promising as well.

The win P/L has been a bit variable and last year was lower.

Quite a bit lower.

This year.

Two of them have placed so it's in the same bracket.

On a meaningless sample size of four.

It's too early this season obviously we lost the racing now.

I wouldn't be worrying about this year.

So I'm interested in this but I can see a

general degradation of the profit and the A/E figure reflects that as well.

I would be happy to save this Angle and as I say use it advisedly rather than backing these horses blind: it would just be an aide memoire to me that McLintock and Keatley

are trainers to keep on side in the early part of the season.

So then I'd add that to

my QT Angles.

"Early Season Trainers", Add Angle,

And then that's done.

And, of course, like everything else they're all zeros, but that is one angle and you could have an early National Hunt season trainers one, a summer jumps trainers one.

You could have a

sa Summer jumps by track angle. So there are lots of different... this is one example, but there are lots of different other ways that you could cut this data.

So that's the first one. Right let's look at trainers and jockeys now so I'm going to hit my reset.

I'm actually going to refresh the page entirely.

Now this time I'm

going to look at

two years of data

I'm going to go to.

Ireland, just for fun, just to change things up a bit.

I'm going to sort by trainer.

Just do that because I want to see who's got the most

runners.

There probably is some merit in looking at trainers who maybe only have 30 or 50 runners a year.

But really I think the value is looking at the big

Big datasets.

And looking at things that

are maybe less obvious

to the man or woman

in the street.

I'm just going to change this to FLAT (TURF/AW) again

And now we've got a small subset, well, we've got a large number of trainers but a small subset of

essentially volume trainers.

The trainers I'm going to be interested in

I want 100+ wins

And that's going to quickly sort things out.

And then I'm going to sort

High to low.

And let's have a look at Aiden O'Brien. Let's select Aiden.

Generate Report, and that's going to bring just him up. I've got to remember to clear

my filters data here.

Now, I'm gping to say, show me Aiden O'Brien's runners in the last 2 years on the flat.

Sorry Aidan O'Brien Irish runners in the last 2 years on the flat

by jockey.

Click the JOCKEY radio button, click generate reports and then in my summary box.

I got all the different jockeys that Aiden has used in the last two years. Now again we've got these ones and bits and pieces, they're not really meaningful so let's sort by

wins and we'll say, "right well we're just get rid of

anybody with

less than

20 runs", let's say.

Small subset here, again sort by A/E.

And we've got.

Messrs Hussey, Moore Donnacha O'Brien,

Emmet McNamara, Seamie Heffernan,

Paidraig Beggy,

and Wayne Lordan.

Wayne Lordan

is an immediate chuck out and if you're a layer that might be interesting: an A/E of 0.53.

on 150ish.

runners is terrible.

In fairness to him, he's almost always on a second, third or fourth string but nevertheless...

And again you'd need to check

Betfair SP because he might be riding some massive priced horses, but on the face of it these are eminently avoidable.

19 out of 20 get beaten.

5 out of 6 are not even in the frame.

These are not horses to go to war with generally.

At the other end Ryan Moore is quite interesting: 34% strike rate and a small profit, in fact a reasonable profit

at SP. So we'll have a look at Ryan.

Let's take Ryan Moore and Hussey and O'Brien is now training so he's stopped; we'll have McNamara and Seamie Heffernan as well.

The reason I've done that is I've got them here now so what I can do is I can look at them individually and I still got these names here to come back to. I'm going to have a look at

Ryan Moore first.

I want to look at

a bigger data period.

So I'm going to go back 5 years.

And I'm going to sort by year.

And order this by group.

You can see here...

that essentially

what happened

in the last 2 years.

Is not replicated in any of the previous three.

This is kind of precarious territory now because we're not seeing

a replication of the Actual

over Expected, we're not seeing a replication of the profit and loss.

We are seeing that in the last couple of years Ryan's IV has risen.

Now, our job as researchers

is, if you remember the point from part 1, of logic logic logic...

If we can come up with a reason

for this, if we can explain why

in 2017

It was not good, and in 2018 it was good,.

then we've got a bit of a chance.

And there is one credible reason, and it is this.

If I go back to RUNNER

and JOCKEY. And I'm just going to look for

this guy, Joseph O'Brien.

So if I do that and then sort by

JOCKEY

Right now what I want to do is I'm ging to go to my dates and sort that by year.

And what we can see is that

Joseph stopped riding in 2015.

So that would partially explain

these data here. So 2015

Joseph had

plenty of the good Aiden horses.

It doesn't explain 2016 and 2017.

Notwithstanding that the A/E figures for those years are kind of more acceptable than

this one here.

When Ryan was competing in Ireland with

Joseph for the Aiden

rides (apologies for

first name terms).

So where do I get to with this? And again these are the kind of situations that you'll find yourself in when you're doing this.

You've got some kind of make value judgements.

Actually I should have cleared that I don't think it's going to make and difference.

I should have cleared that before.

So we've got a situation here where recent history is promising.

Longer-term history less so.

We've got kind of a partial explanation.

We've got a full explanation for the year 2015.

You can see that as Joseph stopped riding - in 2015 Ryan Moore only rode 27 of Aiden's horses in Ireland.

And in subsequent years he's ridden more, as you can see; and that is probably a factor in these numbers I think on balance it's definitely something worth

keeping in mind because it's the kind of thing...

It's one of these 'Hidden in Plain Sight' angles, it's the sort of thing that everybody thinks must be overexposed.

And it's potentially not.

Now what you might do this in the last 2 years there's kind of 200 runners there you might look at whether it's 2 year olds or Group races only you might look at

which particular

race types

O'Brien and Ryan Moore have combined with for the most success.

And that might be your angle.

This is a trainer / jockey combination and, you know, who would have thunk that

O'Brien, the best trainer in the world or certainly in Britain and Ireland, and Ryan Moore, the best jockey in Britain and Ireland, I think both of them have only got one peer and they're a partnership as well.

Gosden nd Dettori

Who would have thought that those highest of high-profile trainers and jockeys would be

borderline profitable to follow blind.

It really is quite remarkable and it's and it's worth knowing.

Saving it to your angles if that's something that you want.

Let's.

Let's do a slightly less obvious one.

This time I'm going to look at

UK trainers on the flat.

The last 2 years here, you see that there.

And from my RACE conditions I'm going to say UK.

Race code.FLAT (TURF/AW)

And then I'm going to look by trainer.

This is quite big dataset, so it will take a minute for the data to filter in. The query is complete and then it takes a second for your browser to order the data my browser is being told what to do.

And it's got to create this very big table.

And that takes a minute or a few seconds to do.

Right again we've got very small numbers in here so I'm going to sort by number of winners.

So I can see where a sensible cut-off point is.

And 150 wins

gives us plenty

to go at.

Sort by win strike right, now we can see that we've got David Evans who has

volume but low strike rate. I don't really want these

super low strike rate trainers so I'm going to put 10% in.

which actually doesn't get rid of many.

I just leave it like that I think.

So we've got quite a bit of data to go at.

Some trainers,

like Mark Johnson uses Joe Fanning and Franny Norton

extensively and there actually aren't that many left around that. Other trainers like John Gosden will.

use Frankie and Rab Havlin for the vast majority of his. Let's have a look at Johnny G actually.

And Karl Burke

And maybe Roger Varian

So what we've got here are

three trainers who all perform better than average, one of them is a standout and that is Gosden.

We're going to look at Gosden first and again if you remember we can just deselect the other trainers.

That's Johnny G's - again forgive familiarity - that's his overall 2-year

record on the flat. I want to look by jockey.

Select the JOCKEY radio button and generate report and here are the data.

Robert Havlin has had the most rides and winners in the last two years Frankie is quite selective.

Let's sort by A/E.

And again we want to get rid of the small sample sizes.

Let's say at least 15 wins,

Now we've got a much smaller

more meaningful dataset. The first thing to look at is Frankie (Dettori).

See he wins 30% of the time

Slightly.

So let's have a look at that actually overl the last 5 years, I think it might be a profit over the last five.

Break-even, but at exchange prices that will be a profit. We'll go back to two years.

So we got Oisin Murphy, Jim Crowley, Frankie Dettori, Rab Havlin, Nicky Mackay and Kieran O'Neill.

The strike rate for Nicky and Kieran is 20% or lower which in the context of the group

is not really at the level I would like to be, so we'll look at just these four guys.

So we've got four here now.

What we can do is

Rob Havlin.

It's going to be hard, I mean there might be some situations where he's

profitable to follow.

Potentially when he's on a second string so when

he's riding

a horse at

a bigger price to Frankie.

That might be something worth looking at, you can do that with odds by selecting him but I'm going to

deselect him for now.

Generate report and I've got three in here.

I want to look at these guys over the longer term, we could just quickly look at Frankie but I want to look at.

Oisin and Jim as well.

