Please disregard the following as a selection. Just realised the race type doesn't fit the selection criteria. Sorry about that

GCST06-07 Screen Siren

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

Rest of todays selections. Will post the results and summary tomorrow. Hope the rest of your day goes ok.

BLMT04-05 Amadiora
BLMT05-06 Metal Power
BLMT06-11 Ticking Time
BLMT07-02 Local Legend
BLMT07-06 No Questions
BLMT07-07 Gobiton
BLMT07-11 Mercury Halo
TWBA02-07 Foxie Em
TWBA04-06 Much
TWBA04-09 Show Biz Miss
TWBA05-07 Kings Valour

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

A nice day with both price divisions ending with a healthy profit. The highlight was snagging the 34.00 winner Cinque Cento. You could have got as much as 55.00 a minute or so before the jump. I managed 48.00. Show Biz Miss surviving a protest to win at 12.00 was the cream on the cake.

There was a couple of close calls in the "11.00 or less" lay division the closest was Merlot Now's whisker second which had he have won would have taken a nice bite out of our days profits. That's life on the lay.

Prices from the B.A.T.


====================
Lay 11.00 or less
----------
BLMT05-06 Metal Power 10.50 ... LOST +1.00
BLMT06-11 Ticking Time 9.00 ... LOST +1.00
BLMT07-06 No Questions 6.80 ... LOST +1.00
CHEL04-02 Merlot Now 4.80 ... LOST +1.00
CHEL06-02 Toxic Free Mallee 8.40 ... LOST +1.00
DOOM03-19 My Hangover 10.50 ... LOST +1.00
GCST03-02 Brinkley Light 9.80 ... LOST +1.00
RHIL04-09 Scorched Earth 8.20 ... LOST +1.00
RHIL07-06 Newport 6.80 ... WON -5.80
SAND05-01 Bel Danoro 6.60 ... LOST +1.00
SAND06-06 Desert Master 8.80 ... LOST +1.00
SAND08-11 Roubechon 10.50 ... LOST +1.00

Results April 21st - May 19th*
----------
Number of Selections: 76.00
Observed Successes: 68.00
Observed Strike Rate: 89.47%
Expected Successes: 61.79
Expected Strike Rate: 81.30%
Advantage: 10.05%
Success due to luck: 2.03%
Profit: +24.50 units
Commission @ 5%: -3.40 units
Net Profit: +21.10 units
Net ROI: +27.76%
====================


====================
Back 11.50 or greater
----------
BLMT04-05 Amadiora 20.00 ... LOST -1.00
BLMT07-02 Local Legend 16.50 ... LOST -1.00
BLMT07-07 Gobiton 20.00 ... LOST -1.00
BLMT07-11 Mercury Halo 17.50 ... LOST -1.00
CHEL03-07 Lessie 20.00 ... LOST -1.00
DOOM07-04 Coalesce 19.50 ... LOST -1.00
DOOM07-08 Cinque Cento 34.00 ... WON +33.00
GCST07-03 Hallside Hero 19.50 ... LOST -1.00
GCST09-14 Experience 32.00 ... LOST -1.00
RHIL02-11 Montana Royale 13.00 ... LOST -1.00
RHIL03-06 Parfumier 14.50 ... LOST -1.00
RHIL08-06 Tolo 17.50 ... LOST -1.00
TWBA02-07 Foxie Em 42.00 ... LOST -1.00
TWBA04-06 Much 40.00 ... LOST -1.00
TWBA04-09 Show Biz Miss 12.00 ... WON +11.00
TWBA05-07 Kings Valour 21.00 ... LOST -1.00

Results April 21st - May 19th*
----------
Number of Selections: 93.00
Observed Successes: 9.00
Observed Strike Rate: 9.68%
Expected Successes: 4.70
Expected Strike Rate: 5.05%
Advantage: 91.64%
Success due to luck: 13.12%
Profit: +90.50 units
Commission @ 5%: -8.72 units
Net Profit: +81.78 units
Net ROI: +87.93%
====================

* I've normalised the B.A.T. prices to a 100% market and have started subtracting the Betfair commission at a fixed rate of 5%.

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

Has anybody given any thought to other filters that could be applied to these selections? It would be great to weed out some of the real no hoper longshots and improve the strike rate there.

Any ideas?

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

I was going to suggest that any horse with a massive adv. high on BAT could be eliminated, but that would also have eliminated Cinque Centro, so back to the drawing board.

AngryPixie, without knowing the criteria of your selection process someone might suggest the distance of race, barrier, days from last start, place/unplaced last start, etc but these might already be in your elimination rules.

