Sectionals an Idiots Guide Part 1

If you have been hibernating for the last five years or perhaps you are easily distracted by the gradual overturning of Brexit or the idea that animal cruelty is the reason for Horse Racing’s decline with the betting public, then you may have overlooked the increasing prevalence of electronic sectional times. At the Races have been publishing sectionals for quite a while now on their web site and they form an integral part of their daily form reporting. It is refreshing to see a racing publication actually attempt to innovate in its provision in a manner that benefits punters, unlike other publications that appear to do exactly the opposite.

Perhaps the main informational gain from sectional times is that they can tell us how a race has been run. We have long had final times for races, for example a 5f race at Epsom may clock 60 seconds but what we have not been aware of is how fast or slow was the first furlong, the second furlong and so on. This is what we mean when we talk about sectionals.

When I was in my twenties and out running 10k road races I recall one particular summer when I was in rude health and fitness. In training I could run 8 miles at 6 minute mile pace. One particular summer Sunday I arrived at a 10k race just outside York and decided to see what it would be like to attempt to run with the elite runners from the start. I wanted to experience that opening pace and see how long I could go with it. If you had asked me before the race what I thought would happen I would have guessed staying with them for maybe half a mile at best. What actually happened shocked me, not only could I not lie up with the leaders at all, well maybe 50 yards, but the effort of trying decimated my whole race. I never attempted it again.

So how can we attempt to measure whether a horse has run an even sort of race which like me maximizes its chance of running its best overall time or perhaps the way it has run has disadvantaged it and of course that disadvantage does not have to come from a kamikaze opening section. It could be suicidal burst somewhere in the race akin to Said Ouita’s outrageous run for home from 500 metres out in the 1983 world athletic championships, handing the gold to Steve Cram.

One approach would be to calculate average times for various sections of races by race distance. In other words what is the average time (sometimes called par time) for the first 2f of say all 5f races. The problem with this is our courses are so different in conformation that the waters would be muddied by a course having a downhill opening section like Epsom compared to a flat or uphill section on another track. We need therefor to calculate average times for sections for each track. There are still problems however, what about the going. A race may appear to have a slow sectional but in fact we are comparing the race run on soft going with the par sectional that on average has been calculated from good going.

In attempt to get around this Timeform have come up with what we could call an in race method of evaluating pace so that we can evaluate whether a horse within a race or the race overall has been run fast, even or slow in terms of its early pace. Let us take a simple example with nice round numbers.

Slowcoach runs in a selling plater over 5f at Epsom, he is particularly slow and finishes the race in 100 seconds covering the final 2f in 30 seconds. We can calculate the relationship of his final 2f to his overall time with a little Math.

His overall time we will call OT
His final section time we will call fst
The distance of the final sectional we will call sd
The overall race distance we will call D.

The relationship between the sectional time and his overall time can be expressed as

(OT/fst) X (sd/D) X 100

or in Slowcoach’s case

(100/30) X (2/5) X 100 = 133.33 (race finish percentage for Slowcoach)

Now this is an extreme example after all Slowcoach is pretty darn slow. It’s also a number that may say something about how he ran his race (more on that later although a number like 133.3 might suggest he stopped for a nibble of grass after 2f) but what about how the race was run overall. I mean I ran that 10k race at an inefficient rate for me but maybe the winner ran an even race for him. We can carry out the same calculation for the winner of Slowcoaches race and hence get a number for his/her performance in terms of final sectional vs overall time. This may help us to get a picture of how the race was generally run or at least in terms of the winner.

Let us imagine the winner comes out with a race finish percentage figure of 101.5, the problem is we still do not know what that means. Let’s face it the final uphill 2f at Beverly is likely to produce bigger fst numbers in that equation than the final downhill 2f at Epsom. If you play around with that fst number above you will see that if you increase it the final number gets smaller. So a smaller final number means the horse must have gone faster early in the race hence the increase in the final section or fst time (or perhaps the last 2f is akin to Mount Everest). That is the first thing to take out, bigger race percentage numbers eg 133.33 mean slower early pace. We still do not know if 101.5 however represents fast even or slow early pace unless we have some benchmark to compare to. What we need is an average or median for races run at that track over 5f, in order to get around the Mount Everest problem. If the median comes out at 100 then we know that the 101.5 winner has run slightly slower early on than is perhaps ideal. If his final number is below 100 then he has run faster than ideal early on.

Of course different tracks and distances will have different medians for these race finish percentage numbers, they will not all be 100 but they all give a benchmark with which to compare a horses run with on that particular track.

