90% winners
- well, don't we all dream of that yet what if we
could fine down the chances in a day's racing that
guaranteed 90% of the winners would be left and the
losers eliminated?
Well
here's an interesting statistic. In a study of over
23000 Australian races, horses that were beaten by
less than 6 lengths at their last start won over 90%
of the races. Now 90 % is starting to sound like a
pretty impressive figure. So how did that work out
on Saturday 22nd May 2010 and how many horses were
we able to eliminate? Let's use the Caulfield meeting
as an example.
Pre scratchings there were 110 horses in eight races.
Twenty eight of them had been beaten by more than
six lengths at their last start or just over 25% of
the total number of contenders for the afternoon's
racing. So how did they go?
Only
one of them won ( one out of 26) - and that was Star
Scream who paid (predictably) $19.70 a win which you
could argue STATISTICALLY was over the odds - both
in percentage terms of the number of races (12.5%)
and in the dividend it paid relative to its chance
based on this one rule.
Interestingly,
in race 2, HALF the field could have been eliminated
using this one rule (including the $4.00 second favourite)
which left you just 6 entrants to base any further
assessment upon. Remember these are long term statistics
so tread with caution. About a third of the field
could have been immediately eliminated in race 5 and
race 6 so your area of further study is getting better
and better as far as "time spent" is concerned.
According
to this same study, nearly 90%, in fact 87.6%, of
races are won by horses in the first six lines of
betting. In other words, the market gets it right
significantly more times than it gets it wrong. So
what happens if those two rules are applied together?
Okay
- now you're starting to think laterally here. What
if you were laying horses that didn't fall in to the
beaten margin winning guidelines and what if you put
a cap of say, $4.00, or 3/1, on the price you were
prepared to lay them at knowing that 90% of the time
they won't win?
Here
are some more interesting figures to ponder: over
60% of winners have an average prize money index figure
in the top 4 of all runners in any field and well
over 80% of races are won by horses that have started
sometime in the previous 28 days (83%).
If you
are serious about profiting long term, you simply
have to bear in mind the long term statistics of the
game. To do otherwise is to court disaster.