And we can see that

Oisin Murphy

When he rides for John Gosden

I mean 40%.is ridiculous...

It is a small sample size.

And these 30% numbers

certainly Frankie's, on

a bigger sample size are remarkable.

If you're betting in a race where Gosden

has got one of these jockeys up and you're not betting it

You've only got 70% of the winners to go at. Now that might be absolutely fine.

It's kind of a meaningless or misleading start in and of itself but you need to know that these guys are winning a lot of the time. Whether they're profitable or not is another question: in the case of Oisin Murphy who is

the retained jockey for Qatar Racing and it may very well be the case that

a lot of those 50 horses that he's ridden for Gosden in the last five years were for his retained owner.

That's by the by, what we need to know is that this is a guy worth following. So you might save this angle as...

Gosden and Oisin.

And add it to your setup and then when they have a qualifier you get your Gosden and Oisin...

You get your blue number here and it will tell you the numbers and you'll be able to factor that into your overall consideration of that race. It might be you might want to bet those blind or you might want to bet them more selectively as I do. But either way you have that data right in the card there and also on the QT Angles Report.

So those are jockeys and trainers. Maybe we'll just look at one more. Let's go back to

RUNNER and we'll look at the trainers.Let's have a look at Karl Burke

So I've selected TRAINER Karl Burke and I've still got this by JOCKEY.

I want to look at Burke's

rider selections in the last 2 years.

.

Again I'm going to sort it. I want to get rid of the small numbers so let's

cut that off at 50, that's fine.

Sort by A/E.

Ben Curtis is the guy that kind of immediately

jumps off the page.

Let's have a look at Ben.

Now what I want to do is I want to look I want to look by year.

How's things.

Let's go 5 years and extend it out a bit.

That year actually if we look at

the win strike rate in recent years,

2017 and onwards, you can see that the strike rate is around

16%-plus.

But last year was down.

This is one, again it's another value judgement, you've got to kind of say,

"Right, obviously if I got a year like

2017 or 2018 I'd be thrilled to be following these but if I got a year like 2019 where the strike rate was down

and I might be in the hole a fair bit at some.point,

would I be able to stomach that?"

The answer for most people is NO

Only you know the answer for you.

I'd be absolutely fine with this because, again, I'm not backing them religiously anyway. I'm missing winners but I'm missing plenty of losers as well by being selective.

What I want to do with Karl and Ben.

is I want to

look by MONTH...

I want to see, because most trainers have seasonal ups and downs, and looking at trainers by month is a valid thing to do, and often it is

quite instructive.

So I've selected order by MONTH and Generate Report. .

Now we've got some interesting

.

Remember our filters, specifically Karl Burke when Ben Curtis is riding

On the flat in Britain in the last 5 years.

See that there are some ups and downs here and the easiest way to

visualise this is with the CHART.

This is something else I wanted to show you: when you've got a...

When you've got a number of

variables in your parameter, so I've got 'by month' here and I've obviously got 12 months - 12 variables in my parameter.

Or 12 parameters in my variable, I'm not even sure which of those is right! Anyway,

what our charting software does is it takes half the dataset, or sometimes a smaller percentage. But if you click .

in the top chart,

it will show you everything. Now sometimes, if you've got like a 1000 trainers in here that's going to be not going to be able to make sense of this so what you can also do is if you click and drag

you can select

a section.

of the chart to look at in more detail. And when you've got 1000 in here that selection I've made there which is, what?, about a quarter, that's still going to be 250-odd so I might actually be only wanting to

look at a smaller subset like that.

A single click and you'll get the full dataset. Right, so here we've got Burke and Curtis.

It's sorted by Win PL I'm going to sort it by A/E, which is a good friend of mine and again clicking in the chart [to view all data].

What we need to note here.

1.0 is the line of interest in A/E (and to a lesser degree IV).

And what we can see here.

In the early part of the year.

Certainly January-February March.

And the late part of the year - October November December - this is a period that obviously aligns with the all-weather.

Karl Burke and Ben Curtis have had a good time of it.

In the summer months,

less so and particularly less so between

July, August

and September

I mean that's perfectly legitimate in my opinion.

To accept that seasonality I mean if you look at strike rate.

The average for the year, you can see this at the bottom, it's 16% overall.

And in July it's 10% or 9% in August it's 5%.

And in September it's

12%. It's much lower

than the overall averages in

April May are much lower as well so I wouldn't be including June and excluding April and May.

I'd be either including April and May as well as June, or excluding April through June, if you see what I mean. You've got to put logic behind the theory: now in this case the logic is probably these guys are

mustard on the all-weather and we can very easily check that. If we just

select the ON button here it's going to put all the months on I'm going to take out

May to September.

Is a little bit convenient maybe.

I'm going to do that, and then life looks more rosy obviously but what I want to do now.

Is I want to look at

by RACE CODE

There actually isn't a huge amount of difference.

So the theory about

most of their winners being on the all-weather is debunked.

They look absolutely fine on the flat turf as well so that's interesting that's good. One other thing that I might look at is by handicap or non-handicap.

And again.

Much better in handicap so might though it is profitable in

win profit and loss

terms in non-handicaps but if you look at the A/E that would give you cause for a slight reservation. Certainly

all of the metrics are better in handicaps.

I might change that to handicap and I might revisit my dates and see if that makes

any difference in the summer months.

And actually what it does

is it kind of reinforces

the previous date range

that we selected, which

was October through to April.

So if we delselect the summer months

We've now got...

We've essentially combined the two scenarios we've looked at so far which are kind of a sub-season.

It's sub-season trainer form with trainer by jockey.

Generate the report and we've got a nice little angle here which has been extremely profitable. It's worth looking at by year.

And we can see again that there was a

losing year in 2016.

So, again, are you comfortable with that? The answer might be no.

Generally speaking this is an approach that in the last few years has been a really

good one to have onside, so I'd always be mindful of Burke and Curtis

teaming up in handicaps in in the trainer's good times, which are October through to April.

That's an angle that I think it's worth saving.

So that's saved to my Angles now..

I want to show you one more. I am conscious of the length of this video and I might break it up into two recordings.

I will do that so I'll do this last one on trainers.

Actually I have got one more on trainers, so I'll do that in a part

3b if you like, and some people will obviously have got the general idea by now and choose not to look at

the angles highlighted in Part 3b, others will want to look at those as well.

I mean I would encourage you to look because I think,

not so much for the specific angle, but there are some more scenarios I'm going to highlight which might give you ideas to go and research on your own.

And I think there's plenty of value in that.

Let's go we're going to do another trainer jockey combo.

I do loves me a trainer jockey combo as long term

subscribers will know.

This time we're going to look at Red Raif, as I

somewhat unflatteringly call him.

Mr Beckett, who is an excellent trainer.

And a passionate man.

Somewhat political and not fully aligned with my own view of

the world. But that doesn't make him right or wrong, it just makes us different.

Anyway it is his ability to condition horses that we're interested in here so let's retain focus on that.

Beckett as you can see has a 16% strike rate in the

last two years. If we extend that out to five years, we can see he retains a very consistent strike rate.

And if we look by year,

we can see that he's...

...ignore this part year which is unrepresentative, as you can see by the number of runs, but in the main he

is consistently around 14% to

20%, average 16.5%, very solid overall figures from which to work. So what I want to do is I want to look at...

As you can see down the bottom here we've got two and a half thousand runs

So we've got a bit of data to work with..

So let's see if there are some sensible subsets within that.

We might look at

RACE CODE for flat turf and flat all-weather.

We can see that his strike rate again is consistent.

Nothing really

of interest there.

Distance.

Is he better with sprinters or middle distance horses? He doesn't have a huge amount of runners

at sprint trips.

The ones he does are largely

consistent in strike rate terms, so

nothing really going on there.

Handicap or non-handicap?

Hmm, now that's interesting.

The strike rate is not

massively different, but it is notably different, kind of 10%.

16 + 10% of 1.6 - 17.6 and it is 17.43, let's call it 9% better in handicaps.

And we've got a bit of a chance looking at the A/E figures here and Win PL on a big sample size so I'm going to look at

'Red Raif' in handicaps.

And then we've got this summary number. Now let's look by

RACE CODE

That's interesting.

Distance.

Longer-distance races look

potentially more interesting.

But what I really want to look at is by jockey.

So let's open up the JOCKEY radio button.

Generate report

And get rid of some of these meaningless .

samples, so let's say we want.

we'll start with 20+ and work up from there.

Sort by Actual / Expected

And we've actually got some really interesting players here.

Now Fran Berry has retired and he and Pat Dobbs used to ride a lot for Ralph Beckett, as did

Richard Kingscote as you can see. They had the least good data in terms

of A/E and indeed

in terms of Impact Value which is a reference to strike rate as well so they are easily excluded.

Higher up the list we've got

the likes of Sylvestre De Sousa, Josephine Gordon

I think if we put a

win strike rate of at least 15%

Get rid of some of these so we can focus more clearly and an each-way strikerate of 33%.

