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Old 2nd May 2011, 09:32 AM
Barny Barny is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2010
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Default A Formless System

Nearly all systems based around form & ratings (if they’re at all different) track conditions, weight, success at track and distance will return a negative POT, usually around the value of the TAB take. Stats are useful, but one needs to find the correct combinations, but then we end up with what everyone else ends up with.



An example of a decent filter, and one which has been discussed to death over decades, and decades is LSW. Approx 15% of all LSW win their next start. There are arguments to suggest that they don’t represent value because they’re overbet ….. no-one can provide proof as to when a horse is overbet. It’s simply a baseless opinion, and might be one of these myths that could actually work in our favour. A LSW might have had bad luck in running, might not have been fit, the jockey might have timed the run perfectly with a minimum of effort required from the horse to win, may not have liked the track or the conditions ….. all the same reasons given why horses get beaten can also be applied to LSW.



The best % place getter in a race is supposedly the only single raw statistic ever found that returns a POT. A POT of 8% apparently ….. see Malcolm Knowles book on Consistency. I don’t doubt the authenticity of the research but looking at the stats used to arrive at this outcome, there’s room for healthy scepticism.



If we combine these two filters we MUST get a profit of greater than 8% !



I’ll betcha ya it returns a negative POT.



Why not a formless system, something “relatively immeasurable”. Many of the decent opinions written here and written in books DO highlight (sometimes obscurely) the importance of the “improver”. Even Malcolm Knowles in his Consistency book “shouts” the improving horse. I wonder how many have “read” this !?



Why not ??

· a certain number of runs from a spell (with or without a win?),

· an increase in distance each time,

· limit the number of starts the horse has had so you don’t have a horse that’s past it’s best,

· maybe 3 y/o (from FEB onwards) to 5 y/o,

· if more than one sel’n take the lightest raced.



Contradicting the above, I do punt one system.
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