"Favourites have a bad record"

[slapdash]

Quite often you hear somebody say on the TV racing programmes that in some particular race "favourites have a bad record", suggesting that it's a bad idea to back the favourite. Without having done any research, my gut feeling is that this is probably nonsense. The amount of evidence for any particular race is very small, and most of it quite a long time in the past, so it seems very unlikely to me that any evidence there is is going to be statistically significant. I could believe that some particular kind of race might be known to be bad for favourites, but not a particular race. Any views? Is there any genuine evidence that any particular race is bad for favourites?

[bowles10]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record" slapdash, they make their comments from the trends of that race, e.g you could have a race where the favourite has not won in 15 years! that would probably be unusual, but enough to put the punters off the Fav. The trends have to be bucked sooner or later, but the TV guys are stating fact when they say this.

[dave]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record" Some trends make sense. However how many favourites have won a particular race is an irrelavant trend one in my opinion - the horse doesn't know where it is in the betting, it's not going to think "i'm not going to win today because i'm favourite + favourites don't win this race".

[slapdash]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record" bowles: I realize they're just stating facts about the record of favourites. I'm just dubious about whether these facts are significant. In a big handicap, where the favourite is around 4/1, say, then even if that's a fair price, so the favourite has a 20% chance of winning, the chance of the 4/1 favourite losing the last 15 years is about 3.5%, or more than 1 in 30. Considering how many big handicaps there are every year, it's not surprising that there are quite a few where the favourite has this bad a record, even if there's no good reason for it. dave: Yeah, it's clearly stupid to take this literally. But it's conceivable that in some races there's some reason that the lower priced horses (not just the favourite) tend to do worse than the price suggests. I guess my point is that if you look at the last 20 years or so results of a particular race, then just by chance you'll be able to pick out lots of dubious "trends" (not to say there aren't genuine trends as well) -- "favourites do badly", "favourites do well", "fillies do well", "first time out horses do well", "6 year olds and 8 year olds do better than 7 year olds", etc.

[dave]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record" There are good reasons for a lot of trends - mainly that trainers use the same methods year in year out, but the training has nothing to do with the odds really.

[slapdash]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record"

There are good reasons for a lot of trends - mainly that trainers use the same methods year in year out' date=' but the training has nothing to do with the odds really.[/quote'] I'm as sceptical as you, but acting as devil's advocate: Of course, a horse won't run worse because it has low odds, but it's possible that in some races there's a tendency for the bookies or the betting public to overestimate the chances of the shorter-priced horses, so their odds tend to become even lower than they should be, so that it's a particularly bad idea to bet on these horses.

[dave]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record" In certain types of races yes, in certain races no I don't think so.

[Sco]

Re: "Favourites have a bad record" I think I once saw a thread where a person was laying favourites on certain types of races...I cant remember if it was on this forum though? It would be interesting to see how that went, although I have the impression it would go badly. Sco