With my current methods I have looked at many factors but can't seem to come up at this time with any worthwhile filters - except with my Unitab 100 pointers I will not include any selections resuming from a spell or only have had one race start. Maybe these two rules might be worth looking at if they're not already accounted for in your selection method?

Burrah/Michael

In hindsight maybe we should just let this run for a while to see what happens. As you say Burrah, you'd kick yourself if you filtered out a big priced winner. For the time being it's performing well so let's not tinker till we have to. Besides, I've long given up doing any form so the only filter angle I can think of is something that involves drifters and firmers, and I've only loosely been paying attention to these before the last 30 seconds or so. When I managed to lay a couple of selections early, below 11.00 I managed to green-up when they drifted over that mark. That's another way to play these I guess. Also I find Fairbot invaluable due to it's near realtime market refreshes and one-click bet submission. Great when your trying to snag a particular price right at the last second.

We've actually passed the 95% confidence level for the "11.00 or less" lay group now that I've normalised the B.A.T. prices. In fact it's almost at 98% but that will jump around a little. Let's keep going until we get both groups over 95% i.e. success due to luck: 5.00%. The number of sample races involved here should of course be considered the minimum.

Hope you guys are managing to grab some profits.

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

Michael I take your point. Without going into too much detail we're basically just playing the percentages here. There's no classic form fundamentals involved.

By way of example and in very simplistic terms it works like this.

First I take a very simple view of the race eg. there are ten runners in the race therefore every runner has one chance in ten of winning. I then gather some "facts" about the runners the most important part being that they are independant of each other i.e. one "fact" doesn't influence another. I crunch these "facts" together for every runner and get a probability at the other end. I look at the top four, subtract their probabilities from my simple one chance in ten view of the race and those with a positive result are the lay selections.

eg. Runner 4 is the lay selection

Runner 1 .10 - .31 = -.21
Runner 2 .10 - .15 = -.05
Runner 3 .10 - .11 = -.01
Runner 4 .10 - .07 = +.03
---
Runner 5 .10 - .05 = +.05
Runner 6 .10 - .02 = +.08
.
.
.


You'll occasionally get a group of runners that are too close to seperate into a top four. In this case I include them all. That's the reason that some races have three or four selections. Some races have no selections, and I've a personal bias against 2yo, 3yo, Maiden and Jumps races so I ignore those, but I've no reason to think the method wouldn't work with them. Big fields can also be a problem and I'm still experimenting a bit there. And yes, the runners with the negative result in the top four do win more than their fair share of races.

Getting the "facts" right is the hard bit and the bit I'll keep to myself but they should be very simple and proven to hold true over many years. There's a myriad of them though. It doesn't necessarily hold that the more you use the more accurate you are either. I've got it down to three that I use in Australia. The method works in the UK too, and was the basis of my "Beat the Donkey" thread. Interestingly what works on a Saturday in Australia doesn't work during the week where I think private information is of most benefit.

You'll get more of an idea here.

http://www.flatstats.co.uk/ppp/viewtopic.php?p=7441

That's enough from me the rest is mine

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

AngryPixie, have you looked seperately at the "facts" that form the basis of your selections for their strengths/weaknesses. Can any of them be modified, eliminated, etc?

Michael

The strength of the method is in the combination of the (let's call them) factors. That's what it all hinges on i.e. the group is smarter than the sum of its parts. When I added more factors accuracy improved only slightly at the expense of quite a bit of action as the price of the selections tended to lengthen. Remember I was primarily looking at this as a lay method. The three I use seem about right but about half of the selections are at uncomfortable lay prices. There's been quite a bit of trial and error.

The Flatstat's page gives some indication as to what type of factors you can look at. You could use average prize money, jockey strike rate, trainer strike rate, saddle numbers, grey horses whatever etc. There are many many combinations. You might even work some of the Neural factors in there.

You don't have to do the substitution part either. You could just back or lay to the percentages you get after you've crunched the numbers. That's been more my approach in the past and it works ok to.

In back testing this is actually looking quite ok on the lay side. At this stage I'll be dropping my present 7% POT lay method in this ones favour. The backing side can go a long time without turning up a winner. It's just unfortunate that the size of the Australian markets don't allow me to share some more. I'm happy to keep this going for a little while longer while we build confidence, as I'm not really putting proper size bets on these yet. Eventually I'll have to close the thread down

Am I sounding too confident? I can see I'm setting myself up for a massive correction this Saturday.

__________________
Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash