Wednesday 6 August 2008

The Worst Tipster In The World?

I am the worst tipster in the world! It’s mainly for this reason that I have never given out a tip on the blog and I never give anyone tips. Obviously, I could be a very good tipster in practice but every time I give someone a tip, it loses! It’s been like this was since school to be honest and that’s why I never tell anyone to back a horse. I’m not going to change that now………

Below is my thinking on a horse running at Sandown tomorrow night. But to be able to understand the horse, you need to be able to understand the 9.20 at Nottingham on the 5th of July!

Below is the result from the Racing Post:





The Racing Post reviewer for this race commented that “this was a moderate contest where the winner was allowed a soft lead.”

I would argue that subsequent events have shown that this was a particularly strong 0-70 handicap and as such, there is a very well handicapped horse running tomorrow night at Sandown.

Before I discuss what I think, let’s look at the facts.

Since this race, 9 of the horses have since run. Out of these 9, 5 horses have won their next race (all handicaps). Interestingly, 3 of the beaten horses were priced at 40/1, 50/1 and 50/1 in the above race. Therefore, we can exclude them from our calculations since they are clearly not handicapped to win a race and are very poor horses.

Hence, 5 of the 6 horses who have run have won next time out. Amazingly, the horse who didn’t win was priced at 2/1 fav in a competitive handicap and ran very poorly. The fact it hasn’t run since implies that there was maybe something wrong with the horse which can explain its poor run.

So, we may have the situation where 5 healthy horses have run since and all have won since.

One of the interesting aspects concerning this race was the fact that the front two were 7 lengths clear. Having watched the race again, it is clear that the front two had the run of the race and kicked on early which allowed them to open up a sizable lead on the field and the rest of the horses appeared very one paced.

The fact that the winner has since made all off a 6lbs higher mark and is now rated 14lbs (Yes, 1 full stone higher!) implies that it isn’t surprising it managed to beat the rest (all bar the sick horse) by 7 lengths plus.

When the handicapper came to assess this race, he had to look at the field in 2 different groups. He decided to raise the winner and the second by 6lbs (too little going by subsequent win of first and fact second was 2/1 fav next time) and he decided to drop the rest of the field anything between 1lb and 3lbs.

Subsequent wins by the 3rd,5th,7th and 10th have shown that the form of the 2nd group was also very strong. Therefore, we can choose to exclude the front two from the calculations now. For simplicity, let’s exclude the 3 donkeys from the calculation that will never win a race.

We now have this picture:




As you can see, out of this group of 5 who raced, Golden Prospect had little chance in winning this little race. On average, each horse it was racing against was actually 7lbs better than its current mark.

Tomorrow night, Golden Prospect races off a 3lb lower mark than it ran in that little race. So, the fact it finished second was an amazing achievement and implies it has 10lbs in hand of the handicapper.

For those of you who don’t understand handicapping…..

If Harare ran in tomorrow’s race, it would race off a mark of 70. Golden Prospect would run off a mark of 66. So, Golden Prospect would receive 4lbs from Harare.

Last time, Golden Prospect gave Harare 5lbs and only lost by ½ length. Hence, it would be 9lbs better off for getting beat ½ length!

It would be 11lbs better off with Flashy Max for beating it a short head!

It would be 12lbs better off with West End Lad for beating it by 8 lengths!

It would be 8lbs better off with Eton Fable for beating it by 10 lengths!

If Flashy Max was running in tomorrow’s race, it would be a likely favourite since it has won its last 2 races.

What price is Golden Prospect in tomorrow night’s race??????

Sporting Life tissue is 20/1 and Racing Post tissue is 16/1…….

I rest my case your honour!

Graeme (Worst Tipster in the world!)

P.S. The horse is entered 5 times in 5 days as it doesn’t like soft ground. It needs firm ground but the trainer knows this, hence he’s willing to waste entry fees on 5 races. It may not run at Sandown tomorrow night unless it stays dry but it will run somewhere I imagine in the next few days as they wouldn’t enter it 5 times unless it was ready to run!

16 comments:

Terry said...

Graeme,

An entertaining read as always. lol

2 questions before I remortgage:

a) How much is 10lbs worth in distance?
b) How do we know the horse is healthy and not like the other horse that lost?

Steve

Graeme Dand said...

lol....

Steve,

I love the second question. Without knowing someone who works in the stable, I think every time I put a bet on a horse, I need to assume it is healthy!

Obviously, if it only has 3 legs when it's trotting to the start, I'd be worried but apart from that, nothing else I can really do.

Your first question is quite technical. Being 100% honest, I don't really know. I know the BHA have a little table that says that for each distance, 1lb is worth some sort of distance.

For example, I know that for long distance flat races and all NH races, 1lb is worth 1 length.

