Making the Best of Free Resources – Part Six

A quick search on “Google” using “horse racing blogs” currently brings up 36,200,000 results………… now that’s a lot of people talking about our Sport of Kings, and is also a potential goldmine of useful, and generally free information.

One such blog is written by the guy who heads up the Flat Racing Select service that is being trialled over on our Horse Racing Forum. I had a good read of his race reader blog and my attention was drawn to an article on how Steve had analysed the effect of pace in a particular type of race.

Having checked with him he is happy for us to quote from his article as follows:-

“The Effect of Pace – Southwell Handicaps”

There have been 44 5f Handicaps from Jan 2009 to the end of Jan 2010.

12 races (29%) were won by horses that led or disputed the lead.

27 (60%) by horses that chased or tracked the leaders or raced prominently.

Only 5 (11%) were won from mid division or the rear.

To try and ascertain the “usual” running style of a horse we will base this on its 3 most recent outings, awarding points on the in running comments immediately after the start of the race as follows:

4 for a horse that “led” or “made all”

3 if comments are “with leader” or “disputed the lead”

2 chased leader(s), tracked leader(s), close up, prominent

1 mid division, in touch.

The higher a score the runner has the more likely it will be leading, particularly if all or some of the rest of the runners have low scores.

Now let us see this in action by taking a look at a recent race………..

11^th Feb 2010 -2.20 Class 5 0-75 Handicap

Seven runners went to post and were rated pre race as follows:

Where’s Riley            0

Guto                            4

First Swallow             10

Captain Kallis            4

La Capriosa              7

Miss Thippawan        6

Came Back               8

From this assessment it seemed likely that the pace would come from First Swallow the 6/4 favourite or Came Back the rank outsider. To my mind neither offered value in the outright win market, with the favourite being too short and the outsider having finished plum last in its last 3 runs. So I looked at another angle that this type of analysis can provide – in running pointers. Given the likelihood that either of these two horses would make the running and given that the race was over the minimum sprint distance of 5f it seemed likely that they would “trade” at shorter prices when the Betfair market was turned in-play.

Let’s review the actual race comments……………

FIRST SWALLOW:   Led, ridden along 2f out, driven and headed over 1f out, kept on same pace to finish 3^rd.

CAME BACK:           Close up, ridden along halfway, soon weakened, finished last of 7

So the pre race analysis seemed to pan out but did an in-play opportunity occur?

Both of these horses halved their prices in-running and by using one of the readily available (some are even free) “bots” you would have been able to generate a profit even though neither horse won the race. I realise that it can be difficult to gauge how the prices can go in –running as they move so fast, and it can be difficult to capture the very lowest price, but in both of these examples looking to get your lay matched when the back price had dropped by 50% should have been comfortable to achieve. Based on this the back/lay trade on First Swallow would have produced a profit of 41.62% and Came Back 92%, calculated as a return on investment of your initial back bet stake.

Interestingly the actual winner of the race was Where’s Riley @ 4/1 that traded at a high of 13.00 after being outpaced and staying on to lead inside the final furlong. To my mind that was a very good performance based on the past results that were highlighted earlier and marked him down as a potential horse to follow.

He ran 7 days later over the same course and distance and again produced a power packed finish to win under a 6lb penalty @ 9/2F.

I hope that this has highlighted some new and interesting ways that we can all profit from by carrying out our own research, even if it is initially based on somebody else freely available information.

The quest that is beating the Bookmakers has to constantly evolve to keep one step ahead…………happy punting!