Try calculating the race finish percentage figure for the following horse using the last 2f as the final sectional fst for this Lingfield race over 8 furlongs.

DIVINE MESSENGER 2f-1f 11.0s 1f-Finish 11.6s Finish/final time of race 97.2s

Now check out your result at by clicking on the sectional tools tab at

https://www.attheraces.com/racecard/Lingfield/08-March-2019/1410

One final point, ATR has a race final percentage figures displayed next to the hotbar. For Divine Messengers race its 107.0. This is not the same as Divine Messengers race percentage figure which is 108.0. This is because the race percentage figure of 107.0 is calculated as follows

Take the race leader time at 2f out, Majestic Moon 74.5
Subtract it from the race winners final time of 97.2 giving 22.7
Use this as the final sectional time in the equation

This is a tricky subject so please feel free to correct any misunderstandings in the above. Please indicate how helpful this was below

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Regressing Final Call Sectionals

Today’s Southwell card has been decimated by the Arena trainers and owners ban over decreased prize money. The result is very small fields and further evidence of the farcical state of UK racing. Meanwhile the BHA are working on more important matters like whether 9yo’s can be made to win more races and benefit the bookmakers who will welcome the increased randomness. Ironic when one considers that they are the root cause of this prize money problem in the UK.

Small fields however do allow a speedy experiment in sectional regression to analyse the chances of todays runners in the 5.10 6f race. Taking the final 2f times and the 6f to 2f times of all class 6 races over 6f on standard going at Southwell allows one to play around with regression on the latter to predict the former. In other words if a horse runs the first 4f in x seconds what would you expect it to run the final 2f if given all previous placed performances run under these conditions. Using this formula we can look at the four runners last runs over Southwell 6f which all happen to be class 6 on standard going. The 3yo runner does not have a run and so will be hard to assess here and Pearl Noirs run go’s back some two years having been campaigned almost exclusively over 5f. Never the less lets take a look at what the numbers say.

Jazz Legend ran last time out 49.9 and 26.9 but his predicted final call was 26.2

Televoi ran 51.5 and 25.7 off a predicted 25.6

Jazz ran in the same race as above with 50.6 and 26.4 off a predicted 25.9

So far Televoi looks the better shot with a much closer to predicted final call

Pearl Noir ran 2 years ago 50.4 and 26.2 off a predicted 26.0

Pearl Noir would perhaps be the bigger danger to Televoi with the 3yo being hard to assess having never run at Southwell

Current odds

Televoi 2.32
Jazz Legend 2.42
Thedevilinneville 8.6
Pearl Noir 19.0

Level Stakes and Percentage Bank Betting

So you have developed a winning system, a profitable model or maybe you can just read form and grind out impressive returns. The work is done, you can start betting and watch the profit roll in, except things don’t quite work out as you would like. Should you have bet levels stakes instead of perhaps being greedy and operating a percentage of bank stake in the hope that the latter would accelerate growth and put when to increase stakes on auto pilot.
Maybe you should just give it a bit longer after all the results show levels stakes are doing OK and maybe your percentage bank betting is just taking a bit longer to crank up.

Joseph Buchdahl does an excellent job of examining the pro’s and con’s of levels takes v proportional bank staking in the following article.

https://www.pinnacle.com/en/betting-articles/Betting-Strategy/level-vs-percentage-staking/PTG2LLKF9SH3TMUY

Well not much to add one might think, but it occurred to me that there are other considerations to well, take into consideration. How does the real world of getting on impact various forms of staking. My main thoughts on this revolve around knowing your betting pattern, especially in terms of odds. It is easy to think that proportional betting is the way to go on paper but in reality that theoretical £500 stake at 80/1 is not going to happen even betting just before the off on Betfair. Even levels stakes will run into getting on problems when you decide perhaps at the end of a year to increase stakes.

This is where another form of staking should be considered namely variable stakes. Variable stakes involve putting a proportional amount on to win a fixed return. If you are backing a 10/1 shot and your fixed return is £1000, you would invest £100. If it happened to be even money you would invest £1000. The advantage of this staking is that you are putting more on the odds which will allow you to put more on. Another argument is that if your method is not making reasonable returns to variable stakes it is much more likely to be a mirage in terms of long term profitability.

Variable staking does not quite give you the same roller coaster ride as levels stakes although it clearly can inflict pain when an even money shot loses and a 20/1 shot go’s in but the long term profit of variable staking is perhaps more realistic due to the allowed stakes imposed by the odds you are taking.
The bottom line is know your betting method/past results, take a look at variable staking and see how it stacks up and remember always bet with the exchanges because that is where you will end up anyway.

