Im with you on the top 6 in handicaps Party but cant come into the others.


Things like days since last start are meaningless to me,yeah they win a large % but thats only because a large percentage of starters are in that catagory,doesnt tell me anything other than they are overbet.

Whatsmore some of these stats are at the mercy of the changing face of the sprot,for example before Vintage Crop won the cup it was unheard of to set a horse for a distance race first up,thesedays trainers are aware that each horse is unique and they set them accordingly,the percentage for something like raced within the last 21 days is slowly eroding,something like the top 6 pre post on the other hand is a constant.

Hey Dale, strangely I'm with you; one side of the equation when we are taking about straight out handicapping.

What we are talking about here is a systematic approach, and of course we have to accept that no matter what we will have anomalies, what we are trying to achieve ( and it definitely is not easy) is to still make a profit despite that.

So again talking PURE statistics, 80% of winners ran within 3.5 lengths of the winner last start, TRUE, but of course that means that 20% of winners did NOT run within 3.5 lengths of the winner last start etc etc.

Nah we are on different pages,the above stat tells me nothing,no mention of how nay horses actualy finished within 3.5 lengths.

It could be that in 10 races there were 8 winners but maybe the reality is there were 120 horses in those 10 races and 60 of them were within 3.5 lengths of the winner last start.

Thats 8 out of 60 winners at odds on the short side considering their close up finish,a conservative $7 average win price still leaves you $4 out of pocket.

All speculation but as a stat useless unless you know how many selections you are dealing with.

Ok Dale I guess you're right we are on different pages........or are we?

take your stat of 84% of winners come from the first 6 in the pre-post market,

by the same token then, doesn't that also say nothing? as we are talking about a number of races with "6" runners all the way up to races with 20 runners??

But still never mind it was only a feedback for thought.

What would the stats look like targeting top six anything
e.g. Pre-post,win, place or API ranking

That won or ran within 3.5 lengths of winner , last start.

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Cheers.

The top 80% statistics provided here are what most punters base their selections on and so there is no value in considering these horses. I feel you would be better considering the other 20%.

43691 races all Tracks All venues all weather all fields all distances
1st Fav 13626 31.18%
2nd 8446 19.33
3rd 6140 14.05
4th 4582 10.48
5th 3341 7.64
6th 2541 5.81
7th 1839 4.2
8th 1230 2.81
9th 787 1.8
10th 512 1.17
11th 312
12th 179
13th 85
14th 43
15th 17
16th 10
17th 1

This tells you where the 20% lies. Actually this sample puts 88.49% in the top 6

Top fav odds $1.10 to $3.40. Top 5 favs win from 100% down to 80.25%.
This steadily falls to 67.12% at $5.00 top fav odds.

Hi Beton
Those a very interesting stats .

Thanks for sharing your findings.

__________________
Cheers.

Thanks Beton for your stats that show that 80% of winners come from the first 5 lines of betting but I still maintain that there is insufficient value in these horses. For example, on your figures you would have to average $3.21 on the favourite to break even, similarly the break even averages for the others are $5.17, $7.11, $9.54 and $13.08 respectively. Note these are the average price you would have to get. I am fairly sure that the TAB prices at least would be about 15-17% less than these for horses on the first 5 lines due to their take and rounding down.

It has been shown that punters overall get the chances of a horse winning right and horses win in proportion to their starting price (adjusted for the take) and of course this applies the other 20% that I look at as well.

My thesis is that it is easier to get over the odds on the longer priced horses than on the favourites. To start with the effect of rounding down is less on the longer priced horses. For example, a friend and I have a system that looks at longer priced horses. Today I backed Mini Maizing on Unitab and got $40.60 but my friend at the track jagged this winner with $81 from the bookies. I did not get value like he did but I was still happy with my win all the same.

It could be argued that applying filters to horses in the top 5 lines will improve the POT but I feel most filters either lower the average price and/or
ruin the strike rate and thus make little change to POT.

These are just some of my thoughts based on punting over the years. It is good to read lots of ideas like those on this forum because you never know when you might pick up an idea that really helps improve your own system