In Victoria there is a bet where you need to find the jockey at each meeting to score the highest points on his efforts,with a 3,2,1 reward for finishing in the placings for the whole card.
Anyone know how to come up with a market in this form of punting?

Don't try that one with a calculator or a pencil and paper - you need to program a formula into a computer and give it a price/ rating for every runner in every race. You'd need to be a decent mathemetician to work out the formula and a decent price assessor to work out the prices.

Yeah, I don't know how you would come up with a market Mo.

It's pretty tricky. If I think one of the top jockeys has a great book of rides, I'll sometimes have a go, but so many things can go wrong. I backed a double of Beadman and Oliver a few weeks ago and Oliver was never in doubt but Beadman had to win the last race on an $8 shot to get up. Nerve racking!!!

I remember one day backing a jockey who I thought was a certainty. He started with a couple of wins and I thought he was home, but then he injured his foot before the 3rd race, was stood down for the rest of the day and got beaten.

With the speed of computers,Filante,I don't know if the permutations are a huge obstacle.
The formula would also apply to the Brownlow Medal.
I will work on it.
Trouble with the Brownlow is injuries and suspensions.
Jockeys shouldn't be too tricky.

Trying to come up with a formula regarding the Jockey Challenge I narrowed down the possibilities by coming up with a basic set of hypothetical,but unreal,set of races.

Let there be 3 races,each of which have 4 starters,ridden by only 4 available jockeys.
Say,Beadman(B),Cassidy(C),Nikolic(N) and Oliver(O).
And just for the sake of experimentation,let Beadman always get the $2 favourite,Cassidy gets the $4 chance,Nikolic gets the $5 chance and Oliver has the $20 chance.
So we know the chances of our jockeys are winning the race,but what are their chances of running 2nd and 3rd and unplaced.
Well in my more patient years,I came up with a formula which would calculate the probabilities of every possible trifecta combination,after inputting all the starters prices.
From that I could then work out the place chances and even the price of finishing in a particular position.
Now of course I don't recall how I done this,but the program is still there and I have used it to come up with the appropriate prices for the hypothetical races today.

The percentage possibilities for race 1(which will also apply to all our hyperthetical races.) as regards finishing position are:

----1st2nd3rd4th
B - 50 32 15 03
C - 25 33 32 10
N - 20 28 38 15
O - 05 08 15 72

Just side tracked for a moment,notice how the 20-1 shot has the same chance of running 3rd (15%) as has the Even money favourite.Yet we can understand 20-1 shots running third but jump up and down when an evens favourite can only sneak 3rd.

GEE!.I was doing allright for a while but now it looks as though I've come to a huge abyss.And to cross the abyss it seems to be you need to know every possible permution for the placings in said hypothetical race!

Goodbye cruel woorrrrrlllllldddddddd!

I'll be back!

Roger Dedman gives a trifecta formula in his book...I think it's called "Practical Punting - A Mathematical Approach" (...or something like that).

He was in fact my mathematics teacher back in my RMIT days and I always thought it was him I'd often see on the racecourse later on.
Yeah I got the book and still working on the Challenge challenge.

I said I'd be back

Look,this is ridiculous.
We have our percentages and we know our points.
Let's just simplify it like this to see if it leads us anywhere.

B - 50% of 3 + 32% of 2 and 15% of 1 = 2.29
C - .25 x 3 + .33 x 2 + .32 x 1 = 1.73
D - 0.6 + .56 + .38 = 1.54
O - .15 + .16 + .15 = 0.46

Now I don't know what we got but who cares.
Common table salt is made up of 2 very deadly elements,yet sure makes my fish'n'chips taste good!

So Beadman has 2.29
and Cassidy has 1.73
and Nikolic has 1.54
and Oliver has 0.46

I often use a formula like X=Y^Z
where y is a special number and z is our rating.
Well Y=0.884 and again I feel like jumping over the cliff.BByyyyeeeeee!

I've tried this form of betting a few times. Successfully backed Gauci on one occasion. Trouble is, the TAB don't post the results anywhere, and when I asked them about this they said 'you have to work it out for yourself'. Also, they don't pay until the next day.

So lets make 2 hypothetical races with Beadman and Cassidy and Evans the only riders.
Beadman rides the Evens favourite in both races with Cassidy riding the 6/4 shots and Evans has the 9-1 chances.

So this is what it can all boil down to.

BCE 40
BEC 10
CBE 33.3
CEB 6.7
EBC 5.6
ECB 4.4
for each of the 2 races giving us 36 permutations.

After going through the 36 combinations,in this case the Jockey Challenge price is the same as the price of the starters.

Does that seem right?

Tell you what I did learn but!
If you can't work out whether you will be getting value on your bet,DON'T BET!

Can't wait till footy starts!.