Monday, 26th February 2018
At ATC, one thing we try to do is to bring you information that you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of....
Perhaps an observation or an insight you might otherwise be working without....
Or maybe a stat that delivers a fresh perspective on a specific subject or issue....
Our aim is to provide an angle that enables you to look at a horse, a trainer, a race or a given situation in a different or more productive way....
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 we’ve almost completed that work – a good fortnight ahead of time. But there’s just one more piece of the jigsaw to put into place....
Today I bring you our second KISS angle for the Festival. If you missed the first one – distributed on Thursday last week – you can catch up here....
There is a definite case for saying that as punters we sometimes over-complicate the racing game….
At one time or another, we have all been guilty of analyzing things to death – looking at races in such fine detail that sense can no longer be made of the whole….
Sometimes we try too hard – and the analytic process leaves us knowing less than we did when we set out….
That’s especially the case with the big handicaps. Big-fields of 20-odd runners take hours to scrutinize. And sometimes the time you spend doesn’t really produce the sort of return you require….
You can study the form, crunch the numbers, look at the race for any one of a hundred different angles – and, when you’re done and dusted, you can often still make a solid argument for fifteen of the runners….
Maybe there’s a case for going counter-intuitive and seeking to do better by thinking less….
It’s a line of approach we experiment with occasionally at ATC – especially at the big meetings….
This occasional approach has grown out of my frequent bouts of wondering whether the process of locating betting value really needs to be the complex and demanding exercise everybody assumes….
I often wonder if there aren’t sometimes simple, straight-forward and painless routes to handicap profit that stare us in the face….
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….We reported last week that William Hill had been fined £6.2 million for breaching money-laundering rules.... That’s a lot of money to the man on the street. But it is chicken feed for bookmakers and it is questionable whether such fines really act as a deterrent to bad behaviour within the industry.... That’s the argument being made by David Ward, who last year launched Cumbria’s first Gamblers’ Anonymous meeting. I wonder if he has a point. He says this.... ‘They operate in billions in terms of their annual profits. It's certainly a step in the right direction to regulate the industry in a stricter way. But fining them hundreds of millions is the only way to hit them in their pockets, or to restrict their licences, even locally....’ |
When looking for potential KISS angles, the historic record is my first port of call....
Past events produce a body of data that we can go back and study, measure, test and interrogate in a bid to find interesting sweet-spots within the larger patterns – sweet-spots that suggest they might be profitable moving forward....
These things are not easy to find. They rarely jump off the page. 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....
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 and to buy into the view that a dataset has nothing productive to deliver....
But I persevered, and I hit pay dirt. I’ve isolated two gold nuggets – the best the dataset can deliver. And I’m going to share the second of those with you right now.
Apprentice riders can claim weight allowances in handicaps. The amount they can claim depends on how many winners they have ridden to date.
The more winners you’ve ridden as an apprentice, the less weight you can claim – the real neophytes in the weighing-room claim 10lbs.
Others claim 7lbs, 5lbs or 3lbs – depending on the volume of those winners they’ve ridden to date. The 3lb claimers are the most experienced apprentices having ridden most winners....
Ride enough winners and eventually you ride your claim out altogether and must compete with the senior riders on level terms....
But that’s by the by. In the big handicaps – and the Festival is no exception – a good claimer is potentially worth his weight allowance in gold. He strips a few pounds off a horse – effectively lowering its rating.
In putting a claimer up the trainer is trying to make his horse more competitive. It might be too high in the weights – and need a few pounds taken off. Or he might just be trying to give his horse the benefit of a flyweight....
Plenty of claimers have been tried at the Festival over the last five years – 252 to be exact. Just six won at 2.4%. A claimer in the saddle is clearly not a sure-fire indication of an imminent win. Far from it.
But one trainer does stand head and shoulders above all the opposition when it comes to putting a claimer up on a Festival handicapper....
Nicky Henderson is that man – and if he puts a claimer on one of his handicappers at next month’s Festival, that horse is worth a second look, especially at a price....
Over the course of the last five festival meetings Nicky Henderson has put up a claimer on 25 of his handicappers....
Two of those horses won. Another six hit the frame (if you include 5th place finishes which many bookmakers pay out on in big-field Festival events) and another five 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 amounting to 37.2 points. And that’s not a bad return over a five-year period at just one meeting....
The performance gets better still if you stick to the horses on which Henderson puts a claimer with an allowance of 5lbs or more....
Thirteen qualifiers produced two winners and four additional placers for a profit of 44.4 points when backed to the tune of 1 point each way....
The suggestion is that Henderson is a particularly judicious user of claimers in the Festival handicaps. His record suggests he knows exactly which claimer to use and when to use them to maximum effect....
Of course, what happened in the past is no guarantee of future outcomes. But the stats do suggest that any Henderson handicapper carrying a claimer next month – especially at a price – is an interesting betting proposition....
Some defeats sting more than others. Theatre Territory and Art Mauresque – my contrarian selections for Saturday’s Betdaq at Kempton – were beaten into 3rd and 4th respectively by Master Dee....
That one had been on our Watch List since back in November. So why didn’t I put him up on Saturday?
It boiled down to price. On the Watch List we are simply highlighting horses we believe are ready to win. In the Friday column, the objective is betting value....
By the time the final declarations for the Betdaq were published, I took the view that Master Dee had been found by the market (I believe Paul Kealy put him up as a selection in last Wednesday’s Weekender).
In hindsight (it’s always much easier when the result of the race is known) the 8s was more than acceptable. But we must bet without the benefit of having the result in our possession....
At the weekend we try to identify the right horses at the wrong prices. On Friday, I took the view that Master Dee was around about the right price and chose to look elsewhere....
More on this issue tomorrow....
That’s all from me for today.
Until tomorrow. Stay tuned.
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