This is a guest post by Michael Wilding from RaceAdvisor.co.uk
For most people numbers and horse racing go hand in hand. Some find numbers hard to work with but if you really want to be making profits with horse racing you need to be comfortable with them.
Why do we need to be comfortable with numbers?
In horse racing we are trying to analyse aspects of a horse’s performance that are very difficult to specify, one such example would be class. Without having something solid to pin our knowledge to it is impossible for us to consistently repeat a process, this is why we need numbers. By using a number we immediately have something that can be written down and quantified.
For example, if I said “Explain the class of the horse to me” you may be able to write pages on why it may be a good class horse and why it may not be. Once that has been written you still need to go over all the opinions and make a final decision.
If I changed that to “What class is the horse between 1 and 10 with 10 being the highest?” you would immediately say 7 (or whatever you thought). Instantly all those opinions you wrote before have been quantified into a single piece of data that can be used efficiently.
Human society is by definition number orientated, just think of all the statistics that are permanently being shown about employment, education etc… This interest in numbers encourages a bias towards averaging.
As winning punters this benefits us.
We can benefit from the desire of most people to create averages because winning horses are not average. An average figure in horse racing will usually hide whether a horse is declining or improving, or whether it is a strong performer under certain conditions or not under others, or whether the trainer is in a positive form cycle etc…
Taking the need for our fellow punters to tend towards averaging can yield us long-term profits. This can be simply achieved by focusing on specifics rather than on averages.
Let’s put this into practice and take a look at some examples of where we can put this into use. Consider the following statement….
“After a layoff period of 90 days or more a horse runs poorly on its next race.”
This is a commonly understood principle, the number of days may be 30 or they may be 180 but the principle that a horse who has not been running recently needs a couple of races to get back into a competitive level is often assumed.
Taking our knowledge that the normal punter is going to tend towards the average we can now look at this from a different viewpoint. Changing the statement we now get.
“If an average horse performs poorly after a long layoff then there will be some horses who perform exceptionally after a layoff.”
Here we are going against the average and, as I am sure you are aware, when we go against the average we can make significant profits. All that is left is to find what types of horses perform exceptionally after layoffs and bet them whenever they come back from one!
Once you start to look at racing from a specific point of view and get away from the normal method of averaging you will find that profits come much faster than before.
Another example could be:
“Stay away from cold jockeys because they just can’t win.”
A true statement, jockeys go through periods where they struggle to win their races. How can we profit from this averaged information? Let’s rephrase the statement to:
“Cold jockeys just can’t win many races, but usually they will find affinity with a specific trainer or horse during this period and can’t lose for them.”
It is very common to find a jockey that hits a cold period to be consistently winning for one specific trainer or one specific horse. By going against the general consensus we can look out for cold trainers and monitor their performances to see who they are winning for, when you see them win a couple of times for the same trainer or on the same horse you will often find that they will continue to be profitable bets when running with the same horse or trainer until their cold period ends.
There are many thousands of anti-average angles like this in horse racing that can seriously make you a large portfolio of successful niche betting systems. Here are some steps that can help you to find them.
- Browse any horse racing related website or forum and pick out some choice “known” facts about horse racing (even the most obvious will do).
- Write the statement down and then underneath write a statement that highlights what those non-average horses/trainers/jockeys will be doing.
- Follow the non-average statement and monitor the selections.
By following these three simple steps you will be finding profitable angles faster than you have ever done so before. All you need to remember is to stop averaging horses and start looking at the non-average runners!