Bookmaker Trainer Connections

Is it ethical for race horse trainers and indeed jockeys to have financial connections with bookmakers. Most punters would think it is unethical and I would tend to agree. Even if you cannot stop under the radar connections, the sport still has to be seen to be clean and financial ties between trainers and bookmakers is just another example of the degree to which bookmakers run racing.

There has been plenty of talk on this subject recently on Twitter and forums so I decided to take a look at 10.00am prices and track the occurance of top priced bookmaker by trainer. The bookmaker had to be outright top priced and not joint and the data spans from September 2018 through to today, the 20th February 2019.

The most frequent top priced bookmaker is Matchbook and their most frequent trainer connection when top priced was Richard Fahey who they got right most of the time. They had one of his horses top priced 84 times and the total profit/loss to Betfair SP on these horse amounted to -34.04 from an average odds of 13.07/1 (14.07 to decimal odds).

Matchbook do not however have a flawless crystal ball. in next was D Skelton who they tended to get wrong with 80 top priced horses returning +77.44 before com’ off average odds of 10.16/1.

So what about the most high profile trainer bookmaker connection, Nicky Henderson and Unibet. Unibet have been outright top priced 8 times with Nicky Henderson for a BFSP loss of -0.21, hardly suspicious but with all these numbers probably worth a revisit in 12 months time.

For the time being be cautious when R A Fahey is outright top priced with any bookmaker at 10am until bigger samples say otherwise.

Comparing Betfair and Betdaq SP

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comparing betfair and Betdaq SP

At the age of 14 the quote ‘I know what I like and I like what I know’ did not really resonate with me quite as the Music teacher hoped even though I understood what he was getting at as he tried to give us a reason why we should open our minds to the possibility of enjoying Beethoven. I have since thought that he missed a trick and should have made his appeal through the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange which was sweeping through my 4th form at
that particular time. I think then he would have had our attention, particularly if he had turned up in white’s, a bowler, boots and single false eyelash.

We are all still guilty at various times of liking what we know and for some that means not being able to embrace the better winning prospects that exist on Betfair but for Betfarians it may be simply not checking out the other exchanges
that are perhaps making in roads into Betfair’s dominance.

One particular area I have been meaning to look at is the variance between Betfair SP and Betdaq’s XSP. This could be quite useful if you are a users of Betfair SP and are concerned about canibalising your price. If Betdaq offer comparable prices then splitting between the two may be an option in order to spread the erosion.

I decided to take a look at relative returns for the first week of January 2019 for UK racing. My data produced 1583 individual horse returns.

First looking at the average price across all horses showed the following

Average all prices Betfair SP 65.0
Average all prices Betdaq SP 66.91

Clear win for Betdaq over Betfair here, but its winners that really count.

Average price where finpos = 1 Betfair 7.76
Average prices where finpos = 1 Betdaq 7.94

Betdaq again comes out ahead and furthermore the average winning prices were better for Betdaq on individual days

In order to enlarge the place sample I looked at all horse that finished in the first 3

Average price where finpos less than 4 Betfair 12.18
Average price where finpos less than 4 Betdaq 12.87

Finally the number of occurances when each return beat the other

Count Betfair greater than Betdaq 732
Count Betdaq greater than Betfair 824

Across all bands Betdaq was superior to Betfair SP during the first week of January. This I have to admit surprised me a little, especially the cross blanket domination. Betting at exchange SP is often used as a fall back against missing a price and perhaps both exchanges should be considered.

Beethoven anyone ?, prefer Rachmaninov myself.

Switching To The Exchanges

Around 2013 I finally got fed up with betting with bookmakers, in fact it started way before then it was just that around this time I decided to seriously look at Exchange betting only. I suffered from all the anxiety you are probably feeling if you are used to making a few quid betting with bookmakers. The lack of liquidity in the morning on the exchanges will mean I wont be able to do what I am used to doing which is decide what I am betting on, check who has best odds and then proceed to bet with that bookmaker/s, occasionally even on the exchange to smaller amounts. It seemed that deciding what to bet on and then choosing the book with the highest price was a criminal offence in the eye of bookmakers and to legitimize their actions they would lump all such clients under the banner of arbers or filthy arbers as they like to call them. An activity which bookmakers of course never take part in.