Now we're getting to the juice of it. And a problem with Sylvestre is that he's a fantastic jockey - that's not a problem - the problem is that everybody knows he's a fantastic jockey.

Even in this loaded situation, Beckett in handicaps, where

he places his horses very well clearly.

The strike rate is high but we're never going to be able to get rich with this guy.

I think I'm going to look at the other four

You could do more with this but really, it might be worth looking at gender - Beckett is extremely good with training fillies and mares. He's won the Oaks a number of times.

There's not really much difference.

Male horses tend to win more often the female horses.

That's just a function of

genetics I suppose; age is worth having a look.

I just want to sort this by group, so I can get a feel for the linearity of it, if you like.

Rather than cherry-picking

based on A/E

or profit.

Most of his runners are in the 2 to 4 year old age group, it might be worth focusing only on the the younger horses: 2 and 3 year olds.

I think that's probably a legitimate thing to do.

In this example I'm going to leave them all in but you might choose to focus only on those that small group you can see that they're the sort of 5, 6 and 7 year olds have very few runners. They've had 34 runs between them whereas 2-year olds alone in handicaps have had 45 runners in the period so I'm just going to leave it as is and

I think we've got a nice little trainer jockey angle here so Ralph Beckett in flat handicaps.

When he uses Oisin Murphy, Rob Hornby, Louis Steward or Harry Bentley. Now this is a five year view and again it's definitely worth looking at the year by year breakdown.

We can see that there's a

gorgeous consistency here that is an angle researcher's dream such is its

annual profit and its strike rate of

20+% (again, ignore this year because.that's

a small number of runs in the year so far). I mean that's really quite interesting.

We might look by month as well just to see if he has any seasonality to his form.

The easiest way to do this in a chart.

The 1.0 line is here and we see

again in June and July

High summer when trainers are running horses left, right and centre,

firing a lot of bullets,

it's quite difficult to retain

the higher strike rate.

And that has an impact on profitability and therefore A/E.

You might choose to leave

June and July out; I'm not seeing enough there to justify it for me so I'm going

to leave them all in.

Notwithstanding that June and July are

slightly less appealing.

I think it's a really solid angle and I'm going to save it to my QT Angles.

Added.

Alright and that's another angle.

And that is enough for this video I think. I hope

you've seen some interesting angles there. More importantly, I hope you see

some of the considerations that we need to work within when we're considering what might be an approach that suits us and when we're considering

the legitimacy of

data in terms of

it's long-term or future profitability potential.

And I hope this may have inspired you or encouraged you to maybe have a crack at researching some angles yourself. If it has and you've watched this video from the blog...

Please do leave a comment with anything that you'd be happy to share. You might want to keep some of them for yourself, and that's fine, but if you're happy to share that would be fantastic as well. Even if it's

a generic approach.

So, again, like a scenario that people could go away and look at their own

"sub-scenarios".

OK, enough already, this is Matt Bisogno saying thank you very much for watching this part 3a

of the Query Tool series. I hope you got some value from it, I'll be back the part 3b very soon.

But, for this one, byee for now.

Horse Racing Betting Angles: Part 2, Query Tool Intro

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In Part 1 of this three-part series looking at horse racing betting angles, I talked about research principles: about knowing what works for you, about the importance of logic and a lot more besides. It's a foundation piece for the next two parts and, if you've not read it yet, I'd strongly encourage you to do that first. Here's the link: Horse Racing Betting Angles Part 1

Parts two and three are video-based for now, though I will endeavour to get transcripts at some point. The middle piece, then, is below, and it provides an introduction to Query Tool, Geegeez Gold's main research module. It can be used to drill down on courses, horses, trainers, jockeys, sires, damsires, and plenty of other things besides.

In this video, you'll discover what Query Tool (QT) is, where it lives, and how it works. You'll see how to visualise your analysis, display qualifiers and, best of all, save your research so that it is recalled when relevant, i.e. when there are qualifiers in the day's racing. Click the play button to watch Part 2.

In Part 3, which you can look at here, we'll look at some examples of angle research, produced with Query Tool. Each example is one element of a group of entities which can be researched. As such, there is ample opportunity for curious readers/listeners to try things out for themselves. Look out for that in the next couple of days.

Matt

Horse Racing Betting Angles: Part 1, Research Principles

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To win at betting on horses, or indeed anything, one needs either to be lucky or to be smart. Ideally, one needs to be both. The best tactic of all is to use smarts to make your own luck, and that is how we'll proceed in this three part series. In this first episode we'll consider the cardinal principles, without which anything that follows will be precarious as a basis for betting decisions.

What is a betting angle?

Let's start at the start, and define what exactly is meant by a betting angle. For me it's a deliberately vague term because I don't want to be reduced to mechanistic wagers spat out by my computer's 'brain', even if whatever comes out is a direct result of what I fed in. I'd rather be advised or reminded of a nugget of information when I'm previewing a particular race.

Put another way, if my research tells me Trainer X has a great record with Jockey Y that will generally not be enough in itself for me to place a bet. But it will encourage me to look more closely at the overall profile of the runner around which Trainer X and Jockey Y are combining.

In other words, I want as many extra pieces of information - snippets which will generally be unknown to the vast majority of punters - as possible when I'm weighing up a race. What I don't want to do is simply back a list of horses generated from my angles.

That is system betting, and it works for a lot of people. If that's you, you will find plenty of utility in this series, but my main focus is on micro-angles which will add a point or two to the case for a given runner without necessarily commending it as a bet.

Betting angles then are snippets of information which can help decipher a race and potentially identify a dollop of otherwise unseen value.

No system or angle is God

Horse races are loose forms of organised chaos. An average of ten large animals, steered by small animals, with each other and/or obstacles in their way: there is plenty of scope for things to go wrong. Unsurprisingly, things frequently do go wrong. Thus the best horse often does not win. Rather, the best suited horse to conditions, or the best placed horse from the break, or the horse that makes the fewest mistakes, usually wins.

These kind of 'chaos variables' are generally not factored in to the price of horses at the top of the market, meaning such horses can not normally be considered value bets. Their chances are well advertised by the good judges in the racing media and the weight of money from lazy punters ensures their followers will eventually suffer death by a thousand poor value betting slip paper cuts. Or something like that.

My point is that we need to build in enough latitude to account for what used to be known in my software development project management days as OSINTOT's ("Oh Sh!t I Never Thought Of That"). Stuff happens, regularly in horse races, and our wagering approach must be sufficiently resilient to handle it.

No system is perfect, no angle immune to the bettors' scourge, variance: again, as I like to say, "after a good run expect a bad run; after a bad run expect a good run". Such is the nature of the beast.

For ultra-contrarians, the best time to get involved with a proven tipster or a solid-looking betting system is in the howling teeth of a downturn; after a bad run expect a good run. But only if you firmly believe in the underlying merit of the approach behind it.

Designer babies

We all want to be beautiful/handsome. And we all want to back big-priced winners on a regular basis. But, sadly, we have to play the hand we're dealt. You might have smouldering Dean Martin looks, but I get reminded more often than I'd like about my better than passing resemblance to Mister Bean. Such is life.

And so it is with betting systems. We hanker after the golden goose, the method that gets all the girls. But that's not what we need. What we need is a steady little portfolio of pointers that keep us honest, content and on the right side of both the bottom line and sanity. That is achievable, sustainable, and far more nourishing than a golden goose. How B-O-R-I-N-G would life be then?

This game is about little fish tasting sweet. It is about the thrill of the chase, about engagement and fun: solving the puzzle lower down the lists where others have fallen into its top of the market traps.

There is no such thing as a golden goose system, thank the deities. But there are myriad in's that offer slivers of value, shards of profitable light, to those who care to seek them out.

This series is for you.

A bit about you

On that point, then, let's talk about you.

One of the best pieces of business advice I ever received was to create customer avatars. A customer avatar is a very specific definition of the core client of a business.

Understanding this has helped geegeez.co.uk to stop focusing on 'all horse racing bettors' and home in on 'horse racing bettors who know they want more information than is available for free elsewhere, and don't mind getting their hands dirty in the quest to find their own value picks'.

That's less catchy, and is a very (VERY!) small subset of 'all horse racing bettors', but I can talk to almost every single one of these guys - you guys - as an equal, and expect that what I say will largely resonate with your own general outlook on the racing and betting game.

Back to you and, specifically, your betting approach. If you've read this far, you almost certainly are interested in finding your own betting angles - the good Lord Sugar knows this introduction has been long enough to disqualify those who are not!

But a betting angle that works for you will not necessarily be the same as one that works for me, or that works for the next reader. Some examples will help.

Betting Angle A has a 3% ROI on more than 10,000 selections. That's 300 points profit. Nice right? Well, maybe.

What if Angle A identifies 40 bets per day? What if the average odds of winners are 25/1?

