Fintron's AW Thread

[fintron]

Seeing Russ start his own AW thread has spurred me into action to start my own. A while ago I did a little bit of research into AW racing with a view to starting a thread, but over the summer the flat meetings obviously take over and us AW addicts were mainly restricted to the Wednesday meeting at Kempton and the usual Saturday meeting at Wolverhampton so I saw little point. Looking at the Sporting Life calendar it seems the AW meetings will be coming thick and fast now though, so now seems a good time to start a thread. When I finished my research before I popped a few graphs and bits of info up on here so I won't post all those up again, instead I'll just skim through the findings.... Importance of Market Position in all-weather handicaps I gathered results from 319 AW handicaps from all five AW UK courses - Kempton, Southwell, Lingfield, Wolverhampton and Great Leighs - and combined all the results together for the purposes of analysis. Findings: favourites had a success rate of 31 % in the handicaps studied (in non-handicaps the win percentage was almost double this!). The field size did not seem to effect the success rate of favourites. I wondered whether favourites may fare better in smaller fields when their true probability of winning was increased, but infact the winning percentage dropped, (29 %) albeit by a negligable amount. Thus I concluded that field size did not effect the chance of favourites winning. The market in general does seem a fair predictor of success, and in the sample of 319 races, 64 % of winners came from in the first four in the betting. I concluded that it was best to concentrate on the first four in the betting. Importance of position in the weights in all-weather handicaps Following on from the research of David Duncan in Horse Racing and Betting Systems I wanted to see whether horses at the head of the weights did indeed outperform horses from the bottom of the weights - as his research indicated. Unlike Duncan, however, I excluded any races with less than ten runners from my analysis because if I had included races with only six runners, for example, it would have been inevitable that a lot of races would be won by a horse from the first five in the weights (as Duncan concluded). I ignored any apprentices allowances as in many cases apprentices aren't always worth every 1 lb of their claim. Findings: Top-weighted animals fare very well in AW handicaps and win just under a fifth of races. Those animals at the bottom of the handicap have a much lower win percentage than those carrying more weight. To me, this made sense, because the horses carrying more weight have higher official ratings and are thus the best horses in the races. Although the principle of handicapping is to give every horse and equal chance of winning by making the top horses carry extra weight, it seems that in practice every horse is not equal and it is best to back horses at the top of the handicap. SP of AW handicap winners As you would expect, the SP's of handicap winners was wide ranging but it seems that it is best to avoid backing short price favourites in handicaps. Because favourites have a low success rate (almost half of that of favourites in non-handicaps) there is little value in backing horses less than 5/2 in the long run. 4/1 seemed to be a price that cropped up quite often (8.2 % of 319 winners). 7/2 (6.3 %) and 8/1 (6 %) came up quite a few times too. I concluded that it may be best to focus on horses priced between 5/2 and 8/1 to acheive long-term profits. Analysis of form figures in handicaps It makes sense to follow horses that are in form but I was quite surprised when the results showed that only 39 % of 319 handicap winners had posted a win in their last three runs. Further still, only 47 % of winners had finished in the last three on their last run. Put another way, just because a horse won or made the frame last time out does not make it anymore likely to win its next race! From this I concluded that you should not be put off by a horses form figures, and that you need to delve more closely into its form. Did it have a poor draw last time out? Was it in the grips of the handicapper? If it ran in a sprint, did it finish 4th, but in a blanket finish? has the horse been faring poorly on turf on recent outings and if it has, did it have a good history on the AW before that could make it overpriced for its current race? Is it dropping in class? Analysis of all-weather maidens 54 % of 100 maiden races analysed were won by favourites and 86 % were won by a horse from the first three in the betting. 85 % of maiden winners had previous racecourse experience. Thus, when betting on maidens it is best to ignore newcomers, no matter how good their trainer is, and concentrate on those at the head of the market. A horse may have been unplaced on its debut but providing it has at least one run under its belt it can at least come on for that experience. I'll leave it at that for now as all that info probably bores people to death (if you are still with me!?), but in the next post when I get chance I will post details of draw biases I found and list the trainers and jockeys that seemed to do best on the AW. Fin

[fintron]

Re: Fintron's AW Thread I can't seem to find the spreadsheet with the draw biases so will have to put them up later. Anyway, the first bet for the thread is from the 4.20 today at Wolverhampton. Pegasus Dancer is one of Kevin Ryan's and may be able to provide Neil Callan with a much needed winner. The king of the sand has ridden only two winners from 49 rides in the last two weeks but in that time he has been sat on a lot of outsiders. His mount is a son of Danehill Dancer who has been running in sellers and claimers recently. Although he steps back into handicaps today, this is only a class 6 affair, and so the standard of racing isn't really much higher. The last time he won a handicap was in December when he won off a mark of 67, and he is 6 lbs lower here. He likes to race prominently so his draw in stall 6 shouldn't pose any great problems and given he has one of the best top-speed ratings in the field I think he may be able to make a bold bid from the front and at least manage a place. Although he hasn't won here before, he has run respectably on previous outings at Dunstall Park and I'll take my chance each-way. Stan James go 13/2 (BOG) and pay 1/4 odds on 3 places so the suggested bet is 5 pts EW.