So grumbles aside what is the best way to make this transition. These ideas are based solely on my experience and hopefully others will add comments. The first thing you could do is track what lies ahead with your current approach. Any smart punter who is winning with bookmakers should be preparing for the inevitable by additionally placing small breadcrumb bets at Betfair SP. Maybe £2 on all your current bets. This will allow you to gauge where you are in relation to your current activity and the exchanges. You may not even have to log these bets if you currently log all your bookmaker bets (you should be) as you can look up Betfair SP and insert the prices into your spreadsheet and see how you would have faired.

The reason for doing this is it will enable you to see whether your current methods need binning or perhaps just adding to in order to boost or hopefully boost profit.

So lets assume you have done the above over a period of time and you are making between 5% and 10% with Bookmakers but losing 1% with Betfair after commission. This is just an example, I am sure everyone will have different profiles and it is difficult to be specific. My personal conversion showed that my betting was profitable to BFSP but only to around +1% and given that I was having around 3,500 bets per year this meant a paltry 35 pts per year instead of my average 350 pts. It was clear that the market got smarter as time moved through the morning towards the off.

I realized that in order to make meaningful amounts I would have to shift my game up to a very high turnover activity with low ROI but decent returns and this would mean automation. I also realized that small return approaches which normally with bookmakers you would normally cast in the not worth the effort bin suddenly have a different value. If you can automate and some approach makes 0.5% per year then run it as it contributes to lowering your commission and helps keep you away from the despicable premium charge.

OK automation may not be within your skill set but their are off the shelf programs that can help with your automated betting. Maybe even consider getting together with one or two punters with a common need and hiring a programmer. It may not be difficult to find two or three people who all have the same basic need in terms of bet execution but are plugging their own files of daily bets into the software.

I am probably going to add more to this blog entry later but for the time being I will end on these notes. Talk to other exchange players, they are usually prepared to talk about general strategies if not specific bet choice methods. Also be prepared for increased variance. When you are down at the + 2%, +3% or + 5% ROI you are going experience greater shifts around the plus and minus marks. Are decent returns possible of smaller bet samples, yes I think so. I am currently running a Machine Learning model that in testing achieve around 9.5% ROI to BFSP and on live bets is currently running at just under this from 2,400 live bets after 7 months. This bet execution is automated along with a load of other stuff but the ML bets numerically are at the threshold of executing manually. Also let us not forget that the exchanges opens up a whole new side of betting that you previously had not dabbled too much in, LAYING. If you are good at finding value based winners then you should be good at finding value based losers.

One thing is for sure, if you are any good at betting you will be forced eventually to either pack up or consider the exchanges, it is better to consider them now along side your betting so that you are prepared for a successful switch over.

Please leave a comment if you have personal experiences to add with regard to Exchange switching.

Are You Feeling Lucky Punk!

Its been a long time since I have ventured into a bookmaker, like all sensible punters I bet solely on the exchanges these days but I was tempted back in on Saturday to sample a lucky 15 bet and of course the delights of a modern punter friendly betting shop. The usual addicts were strapped into their machines conjuring memories of that classic Matrix Battery power plant scene. I asked the manager to explain the bonus system of the lucky 15. Now it is not too difficult in Betfred, you get one winner only and they triple the odds and if you get all four horses up then they add 10% to the winnings. He failed to inform me of the treble odds part. Make what you will of that.

My excursion began with an exchange on Twitter about the possibility of boosting long term winnings with under the radar bets like Lucky 15’s. The naive idea is that if you are taking money off bookmakers via single bets they will ban you but if you are taking money off them using Lucky 15’s they will make you free cups of tea and invite you to the staff do. So can lucky15’s turn a losing punter into a winning one and how less of a loser do you have to be to get lucky punk!.

I ran a siimulation using my own ratings on flat handicaps and selected my top rated horses from 2017 and 2018. This produces around 4,000 bets per year and across those two years they made a loss of around 9% to bookmaker SP. To Betfair SP they made a profit of +5.6% which should immediately make you curious as to why you are not pursuing Betfair especially if you have any ambition to become profitable as this is where you will be forced to bet in the long term.
To check the Lucky15 performance I ran some code to select 4 horses randomly from the top rated list and calculate the profit or loss using Betfred rules for a lucky 15. I did this 1,000 times to roughly represent a year and then ran the years 5,000 times. The results were interesting.

The best year to returned a profit of £251,502 to a £1 lucky 15 bet
Don’t get too excited though, the worse year was a loss of £5,579
The average profit or loss per Lucky15 came out at +1.75 per lucky 15 which equates to a 11.6% return on investment.

