Thursday 4 September 2008

Tipping God?

Daily Loss £20.00

I’m not really sure how to start tonight’s post but as you can imagine, I’ve got a fair bit say. (The blog title is a quote from a reader on my last post, not my view!)

I’ll start off with 2 quotes I got from 2 readers in emails straight after the race today. It read “OK analysis there, well done.” It made me chuckle……

When I mentioned it to Andrew, he wrote, “What the hell do they want from you, the whole 20 runners in finishing order?” This made me laugh too. I replied, “no, they just want a bloody winner!”.

OK, the first point about today is that I lost 2 points and more importantly for me, I lost £20. The reason I didn’t back my horse for 1 point each way is that I’m not familiar too much with the place markets on BF and I wanted 8 but I couldn’t get matched, so I gave up asking.

I actually had £50 win at one stage with average odds of 32 but I traded in £30 at 23-26 pre-race. In summary, I ended up with £20 win at 42/1 which was about as much value as you can squeeze from a horse that started at 20/1. I couldn’t get the place odds to match my win odds, so I didn’t back each-way.

For anyone who is not aware, I decided to analyse the 2.00 at Redcar today. It was a 20 runner 2 year old handicap. This is not my typical sort of race as I prefer more exposed horses and Andrew wrote to me this morning asking, “why are you trying to unpick the most difficult race of the day?”

Basically, I feel like I have to use this month to prove to people that I know what I’m doing. I know there will be many people reading the emails everyday and being quite sceptical about what I’m trying to do. No one likes paying for tips and in the long-run, it would be much better to select your own horses. However, not everyone has the knowledge and time to do this, so I’m hoping that I can provide a service to these people ultimately.

When I was looking through the races last night, I remember thinking to myself, that would be nearly impossible to unpick. However, one saying I was taught was“ The bigger the field, the bigger the cert”. Andrew always laughs when I tell him this when I’m analysing 20 runner fields but it is so true. My edge in these races is absolutely massive.

Joe Punter has zero chance of picking the winner or understanding the form lines. Therefore, if I spend two hours or three hours looking at the race and unpicking the form lines, I can make it pay in the long run easily.

Anyway, so I decided to try to unpick that race last night. So you all know how long it took, I was studying in a room on my own for just over 2 and a bit hours. That got me down to the final 4 horses. I then stopped and waited for the odds this morning before trying to compute the horse’s chance against their selected odds.

As I’ve shown everyone in the past 2 weeks, the final bit of the jigsaw is usually the most difficult to fit into place. Narrowing the race down to 4 is the easy part. Getting the winner is the difficult bit.

Usually, I plump for the horse that is a high price but I was spoilt for choice today. My final 4 were priced at 20/1,25/1, 14/1 and 10/1. Now that’s what you call spoilt for choice!

As we all know now, I again messed up this bit of the puzzle. I plumped for the 20/1 chance which was the best value in my opinion.

Thankfully, I’ve had 2 very nice emails from Stan and Dan as well as the comments below from them and others saying that they backed all 4. I take my hat off to Stan as it appears he used the 4 horses for reverse tricasts and forecasts for 50p stakes and won over £1,300!

(The irony of this is that I personally hate permutation bets like this and I would never recommend to anyone to perm my horses in tricasts especially. The chance of anyone picking a tricast in a 20 runner handicap is up there with 5 numbers and the bonus ball in my opinion but I know many punters use them.)

Anyway, well done Stan and it makes me feel quite good to know that you won a few quid mate. My address is XXXXX and please make the cheque payable to Graeme Dand for my share mate!!! Just joking…..

Back to the post-race analysis…..The result of the race was the 25/1 won, the 10/1 was 2nd and the 14/1 was 3rd. These were the odds this morning. The SPs were 20/1, 8/1 and 14/1.

I hear everyone shouting “what the hell happened to your 20/1 shot?” OK, I have a few points regarding this horse.

As I made crystal clear in my email, there was a horse running in the race called Cutting Comments and it finished 4th at 25/1. On the formbook, my selection had 10lbs in hand of this horse today. As it turned out, my horse finished tailed off at the back.

Now, I don’t want to be a smart-ass here but clearly, my horse has not run anywhere near to form. I’d even go as far to say that if we assume that the 4th has run to form, then my horse would have won the race if it had ran to the same level of form it did when it faced this horse last time.

In simple terms, if my horse had run to form, I would have selected the winner and the 3 horses which followed him home. Now that would have been a good story to write about on the blog………

For the traders out there, my other 3 horses excluding the winner traded at 1.4, 2.26 and 4.2. At the off, my 4 selections started at odds of around 27, 11, 19 and 34.

Therefore, if you had followed my advice and backed at 30+ on Betfair, you would have been OK as long as you laid off IR at 5 or above.

I’m sure you are all wondering how Andrew used my analysis! As you know, Andrew likes big prices. He was spoilt for choice today and he backed all 3 of the big prices which meant he got the winner, 3rd and mines!

Due to the fact that they all traded at below 5 and one at 1.4, he managed to triple his profits on the race by getting all his low lays matched IR and he won a substantial sum. He then followed it up with backing a 40 shot in the next which traded low and winning another nice sum to have an absolutely fantastic day on the whole. Well done mate!!!!!

