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by David Renham (January 2006)
One of the keys to successful betting is gaining an “edge” over other punters. What tends to happen is this : a punter or group of punters find a new “edge” that is underestimated by other punters and the market. This select group of punters employ this method or system until the “edge” disappears. The edge disappears because more people cotton on and eventually this drives the price down to a point where profits disappear. This process can often take several months or indeed years, but unfortunately it happens to most “profitable” ideas.
Hence, as a punter we have to think differently to the majority. Not only that, any idea we have has to work – it is no good having an idea different to everyone else if it is no good!
The avenue I have decided to explore is horses with no significant recent form. The reason for this is that most punters think recent form is a very important factor in determining the chance of a horse winning. They are right of course, but the market is very well aware of recent form and prices up races accordingly. Therefore, it is very difficult to find an “edge” backing horses with good recent form. Using reverse logic, my theory is that it must be possible to find an “edge” backing horses with poor recent form.
Handicaps seemed to me to be a logical starting point as handicaps are designed to be contests where all horses have theoretically the same chance of winning. Thus recent form may not be quite as important in these races. Having initially decided upon handicaps, I narrowed this down by only choosing all age handicaps. The reason being that I have always felt more comfortable backing in all age handicaps where I know the long term records of the horses concerned. This was my starting point, but I knew it would probably change after doing some “digging”.
1. Horses that had finished 7th or worse in their last three runs.
2. All age handicaps only.
Results – strike rate of only 3.7% and a loss of over 42%.
Not a great start equating to 1 win every 27 races, and a hefty loss to boot! However, I was expecting this and decided to consider how best to improve these results. I decided that any horse that started favourite would surely improve the figures considerably. It would be unusual for such an out of form horse to be favourite, but nevertheless I thought it was worth pursuing.
1. Horses that had finished 7th or worse in their last three runs.
2. All age handicaps only.
3. Must be favourite or joint favourite.
Results – strike rate increased to 19.1% and a loss of just under 11%.
This was more promising! What next?The next factor I considered was fitness – we all know that a recent run on the flat is a positive and so I decided to add that the horse must have run within the last week.
1. Horses that had finished 7th or worse in their last three runs.
2. All age handicaps only.
3. Must be favourite or joint favourite.
4. Must have run in last 7 days.
Results – strike rate to 27% and a profit of 26.7%.
Impressive stuff until you realise that there were only 59 qualifiers in the past 19 seasons. Not enough for your average punter – just 3 bets a year on average!
In order to increase the number of bets, I decided to eliminate the “all age handicaps” rule, and opened it out to all races.
1. Horses that had finished 7th or worse in their last three runs.
2. All races considered.
3. Must be favourite or joint favourite.
4. Must have run in last 7 days.
Results – a strike rate of over 30% and a profit of 24.5%, and the number of bets had increased to 138.
Still only averaging 7 bets a year though, which is still not enough in the grand scheme of systems. I needed therefore, to think of ways of increasing the number of bets, but keeping a similar “theme” for the system. I knew that the chances are that profits would diminish, but I would be happy with a decent increase in the number of bets even if the profit margin suffered a bit. The only “rule” I felt could sensibly “tweak” was the “must be favourite or joint favourite” one. I decided to include not only the favourite, but the second and third favourites as well. In addition, I decided that any qualifiers must also be in the first three in the betting forecast. My previous experience of systems involving horses at, or near, the head of the market, was that including this rule would help. The argument I suppose for introducing this rule is that not only does the market think the horse has a good chance, but the leading racing newspaper does as well. The results of the final “horses out of form” system are shown below :
1. Horses that had finished 7th or worse in their last three runs.
2. All races considered.
3. Must be first three in the betting (at SP) and in the first three of the betting forecast.
4. Must have run in last 7 days.
Results – 83 wins from 370 qualifiers. Strike rate of 22.4% and a profit of 19.2% on investment.
More qualifiers, a slightly smaller percentage profit, but this system will at least offer on average around 20 bets a year. Indeed, over the past 6 seasons the system has averaged 28 qualifiers per season.
Finally, it should be noted that this “final” system has produced 8 winning years out of the last 9 with a profit of over 30%. Now I bet you did not think that you would ever meet a system that made a profit from horses finishing 7th or worse on their last three starts! Well now you have!! |