It would seem therefore that a Lucky15 can reduce a 9% loss to a healthy profit but one caveat I must mention. I had to ignore shorter priced horse to get the above results. Running on horses below or equal to 5/1 produced a bets year of +£8,465 and a worse year of -£3,529, the average profit per lucky was 0.02 pounds or 0.13% roi

I wont be pursuing this kind of bet in the future but I almost got very lucky on my sole and only venture any time soon into a betting shop. My selections came
3rd at 40/1 beaten a length
3rd again at 10/1 beaten 1.5 lengths
Won at 10/1
Won at 5/1

If they had all won we would be talking around 47k

Interview With Russell Clarke

Russell Clarke was one of my favourite interviews from my book The Newmarket Wizards. I have reproduced it here in response to a Twitter enquiry about him

 

Russell Clarke may be known to some readers from his monthly column in the now defunct magazine Odds On. Russell ran a column on the statistical side of betting along with a very successful advisory service. A clue to how well he had done can be gleamed from the fact that some of this interview took place in a restaurant at the Marina in Marbella. Russell took me up to see the location of his new build villa overlooking the city. Russell’s profit on the exchanges alone is in excess of seven figures, a fact I can personally verify. This was clearly a guy worth listening to and another major influence on my own betting. Since this interview Russell is now back in the UK where his daughters are finishing their education.

Q How did you first get interested in horse racing and betting?

 

I was probably around ten years old when I first took an interest in horse-racing. Both my Grandad and my Uncle were keen punters and the house always had a copy of The Sporting Life as we all lived together at that time.

 

My Grandad read all of the views of the racing correspondents in the papers at the bookmakers and then came to a conclusion based on that pool of knowledge. My Uncle took a more analytical approach by compiling his own speed-figures and keeping the records on index-cards. As a youngster I often did the simple math’s involved and helped him maintain the cards.

 

I became fascinated by the concept that the winner of a race could actually be worked out by the use of numbers or ratings. From there it was a natural progression to have a small “round robin” (my bet of choice at that age!)

 

Q How successful or unsuccessful were you when you first started to bet regularly, did you serve the typical losing apprenticeship?

 

I didn´t keep records back then, so I would be guessing, but my stakes were very small and I fondly remember a number of very good wins, so I would guess that my pre-teen betting days were profitable. As I got older, I did bet more regularly, but it was the 70´s and I was lucky enough to be using the speed-figures from the old Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book. These figures were powerful and largely anonymous to the general betting public and so I was fortunate to have stumbled upon a source of profit.

I don´t suffer from a need to win on any given day and so have never chased losses or got into difficulties by being reckless or “on tilt”.

 

Q Could you cite any pivotal moments or influences in your early regular betting life that shaped your style and approach to successful betting?

 

Lots! The first, and most important, was my belief that an objective approach to betting was more likely to succeed than a subjective one. This was almost the first conclusion I ever drew about betting on horse-racing. It came from a cursory glance at the Sporting Life Naps Table, which always showed that perhaps only 20% of the racing correspondents showed a profit on their daily “naps”. And, the really telling condemnation of subjective analysis is that, it was always a different 20% of the racing correspondents that managed a profit each year!.  Reading their columns, I concluded it was because they based their bets on their personal opinion. At that time, I didn´t really appreciate the importance of odds in betting, but nevertheless, I have never wavered from my belief in objective analysis from the conclusions drawn as a ten year old looking at the Sporting Life Naps Table.

 

Other influences were, the speed-figures in the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book, the figures of Dick Whitford in the Sporting Life (which were my first introduction to the world of collateral form ratings), Phil Bull´s Timeform Computer Timefigures which I used for ante-post betting on the following year´s Guineas and Derby during the 1980´s in particular, and, any number of trends that I have found measurable such as the influence of the draw in Flat racing.

 

 

Q My understanding is that you are more statistically prompted bettor than an interpretative one (i.e.- evaluating form via personal observations). How would you summarize your style?

 

As I have alluded to already, the central thread of my betting is objectivity. To summarize this in a sentence…”if I can´t measure it, I struggle to evaluate it and so tend to ignore it”

Throughout my betting life I have remained flexible in terms of changing my methods. Over the years I have relied on speed-figures, collateral form figures, draw, pace, statistical systems, and various mathematical approaches that highlight that most elusive of all variables… value

 

Q What would be a typical betting day for you (e.g.- 10.00pm compile list of contenders, 8.00am compile odds line, 10.00am check Belfair prices etc etc etc

 

It may surprise you to know that I rarely spend more than half an hour on any meeting. This is because of my objective style of betting. As I rely on figures and statistics and systems, the work has largely been done beforehand. Really, all I require are the runners and an accurate going description. Additional subjective analysis merely results in convergence towards the accepted wisdom, which I constantly strive to avoid. Then I look at Betfair and highlight the potential value horses in each race. It is then a case of deciding the best way to back them.

