Wednesday, 4th July 2018
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 an 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 I touch on from time to time….
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….
I’m talking about adopting Keep-It-Simple-Stupid (KISS) strategies and sticking with them over time….
Next week at Newmarket’s July meeting, you can do worse than follow a specific division of Andrew Balding’s runners….
Balding has a fantastic record in the handicaps for 3yos run at the July meeting – a record that demands respect and makes it a matter of folly to ignore what he sends this time round….
Over the last decade his 30 handicappers running in races restricted to 3yos have produced 6 winners and 8 additional places....
That’s a place-strike-rate of almost 50%. And that’s a sustained record of consistency that you seldom find in a handicap dataset....
Better still, the prices have been there to get for punters. If you’d backed all 30 qualifiers to level stakes of a point each-way, you’d be looking at a profit of 36.1 points.
And that profit is to SP. Chances are that in the early-morning markets, on the exchanges or betting to Betfair SP, you’d be looking at a much-improved surplus....
Of course, the past is the past. And what happened before is no guarantee that it will happen again….
Stats don’t run races. Horses do. Balding needs the right horses this time round. What his horses of yesteryear did at the meeting must be replicated by the current population. It isn’t the same set of animals turning out year on year….
But if the stats are omens then the omens are at least good….
They tell us that when Balding has a decent 3yo handicapper in his care, this is a meeting he likes to target for a win….
And when they haven’t managed to win, plenty more have put in very competitive performances suggesting they have been primed to go-well….
So, it is reasonable to antiicipate that this year will be no different….
If Balding is n possession of some decent 3yo handicappers on potentially good marks, he will have prepared them for a serious tilt at this week’s prizes. And his past record suggests he will make a pretty good job of that preparation….
It’s a good thing to know. Something to be aware of when you come to look at the 3yo handicaps. A Balding runner at a nice price might just be exactly what the doctor ordered….
I didn’t manage to dig out a winner last weekend. But it wasn’t all bad news at the weekend apparently....
Several readers have written in to say they got a place return on Island Brave in the Northumberland Plate – a result of betting with a bookmaker offering enhanced place terms and paying out on the first 5 home rather than the first 4....
Fair enough. I can’t take any credit for that. That result is down to those individual readers going to the trouble of getting the best deal they could find on their bets....
It makes sense to do that and all those little extra’s – like Saturday’s place return – can add up to quite a sum over the course of a season or a racing year....
That’s all from me for today....
I’ll be back tomorrow....
Stay tuned.
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