Lowest on Yield – 1

Lowest on Yield...

I recently mentioned that I believe that there is value in backing the lowest on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) in non-handicap races on the first page of the ratings (option 1 on the ratings email.)

Now, I have received a lot of feedback and am now ready to start crunching the numbers.

However, I have decided to test a number of possible strategies at the same time.

I shall be calling these strategies Lowest on Yield Strategy or LOYS and they will be numbered as LOYS1, LOYS2 etc.

The Strategies...

1). LOYS1 - Lowest on yield horse from the top three rated horses on the first page of the ratings in non-handicap races.

This is the current strategy and is a result of my observations.

2). LOYS2 - Lowest on yield horse from all horses in the race on the first page of the ratings in non-handicap races.

I have been informed that there is more value to be had by looking at all the horses in the race rather than just the top three.

3). LOYS3 - Lowest on yield horse from the top three rated horses in the race for all rated races in non-handicap races.

I have based my observations on just the first page of the ratings but there may be a better cut off point.

4). LOYS4 - Lowest on yield horse from all horses in the race for all rated races in non-handicap races.

Who know what this might reveal?

The Process

I am just about to cut a data set and create a spreadsheet for the analysis. This will be based upon exactly 2 years of data (to make the calculations easier for me) from (and including) the 1st of September 2013 to the 31st of August 2015.

I will then save the basic spreadsheet as 4 different ones so that they can be analysed individually.

I shall start off by looking at the unfiltered data and then move on to testing some individual filters.

Initially I will start with LOYS1 and LOYS2 as the results from those will help speed up the other two possible strategies.

Some of the filters that I shall test are as follows...

a). No of runners in the race. This is an obvious one - the fewer runners, the better our chance of picking the winner.

b). Race Type. It could be that, by filtering out certain race types we can improve the basic strike rate.

c). Difference in yield. I've noticed that if one horse (from the top three rated horses) is significantly lower in yield than the other two, then it almost always wins.

d). Actual yield. It could be that, if the lowest on yield horses, has a very low yield then that might indicate it's likelihood of winning (or otherwise.)

I'm tempted to avoid things like Days Last Since Last Race as that is taken into account in the ratings themselves. Having said that, so is the number of runners so that may all change.

The important thing is to take it one step at a time and not have any pre-conceived ideas.

Moving Forward

At the moment I am only looking and Backing to Win and will only be looking at ISP. I know that most of you use Betfair but, if I can show a profitable strategy to ISP then, by using BOG or Betfair SP, you will be able to further increase your profits.

I may, at a later date, re-ruin the numbers to investigate Place Betting on Betfair.

Once a strategy (or a number of strategies) are defined, I shall write some code so that the selections are automatically generated and then shown on the morning ratings email.

I shall also be looking at some kind of exotic bet to use with the selections.

However, I don't know a Trixie from a Lucky 15 and so I may be asking for your help and advice here.

Conclusion

I imagine that I'll be able to publish an update every two or three days and, thus, the entire process may take a couple of weeks.

In the mean time I will try to report on the results of the current strategy where we just look at the horses that has the lowest yield from the top three rated in non-handicap races from the first page of the ratings.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, please feel free to let me know; feedback is always welcome.

As always...

My kindest regards