 

Q Do you have any particular methods or approaches to handling a bad run of results. Could you give an example of a typical poor run e.g. time span, bets,  points lost.

 

The importance of psychology cannot be stressed enough. It is the factor that governs longevity in betting, or indeed any type of investment. When I lived in England I ran a Subscription Service. I can´t recall the year, but during one Flat Season I made a paper profit of just 4 points to level stakes. In reality, the clients would have lost money because the profits were quoted at prices recommended and these became progressively more difficult to obtain with bookmakers. The meager profits that year, were also due to a 50-1 winner at Royal Ascot and I think the losing sequence prior to that winner was something around 40 points or maybe a little more. That year I lost over half my client base. I recently spoke to a hedge fund manager who operates a very similar investment criteria to myself, and, he confirmed that he also lost many clients after a poor spell of returns, regardless of past performance. As humans we all share the same psychological response to losses. We time-weight recent results, so that they have much more influence on our behaviour than past results. Unfortunately, these responses do nothing to help with profitable betting/investment.

 

Such runs can sap confidence. Nowadays I hardly watch a race, except for the big events. This helps me personally. Watching loser after loser can be soul destroying, you blame bad luck, bad jockeys, bad “anything”. If you watch 8 losers and then a 10-1 winner, it hardly feels like a profitable day! So, I watch very little racing and sometimes don´t even check the results for a few days (I think my record is catching up on 4 days worth of results). I actually got that tip from a client. He reasoned that what happened day to day wasn´t really of any consequence if you have long-term faith. I think he has a valid point.

 

Q When someone asks me if I have had a good day, I usually answer ‘I don’t care but I am having a good year’. I make this reply not because I wish to be flippant or because it’s easy to think this way but because that’s were I want to be psychologically. You seem to be there already. Has this always been the case and more importantly do you think it’s innate or can it be developed.

 

My literal answer to the question is always honest but vague…so something along the lines of “a bit behind”, “a bit ahead”, “no, not today” or “yes thanks”. I´m only vague because I feel it is a little vulgar to mention numbers, akin to mentioning your profit if someone asks about your business. I suppose it also depends on who asks the question.

Therefore I don´t think the answer to such a question reflects the broader point you are trying to convey regarding separating the short-term peaks and troughs from the long-term trend in your own mind. I´m lucky on this score because I´m putting faith in rigorous statistics and not my own ability to find winners, the former is established, the latter is subject to variations in confidence.

Q The betting arena has changed enormously over the last 10 years. What impact has this had on your betting?

 

A huge impact, at one stage I relied almost exclusively on early morning prices and had accounts with bookmakers all over the country. I visited towns to open accounts with any independent who offered early prices or who might lay me say, the Big 3 or 4. In the 80´s I had a spell on-course to avoid betting tax, but found this soul-destroying. I have just read Dave Nevison´s book (very entertaining) in which he states that he prefers being on-course, so there is no right or wrong, but it just wasn´t for me. Driving home after losing a four-figure sum made me feel like getting a proper job!

 

I then discovered the spreads, but restrictions were soon applied and the majority of my bets I placed “abroad” and this was well before Victor moved to Gibraltar! There was quite an underground betting scene and the main reason was to escape the betting tax.

 

Along came Flutter….my first dalliance with exchanges. They were swallowed up by Betfair and the exchanges changed the betting map of the UK.

 

Q Some people complain that the exchanges have ruined early morning value whilst others feel things have never been so good. How do you stand, is it easier to make a profit now than pre exchanges. (note profit encompasses all aspects including getting on)

 

I believe bookmakers have become more astute at identifying winning punters, and, at an earlier stage. This makes it difficult to get on and as even accounts in friends and family names, that previously had served you well for a long period of time, are now heavily restricted very early on.

The exchanges are certainly lacking in liquidity in the morning markets. I think this highlights a flaw in the betting exchange business model, which is that eventually you can run out of “layers”.

With that caveat, I believe the exchanges have been a positive for punters overall.

 

Q I know you bet on horse racing, do you bet on other events. How about laying and trading, do they play any significant part in your activities?

 

I don´t trade unless the odds dictate that I should. For example, if I rate something a 14-1 shot and I can back it at 25-1 then I do so. If the price subsequently shortens to 8-1, then I will become a layer and effectively trade that position. But overall, I don´t trade.

