Lets look at the stats for Saturday meetings (all venues) for this year. You will notice:

1. Barrier 1 has produced 335 winners but barrier 14 only 83. Case closed I hear you shout! BUT inside barriers are used a lot more than outside ones. For example every race has a horse starting from 1, 2 or 3 but only about a third of races run have a starter from 14. In the sample we had 3113 starters from B1 but only 970 from B14.

2. When you adjust for the actual number of starters from each barrier there is still a bias towards the inside winning more than the outside but it is not as big as most punters believe. In this sample B1 had a strike rate of 10.7% (the highest in the sample) whilst B14 had 8%.

3. If you look at the POT then a surprising (for many people) thing shows up. Outside barriers show a much smaller loss than the inside. In this sample B1 had a loss of 20% whilst B14 actually showed a profit! If we say B1 to B10 is inner and B11 to B24 is outside (just for arguments sake) then we get:

Inner Barriers (1-10) = 22% LOSS ON TURNOVER
Outer Barriers (11-24) = 10% LOSS ON TURNOVER

In my opinion this shows that punters place way too much emphasis on the disadvantage of outside barriers. In reality the barrier makes ************ all difference (talking in general here - obviously there are some courses/distances where an outer barrier can be a much bigger disadvantage) and the smart punter can take advantage of the fact that the herd mentality is to avoid the outer barriers so those winners will be much better value.


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"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson

[ This Message was edited by: becareful on 2003-12-08 08:23 ]