A couple of years ago we
decided to run a 1000 race study of how favourites performed under
different circumstances in an attempt to gain an understanding of
what made certain favourites layable and what made them backable.
It was an interesting exercise
but, of course, on a sample of 1000, (all the time we had to spend
on it in March 2008), it was never going to be a definitive work.
Recently, fellow Tasmanian
Roger Biggs, mathematician and author of such things, dropped me an
email to helpfully correct some of the figures that we arrived at
based on his sample size of nearly 200,000 races. Wow - great database!
That size of database to draw on makes his calculations far more valid
than mine.
Here are those corrections
that he e-mailed:
Winning Percentages of favourites
by Days Since Last Start: (196755 races)
>= 301 days................
31.7%
201 - 300 days.............33.6%
100 - 200 days.............33.0%
50 - 99 days.................34.8%
29 - 49 days.................34.1%
21 - 28 days.................32.1%
14 - 20 days................ 32.3%
8 - 13 days...................33.1%
1 - 7 days ....................36.9%
Winning Percentages of favourites
by field size: (196,755 races)
17+starters...........
23.2%
16 .......................26.2%
15........................27.1%
14 ......................27.8%
13 ......................29.2%
12 ......................29.7%
11 ......................31.2%
10 ......................32.3%
9 ....................... 33.1%
8 ........................35.4%
7 ....................... 37.3%
6 ....................... 41.5%