 

My main activity nowadays is football betting. The liquidity is much stronger than for horse racing and I find it a new and fascinating challenge. For football, I have joined forces with a really talented partner. The software we use generates prices for all markets (including in-play) and we simply back and lay around those prices. Just as for the racing, it is totally objective, and we aim to become the biggest players in the UK.

Q I am no expert on the football markets, but my guess would be that the bigger profits and turnover is within the chaos of in play betting?. I have always thought the pre match odds were pretty tight?.

 

There are anomalies in the pre-match markets, but you are probably correct that the greater potential for profits occur during a game, when the market is constantly changing and reacting to events. However, the differences are not as marked as I believed they would be. As with horse-racing, certain factors are overlooked or even misunderstood by the market and this can happen almost as much pre-match as in-play.

 

Q What do you see as the key characteristics needed in a successful professional gambler?

 

Boring stuff really…..being sensible, realistic and brave. But your greatest ally is Belief

 

Q There will always be a nucleus of people contemplating becoming a full time pro’ in the betting world. What are the positives and negatives of such a working life style?

 

It is no different to running any business of your own. My advice would be to forget it is about betting…just treat it as a business. Do all the things you would do to make any business successful.

 

Q How do you balance the demands of pro’ gambling with home life. Have you had to make adjustments over the years and have you at any time in the past felt like you were simply working too hard at the betting?

 

Some summers have been hard in the past because of the plethora of racing once the evening meetings kick-in. But I have never felt like I am working too hard.

 

Q If I presented in front of you a willing wannabe professional punter (horse racing), who is the type of punter who doesn’t lose a lot over the year but cannot quite break into the regular profit zone. What advice would you offer such a person? Are there any simple tips that might improve the bottom line by the required amount?

 

I couldn´t really offer advice unless I knew this punter´s modus operandi. If we assume he utilizes best prices, exchanges, spreads etc, but is till not winning, then he needs to change his selection methods. But a generic piece of advice that we should all have transplanted into our heads is;

 

It´s ALL about the odds, NOTHING else matters. It is engrained in punters to try and find the winner of any race. This is reinforced by the “experts” on TV making a case for/against a horse, with little, or cursory reference to the odds available. It is a nonsense of course, but, the reality is that a well researched argument or opinion is far more interesting than a bland statistic. The opinion makes interesting television, the statistic doesn’t.

 

 

Q What are your basic figures, i.e. number of bets, strike rate, profit rate (per year).  Also, how long have you been able to sustain these figures?

 

The number of bets depends on the profit margins that I set. For example, if I set a requirement of a margin of 20% between assessed price and odds available, I will have less bets than if I set the margin at 10%.

 

Strike-rate also varies with the levels of margin set, but a broad average would be between 15 and 18%.

 

This has been relatively consistent over the years, though I am always a little surprised by the amount of variation season to season.

 

Football betting is a different animal. There are less unknown variables and so I can price up all markets and have a back and lay price for ALL selections. Therefore the number of bets on an individual game can run into 3 figures.

 

Q What do you consider to be the tools of your betting profession

 

All that is required, given that “it´s all about price…nothing else matters” is a means to accurately assess an accurate true price.

 

For Horse Racing I use a systematic approach utilizing statistics, alongside collateral form.

For Football I use a 100% mathematical approach to produce goal expectations and from these, all other prices can be calculated.

 

I use software, written for me, to actually place the bets.

 

Q What is the worse bet you ever made (gory details included please)

 

The year Seagram won the Grand National, I had my biggest ever bet on Garrison Savannah. At that time, I was heavily into ante-post betting and I had backed Garrison at all prices, I think from 25-1 to 10-1. I would have won enough to buy a terraced house, so the equivalent of 100,000 pounds today. The scale of the bet was due to a theory I have about the Grand National, which has brought me numerous winners of the race. On the day, I didn´t even watch the race….I was at Sincil Bank watching Lincoln City. People in the crowd had radios on and I asked a chap behind me, quite nonchalantly, who had won the National? “They´re just coming to the last…” he said….. “Garrison Savannah has gone 10 lengths clear”. I kept really cool and started dreaming of my winnings. A minute later the chap patted me on the shoulder and said “Seagram won it”. Deflated wasn´t the word!

 

When I got home I watched the race on video. If any of you can recall the race, Garrison jumps past Seagram at the last and quickly powers 10 lengths clear…..at this stage, had Betfair been around, he would have been 1.01! As I watched the video, I couldn´t believe that somehow this horse would get beat. But, at the elbow, he simply died, like Crisp had done years before.

