Hi everybody, have been reading your posts for a bit and there seems to be some knowledge amongst you. I am a newbie and have a question.

My main interest is greyhound racing because of the consistency (in number of participants...). I have come up with an Excel spreadsheet with each dogs projected finishing time and metres behind the leader. All looks good at the moment with results and whatever, but I am interested in pricing these dogs chances so I can bet on each dog.
Any ideas on how to frame a market after you have come up with your finishing order?

Hello newbie.
I'm having a shocking run regarding selections,but have the solution for your framing market.
You have your dogs in order of margins or times.
I work my markets out on predicted margin from the expected winner.
Don Scott said to use lengths or kilos,but with dogs you can use lengths or times.
Always start by giving your predicted winner 100 points.
At a length behind the winner,the selection gets 66 points.
In greyhounds there are 16 lengths to a second.So a length is 1/16th of a second or .067 seconds.
With mucking around with numbers,every .01 of a second you think the dog will finish behind your top selection,decreases the points alotted by 6%
So if you think the dog will finish .13 seconds behind your top rated selection,It gets 45 points.
The formula is 100 multiplied by 0.94 to the power of margin in hundredths of a second.
So in this example,0.94^13 is equal to 0.45.
And 0.45 times 100 equals 45.
Do this for all dogs,then add up the eight totals.
Divide the dogs rating into the total and you now have the minimum the dog needs to pay on the tote to be a betting opportunity.
It's easy once you know.
If you are still interested but haven't quite understood,please ask.

Hi

In greyhound racing its very important not only to find avg. time but also the Standard Deviation for each dog, then you can use the Normdist within Excel to formulate your probabilities.
All you would need to do is know the avg win time for that grade an track an use that as the Mean figure in the formula.

I prefer to use Monte Carlo simulations as i invest in exotics as well as win/place.

Thanks moeee. That is exactly what I was looking for... Still trying to put it into excel at the moment to come up with correct results (race 1 started today before 12 as did beer 1... lol ).

woof43... Your comments have been noted also but at this stage all I am working on is the past 3 races as given in the formguide of tabracing.com.au....
I have to type in the form at the moment as I don't know of any software or downloads to get the form of every dog in a race. This is time consuming so all I am prepared to do.

Please keep the comments coming though, as they say: knowledge is power...

You can use the web query function in Excel an download the entire form of every dog in Victoria at the GRV site

Seriously?? How do I go about that?
I know you can download a greyhounds history into excel but can you do it for a race at a time?
Please explain...

You would create 8 seperate .iqy files one for each dog,this would be done in a text editor program like Word etc.
Then open a sheet in Excel an then using the Macro record function you would go about running the 8 individual .iqy files save the macro an save sheet.
Then all you would do is edit the 8 .iqy files with new dogs names then go to your Excel sheet an run the download Macro

Thanks woof43, will check it out tomorrow..

Moeee, got it all sorted now. I have a couple showing about $1500 in Whiskey Assassins race tonight.. Glad I'm not a bookie....

Anyone thats interested, Whiskey Assassin (Shepparton R8 No.5), I have winning by 10 lengths... trifecta 5/8/1,4

Ooops.... 5,4,8 trifecta paid $79.50....
Pity..

Bit stiff there BJ.
Might pay you to box your placegetters with the Special to win next time.

Curious,please do not release your secrets,how you came up with 10 lengths as your estimated winning margin.
On heat times it was less than that,but more significant was that he was never going to get an unobstructed run from Box 5 as he did in his previous starts from the pink.
Perhaps deserved a penalty of a couple of tenths.
Well done anyway.Nice to have more greyhound people about to share wisdom.

In restrospect I should have boxed them. I had 5 to win by 9.9, then there was only 1.5 metres between 841. It was just that 1 was about $2.80 at that time so I wanted a bit of value..
As far as my method goes its pretty basic, and probably already been thrown out on this forum.
I only look at races with 8 dogs (actually 3 place dividends, late scratchings are alright.).
Each dog must have had at least 3 starts.
I work out the speed each dog ran in their last 3 starts, average it and convert to the distance of the current race. I try and convert as close to the decline in speed shown in the track records of all Aus tracks.

The dog with the highest speed is my top rater. For this dog to become a betting situation however it must pass these tests. It must have had the fastest m/s of all 24 races tested. The average race distance over the last 3 must also be within 10% of the current race distance.
At this stage I am still testing, and gathering stats to see how viable this is, and only betting $2 each race, but now thanks to you Moeee, I am also converting the top rater to odds and betting to return $100 (theory).

My basic idea is that the dog must have early speed to have the highest chance of winning. Box draw to me is irrelevant, I think too many people already account for this and is shown in the betting so the gain in odds accounts for anything lost in the race.
So far I have had:
21 betting opportunities
10 wins
$31.10 total returns
Also I had 3 top raters a week ago and put in another race to make up the quaddie which paid $300 and the daily double $40.

Once I work out the downloading of form from the net into excel properly, I will have more data to work with and will add more to it, but at this stage all looks good...

hi woof43, dont suppose you could advise where one might be able to obtain the average grade win times you mention.

thanks if you can

Wow... Just trying to suss out the form for todays dogs and my spreadsheet has become corrupt....
I managed to use a demo to recover my formulas so I can still do it hopefully, but the rest of the spreadsheet has been covered by the word 'demo'. If anybody knows of a free excel recovery program that I can use to get all my stats back.

which version of excel are u using?

I am using Excel 97. I don't know what happened, it was fine last night, and it is the only file I can't open in excel.

Hi
If you go to the grv site the form that has the most detail has in the top left hand corner the avg win time for track an distance.
An alternate method is to find the avg time of Todays race an avg stdev for the field an multiply the std by zscore 1.60 an deduct this figure from the avg win race win time.

If you look at the zscore table you will notice that in that range of -1.6 to 1.6 95% of all performances will fall within this range, when runners win they normally record a time in the top 5% of their performance range, so thats why we multiply the avg stdev by 1.6.

thanks woof, will check it out

bj, if you were using excel 2002 i could probably help as it has a recovery function, but having been in the situation you now find yourself all i can suggest is that you get into the routine of daily backups of all your work.

Yeah I have it all sorted as far as future events go.
Here are my thoughts on Bendigo tonight, for those that care...

R7 No.8
R9 No.5

Quaddie: 2,5/2,3,6/8/3,5

These are my betting for tonight.

Also R8 No.3 is a top rater for me and showing excellent odds at this stage. Maybe a good eachway bet.

Whiskey Assassin
What a great run, got checked and came out slow, running at the back of the field came around the turn saw the line and took the lead.
Oh Yeah

Yes awesome run by Whiskey Assassin. Another awesome run today was from Proven Warrior (meadows R2 No.:cool:. Only paid $1.90 but is certainly a classy dog and one to keep an eye on.

While I am here can I ask if it is possible to download live odds to excel. I have just worked out about the form thanks from a bit of advice from woof43, but am presuming that this would not be possible for the odds.
I would prefer, Vic tote, but would appreciate all totes if this is possible. Any advice welcomed, good or bad.