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MCLARKE

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Posts posted by MCLARKE

  1. Right, I'm diving straight into the deep end !

    Be gentle with me, I'm an absolute beginner at this.

    I was going to concentrate on the all weather but as @Trotter says, we are now probably past the peak season for the AW.

    After rereading some of Nick Mordin's work he does state that the racing post standard times are valuable but compiling your own average times would produce more accurate figures. So, in for a penny, in for a pound.

    I will start with Ascot (purely based on the alphabet).

    I have taken data for 2022 (I am going to use 2023 as test data). For each race I have listed the date, class, distance and winning time. Most of this data I have been able to download automatically.

     1. Convert the data into seconds per mile. This shows the the fastest time was in a 5 furlongs sprint and the slowest time in the Queen Alexandra Stakes over nearly 2 miles 6 furlongs. Logical so far.

    2. Calculate the average time for each distance. 

    2. Calculate the average winning time by distance and by class. So as an example for 6 furlongs there were 8 races at class 1 with an average time of 73.73 seconds, class 2 was 74.03 seconds and class 3 was 75.13 seconds. Convert these into seconds per mile.

    3. For each race subtract the winning time from the average for that distance and class.

    4. Calculate the average for that meeting. This is the going allowance for that meeting. The highest adjustment (1.53 secs / mile) was in June when the going was good to firm, the lowest adjustment (-2.85 secs / mile) was in October when the going was good to soft.

    I disagree to a certain extent with Mr Mordin at this stage, he takes a subjective view of each meeting, in an example of a 6 race meeting he excludes one race because it was "probably won by an exceptional horse" and for 2 others he excludes them because he would "guess that they were slow-run affairs". That leaves him with just three races to calculate the going allowance.

    5. Subtract the going allowance from the winning time.

    6. Subtract the adjusted winning time from the average winning time for that distance. The highest figure was for Pyledriver in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stakes. Intuitively this feels right. The winning time was 149.49 secs (100.00 secs / mile), the average winning time for that distance is 102.62 secs / mile. The going adjustment for that meeting was -0.10 secs / mile, giving Pyledriver a rating of +2.72. The lowest rating was Oh This Is Us in a class 3 classified stakes with a rating of -3.87.

    7. Convert the ratings to a scale. Not strictly necessary but conceptually better. The top rated horse could be given a rating of 140 and the lowest 0, possibly as a comparative to the BHB official ratings.

    8. Calculate the ratings for the remaining horses in each race. I will use Nick Mordin's assumption that every fifth of a second is counted as one length.

     

    So there it is, my starter for ten. It seems logical but I may be missing something. The next step is to calculate these numbers going back a number of years for Ascot and also for all other courses. Time consuming but doable using Excel. Hopefully the effort will be worth it.

     

     

     

  2. From what you say it would appear to be a good sign if the XG is better than the actual.

    I guess you would only know after you had kept some stats.

    I've always avoided the goals market because the overall overound is so high but you seem to have the football knowledge to overcome that. Unfortunately I don't have that knowledge, I am driven by the stats.

  3. 6 minutes ago, calva decoy said:

    How do you take into account a national hunt chase race where for instance 2 horses of the 8 entered in their last run only jumped 4 of the 8 fences due to a low sun compared to the other 6 who jumped all of the 8 fences & say over a 2 mile trip ? 

    Whatever the answer it'll turn out to be a false narrative because of the 25% from the last runs inequalities & being speedier because of the less jumping needed .

    The only time I used speed figures is via Equibase in US dirt sprint races between 5-6f & it's been quite productive along with low draws in those races but , each to their own & a good thread for discussion 👍

    I think I'll concentrate on the flat, there are enough question marks there !

  4. 22 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

    Thanks, one of those things I do occasionally then forget how to do! In reality it turns out I missed out on 55 bets that showed a profit of 0.4 points to 1 point level stakes so I could have backed 110 bets with an ROI of 18% but instead backed 55 with an ROI of 36%! Obviously we’re into tiny sample size territory there. Overall the indicators support the change I was thinking of but the impact in terms of additional bets will be much smaller than I originally thought.