The downswings with an approach like that could run to many hundreds of points. To operate it profitably would require a very large bank, very small unit stakes (in percentage terms), and titanium sphericals. The profit is attractive to all; the modus operandi suitable for very few.

Let's try another.

Betting Angle B has a 9% ROI. It finds roughly 40 bets a year and has been profitable in four of the last five years. In the other year, it lost 28 points. Could you handle that loss and still retain belief in the angle? You probably could if you were being selective when playing it, and if the 40 bets were in a particular context - for example, early season trainer form.

Whether you could or you couldn't, the key here is that while we may all be similar in terms of our general aspirations from the game, we are all different in how we can scratch that itch.

We have different bankrolls, different appetites to risk, different styles of betting, different amounts of time to invest in finding our bets, and so on.

That diversity is to be celebrated: it ultimately means we'll land on different horses and back winners on different days. It won't stop any of us from being profitable or from enjoying our betting as long as we recognise our own terms of reference before getting stuck in.

It is very well worth taking a few minutes to think about your approach, and how optimal that approach is for you. If you use our Bet Tracker tool, you'll have a better insight than most into the way you bet, what works and what needs more thought.

What to look for in a good system/angle

The first thing to say here is to refer back to the previous section: make sure any angle you identify looks sustainable in terms of the way you play. If you need a winner every third qualifier there is little point in deploying an angle with a 10% strike rate; you'll give up on it after a few losers which, almost inevitably, means before you've made any profit.

If you only want to place one of two bets a day, there is little point in identifying a great angle with an average of six bets a day. You'll immediately feel uncomfortable with the different staking and wagering regimen, and that is not a position of strength from which to enjoy the sport.

Any research you undertake needs to be mindful of how you bet: how often, how risky, and so on.

A good system, then, will speak to you personally in terms of its numbers. It will fit your appetite for risk, volume and available time. If it doesn't, it's only a matter of time before you pull the plug, profitable edge or not.

Aside from the personal elements, there are generic precursors to good angles, too.

LOGIC LOGIC LOGIC

The first, and most crucial, component of angle research is logic. An angle should be explainable in a shortish sentence and, if you were explaining it to a fellow punter, she should not spit out her beer in disgust at the case you make.

It is never enough to reason, "well it's profitable". If you can't explain why it is profitable the approach is very likely built on foundations of sand.

It might be fine to have an angle based around big trainers' performance in Saturday handicaps. But it would never make sense to create an angle around performance on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, for instance. There's simply no underlying logic.

Likewise, trainer angles where there are gaps in the months which qualify make no sense; conversely, however, plenty of trainers have certain parts of the year/season when they're in bloom. As long as there is a consecutive nature to the period, that may well be predicated on the schedule of the yard's year.

Just think 'why' for every variable within your angles. If you can't explain it, you should probably bin it.

Less is (usually) more

The always compelling Tony Keenan wrote about focus for optimal betting decisions in this excellent article. In it, he refers to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin's contention that we should unburden the brain by placing information in the physical world. Keenan talks about 'to do' lists as an example but it is equally true of betting angles: we should move these from our cluttered crania to, well, to a query tool or other aide memoire.

He goes on to reference Levitin's work on something called optimal complexity theory. Here's Tony:

...the idea that too little information is no good but so is too much. This applies with any decision we make, like buying a house or car say. Having too many parameters to consider leads to confusion in decision-making, with humans apparently unable to process more than ten variables for any choice, the optimal number being closer to five.

Betting angles should be simple in the main, predicated on sound logic, and often 'hiding in plain sight'. The more convoluted they are, the more likely the creator has added an extra variable or two to filter out some inconvenient truth. This is a subjective area and one where common sense is our greatest ally. Less is usually more.

Be wary of small sample sizes

The nature of looking at horse racing statistically, which is essentially what angle research boils down to, is that we are invited to make inferences on insignificant sample sizes. The conundrum is thus: too large a sample and the angle is well known and profit gone, too small a sample and the angle is unreliable and may be a fluke.

So what to do? Two things...

1 Seek a happy medium

Somewhere in between those two unsatisfactory sample size groups is a reasonable amount of data and the chance of profit continuing in the short- to medium-term. Where possible, look for as big a sample as you can. An angle with eight winners from ten runners looks fantastic, but how sustainable is that? It's impossible to know on such limited evidence.

One thing we can do in such situations is to widen out the search. For example, if Sire Z's progeny have had eight all-weather sprint winners from ten runners, how does that compare with his turf sprint winners? Or with his all-weather runners overall? We're looking for greater assurance in larger numbers. Chances are we'll still be dealing with relatively small samples, but we'll have a better feel for the sustainability of the micro-micro-sample of ten runs.

2 Proceed with caution

Wise men say only fools rush in
But I can't help falling in love with you

So sung the immortal Elvis Presley, and he wasn't wrong. Once you've satisfied yourself that there at least might be merit in an angle, go forward carefully. Do not rush in. Only fools rush in.

Such angles are prime contenders to be considered in the context of the race overall rather than bet blind. For instance, a trainer with an excellent record with handicap debutants from a tiny sample: is there anything else about this runner to corroborate its chance? Has it been off for more than a month? Is it stepping up in trip, or down in class? Is there a notable jockey change? Has there been money for the horse?

It doesn't take long in most cases to see whether the qualifier should be a 'proper' bet, an 'action' bet, or a watch and squirm job. (For me, there is no such thing as the last named. I'm either betting to win a few quid, or I'm betting to win a cup of tea and a sticky bun, or I'm not betting and I won't cry if the horse wins).

Profit is not the best measure

Most angle researchers have an unhealthy obsession with the Profit/Loss column. Of course we are trying to secure a positive return, but there are any number of traps for the greedy punter whose alpha and omega is pee and ell.

Harking back to what suits a particular bettor, and mindful of the small sample sizes that often manifest, it may be prudent to focus on each way percentage, percentage of rivals beaten (PRB) or percentage of rivals beaten squared (PRB^2). The last named pair, especially PRB^2, are very interesting metrics that will make their way into Geegeez Gold later in 2020 and I will cover them in greater depth at that time. For now, though, Gold users might look to each way percentage as a way of - somewhat artificially but perfectly legitimately - extending the sample size in question.

In terms of profitability, A/E (Actual vs Expected, more information here) is a solid barometer of ongoing value. It's a simple enough concept, where an A/E of greater than 1.00 is considered a positive, an A/E of less than 1.00 is considered a negative, and the further away from 1.00 the number, the better or worse is the expected merit. The A/E column can be found within Geegeez Gold's Query Tool, a tool that will form the cornerstone of parts two and three in this series.

Review, and Realise

Once you've found your angle(s), stored them, and started to bet them, there are two important 'maintenance' jobs to take on. The first is one of review. No matter how large or small the research sample was, every qualifier thereafter swells the knowledge base. Returning to your set of angles on a regular - maybe quarterly, but it depends how much action an angle throws up - basis is excellent discipline. Don't get too hung up on profit and loss from quarter to quarter, but rather focus on whether the horses looked likely beforehand, took a degree of support, and ran well even if in defeat.

Through this review process we start to realise - make real - the angle. A trainer becomes someone whose methods we get to know; likewise a sire, or a course profile, or whatever. We must make friends with these entities, ask questions of them, become more familiar than the market. This is a lot easier than it might sound, particularly in terms of the early markets, which are heavily focused on 'top down' information such as basic recent form, newspaper tipsters and fashionable trainers and jockeys.

'Bottom up' intel - first start in a handicap, favourable draw/pace, no name trainer with his job jockey, and the like - is factored into the market later. This late intelligence is generally underpinned by people close to yards who want to bet, and they can't get a meaningful bet on until nearer the off time. As angle punters we have to second guess them: we'll generally not nick their price, but can nab a few quid at 'ignorant odds' before the smart money arrives.

More often than this, though, are the occasions when we realise that the first flush of love was misguided; that we rushed in as fools, or maybe merely flirted dangerously with a dataset which failed to substantiate itself for the application of further evidence. Reviewing and rejecting these false dawns (no offence, Dawn, if you're reading!) is as valuable - arguably more valuable - than finding a great angle: the first job is to try not to lose money, the second job is to try to win money.

Nothing Lasts Forever

The final point to make in this overture to Angle Research is that nothing lasts forever. You will know you have found a great angle if the strike rate remains largely the same over time while the profit diminishes to a loss. That is simply a function of market awareness and is the lot of any and all statistical edges.

The game, of course, is to continually reinvent our portfolio.

Every week, month or year, there are new trainers waxing and old trainers waning. Likewise sires and, to a lesser extent, jockeys. Tracks change their drainage and, in so doing, reverse their draw biases. Surfaces get relaid and the front-running bias is mitigated as the kickback to later runners becomes less severe.

It's the circle of life, and all the joy within: there is always something else to learn, to discover, to deploy.

