TAB & Barrier Plan

[hermes]

Here's a simple plan put together from elements taken from various posts to this forum. Thought I should give something back to the generous and intelligent contributors here...

Rules

1. No heavy tracks.
2. Races with 9-13 runners before scratchings.
3. TABs 1-4 only.
4. Barriers 1-3 only.
5. Rated 93-98 on the TABQ website.
6. Ran fifth or better last start.
7. Back all qualifiers except where a runner 1-4 with barrier 1-3 is rated 99 or 100 on the TABQ = pass the race.

Basically we are looking for runners numbered 1 to 4 starting from barriers 1 to 3, and then we filter using data readily available at a glance on the TABQ webpage, namely the ratings and last start.

As a rule you will find that runners rated 93+ who ran fifth or better last start are real contenders in a race. This combines two solid stats: 80%+ winners are rated over 93 and 80%+ winners ran fifth or better. I use this as a regular first step when looking at a race: 93+ and fifth or better will give you a short list of real prospects in any race. If there are too many of them, pass the race.

We eliminate runners rated 99 or 100 in order to place selections in a better value band. Eliminating the 99s and 100s takes out most short priced favourites. The punters and the ratings are often spot on, but there's no value in that. We not only don't bet on such runners, we avoid such races. They'll often win, but not profitable.


We avoid heavy tracks for obvious reasons, given the importance of barrier in this scheme.

This plan is designed for a set-and-forget approach. A fair volume of bets. Lots of surprises. Fun and you don't need to know a whole lot about horses. But hopefully it spins a reasonable POT.

As with other plans, though, a bit of judicious staking will improve results. You can bet mechanically across the board but better to use some judgement in each case. Some selections are worth an each way bet, for example. Some - long shots - might be better as a place bet.

I think plans like this should be seen as simple "selection generators". As with commercial subscriber plans it gives you a range of selections to consider - you can then pass them or bet them according to your judgement. I use the Radio TAB tips at the top of the same web page. If a selection is a Radio TAB tip, I'm definitely in. Otherwise I look closer.

Better results are always achieved by waiting for prices at jump and looking for value, but then it requires a big imput of time and attention. We're looking for starters over about $5 and runners over about $14 rarely get up.

Works OK for me in small samples and real-life tests. Fast, interesting, profitable - but with some nasty runs of outs, of course. Does anyone have the capacity to test it over a large sample of past results? Any suggestions to improve it?

Many thanks for the stimulating contributions in this forum. Happy punting.

Hermes

[good 4th]

Great to see someone is thinking.
Have tried a similiar thing with the Dogs, bit of pot luck though.
Keep working at it !!!!!!

[becareful]

Please don't take this personally (am only trying to give a few pointers) but some of those rules really don't make a lot of sense to me.

Firstly the results based on your rules as given, for all races this year, Tabcorp results, Saturday only, metro only (AR, MR, SR and BR) were as follows:

258 selections, 37 winners, 51 Unit Loss, -20% LOT

I then tried your "value" filter and looked at runners starting at $5 or over but less than $14:

134 selections, 8 winners, 78 unit loss, -58% LOT

Turns out most of the "value" is really under $5.00. If price <$5.00 we get:
93 selections, 26 winners, 2 unit loss, -2% LOT


In my OPINION there are a few things to thing about here:

1. Looking at last start finish position is not very helpful unless you also consider lengths beaten, class of race, etc. 5th in a race with only 5 runners beaten by 20 lengths is a LOT different to 5th in a field of 16 beaten by 1 length.

2. Eliminating 99-100 raters looking for "value" is not a good idea if you end up missing all the winners. There is no value in a horse that doesn't win.

3. In my experience using barrier position as a general rule achieves nothing. Whilst inner barriers do produce more winners the outer barriers generally give better prices - you could say there is value in those outer barriers.

4. Concentrate on the shorter priced starters as this is where the majority of winners and most of the "Value" really is.

Good luck with it.

[hermes]

Thanks for your constructive thoughts becareful. I don't have the advantage of a large data base. I'm surprised by your results. I tried treating the high raters as the "value" runners but in my trials hit a wall. So I tried the opposite tack to much better results.

I agree on the general observations regarding last start position - a third last start can mean many different things -, but it remains a statistically useful fact that most winners finished 5th or better last start.