    With my AW systems last year I had plenty that had shown profits in the "test" year and therefore I could use live. I ended up with loads of selections and overall made a loss.

    This year I have used the system that had the highest p value and I have ended up with much fewer selections but a substantial profit.

  5. 5 hours ago, harry_rag said:

    Wish I could find anyone else to talk about a ratings system for goal (or try/touchdown) scorers but I'm more or less ploughing a solo furrow with that one, barring a guy I used to work with who is effectively my "colleague" in the endeavour.

    Slightly obvious question (maybe) but I'll ask it to see if any of you fellow stats nerds think differently.

    I've started afresh with my data since the new "one spread firm" era began in November and made a slight tweak to my formula to allow for there no longer being two firms offering prices. T'other fella has carried on as before. Doing it his way gives 573 bets with a profit of 37.27 points and an ROI of 6.5% while my new approach gives 414 bets and +29.26 points with an ROI of 7.07%. Those are qualifying selections from an overall data sample of 2348 players.

    So I "win" in terms of having the better ROI but have passed up 159 bets with a profit/ROI of 8.01 points and 5.04%.

    Would you start backing those selections immediately or stick to the slightly less bets/better ROI criteria for a while longer and see how the data develops. The 159 bets is still a relatively small sample size.

    I would calculate the probability value (you need to know the average odds for this)

  6. 10 hours ago, Zilzalian said:

    With respect and i have to be careful when communicating with you because you seem to be a very sensitive sort and get a bit titsy whenever i challenge your thinking. However in all the time i have been on here you have never won anything apart from a few KO cup competitions and lose money year on year. A few members have given you good advice over the years but you just ignore them or come up with a reason to just carry on regardless. Most bettors are quite prepared to lose pounds to achieve a goal but you are terrified of losing pennies which is very strange because that is what you constantly do, lose pennies that turn into pounds. I have said before you need to throw out everything you are doing and find a different approach/angle because if you keep banging your head against this brick wall you will be spending more money on paracetamol than the horses. In your defence i will say at least you involve yourself in most aspects of the site which is good but that does open you up for responses from other members as does anything i or anyone else might put up.

    To be fair I think @The Equaliserdoes very well with his naps (better than you and I !) and he would probably be better sticking all his money on this selection (quality rather than quantity) if he wants to maximise his profit (which might not be his actual objective).

  7. @Trotter replied

    Just the Racing Post and I use their standard times

    I think the 'art' in the process comes from working out allowances ...... as for race times the Post has a huge database so their times should be as good as any and as long as you use the same set of times all the time it doesn't really matter ....... it's not absolute figures that matter it's relative figures between horses !

  8. @Trotter replied

    that's true ! ...... I usually do AW when I bother with them 

    In fact I did do AW speed ratings for a good 3 or 4 years a few years ago and found it a good basis for assessing races. It's OK over the winter but during the summer horses flit between AW and Turf so you never have the full picture of how they're running from race to race. The main problem is that there is far too much racing ...... it would be a full time job to rate all races. It might be practical to do it for Irish racing where they have a lot fewer meetings

    If you do fancy a crack at compiling your own ratings it might be an idea to have a separate thread where all the speed ratings posts can be grouped together ..... it's a topic that crops up every now and then but the posts get lost in the daily threads

  9. This is the first post that was posted in the daily chat by @Trotter

     

    I don't think there's any way I'm going to keep this up but thought I'd do some speed figures for todays Curragh meeting. I'd like to do ratings for every meeting that includes a Group race but I don't imagine I will .... It'll soon become a chore that I give up on

    Here's the ratings of todays winners - highest to lowest

    Procrastinate 102, 
    Real Force 101,
    Brilliant 98,
    Money Dancer 93,
    Arizona Blaze (2) 90,
    Chazzesmee 90,
    Merisi Diamond 88,
    Global Energy 83

    This was run on Heavy ground and my going allowance was 88 ...... so the bulk of all the above figures is going allowance

    eg Procrastinate ran a figure of 14 then got his 88 going allowance added on

    note that my ratings are in lengths per mile ...... so Procrastinate would be 18 lengths per mile quicker than Global Energy ....... in a mile race I'd expect him to beat him by 18 lengths

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