Alex Bird was legendary for being a Professional punter he led a champagne lifestyle for over 40 years at the bookmakers expense! One of the things the great man realized was that the huge difference in bookmaker's odds could lead to the backer having a "no-lose" situation. This was called an "Arbitrage". Alex Bird, with his network of contracts both in the UK and in the US famously bet huge sums on the outcome of events when he knew he had all the possible outcomes covered. He never relied on "contacts" from stables or other such madness to determine whether a gamble was going to take place! Bird knew the only way to guarantee his millionaire lifestyle was by getting his sums right every time he placed a bet. Every punter will tell you that the problem has always been trying to obtain information on forthcoming events & a full list of bookmakers odds. Then being able to move quick enough to take advantage of the discrepancies. The day betting tax was introduced into law Alex bird never struck another major gamble. The role of the "Arbitrage" in betting had become almost impossible to exploit!

That was until the explosion of the Internet and tax free betting. With the ever increasing number of bookmakers now operating from tax-free sites & with tax-free betting those exciting days have returned, not just for the likes of Alex Bird but for the average punter who's sick of giving their hard earned cash away to hungry bookies.


If this is the same guy then it would seam he had different types of betting activity.....i have always belived that the winner of this game will be the people that can look beyond the form and find the solution in maths.

Just to add to La Mer's reply, the expected peak rating was the peak rating last preparation plus any expected age improvement.

When doing weight ratings for the ratings comp, I use the most recent rating over a similar distance to the current race. I am now starting to think along similar lines to woof43 and might start to use average figures along with standard deviations rather than just rely on one figure only.

Thanks for making that addition Dr. Ron - should have put that point in myself as it is important, particularly when dealing with young horses at ages 2, 3 & 4.

As an alternative to what Scott stated about selecting one single run, what I used to do when I was an active weight rater was to take a weighted average of a horse's three runs (this preparation) giving a weighting of 50%/30/20% preferably going back in time. i.e the latest run getting the 50%, or weight them according to performance during a horse's last three runs, with the 50% going to the best run, 30% to the second best run and 20% going to the third best run. So using the going back in time approach, if a horse had ratings of 65, 58, 61, then the weighted average would be 62.1.
While it does take some extra time to do it this way, I personally found the results far better than singling out one single base or qualifying run.

What I do is find what it CAN rate given today's circumstances, ie it's peak rating, first. I don't go back miles and miles for it, just this and last prep only, and if more than about 6 or 7 runs this prep, just this prep, unless there's excuses. Then, I adjust, given the likelihood of doing it. If it is very likely to do the rating (ie is consistent, has been doing it lately), I'll bonus it a little, if it very seldom does that figure, i'll penalise it. If there is a significant jockey change, slight bonus or penalty.

At least half the problem is getting your ratings RIGHT. If they're wrong, doesn't matter what method you use to handicap, you ain't gunna win. Then, the other half is punting them right. best way is still scott's old way, and bird's by the sound of it - price 'em, bet the overs.

Cheers to that, amen, testify!

Duritz

Most people who single out one past start or just the last few starts in a career normally have to deal with contradictions and its always about a runner being either In Form or Out of Form.

A Horse is only as good as his last race
or
Do not judge a Horse on ONE bad race!

I hope you see the contradiction there, right?
This is one of those things where people try to keep two opposing viewpoints in their head at one time?

Is the Horse in bad form, or was he just unlucky last race?

Is the Horse in good form, or was he just lucky last race?

He's in good form, and his bad performance last time was explained by "hidden" factors. They are hidden so well we don't know what they are.

He's in bad form, and his good performance last time was just a fluke.

The In Form form guys can explain away anything you want at any time on any Horse. That's why I love ya! Nothing better than a factor that can't be defined, analyzed, pointed out, trusted, or consistently identified. You just have to know it when you see it! But I have to admit, that certainly DOESN'T limit the IN Form guys in any way! Anything they can dream up can be justified. No numbers needed.

Garry Robinson

He seems to be a smart cookie, but some of his ideas, I strongly disagree with and can prove statistically.

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Woof43 the thing is this - when handicapping, if betting to prices, you are essentially pitting your percentages against the rest of the public. You are obviously a very mathematical person, and need a straight, defined practice. You no doubt enjoy rules greatly in your punting. Like you said in another post, paraphrased - "If the tipsters have tipped 1,2,3 or those in any order, and they are the favourites, then you have struck gold!" Mysterious things like horses and their inconsistencies would no doubt annoy you greatly, which is why you punt on the psychology of punters rather than the abilities and likelihoods of horses. Doing the form the way I was describing is not some confusing, contradictory thing, it is a matter of using your BRAIN, and the experience gathered of doing the form over and over, to basically set a market. The market set is the important thing, and it is the expression of how you've done the form, which is compiled by somtimes estimating, but through experience trying to make those estimations as accurate as possible, and by avoiding (yes, avoiding) races where TOO MANY estimations are needed to make a good set of percentages.

You talk about refining a mechanical process so that it does the form and prices to an "acceptable" level of standard deviation, so that - for example - your $3.50 chances win 28% of races. That's one dimensional though, because how many of those 28% that won started at shorter, and how many losers at longer? You could have your $3.50 chances happily winning 28% of races and think to yourself "All I have to do is get $4.00 or more about these things, and I must win!" This is, of course, false.