A top requirement in my schemes is easy-of-use. In this case all info can be taken from the TABQ at a glance. The info available is:

*Radio Tab tips. (very useful tips in my experience)
*Last starts.
*Barrier
*Weight
*Ratings from 60 to 100
*Prices

My thinking is that this is ample info from which to design a simple, reliable "selection generator" to which you then apply some critical judgement in staking. Many of Bhagwan's posted schemes are models of this.

Other more subtle factors like distance from winner are more telling, I agree, but it takes time to look them up or you have to outlay money to have such info neatly packaged for you. My challewnge is to design winning selection schemes from the free, readily available data on the TABQ webpage. For a long time I kept multiplying data. This factor. That factor. Position at home turn, etc. My inclinatioon now is to *simplify* - fast, reliable systems for the busy punter. Preferabbly set-and-forget.

From your analysis, becareful, it doesn't sound like this one has legs. Back to the drawing board I guess. :smile:

Hermes

[becareful]

Personally I don't think it is possible to get a winning system out of the info on the TAB websites - I have tried it myself in the past. There are several pieces of info that I consider absolutely critical - some of these are available from the TAB if you go looking for the individual form, others are not there at all:

1. Distance beaten in lengths (or winning margin)
2. Distance change from last start
3. Days since last start
4. Some indication of change in class from last start (eg. prizemoney for last race v's prize for this race gives a very rough indication).

Plus a few others - don't want to give away all my secrets :wink:

Personally I think subscribing to the Cyberhorse form has been one of my best moves as all this info is included and you only have to look in one place.

[hermes]

becareful wrote:

I have tried in the past.

I am daunted but will persevere. There must be a way to extract a winning system from the given info on TAB. Thanks for the Cyberhorse tip.

[shoto]

Excuse me for butting in with a bit of a side issue ...
Becareful, your ability to analyse these TAB figures implies you can extract the data from the site. Is there a way to do that? I am trying to get data together looking at a few different things, TAB tips amongst them, and of course it all needs the race results to have any meaning. All of this I do manually and it takes ages. Is there a better way??
Thanks for any help.

[Merriguy]

Interesting post Hermes. Thanks.

Just a few observations:

a) Was surprised at how few qualifiers there were in yesterday's racing given that there were eight venues. While I did not analyse things strictly, I got the impression that perhaps only 10-15% had a qualifier. Still that is plenty (I am always a bit suss about Sunday racing anyway!) And I suppose that it would be unrealistic to expect many more given that you are only really looking at Barriers 1-3.

b) When there is a 99-100 starter and also another that fits with your system, do you discard the race because of the 99-100 rater?

c) Share Be Careful's concerns; but, having turned up a selection, it is easy enough to check it by looking at its form over the last three starts by highlighting the selection. There is a wealth of info there including margins. It also has the very important matter, for me, of the strike rate of the horse.

I also believe in getting out while ahead; and, yesterday, the second qualifier came home at $7.10 (after the first had placed) so the rest of the afternoon was only of academic interest to me :grin:

Thanks.

[becareful]

Shoto,

I have a program I developed myself that downloads the results and the final approximates for every runner for each race from the QLD, NSW and Tabcorp websites. Basically it downloads the HTML pages from the relevant websites and then pulls them apart to get the price and results data and stores this into my database (which also has all the form from Cyberhorse for each race).

I have thought about either selling the program that does this download or offering a subscription service to provide the TAB results of all races to subscribers but when I mentioned this some time ago I didn't seem to get enough interest to justify the time involved (since people seem very reluctant to pay even a modest fee for something that is available free on the net - even if it does save hours per day). Also not sure of the legal implications of providing this data since the TABs claim copyright over their prices.

[hermes]

Thanks Merrigum. You wrote:

b) When there is a 99-100 starter and also another that fits with your system, do you discard the race because of the 99-100 rater?

It is not a rule, but in practice I often pass a race on that basis. As said above, it is a "selection generator" - after that you apply some judgement, noting that every race is a unique event with unique factors.

Merrigum also wrote:

I also believe in getting out while ahead...

I take the opposite view, Merrigum. I quit when I'm losing. Why quit when you're winning? After three outs in a row I usually reassess. Any system will have a characteriustic pattern of strikes and outs. This one gives nasty runs of outs so you need a cut-off device to avoid them. I stop wagering, keep selecting, and return to wagering when I'm picking winners again.

Cheers

Hermes

[hermes]

Becareful,

I encourage you to develop your program further. I am certainly interested in such a program. Like others, I'm working with pen and paper, race by race. Personally, I'd be happy with a database of, say, 1000 past race results with which to test selection ideas. If the TAB owns coipyright on their data, there are obvious legal problems.

