Last weekend I was using trends horse analysis to evaluate the chances of one of the horses I’m following this season, Ballabriggs in a relatively low key novice hurdle race at Wincanton. When I looked back at his winning form, I discovered he had yet to win any of his six starts over hurdles, and had failed to win on each of his five seasonal debuts so far in his career. I figured it would be best not to back him, and indeed I even suggested it may prove to be a good lay bet and suggested 7/4 as a reasonable risk. My evaluation was that the race would be simply a good run out for him, and that ultimately his aim for the season was the Grand National.
Well Ballabriggs went on to win at 100/30 so I have to apologise if I put you off backing him, and you missed out on collecting. But I trust no-one went ahead and layed him to lose at those odds.
I’ll try and make amends this week by introducing you to a method I call Value Horse Analysis, which as the name suggests, attempts to analyze the form of a horse to unearth value bets. This method involves rating each horse in a race on six different points – trainer, jockey, distance, going, overall form, and recent form – then pricing the runners according to the ratings.
I’m then looking for any anomilies in prices, where the market significantly undervalues a horse compared to my evaluation, for example when a price of 4/1 is available when I assess it’s chances merit a price of only 2/1
This weekend I’m going to look at the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton Saturday afternoon, re-scheduled from the Boxing Day meeting which succumbed to the weather. It’s a Grade 1 hurdle race over 2 miles, with most of the runners looking to progress to the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham in March. Tomorrow there will be six runners lining up.
My ratings for each runner, out of 150 are as follows:
Binocular 140 points
Bocamix – discounted completely
Escort Men 130 points
Khyber Kim 135 points
Overturn 120 points
Starluck 115 points
Translating these rating scores into prices I arrive at the following ‘book’….
Binocular 5/2 (current best price at time of writing 2/1)
Bocamix 50/1 (…best price… 250/1)
Escort Men 9/2 (…best price… 9/1)
Khyber Kim 7/2 (…best price… 3/1)
Overturn 6/1 (…best price… 6/1)
Starluck 7/1 (…best price… 5/2)
These prices result in a 98% overound which I am happy is close enough to 100% for the purposes of this exercise.
Hopefully you have spotted the two significant price differences, which may be potential bets?
First, Escort Men is priced at 9/1 whereas I have assessed him as a 9/2 chance. This could be a good value bet if we were looking at backing a horse to win.
Second, the price available for Starluck seems too short – 5/2 compared to my assessment of 7/1. Perhaps you might consider this to be a good bet to lay on the exchanges?
Allow me to clarify a couple of things…. I am not suggesting Escort Men is the horse most likely to win, nor am I suggesting Starluck cannot win the race. What this exercise demonstrates is that, according to my assessment of the chances of each horse winning, Escort Men is over-priced, and Starluck is under-priced.
My assessment is of course subjective and completely open for debate. But that’s the whole challenge of making a profit long term from racing… your judgement must be more accurate than the market, enough times, so that you are regularly over-paid on your winning bets.
Recommended Bets: BACK Escort Men @ 9/1 or better, and LAY Starluck @ 11/4 or shorter.