Overall, I think this race will go down as one of the best races I’ve analysed this year. Nice time to do it when I’m giving out a month of free advice in emails I must admit!

For those of you that lost today by backing my selection, don’t worry about it. I lost too! However, if I can keep narrowing races down to 4 horses with an average price of 16/1, in the long-run, not only will we do well, we’ll absolutely skin the layers and the bookmakers! Patience my friends, patience……..

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mate,
Over the past few months I’ve seen you dissect many races – but today was quite special even by your standards ! I have no idea how you did it (even though I’ve probably got a better idea than most !) – it was like watching Lionel Messi at the top of his game !
The only thing I would say, is that trying to just tip winners almost does your analysis a disservice (as was proven today !). In my opinion, you would be better off providing a ‘race reading service’ – perhaps you could call it ‘Dand Form’ or ‘Mystic Graeme’ – LOL !
Anyway, really well done with the analysis – I’m sure you’ve made many of your readers very happy (and just a little bit wealthier !).
A.

Mark Iverson said...

Hi Graeme,

Well done on such a great result. A's got a point about becoming a race reading service and letting the punters make up their own minds on how to stake the race as I think I would have plumped at backing all 4 horses at those prices.

Anyway, I know I'm a bit late but is there any chance I can sneak on the mailing list?!?

mark@markiverson.com

All the best and keep up the good work ;-)

Mark

Anonymous said...

The point about having a bigger edge in many runners races that are harder to decipher indeed makes alot of sense to me.

Terry said...

Graeme,

My sixteen year old son has probably become your most avid reader over the past month. Every night when he gets in from school, he rushes upstairs to read the blog and this week, he has loved the emails. He tries to understand the way you unpick the form lines.

At the dinner table tonight, he could hardly contain himself and you were the talk of the table. He concluded that you were a genius who was the best tipster in the land!

Being honest, I said to him to not put you on too high a pedestal but since I know he’ll read this comment tomorrow, I think he could be right!

Well done again.

Steve

Graeme Dand said...

Cheers Andrew. You raise a very good point mate. What should I do? Everyone keeps telling me I’m the best they have ever seen and yet, I am struggling to make a penny. Emails are piling up from people who are winning and I’m £60 up in the month. lol

I love the Messi line. Great analogy. However, I doubt even he could do something that paid 2,200/1!

“race reading service” is interesting but people usually want tips and don’t care about the analysis that sits behind it.

One point I made in an email to someone tonight is that I could have laid 14 horses in that race today. By my reckoning, the last 69 horses that I have dismissed in races haven’t won. I could be making a bomb by just telling everyone which horses can’t win!

Just when I think I have a new career mapped out as a tipster, I’m now discussing a mystic Graeme service. LOL

You just gotta love The Experiment! Lives up to the blog name every week….

G

Graeme Dand said...

Hi Mark.

One of the reasons I write my analysis in such a way is so that it can be used by lots of people. I'm always very honest and I think that's my USP.

I'll forward you the email from today tonight. You can have a read.

It seems lots of readers laid the favourite which was an obvious thing to do as it couldn't win IMO.

As I keep saying, there are many ways to skin a cat on Betfair. I just can't find any! lol

You're now on the list...

G

Graeme Dand said...

Hi Markomar.

I've spoken about this before on the blog but if I can find a race where there are 20 runners and 14 of them can't win, I'm increasing my value 10 fold.

Today, I could have backed the 6 that was on the original shortlist at around 5/2 and that was probably the bet of the season....

How's the form study going?

G

Graeme Dand said...

Hi Steve.

That comment made me smile mate. Glad your son likes the blog. If he wants some tips on form reading, drop me a note and I'll get in touch. Happy to help out with anyone who wants to learn from me.

lol @ genius. That's probably a bit over the top but I don't think anyone could have read that race better than me today. I laughed at the RP analyst (Spotlight) and he didn't give any of mines a chance at all. Not one of them.

I'm probably in the wrong career but the RP's loss is my readers' gain!

Graeme

mancol said...

hi Graeme, found your blog here recently and must say that not only is it great reading and very entertaining, it is also very informative.... I am very impressed. Is there a way to go on your mailing list?
mancol518@yahoo.co.uk
With many thanks
Cheers
Mancol

Graeme Dand said...

Mancol,

On the list mate. I'll forward you today's note at some point.

G

mancol said...

brill Graeme, really appreciate it
Thanks again
Mancol

Mark Iverson said...

Thanks Graeme.

All the best,

Mark

Anonymous said...

"Emails are piling up from people who are winning and I’m £60 up in the month. lol"

I`m sure many earned alot of money, but I feel you should allow for some "survivorship bias".

Those that read your analysis and turned out winners sent excited messages of thanks.

Those that lost went and sulked in the corner. :)

So you are aware of the former, but not of the latter.

I`m sure there are plenty of others who read your analysis, but aren`t ahead of you in the winnings. :)

____________

My form reading? I`m too much of a jack-of-all-trades so it has been going slowly to be honest. Did gather the courage to lay two horses last week though. :)