The thing is this: As you well know, the market is the sum total opinion of the punters. It is pretty right. Punters psychology can be used to profit, knowing their patterns and how they bet (I do that for fun sometimes on quaddies - if there's a leg with a shorty, leave it out, the value is ENORMOUS, bigger than what it should be given their mathematical chances). HOWEVER, the market is most certainly NOT 100% right. They make mistakes. Certainly, they make patterned type of mistakes, ie the same kinds of mistakes over and over, (like overbetting last start winners), and knowing these things helps, but in the end doing the form in this manner, ie handicapping using your opinion, comes down to you being smarter than the sum total of the opinions out there. And that is not too hard. (Well, now I can say it's not too hard. It's taken a sh**load of work, research, training, trial, error and experience to get to the point where it's not too hard). THEN, your profit is limited only by HOW MUCH smarter, more astute than them you can be.

Believe it brother, it is true.

Duritz.

Hi Duritz,
I wasn't intentionally identifying the basis of your Handicapping, it was meant to throw up a different thought on selecting the base starting point.

I have not mentioned too much about my own methods of Handicapping, other then to say I use Times substantially but these are smoothed by an Age component.

Back to the original intention of my posting;

People assume Recent form will pave the way to riches an that they can see trends within those recent starts that points to a horse coming into form or out of form or holding steady.

You have to be careful with the "trends of 3-4 races" idea. It's very hard, statistically speaking, to determine whether a grouping is a "trend" (which implies a relationship between them, with performance changing in some direction) or just a random event. A person's bias is to see a "trend" where there is really only a random grouping. Again, the roulette example. If you look at a series of roulette spins, you would see "little trends" where the ball came down red three or four times in a row, or black three or four times in a row. These aren't trends. They are just a random grouping of similar outcomes.
Think about it like this. Let's say you've defined a Horse's performance envelope and divided it into thirds, with a good third, a middle third, and a poor third. We'll assume he has an equal chance on any given performance of falling into any of the three thirds. What kind of "trends" would you expect if, indeed, the Horse's performance is random? Let's say you look at a three-race series.

With totally RANDOM performance you would expect to see:

3 out of 27 where three performance are all in the same third.
12 out of 27 where two are in one third, and 1 is in an adjacent third.

That's 15 out of 27 possible combinations that would LOOK like a Horse was in some reasonably consistent form, whether good or bad. And that's with totally random performance! That's over 55% of all three-race combinations would suggest "form" to the statistically naive viewer. That's why you have to be so careful with what you call a "trend" or "form". Because that's not necessarily the correct description.

Here is a little portion of my Handicapping, Horses usually show a beginning pattern, and an ending pattern in their careers. With a big, steady-state chunk in the middle. I don't call these end-lines "form." They are a different pattern. "Form" implies that a group of races should have similar performance. The beginning/end times aren't similar lines, they ARE "trends." The lines change in a consistent direction. But a true "trend" isn't "form" either.
(Age Effect)
The early-career chunk screws up your "career" averages for quite a ways after the Horse levels out. If you don't remove those Starts from use, they will definitely bias you into thinking that form exists when it doesn't. Because near-term averages will be more predictive than full-career averages. The trick to accurate predictions is NOT to assume form is in play. Instead it is to study enough Horses to know WHEN the early-career pattern is likely to be over, and to take that into account when determining any sort of average/standard deviation for some performance statistic. Toss out those early-career lines, and "form" disappears and you also improve the accuracy of your predictions.

The end pattern is harder to deal with because the beginning of the end is much more difficult to identify. If an older Horse has a bad performance, is it just a randomly bad race, or is it the beginning of his tail-off? This is hard to judge because the age at which Horse's tail off varies hugely. There are all sorts of variables like number of races a Horse has run, frequency of running, genetic robustness, talent level, courses raced on, injury, and so on. Of course, a statistically astute player can look for signals. For example, let's say a Horse has three performances in a row where he is in the bottom third of his performance envelope. That would normally happen randomly about 1 time in 27. If it happens to a Horse that ALSO happens to be past a certain age, that might be taken as a good sign that the steady-state part of the career is over, and a new performance envelope is now in play for that Horse.

I really don't take Handicapping lightly, as I said before, you measure Handicapping by accuracy and wagering by ROI.

Yeah those things - as you alluded - come with doing enough horses to gain a sense of it.

I agree entirely with what you say about early career stuff versus now etc. A horse who is now, say, a 4yo and had good 2yo form, I completely ignore the 2yo form. It's 3yo form I ONLY use if it is EARLY in it's FIRST prep back being a 4yo, ie if there is no other data. A lot of things happen to horses after they've finished their first or second prep, things which can mean they in no way resemble the horse they were as a juvenile when an adult. Racing is very tiring stuff, especially when you're overaced by greedy owners and over compensated by pain killers from your trainer. They can stuff you up, then the horse gets to the paddock, the injuries set in, they come back sore and as a result also do not WANT to race. Never assume early form translates.

Will post more another time, things to do.

Cheers.
Duritz

quite right.

ref horses that win at 2 year old not having the same rating as a it would at 4 years old.

in my methods a horse that qualifies in listed or group company at 2 year old but has not qualified again by the time it is 4 years old in comparison of listed horses
wins 5 percent of races won by listed horses as against 33% by horses qualifying in the previous 8 weeks.

the deterioration faction is considerable.

please note these statistics is based on listed/group placed horses only.

the rating does not carry through the longer the period since its peak rating.

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