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Today I have some very important news for you.
As you know, for the last 3 years I have been looking for a way to improve Focus Ratings; to move us from our current ratings strategy (R4) to a new and improved one (which I call R5.)
I have been down many blind allies and been stumped by too many dead ends.
At, at times, I felt like it wasn't worth the effort but...
Something inside me drove me on.
Basically I wanted more winners and, more importantly, more high priced winners.
A few months ago I was out for a long walk and was wondering if I was making things too complicated - I realised that I was and, so. when I got home I took a look at the simplest ratings ever designed...
Clive Holt's Fine Form system.
Starting again from scratch...
Clive Holt's Fine Form ratings system is very simple. The rules of it are below...
Last 2 Races in the Current Season
1st Place 5 points
2nd Place 3 points
3rd Place 2 points
4th Place 1 point
Course and Distance win 3 points
Distance win 3 points
Course win 1 point
Now, I had some questions about some of those numbers.
They just look to me (and my devious mathematical mind) just a bit too rounded.
So, I decided to test all the numbers to see if I could improve on them.
Clive Holt published FineForm in 1988 and, presumably, it took some time to research and write. A lot has changed in the last 30 years and I'm sure that most people now, when looking at a horse's form, look at more than the last 2 races.
I came up with a ratings strategy inspired by Fineform but more logical and mathematically correct.
I was a happy bunny, let me tell you.
I had come up with an additional strategy that I could add to R4 to make R5.
The big surprise
However, when I did some analysis, I had a bit of a shock.
You see, even on their own, these new ratings are pretty outstanding.
To put things into perspective, in 2016 Focus Ratings had a strike rate (for the top rated horse) of 25.43% and returned a POI (Profit on stakes to ISP or, should that read, loss on stakes) of -14.53%.
Now people seem pretty happy with the strike rate and no one expects ratings to be profitable.
The new ratings though, weighed in with a strike rate (for the top rated horse) of 25.76%.
So, the new ratings (designed just to be an add on to Focus Ratings) are actually more accurate than Focus Ratings!
The real shock was, though...
In 2016, had we had them then, the new Ratings would have returned (to level stakes, to ISP), had you blindly backed every top rated horse in every race...
An outstanding POI of 13.77%!
And that's for a ratings system that is so simple that I can manually rate an 8 horse race with just a pen and paper (and a pocket calculator), as long as I have access to a website such as the Racing Post or the Sporting Life, in about 5 minutes!
Obviously, I shall be merging these new ratings with Focus Ratings (and I need to speak to you about how I shall be doing that) to improve the accuracy and profitability of Focus Ratings but...
With ratings this good, I've got no choice but to launch them as a separate product on their own.
And the Good News is...
You will be getting them for free!
From tomorrow, you'll be getting the new ratings at about 6am every morning but you can take a peek at today's ratings here... Today's New Ratings
As long as you remain a member of Focus Ratings you will always get these new ratings.
Obviously, I'm a bit excited about the new ratings (designed just to be an add on for Focus Ratings) and here's why...
Saturday wasn't such a good day for the ratings but, on Friday, the new ratings were into a level stakes profit for the day to ISP after just the first 5 races (out of 35 races.)
In other words, on Friday, after the 12:50 at Sandown had finished, if in every one of the next 30 races, the top rated horse had lost we'd still have been in profit for the day.
Obviously, the 25/1 winner in the 12:50 at Sandown helped but I'll take profits any way they come.
That's in a way, the beauty of the new ratings; more big priced winners.
As things turned out, the day finished with a strike rate (for the top rated horse) of 32.35% and a profit of 85.79% to ISP.
To BSP (once a 5% commission had been taken into account), the profit on stakes was 130%.
Thursday was also pretty good. The strike rate (for the top rated horse) was 37.14% and by blindly backing the top rated horse the profit would have been 10.10% to ISP.
To BSP (after commission) the profit was 19.56%
Yesterday the strike rate (for the top rated horse) was 36.36% and the profit to ISP was 9.69%. To BSP the profit was 17.02%.
Can you see why I'm so excited?
Moving Forward
Now, the hard work begins.
Over the next 6 weeks I shall be working out how to add the new strategy to Focus Ratings to take us from R4 to R5.
Once again, the aim is to increase the strike rate but, also, to bring in more high priced winners.
And for that I'll need your patience and your help.
The first step will be doing the maths in adding the new strategy to R4 and that may take about 2 weeks.
Once that is done, you will get a second ratings email every day (about 5 minutes after the normal one.) The new ratings email will show the ratings in R5 (rather that R4) format.
Maybe, in a few months time, you'll be so impressed that there'll be no need to send out the current ratings email.
I then need to move on to the Builder to give you an option of choosing either R4 or R5 when you test new systems.
I'll need to then write a program to test all of your existing systems and show what they have done using R4 and what they would have done to R5. I'll need to email you the results and give you the functionality to move systems from R4 to R5.
I need to do this all step by step and keep you informed every time a step has been taken.
Conclusion
Since the Brexit vote the value of the pound has plunged against the dollar and the euro.
Now, Focus Ratings is priced in pounds; the transactions are done by Clickbank, an American company that works in dollars and, because I live in France, I live on euros.
So I've really seen the effect of the plunging pound.
I've had no choice but to commercialise the new ratings; it's either that or getting a day job.
Even though my part of France has the highest unemployment rate in the country, there are plenty of local job vacancies.
Unfortunately, there're the jobs that no one wants to do - mainly in abattoirs (my part of France is very rural.)
Now, I don't mind working at Helga's House of Misery and Pain (as the local abattoir is known) but it would mean less time to work on Focus Ratings.
Anyway, you'll be getting the new ratings for free (as well as the normal ratings) and the new ratings will be added to R4 (to give us R5) to give us more winners and, more importantly, more high priced winners.
The new Ratings site is to be found at Advance Ratings.
I haven't had time to look into strategies but it might be interesting to see what happens if a horse is top rated on our current ratings and on the new ratings - there may be other strategies that you come up with.
For me, the real work starts with finding the best way, mathematically, to add the new ratings to our current ratings and do all the work in updating the builder, producing new ratings PDFs and CSV files and so on.
I hope that all of the above makes sense; if you have any questions, please contact me and ask away.
All the best
Keith
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