Evolve or die: this is the angle punter's mantra.

*

In part two of this series, which you can review here, I'll introduce you to Query Tool: what it is, where it lives, what it does and how it does it. And in part three, we'll work through a series of examples: micro angles which can be deployed as they are but, importantly, which are singular examples from rich seams whose nuggets are waiting to be extracted by the inquisitive Gold miner! 😉

Check it out here.

Matt

Punting Pointers: Juvenile Hurdles

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In my previous article I confidently put up several reasons why I didn’t think Goshen could prevail in the Triumph hurdle, writes Jon Shenton. I guess on a technicality I was correct as he unseated at the last when bounding clear in a freakish incident. A hollow victory, even more hollow if you consider that this left Burning Victory – a filly, more on those below – to saunter home, another horse who was consigned to the discard pile for the race, predominantly due to the trainer’s (Willie Mullins) poor Juvenile record at the festival at 0-from-41.

Despite the back to the drawing board nature of the result, research in one area can pay dividends in another. Penicillin was discovered by accident, after all! Hopefully, a poor one-off result in the Triumph can be appeased through a steady stream of winners inspired by some of the research that went into it… if we ever get any more racing here in Britain.

The juvenile hurdle programme covers racing for three-year-olds only (before January 1st) and four-year-olds from the New Year when all horses age by a year. The data in this article relates to the juvenile programme only where horses are racing against the same three or four-year-old age demographic. It excludes three- or four-year-olds running in all-age novice or open company.

Let’s first consider three general pointers to help assess a juvenile field. All data in this article has been generated through the excellent horseracebase.

Fillies underperform in Juvenile Hurdles

The first consideration relates to the gender of the horse and their relative performance.

The message in the table above is crystal clear in terms of the fairer sex paling in comparison to the males in juvenile contests. Basically, a filly is little more than half as likely to win as a colt or gelding based on Win% (Strike Rate). Amazingly, by backing all male runners you would have out turned a small profit to Betfair SP (based on 2% commission), albeit there are some very juicy prices on the machine propping those numbers up significantly.

Clearly the rough and tumble of juvenile hurdling seems to be more of a stretch early in the career of a female horse. Whether this is physiological or mental in nature I don’t know, but the statistics are unequivocal. In fact, the true picture is actually slightly worse as the data table includes all juvenile races, some of which are for fillies only (so there must be a female winner). Analysing the races where both male and female horses compete against each other the picture is even bleaker, see below.

Fillies are gifted a seven pounds weight-for-gender allowance too. These numbers suggest that is not enough to level the playing field amongst the juveniles. An A/E of 0.67, strike rate of 6.3% and a loss of over half of stakes at SP means such runners have to overcome a huge red flag in terms of general punting. However, as mentioned in my introduction, Burning Victory is a filly. One with a trainer who had a pre-festival record of 0-from-41 in juvenile races. There are general trends and pattern-busters. C’est la vie.

Headgear on Juvenile Hurdlers is sub-optimal

Another area worth looking at is the application of headgear, usually in the hope of focussing the equine mind on the matter in hand. For whatever reason, these go-faster stripes have often attracted my attention. As a result, I’ve frequently bottled a potential bet because my fancy is up against a runner in first time headgear. However, in the case of the young hurdle division I won’t be bottling it next time, not based on headgear at least.

This table shows performance by the accoutrements worn (excluding tongue-ties). Those without headgear clearly fare better than adorned rivals. Quite like playing golf in my limited experience! Cheekpieces are only a minor negative but as the more extreme headgear is applied, the lower a performance in general is delivered.

[It should be noted that the massive Betfair figure (P/L (BF)) comes from a quintet of massive-priced winners, including one that returned a Betfair SP of 1000!]

Whilst this is interesting enough, there is some deeper info which can further help with context.

This table shows results by the number of previous runs a horse has had with the exact same headgear arrangements. It relates that if a horse is wearing headgear for the first time (Prev in Hdgr = 0), performance is moderate, with a strike rate of around 7.5%. Once headgear has been worn more than once, the numbers equate more to the unaccoutred level of performance. This makes sense: if an animal runs badly in headgear the first time it was applied, that plan is likely to be consigned to history for subsequent runs.

The bottom line is that first-time headgear is a substantial negative on a juvenile hurdler: if connections are reaching for such a solution in a juvenile campaign it suggests in broad terms that they feel there is a problem to solve. Not even Burning Victory was wearing headgear!

French-Bred horses are more mature and race ready

One thing that’s mentioned in the racing media frequently is a belief that horses bred and/or taking their formative racing steps across the other side of the channel are more mature. The argument thus goes that they perform better as juveniles than the British and Irish competition in the UK.

Here is the performance picture based on breeding origin.

As can be seen, the win rate for French-bred juveniles is notably higher than British- or Irish-bred runners in such races: chapeau to the French.

As an interesting aside, the record of fillies originating from France is relatively strong, despite the generally moderate overall performance of females, something worth bearing in mind.

 

Trainers of Juvenile Hurdlers

The below table shows the records for UK Juvenile Hurdles from 1st Jan 2010 to present day by trainer. It contains the top dozen in terms of victories over that period. The table is ranked by number of wins.

Alan King

Alan King is comfortably the winning-most trainer on the list with approximately 50% more victories than the behemoth Henderson and Nicholls operations. Despite the glittering array of winners, profitability appears to be limited, King’s runners generally very ‘well found’ in the market.

However, whilst panning for precious metal I found a potential nugget worthy of closer inspection.

The above data displays the yard’s juvenile record by the number of previous runs the horse has had over hurdles (in the UK). One line stands out, markedly so and just to be clear, it’s the top one: King juvenile debutants over hurdles have a strike rate of over 30% and are profitable to SP. Whilst performance is perfectly respectable in subsequent outings for the horses, the numbers do regress in a somewhat linear fashion from that initial watermark and are subsequently overbet, with very heathy strike rates yielding losses.

If you want to play with fire, for the first-time hurdlers there isn’t a winner at a price bigger than an SP of 10/1 from 10 attempts (with only one placed horse).  For me though, any King juvenile runner is on the radar for their first spin over jumps regardless of price; I’ll leave the 10/1 threshold to you to decide.

Gary Moore

Next, it’s appears to have been a valuable exercise picking out Gary Moore for due consideration. Exceeding market expectation with an A/E of 1.19, this yard is clearly one worth following in terms of juveniles. Notably, as with Alan King’s runners, it appears that catching Moore entries in their fledgling hurdle days is the optimal time. The table below supports the assertion.

That is quite a stark difference between the two rows of data, leaving little doubt that Team Moore have their young hurdlers ready to compete at a relatively early stage in their development.

I wonder if this is due to the many new hurdlers from the yard that go into a National Hunt career off at least a run or two on the flat given the dual-purpose nature of Moore’s operation. In fact, evaluating some of the juicier priced winners contained in this potential angle, a fair number appear to have had at least one, sometimes several, uninspiring runs previously on the level (or in National Hunt Flat races) before winning first time up over jumps.

These numbers relate to Gary Moore-trained horses making their debut over hurdles where they have run in the UK previously but have not won in their career to date. It’s certainly a micro with too-good-to-be-true numbers and only a handful of qualifiers each year, and it may well be one or two years between drinks; however, ignore a flat maiden Moore debutant over hurdles at your peril.

Finally, it would be slightly remiss not to mention the Henderson and Nicholls yards, as backing both blindly in juvenile hurdles has yielded a small and surprising profit.

Nicky Henderson

For Henderson, a couple of huge priced winners (Une Artiste at 40/1 and Protek Des Flos at 25/1) add a shine to the numbers which may or may not be sustainable over time. However, using some of the themes from earlier in this article it may be a worthwhile exercise paying close attention to his first-time hurdlers that have been imported from across the English Channel.

Although it must be said that two thirds of the profit to SP has been delivered from the aforementioned Protek Des Flos, the figures still stand up fairly well excluding that skewing winner.

Another way to play Henderson juveniles might be sticking to the big races with them.

The competitive Class 1 races yield reasonable returns, with a lower, but still highly respectable, strike rate than other classes. This table perfectly illustrates the difference between backing winners and seeking long-term profit: if you want winners then backing Seven Barrows runners in lower-class races will pay out over a third of the time, but long-term profit will be tough to attain given the magnetic attraction of punters to the Henderson brand in these shallower contests.

Paul Nicholls

In terms of Ditcheat trainer Paul Nicholls, performance is solid across the board. While it’s tough to find a specific edge based on the data, it (obviously, perhaps) remains a sound approach to treat juveniles from this yard with respect. Backing Nicholls juvenile hurdlers is not a get rich quick scheme, but nor is it a get poor quick one!

Summary

The below summarises a few specific Juvenile Hurdle angles to back where desired.

