Horse racing and betting systems blog

The British weather is a constant inspiration for conversation, fellow TIPs, but of late the topic of the weather has been elevated to headline news status. Britain has been shivering since the week before Christmas, and the last of the snow finally disappeared from British racecourses only little more than a week ago. We’ve been struggling to get to work because of freezing weather conditions, and schools have been forced to close. For more than two weeks there was no racing on the turf because snow lay all around. On more than one occasion even all-weather meetings were cancelled, because the obligatory ambulances could not access the course.

With all the talk of shivering temperatures, it is hardly surprising that many people, including us punters, have been asking “whatever happened to global warming?”

I was watching a program on the Discovery Channel the other day which went some way to answering that question. And it also got me thinking how we can draw several parallels between the weather and betting on horse racing.

The chap on the telly was explaining how we should not be confusing the weather with the climate. He said it was was not surprising the cold period has raised questions over climate change – but the snowy weather should not be used as evidence against it.

”It’s no surprise that people look out of their window at the snow and find it hard to rationalise what’s going on with the longer term trend.”

But he said it was wrong to focus on single events – whether they were cold snaps or heat waves – which were the product of natural variability. Instead they should look at the underlying, longer term trends for the climate which were more robust evidence of the changes which are happening.

The last decade was the warmest on record, with the last three each warmer than the previous 10 years.

The Met Office has reported that December and January’s cold weather was within the bounds of natural variability within a global trend of rising temperatures – in which 2009 is set to be the fifth warmest year on record. Despite temperatures in December which were half the average for that month in the UK, the country experienced another warm year which was 0.6C above the long term average.

”If you look at the temperature graph for the UK or the world, it is a series of peaks and troughs and there’s a lot of inter-annual variability within the climbing trend.”

So how does this relate to betting on horse racing?

Weather systems consist of many variables to produce a result. Air temperature, atmospheric pressure, prevailing winds and many other influences combine to dictate whether it rains over a particular area, or sends people running for the sun-cream. On the face of it, weather systems may appear to be completely random and chaotic events. On the face of it, a horse race may appear to be the same. A group of horses, each with four legs, sets off on a race.

The outcome of a horse race is also influenced by a number of variables – the fitness of each horse, the going, the distance, the jockey, the pattern of the race, luck in running, and so on. That is the challenge of racing we all relish. But we relish that challenge because ultimately we think the puzzle can be solved. And similarly, for many years meteorologists have engaged in the pursuit of predicting the weather.

What lesson can we learn from observing the weather?

The extraordinary cold weather we have experienced of late is simply a departure from the norm, but within the bounds of variability. Just because arctic conditions have descended upon us for a few weeks, does mean Britain now has an arctic climate. It is important we step back and observe the bigger picture, setting the recent cold snap in context with the rise in average temperatures over the last thirty years.

We should should exercise the same objectivity when we are betting. A losing day, week, or even month should not necessarily be cause to set alarm bells ringing. Equally, trialling a system for a week and seeing a profit should not be immediately followed by investing headlong with full stakes.

Knee-jerk reactions to short-term results will often lead to poor decision-making.

On this site we tend to trial a system for a month, or thirty “betting days” if the system is more selective. If the system returns a profit, we will generally recommend it worthy of further evaluation, but only further evaluation. Personally, I would not be remotely tempted to start investing properly in any system until I was happy with the returns from at least 250 separate bets.

If you like, data from 250 bets will give you an indication of the climate of the system in question. Any amount of data much less than this will simply tell you what the weather is doing at a particular period in time.

The lesson is to test a betting system, method, or strategy for a significant period of time before coming to any conclusions.

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