So much of racing is about the control of information. I was subscribing to a coimmewrcial selection package. It was based on three simple factors and produced great results. It was all readily available data, but buried in the racing pages. I was paying for someone else to collect it, time being the crucial thing.

I gather that the TAB (with all their number crunching power and research) knows very well that some data is more relevant than others in tipping winners - but they're not about to codify the relevant data on their website. Instead, the TAB website offers low-grade, general data.

Information is big business in this game. If you could market it somehow, becareful, I'm sure punters would go for it.

Hermes

[Merriguy]

Becareful, you indicated that Hermes idea would produce an overall loss on Sat metro races.

Do you have any 'feel' for the situation if all races were considered? Don't want you to run your whole database or anything, but your obvious work on your punting would, I think, enable you to give an educated guess.

Personally, I 'feel' that there may be a lot more value in many weekday and out-of-town races than most of us suspect. Maybe Hermes' filters, if we can call them that, would help?

[Merriguy]

Obviously writing my other response while you were giving yours, Hermes!

Can understand your attitude to getting out; but I certainly hate the feeling of being well up and then losing it all :sad: Suppose a better way would be to use some of the winnings and then get out if no luck. Like in most gambling there is no reason why the bets should run in groups either way!!!

[hermes]

Merrigum wrote:

Like in most gambling there is no reason why the bets should run in groups either way!!!

True enough, but any system will nevertheless have a characteristic pattern of strikes and outs. For example, some systems will give you lots of short-priced winners and will consequently (usually) yield lots of strikes in a row before an out. A long-shot system will give you lots of outs in a row before a strike. There is nothing to say in any system that just because you've had five outs in a row the next race "must" be a winner, but in some systems it will be more likely than others. Its not just POT that determines a good system, but a reliable strike pattern. If you've got a system with only meager POT but a reliable strike pattern, you can make a fortune.

I agree, Merrigum, that there's nothing worse than losing a good profit and ending the day thinking, "If only I'd stopped at the big win on race three...", but once you start thinking "if only" in racing, you're a goner.

Hermes

[kenchar]

Just my opinion, and what I stick to.

Get my profit and get out, Why be greedy?

Lady Luck has a lot to do with this game, when she favours you grab it and run.

I believe any punter worth his salt on most occasions is ahead on any one day.

Just depends on how much you want out of it compared to the size of your bet.

Give me 1 point a day every day with never a losing day and I'll be in heaven.

Cheers

[hermes]

Thanks Kenchar. Why be greedy? Only because winning margins are small in this game and long-term it is hard to make a quid.

I'm not opposed to target betting as such. But I am averse to chasing losses. I much prefer methods that build on wins. If I'm having a bad day I quit, target or no target. I've had some *very* bad days and the more I chased those losses the more I crashed. There'll be more races tommorow. But each to their own. Whatever works for you. If you make a small profit a day, you're doing better than most. Good on ya.

One thing is for sure - a punter without discipline is doomed. The best thing I ever learned was how to enjoy my selection winning in a romp without me putting a buck on it and without caning myself with "if only..."

Good punting

Hermes

[hermes]

Speaking of target betting, does anyone have any solid info on last races? That's the make-or-break race the target betters splurge on and consequently the last race on a ticket is often a different affair than the earlier races. I understand that a higher perrcentage of favourites get up in last races, for example. Anyone with data on this? Anyone with a selection system tailored to the peculiarities of last race betting?

[kenchar]

Check this site for favs in the last.


http://www.adrianmassey.com/flfav/index.htm

I'm not talking about target betting.

I mean 1 point which is the size of your bet flat stakes.

e.g YOUR bet $200 first race even money winner profit $200 go home.

I usually run (on winning days) that if I get 2 points profit either on first bet or after some losing bets then winners to have one more bet.
If that wins have another bet until a lose, then knock off.
For example last week I had 1 lose then 6
wins, then a lose and went home,but sadly the losing days take the cream out of it.


Cheers


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kenchar on 2003-12-08 19:38 ]</font>

[Bhagwan]

Re Favs in last race ,
They win the same standard percentage, but their price tends to be higher than the average , its LOT is far less than the average of -20%

[Bhagwan]

Re Favs in last race ,
They win the same standard percentage, but their price tends to be higher than the average , its LOT is far less than the average of -20%