  • Alan King first time juvenile hurdle runners in the UK
  • Gary Moore first or tecond time juvenile hurdle runners in the UK
  • Gary Moore first time over hurdles with no previous career victories on the flat (or National Hunt Flat races)
  • Nicky Henderson first time juvenile hurdlers originating from France
  • Nicky Henderson runners in all Class 1 juvenile hurdle races

I hope that this gives you a head start for the resumption of racing, whenever that may be. Until then, keep well.

- JS

Stat of the Day, 24th March 2020

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Monday's pick was...

3.30 Naas : Hong Kong @ 10/3 BOG 10th at 3/1 (A little slow into stride, mid-division early, 8th approaching halfway, pushed along straight, tight for room on inner over 2f out, soon one paced) I'm certainly finding the Irish racing much harder to read.

Tuesday's pick runs in the...

5.00 Clonmel :

Before I post the daily selection, just a quick reminder of how I operate the service. Generally, I'll identify and share the selection between 8.00am and 8.15am and I then add a more detailed write-up later within an hour or so of going "live".

Those happy to take the early price on trust can do so, whilst some might prefer to wait for my reasoning. As I fit the early service in around my family life, I can't give an exact timing on the posts, so I suggest you follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for instant notifications of a published pick.

Who?

Frontal Assault @ 11/4 BOG

...in a 12-runner, INH Flat race for 5-7yo over 2m2½f on Soft To Heavy ground worth £5,575 to the winner...

Why?...

Timeform say this looks an above-average bumper with our pick setting the standard having finished behind a pair of subsequent winners when third at Fairyhouse last month, one of which was Ferny Hollow, who went on to win the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham.

Now, as usual, full honest disclosure from me, I don't bet much in Irish races (although that's changing by the day) and I don't get involved in Bumpers too often either, so you can imagine how often I play in Irish Bumpers! That said, I do adopt a quality over quantity position regarding the INH Flat races and one of my starting points are horses trained by Gordon Elliott and ridden by Mr JJ Codd (who is in good form right now, as it happens).

I'm particularly interested in the Elliott/Codd bumper runners deemed to "have a shout" by the market, as those sent off shorter than 6/1 are 59 from 156 (37.8% SR) for 3.2pts (+2.1% ROI) profit since the start of 2016. Yes, a whole 2.1% profit! However (a) that's blind profit and (b) a starting point from which I'd always want at least one (if not more) of the following five angles to be at play...

  • 5/6 yr olds are 38/91 (41.8%) for 16.32pts (+17.9%)
  • those finishing in the first four home LTO are 36/85 (42.4%) for 13.4pts (+15.7%)
  • in fields of 10-14 runners, they are 29/63 (46%) for 16.14pts (+25.6%)
  • those rested for 3 weeks to 5 months are 24/57 (42.1%) for 10.61pts (+18.6%)
  • whilst those racing beyond 2m2f are 9/19 (47.4%) for 13.93pts (+73.3%)

...suggesting...a 1pt win bet on Frontal Assault @ 11/4 BOG as was offered by BetVictor & Hills at 8.00am Tuesday, but as always please check your BOG status. To see what your preferred bookie is quoting...

...click here for the betting on the 5.00 Clonmel

Don't forget, we offer a full interactive racecard service every day!

REMINDER: THERE IS NO STAT OF THE DAY ON SUNDAYS

Here is today's racecard

P.S. all P/L returns quoted in the stats above are to Betfair SP, as I NEVER bet to ISP and neither should you. I always use BOG bookies for SotD, wherever possible, but I use BFSP for the stats as it is the nearest approximation I can give, so I actually expect to beat the returns I use to support my picks. If that's unclear, please ask!

Punting Pointers: Naas Racecourse

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For those of us to the east of the Irish Sea, we are having to currently having to cram on unfamiliar subjects if we have any aspirations of passing our daily wagering examinations. Today's test features a three hour 'paper', starting at 2pm, on Naas Racecourse. For those whose betting at the track has hitherto been blind, this post will attempt to at least partially sight!

Naas Course Constitution

The track is left-handed and has a straight five- and six-furlong piste. Mile and seven-furlong races begin in the chute furthest from the 'pin' on the image below, with ten-furlong and mile and a half races beginning in the straight just after the bend past the finish line.

Races at a mile and a quarter favour fast starters and/or inside draws as there is a dogleg almost immediately, whereafter the course gently arcs left-handed to about the six-furlong point. There is a further left turn with about half a mile to go meaning wider-drawn runners can have plenty of additional distance to travel; there is, however, a half a mile or so straight in which to make a challenge, so the key is not to get hung out wide on the turns.

 

Naas Draw / Pace

5f races

The five-furlong track has had a fairly pronounced low draw bias. That said, at the start of any new season it is important to look to see whether previous biases still hold; often, track maintenance undertaken in the close season can reduce, nullify or sometimes even reverse a previous bias. As things stand, then, the Naas five-furlong picture looks like this:

Those data are based on races at the track since 2009 with 10+ runners, and relate to 'actual draw' - that is, having removed non-runners from consideration (so, for instance, a horse drawn nine but with two non-runners inside him becomes 'actual draw' seven).

The Impact Value (IV, right hand column) for low-drawn horses is 1.48, which means they are nearly one and a half times as likely to win a race compared with random.

At geegeez.co.uk, we devised a metric called IV3 to smooth the curve on individual stall performance. It simply takes the average of a stall and its nearest neighbours: for instance, the IV3 for stall six comprises the sum of the IV for stalls five, six and seven divided by three. The IV3 graph for Naas 5f races looks like this:

We can see a collection from stall four to ten at around 1.0, but higher draws are significantly unfavoured while berths one to three, especially stall one, have a notable edge.

But draw is not a one-dimensional consideration. Rather it needs to be considered in the context of the early pace horses are able to show. The below heat map illustrates the impact of both draw and run style and is clear about the importance of a very prominent early position, in terms of place percentages at least. Those held up, especially from a middle draw, have neither the pace nor the track position to compete generally.

 

1m2f races

As can be seen from the course image above, the ten-furlong range suggests it should strongly favour an inside draw, especially with pace to take advantage of that track position. The data support the logic:

We can clearly see the impact of a low draw on both win and place percentages, and with a strongly positive IV. The Actual over Expected (A/E) figure of 1.32 also implies the market hasn't fully factored low draw importance at this time.

Again, the IV3 chart is unequivocal:

Overlaying pace once more reveals that a low draw coupled with a 'led' or 'prominent' run style is a very big - and profitable - edge.

 

Naas Trainer Form

Overall Trainer Form

The top trainers in flat races at Naas in the five years from 2015 are as follows:

There are few surprises at the top of the overall list, with Aidan O'Brien lording over his peer group in terms of both strike rate and number of winners. From a punting perspective, the runners of Eddie Lynam and Andrew Oliver offer cause for hope.

Naas Handicap Trainer Form

The handicap picture looks different; here we have a number of trainers with solid win rates, numbers of wins and profit figures. Samples are smaller but still not inconsequential, with the likes of Aidan O'Brien, Jim Bolger, Ger Lyons and Jessica Harrington to the fore. These are four of the pre-eminent handlers in the land and they have all been profitable to back in Naas handicaps in recent years!

A word of caution with regards Joseph O'Brien. His seven winners have come at a cost of -27.75 points: clearly they can win but the market overestimates their chance.

Naas Early Season Trainer Form

Focusing only on the months or March and April at Naas, and we are in danger of slicing and dicing our way to statistical irrelevance (assuming we'd not already passed that point!)...

Again, the big guns of APOB, Ger Lyons, and Jessica Harrington are profitable to back. The place strike rates of Michael O'Callaghan, Tommy Stack, Ado McGuinness and Damian English all support their small numbers of winners and suggest they're worth keeping on side in March and April at Naas.

At the other end of the spectrum, Jim Bolger's strike rate in recent seasons has been a cautionary note, while Dermot Weld's horses also look overbet for all that they have a very solid place strike rate.

This article was researched using the Draw Analyser and Query Tool features within Geegeez Gold.

Matt

Monday Musings: The New Abnormal

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Just nine days ago my over-riding thought as I contemplated the very strong card at Kempton was still how awful it was that Goshen had been cruelly robbed of his rightful crowning as the best four-year-old hurdler in memory, writes Tony Stafford. Sympathies for Gary and all the Moore family and the owners were intruding ahead of the general feeling that I’d witnessed one of the great four days of Cheltenham.

Just over a week later, along with everyone in the country, if not the world, apart of course from China where it started and where they now claim there have been no new cases for several days - sure! – even Goshen has been put at the back of the brain.

Looking back, there we were, between 53,000 on the first day and 65,000 on Friday talking, greeting and breathing on each other. A good proportion of racegoers at any time are in the older age group. Now 1.5 million of us senior citizens around the country are to receive letters telling us to stay at home for three months to help “damp down” in Boris’s words, the dreaded Coronavirus.

