Thursday, 22nd February 2018
It’s back to our spadework for the Festival handicaps today....
Think of today’s column and next Monday’s column as the cherries on the icing....
We’ve spent a large part of the last couple of weeks looking at the Festival handicaps from various perspectives – which we hope will bear fruit next month....
And our work is almost done – well ahead of time. But not quite....
One thing we like to do on the ATC service is to bring you something you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of....
It might an observation or a piece of information that you wouldn’t otherwise be in possession of....
It might be a stat that gives you a new set of eyes on a specific subject or issue....
It might be an insight that enables you to look at a horse, a trainer, a race or a given situation in a different or more productive way....
Today and Monday I bring want to draw your attention to two bits of information that could form – if you were so minded – the basis of a couple of KISS angles to use in the handicaps at next month’s Festival....
I wonder if we sometimes over-complicate the racing game….
You can analyze things to death – pulling the bones apart until sense can no longer be made of the whole….
I wonder if sometimes we try too hard. If the analytic process sometimes leaves us knowing less than when we set out….
Especially with the big handicaps….
Big-fields of 20-odd runners take hours to scrutinize. When you’re done, you can often still make a solid argument for fifteen….
Maybe there’s a case for going counter-intuitive and seeking to do better by thinking less….
It’s a line of approach we occasionally experiment with at ATC – especially at the big meetings….
I wonder if locating betting value really must be the complex and demanding exercise everybody assumes….
I wonder if there aren’t simple, straight-forward and painless routes to handicap profit that stare us in the face sometimes….
Routes we ignore because they don’t appear complicated enough. Because they seem too good or too simple to be true….
We’re basically looking for angles that suggest themselves and don’t require too much (or ANY) of our own intellectual input….
We’ve had a fair bit of success with this kind of approach in the past. Enough to persevere and to keep on looking out for what we call KISS angles.
To refresh your memory, KISS is simply an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid – which seems an appropriate name for this type of approach….
In case you missed it….Bookmakers are a particularly low class of animal. I group them together with bankers, estate agents and politicians – which probably does the latter three profession a disservice.... News emerges this week that many bookies are fixing the odds on-course in such a way as to rip punters off by producing a poor-value betting environment.... Andy Smith, who takes bets on-course as Festival Racing, reveals that bookies are banding together to form a ‘cartel’ and agreeing to bet to big margins ahead of racing – effectively producing an organised market of poor-value betting prices for punters.... Smith says this practice is not just confined to small courses either – but is becoming a more widespread practice. I can’t say it surprises me.... |
Stats and datasets are useful tools when you’re adopting the KISS angle approach....
But, if you like doing the statistical legwork yourself, be warned. KISS angles rarely jump off the page. They tend to be hidden and work is required to locate them....
You don’t necessarily have to do a lot of thinking. But you do have to be prepared to do a lot of digging, sifting, riddling and sorting....
It’s a bit like dumping a mountain of rock and earth above a sluice and then working your back to a string of conkers isolating the few ounces of gold that make the job of work worthwhile....
I’ve spent the last few weeks sifting through the statistical record of the handicap chase and hurdle events at the last FIVE Cheltenham Festival meetings....
It’s a deep and wide river of numbers and other data – 44,604 separate bits of data to be precise (and that’s the abbreviated version).
Nothing is obvious – especially if you don’t know for sure that what you are looking for is there to be found....
It is easy to be become snow-blind. And discouraged. It is easy to give up. It is easy to buy into the view that a dataset has nothing productive to deliver....
But today, I can report that I’ve isolated two gold nuggets – the best the dataset is able to deliver. And I’m going to share the first of those with you right now. Because that’s the kind of guy I am....
I know little or nothing about the realities of training horses....
But it seems to me that getting a race-fit horse ready to compete in a big race is an easier job than getting a horse to perform in a big race when its been off the track for a while....
Maybe my thinking is wrong. But I took the decision to interrogate the stats from that perspective....
I wanted to see if any trainer has a better record than the others when it comes to producing horses that prove competitive in big Festival handicaps on the back of a layoff....
In Australia, they have terms for different types of layoff. A freshen is a 3-4 week break between races. A let-up means 6-9 weeks between runs. A spell is a break of 10-weeks or more....
A spell represents the longest type of break from competitive racing. And I crunched the numbers in a bid to discover which British handler (if any) produces the most competitive runners in Festival handicaps off that kind of break....
Turns out Willie Mullins is your man – and by a country mile too. He’s got a fantastic record with Festival handicappers running off a spell (70+ days).
Over the course of the last five Festivals he’s sent a dozen horses into handicaps off a break of 70 days or more.
Granted, only one managed to win – Arctic Fire won last season’s County Hurdle – but another five hit the places (if you include 5th place finishes which many bookmakers pay out on in big-field Festival events) and two more produced what I term ‘competitive’ performances....
Had you backed all the qualifiers to the tune of 1 point each-way you’d be sitting on a profit of 34.2 points....
It’s simple. It’s straightforward. And at almost 3 points worth of profit per qualifying horse, it is well worth looking at as a KISS angle this time around....
I’ll bring you my second Festival handicap KISS angle on Monday – the point at which we will conclude our spadework for this season’s Festival handicaps....
Tomorrow we get back to the here-and-now. I’ll be doing the usual and bringing you my contrarian take – the value-hunting take – on this weekend’s racing at Kempton and at Newcastle....
That’s all from me for now.
Until tomorrow. Stay tuned.
P.S. Don’t miss out on the chance to win a pair of tickets to Gold Cup day at the Festival. ATR are running a straightforward competition. You’ve got until Sunday night to get in on the action. If you’ve already entered, get the wife to enter too. Get the details here….
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