FAVOURITES
REPORT -
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%
What a kind person to take
the time to do that for us.
Roger has a
number of books on this issue and other really good racing
"stuff".