I’ve already effectively remained in the house under instruction from my wife, who will not be receiving such a letter. My only relief from the embargo has been three short taxi-service one-way trips to drop her at shops that have been denuded of fresh meat and fish, bread, pasta, toilet and kitchen rolls and household products. She did yesterday, though, and much to my amazement, come home triumphantly brandishing a copy of the Racing Post, cost £3.90. I wonder what the publication’s 110 journalistic employees are doing to keep that listing vessel above water?

Every day for the past week I’ve been pondering whether I’ve had it, got it or am incubating it ready to transmit to anyone I meet – which pretty much begins and ends with Mrs S. Yesterday she started a daily exercise session, prompted by my difficulty with putting on my socks without sitting down. It couldn’t have been too taxing, but today and on subsequent days it will be ramped up. Whatever you can say about people born and brought up in the old USSR, especially in Siberia, they can be pretty relentless!

I was thinking last Tuesday that the UK racing no-spectator model might work, but that stopped after one day. Then on Wednesday the Irish decided to race on crowd-free, so on Saturday we had Thurles on Racing TV and South Africa’s two meetings on Sky Sports Racing. Somehow, my copy of the Racing Post arrived in time to have a look at the 4.10 from Thurles in which a horse I’d seen run well recently over two miles, stepped up in trip and class for a beginners’ chase.

He’d previously won a hurdle over three miles and was trained by Joseph O’Brien, so more than enough reason to have a good look. I thought he would be around 6-1, checked and found he was double those odds, and had a tiny tickle. Backed down to 9-1, Thermistocles proved once again that young Mr O’Brien can win any race over any discipline at any level and sound jumping and stamina enabled this eight-year-old to beat a strong field with some comfort.

Sky Sports Racing also had yesterday’s Sha Tin card which started at 5 a.m. and featured, almost four hours later, the Hong Kong Derby with its £1 million-plus first prize. Local jockey C Y Ho was entrusted with the ride on the 3-4 favourite Golden Sixty and as he brought him towards the straight he was right at the back of the 14-strong field; meanwhile Aussie rider Blake Shinn sent the 290-1 shot Playa Del Puente into a long lead on the inside. Ho and Golden Sixty came wide, gradually gained ground, but still had at least three lengths to find a furlong out.

Instead of the frenzied tumult had the Sha Tin stands been as usual full of punters, there must have been almost an eerie silence that accompanied the favourite’s continued run which bore fruit three strides from the finish.  The Australian-bred Golden Sixty, a son of Medaglia d’Oro, has now won ten of 11 career starts, and never had a winning margin more than just over two lengths in any of them.

While everything is on hold here – I can imagine just how frustrated the few UK trainers nowadays that concentrate on early juveniles must be feeling – Ireland actually stages its first turf Flat meeting of the year today at Naas. Joseph and his father Aidan both had entries in the first two-year-old race of 2020 in Europe but Aidan’s runner, Lipizzaner, participates.

In between the sparse live fare available, there have been some interesting offerings on the specialist channels and one commentator for whom my regard has grown greatly in recent months has been Mick Fitzgerald. I confess it took ages to get past that gratingly-harsh accent but in a long discussion with John Hunt on Sky Sports Racing the other day he spoke very intelligently on the challenges facing trainers and jockeys, not to mention owners. His thoughts, not least his compassion, equated to the attitude of the Prime Minister and Chancellor as they announced the tightening up of measures to stop the virus.

But now I must return to Goshen. Anyone who saw the Triumph Hurdle on Friday the 13th of March will have been convinced that the margin – some say a dozen lengths – that he held over his toiling rivals coming to the last where he made his calamitous, race-ending mistake, would have been considerably extended by the line.

David Dickinson, the BHA handicapper responsible for two-mile hurdle assessments, had the job of putting the race on a numerical footing. We don’t see the Irish ratings, so the two horses that finished first and second under sufferance, Burning Victory and Aspire Tower, the latter who had a 152 mark pre-race, do not appear on the BHA ratings list.

But Allmankind, Navajo Pass and Sir Psycho, who finished third, fourth and fifth, went into Cheltenham on ratings respectively of 148, 139 and 147 and finished within a couple of lengths, close behind the second who was almost three lengths adrift of the winning Willie Mullins-trained filly.

Dickinson has left Allmankind and Sir Psycho on their existing marks, choosing to raise Navajo Pass to 147, which neatly makes this race a true ratings barometer. If Allmankind is 148 then presumably Aspire Tower could be dropped to 149 from 152 in Ireland and then the winner 152 (less the 7lb filly allowance she benefited from) thus around 145. Of the others Solo, rated 157 after his Kempton Adonis Hurdle romp, ran a stinker and has dropped to 152.

So what to do with Goshen? He was 151 going into the race and on the way he just scooted away from as we have seen some already decent opposition into an overwhelming last-flight superiority, I thought it the best performance (until he exited of course) ever by a four-year-old. I think it was probably only challenged by Our Conor’s 15-length victory seven years earlier which brought a 161 rating.

If the eventual winner had been male, the rating would be 152 and she was hardly going to reduce the margin, yet Dickinson has bottled it! He has chosen to raise Goshen to only 158, in other words suggesting he would have beaten the runner-up by six lengths. Ridiculous, indeed shameful! Not only have Goshen’s connections been robbed of a massive prize and well-earned recognition, the performance has been dimmed for no other reason than small-mindedness.

Goshen should have got at least 165 as I suggested here last week, and that would only have reflected his maintaining the margin to the line, when that seemed a conservative prospect. It’s not an easy job, I realise that, but when it hits you between the eyes, have the decency to admit it!

- TS

Stat of the Day, 23rd March 2020

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Saturday's pick was...

3.10 Thurles : Sizing Pottsie @ 9/4 BOG fell at 9/4 (Led, mistake 7th and slight mistake next, pushed along and joined when fell 2 out) Aside from the fall, the jumping wasn't really up to scratch for this level.

Monday's pick runs in the...

3.30 Naas :

Before I post the daily selection, just a quick reminder of how I operate the service. Generally, I'll identify and share the selection between 8.00am and 8.15am and I then add a more detailed write-up later within an hour or so of going "live".

Those happy to take the early price on trust can do so, whilst some might prefer to wait for my reasoning. As I fit the early service in around my family life, I can't give an exact timing on the posts, so I suggest you follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for instant notifications of a published pick.

Who?

Hong Kong @ 10/3 BOG

...in a 14-runner, Flat Handicap for 3yo over 7f on heavy ground worth £26,549 to the winner...

Why?...

This 3 yr old colt has already won in the mud here at Naas when scoring by two lengths over 6f last October and his breeding suggests he'll be better in time than his current mark of 88 would intimate.

He is trained by household name, AP O'Brien, who has won this race twice in the last seven runnings and is also 55 from 170 (32.4% SR) for 36.5pts (+21.5% ROI) here at Naas on the Flat with horses sent off at 7/1 and shorter over the last three seasons, including...

  • 37/111 (33.3%) for 38.8pts (+35%) over 6f to 1m
  • 24/78 (30.8%) for 25.5pts (+32.7%) with 3 yr olds
  • 19/68 (27.9%) for 17pts (+25%) in big (ie 12+) fields
  • and 7/19 (36.8%) for 12.6pts (+66.2%) on Soft to Heavy/Heavy ground

...whilst for a broad AP/Naas micro, try 2 & 3 yr olds @ 6f-1m in fields of 7-16 runners = 28/75 (37.3% SR) for 47.1pts (+62.8% ROI).

And that's possibly/probably enough to justify the selection today, but as Hong Kong is now returning from Group 3 action at Newmarket to make a handicap debut here, it's also worth looking at AP's runners making a handicap debut on the Flat and if we do that we see 38 winners from 164 (23.2% SR) for 105.4pts (+64.3% ROI) over the last six seasons, including of note/relevance today...

  • 34/122 (27.9%) for 102.2pts (+83.8%) at odds of Evens to 10/1
  • 28/116 (24.1%) for 85.7pts (+73.9%) with male runners
  • 26/110 (23.6%) for 95.7pts (+87%) with 3 yr olds
  • 19/65 (29.2%) for 91.4pts (+140.6%) over the last two seasons
  • 17/62 (27.4%) for 83.3pts (+134.4%) in races worth £13-75k
  • 9/26 (34.6%) for 37.8pts (+145.4%) at 7f
  • 7/23 (30.4%) for 28.3pts (+122.9%) here at Naas
  • and 5/25 (20%) for 32.3pts (+129.2%) under today's jockey, Seamie Heffernan

...and an AP/hcp debut micro? 3yo males at Evs to 10/1 over last two seasons = 8/23 (34.8% SR) for 28.3pts (+123.1% ROI)...

...but first...a 1pt win bet on Hong Kong @ 10/3 BOG as was offered by BetVictor, Hills & Ladbrokes at 8.05am Monday whilst Coral were a fraction longer, but as always please check your BOG status. To see what your preferred bookie is quoting...