 

Certainly my worst betting experience.

 

Q Is most of your daily selection process automated, even down to the selection of value or do you have to resort to some manual analysis?

 

In horse racing, 95% is automated. But, some things I just find easier to assess manually than trying to assign a numerical value to.

 

In football, 95% is automated. Even the team news prior to kick off generates an automatic numerical indication of the effect it will have on goal expectations. However, to do that player ratings are required and they are a mixture of Opta stats and watching every Premiership game each week….so that is the 5% manual analysis.

 

Q You live abroad now, how has this affected you on a personal quality of life level and on a betting level?.

 

We have lived in Spain for 4 years and now 4 years in Dubai. Moving to a new country brings frustrations, but overall we have enjoyed the experiences. It has exposed my family and myself to different cultures and other ways of life.

 

On the betting front, it has taken me even further away from consensus opinion as I no longer have the Racing Post or other mainstream publications drip-feeding me opinions. Whether this has been positive or negative in terms of profitability is difficult to tell, but it has certainly made decisions more clear cut. 

The technology of today means that geographical distance isn´t really an issue.

Whip Ban 2019 ?

As we turn towards the new year much talk about pressure on the BHA to address the alleged cruelty to racehorses in the shape of the whip.  Kevin Blake makes a case for rallying against this fresh tide of concern in his column today and in a previous column of his he refers to the possibility that a total whip ban would produce races which favour free going horses over those that need some persuasion to pull out that extra to win races. This set me thinking, does he have any evidence for this or is he just putting 2+2 together and getting 5, an incorrect answer but one nevertheless that no one will dispute. If whipless races do produce a very different flavour to winner finding then this could be a useful tool especially if we go down a total whip ban under a Labour government.

I decided to check this by taking a look first of all at horse between 2005 and 2010 that were running in hands and heel races and had pulled or been ‘keen’ in a previous race. The results for backing all these horse types was

Bets 471 PL to Bookie SP -119 ROI% -25.3%

Now looking at those that had not pulled before we have

Bets 484 PL -90 ROI% -18.6%

It would appear that non pullers were better bets in hands and heels races than keen types, but how does that 25.3% compare with all races for pullers/keen type. Ignoring the race type and backing previous keen types lost you -20.15%. It would appear that during this period keen types had a greater disadvantage in hands and heel races.

There was another interesting reversal in these races over the period covered. Those hold up horses, who one could interpret as members of the lazy, need lots of riding types fair a lot better than expected in hands and heel races. You would only have lost 18% on turnover compared to -32% on prominent runners. As usual when quoting these figures I am referring to pre race pace figures which are published daily on SmarterSig.

Where does this leave Kevin Blake ?. Well I have almost both feet in his camp but I seem to be finding some polished turds on my shoes and cannot help feeling that we will need other persuasive arguments if whips are to continue.

Should We Avoid Low Class Races

One of the most repeated myths, especially on TV, is that punters would be best served betting on higher class races as lower class races are unreliable due to the erratic nature of lower class animals or perhaps the shear level playing field of modest form. Why this has come about I have no idea as I have long since smelt a rat about this piece of advice. Whether its bookmaker propoganda, as I am pretty sure they want you to bet on high class races, is anyone’s guess. The real question are higher class horses more reliable from a punting point of view ?.

For the purpose of this article I will take a punter view of reliable, namely that punters tend to overbet the last run and usually get swept up with placed horse last time out in preference to those with a more chequered last run figure. If we take a look at the profit and loss to backing to Betfair SP runners who placed first second or third last time out we would expect, if the message is correct, to find less loss in higher class races. Indeed the lower class figures should show that we lose more following ‘form’ in lower class races. Is this the case for the last 5 years Handicaps on the flat?

Class 2 6969 bets PL -346.77 ROI -4.97%

Class 3  6264 bets PL -401.87 ROI -6.41%

Class 4 12768 Bets PL -530.69 ROI -4.15%

Class 5 15475 Bets PL -353.48 ROI -2.28%

Class 6 13994 Bets PL -459.2 ROI -3.28%

The least loss occurred in class 5 and class 6 the very races the media is telling you to avoid and very races bookmakers do not really want you to bet in. Ask yourself this why do some bookmakers state in their new max liability rules that they will take a bet but only in class 4 and above. Enjoy Kempton tonight, I like Hombre Casado and Cool Strutter in the last two handicaps.