On the flat, it's obviously worth more. I think for sprint races, 1lb is worth 2 lengths or 2.5 lengths maybe.

For 1m races, it must be worth a length and a half maybe?

Can any other reader help?

When I'm looking at it, I use 2 lengths for 1lb for races from 5f to 1m2f and I use 1lb for all other races. I know this is factually incorrect but it does me and hasn't led me up too many garden paths.

So,if I really thought this horse has 10lbs in hand, it would win by around 20 lengths.....LOL

Clearly, it won't but this won't need to run to 10lbs higher to win a race. If it has about 3lbs in hand, that would allow it to win unless there is something even better handicapped in the race IMO.

Hope this answers your question.

Graeme

Anonymous said...

G,
I think you've got this the wrong way round - the shorter the race, the less value a pound has ! If you think about it, this makes sense as the horse is carrying the weight for less time ! I don't know exactly what the scale is, but at a mile I would guess that a length is worth about 2lb. Therefore, if it has 10lb in hand, that equates to about 5 lengths - not 20 - LOL !
A.

Graeme Dand said...

LOL.....

Hehe!

Well spotted. Fuck, I was thinking to myself just there, 20 lengths in hand. I'll remortgage my house also! LOL

Yeah, as you say, 10lbs would be 5 lengths. See if you can find that table anywhere on the net! I had a look but couldn't find it.

You know what I meant. I had it right in my head, just came out wrong when I wrote it. lol 20 lengths in a mile race......

If it had 20 lengths in hand, just don't bother running the race! lol

Some tipster I'd be. The suscribers would be having their house on everything I tip!

Cheers mate.

G

JP said...

Hi Graeme,

Will respond to your e-mail tomorrow.

All the best
JP

Anonymous said...

You lost me a little bit there.

Are you saying is Golden Prospect could be a good punt tommorrow??

Just say so...

Anonymous said...

Graeme,

I’ve bought a copy of the Racing Post to see what they think of the horse.

Without quoting Spotlight, the horse is easily dismissed as being out of form. Any thoughts?

Similar to the comment above, how often do you find these types of horses? Are you saying that this should win?

Which price should this horse be in your opinion?

Stan

Graeme Dand said...

Anonymous,

It’s starting to annoy me just a little that every negative or silly comment is being written by someone who refuses to leave their name. I don’t want to ban anonymous readers from posting since I get a lot of great comments from people who don’t have google accounts but all the silly comments never have a name attached to them.

Apologies if I lost you. Simply, anyone who can’t follow simple horseracing form shouldn’t really be punting IMO. Hence, I would suggest you don’t have a bet on this horse.

Graeme

Graeme Dand said...

Stan,

Thanks for the comment.

I’m glad you read the Spotlight comment and I know you are a punter, so no doubt you followed the post OK.

I’ve mentioned this a few times on here but Spotlight is one of many form analysts who work for the RP. There is a pool of them and they review and preview races everyday between them and write the Spotlight comments and race reviews.

Obviously, this is their full-time job and I would hope that they get more races right than me since I have my own full-time job. However, in certain races, I believe that I can read form much better than they can. That’s only my opinion of course.

So, what do I think about Spotlight not agreeing with me? I think he’s wrong. As I said in the post, the analyst who wrote the review of the race last time dismissed the race as a poor race. Take into account that fact and the fact that the front two were miles clear, and I’d be inclined to dismiss the race also without looking at it in depth.

One thing you need to remember about form analysts at the RP is that they need to preview every race, every day. Hence, I’m at a big advantage in the sense I can choose which race to look at and just study that.

I agree with the comment the horse has been out of form. It has been all season until its last run. Here, IMO, it performed very well and showed it was in peak form (even though it wasn’t clear to see at the time).

How often do I find horses like this? If it was everyday, I’d be sunning myself in the Caribbean now.

The last horse that I found on the same method was a horse called Thorny Mandate. It had about 7lbs in hand IMO and it won at 7/1 by a nose. It was given a peach of a ride by a lady amateur to get up and win on the line. The horse was a large drifter on Betfair pre-race but was solid all day.

Before that, I had Tony James about 5lbs clear and it drifted from 20 to 50 on Betfair before finishing tailed off last!

Obviously, I get lots of horses who I think have a couple of pounds in hand but its hit and miss. They are usually always decent prices though.

Am I saying this will win? I didn’t once say in the post that this will win and I don’t intend on saying that here. Basically, all I wanted to do was put a case forward for the horse. If you think I’m correct, back it. If you think I’m wrong, lay it. Simple as that really.

What price should this be? Taking into account it needs firm ground, a good pace, luck in running, a good ride, needs to be fit and well, needs to run to form etc. I wouldn’t take anything less than 2/1 about a handicap good thing. It’s 10/1 with all bookmakers now, so maybe I’m wrong……..