...click here for the betting on the 3.30 Naas

Don't forget, we offer a full interactive racecard service every day!

REMINDER: THERE IS NO STAT OF THE DAY ON SUNDAYS

Here is today's racecard

P.S. all P/L returns quoted in the stats above are to Betfair SP, as I NEVER bet to ISP and neither should you. I always use BOG bookies for SotD, wherever possible, but I use BFSP for the stats as it is the nearest approximation I can give, so I actually expect to beat the returns I use to support my picks. If that's unclear, please ask!

Stat of the Day, 23rd March 2020

/by

Saturday's pick was...

3.10 Thurles : Sizing Pottsie @ 9/4 BOG fell at 9/4 (Led, mistake 7th and slight mistake next, pushed along and joined when fell 2 out) Aside from the fall, the jumping wasn't really up to scratch for this level.

Monday's pick runs in the...

3.30 Naas :

Before I post the daily selection, just a quick reminder of how I operate the service. Generally, I'll identify and share the selection between 8.00am and 8.15am and I then add a more detailed write-up later within an hour or so of going "live".

Those happy to take the early price on trust can do so, whilst some might prefer to wait for my reasoning. As I fit the early service in around my family life, I can't give an exact timing on the posts, so I suggest you follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for instant notifications of a published pick.

Who?

Hong Kong @ 10/3 BOG

...in a 14-runner, Flat Handicap for 3yo over 7f on heavy ground worth £26,549 to the winner...

Why?...

This 3 yr old colt has already won in the mud here at Naas when scoring by two lengths over 6f last October and his breeding suggests he'll be better in time than his current mark of 88 would intimate.

He is trained by household name, AP O'Brien, who has won this race twice in the last seven runnings and is also 55 from 170 (32.4% SR) for 36.5pts (+21.5% ROI) here at Naas on the Flat with horses sent off at 7/1 and shorter over the last three seasons, including...

  • 37/111 (33.3%) for 38.8pts (+35%) over 6f to 1m
  • 24/78 (30.8%) for 25.5pts (+32.7%) with 3 yr olds
  • 19/68 (27.9%) for 17pts (+25%) in big (ie 12+) fields
  • and 7/19 (36.8%) for 12.6pts (+66.2%) on Soft to Heavy/Heavy ground

...whilst for a broad AP/Naas micro, try 2 & 3 yr olds @ 6f-1m in fields of 7-16 runners = 28/75 (37.3% SR) for 47.1pts (+62.8% ROI).

And that's possibly/probably enough to justify the selection today, but as Hong Kong is now returning from Group 3 action at Newmarket to make a handicap debut here, it's also worth looking at AP's runners making a handicap debut on the Flat and if we do that we see 38 winners from 164 (23.2% SR) for 105.4pts (+64.3% ROI) over the last six seasons, including of note/relevance today...

  • 34/122 (27.9%) for 102.2pts (+83.8%) at odds of Evens to 10/1
  • 28/116 (24.1%) for 85.7pts (+73.9%) with male runners
  • 26/110 (23.6%) for 95.7pts (+87%) with 3 yr olds
  • 19/65 (29.2%) for 91.4pts (+140.6%) over the last two seasons
  • 17/62 (27.4%) for 83.3pts (+134.4%) in races worth £13-75k
  • 9/26 (34.6%) for 37.8pts (+145.4%) at 7f
  • 7/23 (30.4%) for 28.3pts (+122.9%) here at Naas
  • and 5/25 (20%) for 32.3pts (+129.2%) under today's jockey, Seamie Heffernan

...and an AP/hcp debut micro? 3yo males at Evs to 10/1 over last two seasons = 8/23 (34.8% SR) for 28.3pts (+123.1% ROI)...

...but first...a 1pt win bet on Hong Kong @ 10/3 BOG as was offered by BetVictor, Hills & Ladbrokes at 8.05am Monday whilst Coral were a fraction longer, but as always please check your BOG status. To see what your preferred bookie is quoting...

...click here for the betting on the 3.30 Naas

Don't forget, we offer a full interactive racecard service every day!

REMINDER: THERE IS NO STAT OF THE DAY ON SUNDAYS

Here is today's racecard

P.S. all P/L returns quoted in the stats above are to Betfair SP, as I NEVER bet to ISP and neither should you. I always use BOG bookies for SotD, wherever possible, but I use BFSP for the stats as it is the nearest approximation I can give, so I actually expect to beat the returns I use to support my picks. If that's unclear, please ask!

Stat of the Day, 21st March 2020

/by

Friday's pick was...

4.00 Dundalk : Cautious Approach @ 7/2 BOG Race Void (Injured rider on track forced a stoppage)

Saturday's pick runs in the...

3.10 Thurles :

Before I post the daily selection, just a quick reminder of how I operate the service. Generally, I'll identify and share the selection between 8.00am and 8.15am and I then add a more detailed write-up later within an hour or so of going "live".

Those happy to take the early price on trust can do so, whilst some might prefer to wait for my reasoning. As I fit the early service in around my family life, I can't give an exact timing on the posts, so I suggest you follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for instant notifications of a published pick.

Who?

Sizing Pottsie @ 9/4 BOG

...in the 9-runner, Pierce Molony Memorial Novice Chase (Grade 3) for 5yo+ over 2m2f on soft ground worth £29,204 to the winner... 

Why?...

Might be a predictable looking pick, but (a) I've not many races to go at, (b) there's a host of stats to support the pick and (c) I expect to have a winner here and I suppose that's the most important right now!

He's a hat-trick seeking 6 yr old gelding who won a similar Grade 3 Novice Chase at Navan under today's jockey last time out. That was 18 days ago over 2m on heavy ground taking his chase record to 2 from 3, having already previously won over 2m1.5f on heavy ground (also under today's rider).

He clearly has the ability to go in again, won't mind the trip or the going and obviously gets on well with jockey Robbie Power, who's in good nick of late having won 9 of 42 (21.4% SR) of rides over the last month. Those are good numbers, but even more so when you consider he was 0 from 15 at Cheltenham (now 0/40 there over three years).

So if we consider just his rides here in Ireland, he's 8 from 25 (32% SR) over the past month, including 7 from 18 (38.9%) for today's trainer, Mrs John (aka Jessica) Harrington and that includes 4 winners from 6 (66.6%) over fences.

Whilst, since the start of 2016, Robbie is 8 from 28 (28.6% SR) for 6.28pts (+22.4% ROI) over fences here at Thurles and these include...

  • 7/18 (38.9%) at odds shorter than 5/1
  • 6/20 (30%) for Mrs H
  • 6/17 (35.3%) on male runners
  • 6/14 (42.9%) with soft in the going description
  • 5/12 (41.7%) over this 2m2f course and distance
  • and 3/9 (33.3%) on 6 yr olds...

...whilst trainer Mrs Harrington's chasers are 8 from 28 (28.6% SR) for 2.23pts (+8% ROI) backed blindly here at Thurles since the start of 2017. I accept that 8% isn't massive, but the strike rate is good from blind backing and when filtered, those runners include...

  • 8/22 (36.4%) for 8.23pts (+37.4%) with 5-7 yr olds
  • 8/22 (36.4%) for 8.23pts (+37.4%) in fields of 6 or more runners
  • 8/21 (38.1%) for 9.23pts (+44%) at odds of 7/1 and shorter
  • 7/19 (36.8%) for 9.93pts (+52.3%) with horses rested for up to 25 days
  • 6/20 (30%) for 5.4pts (+27%) with jockey Robbie Power, as above
  • 6/12 (50%) for 12.27pts (+102.3%) on ground with soft in the official description
  • and 4/13 (30.8%) for 5.32pts (+40.9%) over this 2m2f course and distance...

...whilst from the original 8 from 28 record, 5-7 yr olds at 7/1 and shorter in 6+ runner races at 1-25 dslr = 7/11 (63.6% SR) for 17.94 pts (+163.1% ROI) and these include...

  • 6/9 for Robbie Power
  • 5/7 with soft featured in the going
  • 5/7 for Robbie with soft mentioned
  • 4/6 over C&D
  • 4/6 for Robbie over C&D
  • 4/5 over C&D with soft mentioned
  • and 4/5 for Robbie over C&D with the word soft in the going description

...giving us...a 1pt win bet on Sizing Pottsie @ 9/4 BOG as was quite widely available at 8.15am Saturday, but as always please check your BOG status. To see what your preferred bookie is quoting...

...click here for the betting on the 3.10 Thurles

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Here is today's racecard

P.S. all P/L returns quoted in the stats above are to Betfair SP, as I NEVER bet to ISP and neither should you. I always use BOG bookies for SotD, wherever possible, but I use BFSP for the stats as it is the nearest approximation I can give, so I actually expect to beat the returns I use to support my picks. If that's unclear, please ask!