Good luck!

Graeme

Anonymous said...

Graeme,just ignore any negative or silly comments it doesn't reflect on your or the blog it just shows people are actually reading it.

I'd avoid going down the route of banning or moderating posts as it does put people off posting and if someone really wants to posts negative stuff it's easy enough for them to go to the hassle of setting up an account. One of the reasons you get lots of comments is the fact it's not moderated and they can see there post after sending it. I can never be bothered posting on blogs where it's moderated as you think whats the point in posting if the're going to remove anything they don't want to hear.

Anyway good to see you're looking at all avenues and taking a break with the previous profits. I keep meaning to comment on some of the posts you've done but everytime I come here there's another post and loads of comments to read so never get time.

Had to reinstal my xp and lost a lot of my mysql bot stuff so bit busy trying to get that up and running at the moment but I'll comment more when thats all fixed.

Steve
(The Anonymous account Steve :) )

Anonymous said...

Hi Graeme,

Given the change in ground at the moment (Good, good to soft) to do you think it's worth passing over Golden Prospect now? Spotlight writing off the horse is in all seriousness a big positive though.

I think I've mentioned before I don't play the horses but I was looking into weight for distance a while back and found quite an interesting Betfair thread on gubbed.com -
http://site.forum.betfair.com/jive3/betex/ThreadsFrameset.jsp?forumID=16&threadID=846914

Nick

Anonymous said...

That thread should read

http://site.forum.betfair.com/jive3/
betex/ThreadsFrameset.jsp?forumID=
16&threadID=846914

Graeme Dand said...

Hi Steve.

As you say, I wouldn’t want to go down the route of moderating comments. I haven’t had too many negative comments to be honest. If this horse loses, I’m sure I’ll get a few! lol

I’ve not actually commented yet on here but I’ve actually done lots this week. I’ve been setting up Excel to link into BA Pro so that I can get large full screen size graphs in Excel that I can use to spot trends. I’ll then just use the ladder from BA Pro at the side of the graph and trade from that.

So far, I haven’t traded a single race yet but I’ve watched about 20 races this week and I’m liking the look of what I’m seeing. Obviously, it’s early days but I’m spotting trends far easier now, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to act on them when I come to trade properly.

The number of comments recently has been amazing and it’s clear the blog is being read by more and more people all the time which is cool.

I’ve noticed that there are 2 Steve’s who comment on here, but I now differentiate between the black letters and the blue letters!

Cheers for the comment and hope you get your bots back up and running!

G

Graeme Dand said...

Nick,

Great comment! I hadn't spotted the ground change but it does appear to have changed from good to good, good to soft in places this morning. I assume it’s raining there.

The horse has only run 13 times in its life and only 2 of these were on ground with a description of soft in the title (good to soft both times). On its debut, it was basically tailed off on one run and it ran OK on the other run (4th).

In my opinion, horses tend to have a ground preference. Going by the fact this runs on good to firm most times, I would say it doesn’t like soft ground.

Obviously, I don’t have any proof of this but based on the simple fact that it doesn’t run on softish ground, I think it probably doesn’t like it (or that may be the trainer’s opinion).

Another thing is that the horse is a hold up horse that needs to finish late and fast. IMO, these horses are at a bigger disadvantage on softer ground as it is more difficult to make up distance on this type of ground on the leaders.

I noticed this morning it was taken out of tomorrow’s race it was entered for but it still holds an entry in a race on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

IMO, I think this will be withdrawn if the ground is too soft tonight as I don’t think they will run a horse (that I think they know) is well handicapped when it can’t perform to the best of its ability.

To answer your question mate, I would be worried about the ground a great deal now. However, if it runs, I’ll need to assume it is OK on the ground.

However, I will reflect this in my stake size now. I suggest anyone who reads this does likewise if they are having a bet.

This morning, I’d nearly convinced myself that this was a penalty kick but your comment has reduced my confidence somewhat! I sometimes need to be kept in check when I find horses like this as the more I look at it, the more I convince myself I’m right!

Cheers for the link. I’ll look at it tonight as it’s a blocked site here!

Graeme

Anonymous said...

Graeme,

I'm in the south and it's pissing down at the moment, warm though so could dry out a bit....best laid plans of mice and men lol,

Nick

Graeme Dand said...

From looking at the hits on the blog mate and the various locations, I probably have enough weather watchers in the UK to cover every racecourse!

Every time I fancy something, I should just ask for updated reports on the blog of how it is looking!

Shame Golden is not a 3 mile chaser. It’s a really nice day in Perth today and the sun’s splitting the pavement now after a wet spell this morning.

Fucking typical……lol

G