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Place Betting Strategy

mad_scientistNon Handicap Races

I have started again from scratch and regenerated the spreadsheet.

The data that I am using is from the 8th of July 2013 to the 9th of June 2015.

In other words, almost 2 years of data.

I am looking at all non-handicap races with 5 or more runners.

I'll share the raw data in case you want to come up with a better way of doing things.

There are a number of tabs along the bottom of the spreadsheet.

The first tab contains the raw data and is named Data.

This shows the top on yield horse (of the top three rated horses) for every non-handicap race for a 23 month period where there were 5 or more runners.

Race Types

I started off by looking at Race Types.

As we know, Focus Ratings does better with some race types than it does with others.

So, why not just remove those unprofitable Race Types (for this strategy of place betting the top on yield of the top three rated horses) from the data straight away?

I have also split the data in to three groups; 5 to 7 runners, 8 to 15 runners and 16 plus runners.

The logic to this is that, to Focus Ratings, a small NH Beginners Chase is different to a medium sized one and a big NH Beginners Chase is a different race altogether.

I showed the analysis of the race types on the Race Type Analysis tab.

I've highlighted the Race Types that are profitable.

In fact, as a safety factor, I required a minimum ROI of 102.5% before I consider a race to be profitable.

I then created a new tab (which I called Data01) which shows the data from the Data tab but, with the non-profitable races types taken out.

I showed the basic analysis of the races on the Analysis01 tab.

By filtering out the unprofitable races we are left with an average of 5.04 races a day.

To £10 stakes you would have made an average of £173 in profit each month.

That would have cost you £1,510 in stakes and means that you are making 11.46% a month in profits on your investment.

The Strike Rate is 39.74%.

Now, a profit is a profit but, to my mind, betting (for that read RISKING) an average of £1,510 a month just for a profit of £173 a month doesn't really float my boat.

So, I need to reduce the number of selections (and thus reduce the amount that I am betting) but still make a decent profit; In other words, I need to add some other filters.

So far, the rules of this strategy are...

1). Bet only on certain race types (I'll show the list at the end.)

2). Place bet on Betfair the horse with the highest Yield (of the top three rated horses.)

R4 Status Analysis

I took a look at R4 Status to see if that had any effect on the results.

From the R4 Status tab we can clearly see that top rated horses are not profitable for the bigger races; the races with 8 or more runners.

I created a new Tab (which I called Data02, copied the data from Data01 and deleted all of those 8 runner or more races where the selected horse is top rated.

Now the rules of this strategy are...

1). Bet only on certain race types (I'll show the list at the end.)

2). Place bet, on Betfair, the horse with the highest Yield (of the top three rated horses.)

3). Do not bet on top rated horses in races with 8 or more runners.

I showed the basic analysis of the races on the Analysis02 tab.

By filtering out the top rated horses in races of 8 or more runners we are left with an average of 4.09 races a day.

To £10 stakes you would have made an average of £179 in profit each month.

That would have cost you £1,230 in stakes and means that you are making 14.55% a month in profits on your investment.

The Strike Rate is 37.19%.

A pause...

Now, at this point I have to say that I have analysed many factors such as SP Status, R4 Difference (between R4 and Average R4) and so forth...

But I've decided to only talk about the filters that I'm actually going to use.

Otherwise this analysis will take me forever to finish.

I'm also interested in a system with a fairly high strike that I can use with a specific staking strategy that I'll talk about later.

However, if you want to come up with your own approaches, I have put the raw data online so that you can play with it yourself.

The raw data in Excel format is available at... raw_data.xls

The raw data in CSV format is available at... raw_data.csv

My eventual spreadsheet in XLS format is available at... Strategy.xls

My eventual spreadsheet in Open Office/Libre Office format is available at... Strategy.ods

Now, any system based upon Top on Yield is far too complex for the Builder to handle.

I may be able to upgrade the Builder to take top on yield into account but that will have to wait until after the summer.

So, if any of you come up with ways of profiting from the "Top on Yield" factor thn you'll either have to have to work out the selections manually or...

I may be able to write individual scripts to automate the process.

If I do the latter then you'll have to understand that it'll only be on a "when I have a spare hour or so, no promises" basis.

So...

Back to work.

SP Band

Now, normally I don't like using Forecast SP as a filter but there are good reasons for considering it here.

My rationale is that,

There's no point in coming up with a great, high strike rate system if all your winners are odds on and...

There's little point in coming up with a system that picks out high priced winners (or placers, in this case) if they come up so infrequently that you struggle to stake the selections.

And, once again, I'm interested in a high strike rate system that will allow me to consistently stake the selections according to my staking plan (more of which later.)

Now, this is just one strategy and, even if I end up with just one selection a day, I shall be coming up with additional strategies to supplement this one. I still haven't looked at handicap races and there might be Win Betting opportunities that can be applied to the theory that there is value in betting on the horse that is Top on Yield from the top three rated horses.

And, there also might be some value in looking at the Top on Yield horse from all the rated (and not just the top three rated) horses in a race.

So, I took another look at Data02 (the subset of the main data with the existing filter imposed) and displayed the results on the SP Band Analysis tab.

Now, I've highlighted the profitable FC SP bands and have come up with another set of rules...

1). Races with 5 to 7 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of between 2.0 and 50.0.

2). Races with 8 to 15 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of 5.0 or above.

3). Races with 16 runners or more, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of anything up to 49.99.

My Strategy is now as follows...

Now the rules of this strategy are...

1). Bet only on certain race types (I'll show the list at the end.)

2). Place bet, on Betfair, the horse with the highest Yield (of the top three rated horses.)

3). Do not bet on top rated horses in races with 8 or more runners.

4). Races with 5 to 7 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of between 2.0 and 49.99.

5). Races with 8 to 15 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of 5.0 or above.

6). Races with 16 runners or more, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of anything up to 49.99.

I created a new tab which I called Data03 where I took out the races which were outside the FC SP Bands that aren't profitable and displayed the results of this additional filter on the Analysis03 tab.

By filtering out the non profitable FS SP Bands we are left with an average of 3.93 races a day.

To £10 stakes you would have made an average of £193 in profit each month.

That would have cost you £1,180 in stakes and means that you are making 16.55% a month in profits on your investment.

The Strike Rate is 38.14%.

LTO Analysis

I then decided to look at how a horse performed based upon when it last ran.

Based upon the data shown in Data03 I then took a look at the LTO statistics.

I displayed the results on the LTO Analysis tab.

Now, from looking at this, I'm not sure that there's a decent strategy here so I am going to leave it alone.

Class Analysis

So, I took a look at the same data and looked at the effect of class.

I took the data from Data03 and took a look at the effect of Class.

I displayed the results on the Class Analysis tab.

For the sake of simplicity, I'd be tempted to avoid Class 1 and 2 races where there are 8 runners or more.

Now, I know that we'd be missing out on some profits from the few Class 1 races from the 8 to 15 runner races but...

Stick with me here.

So, I've created a new tab with the data from Datat03 but missing the Class 1 and Class 2 races from races with 8 horses or more.

I called this Data04.

My Strategy is now as follows...

Now the rules of this strategy are...

1). Bet only on certain race types (I'll show the list at the end.)

2). Place bet, on Betfair, the horse with the highest Yield (of the top three rated horses.)

3). Do not bet on top rated horses in races with 8 or more runners.

4). Races with 5 to 7 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of between 2.0 and 49.99.

5). Races with 8 to 15 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of 5.0 or above.

6). Races with 16 runners or more, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of anything up to 49.99.

7). For races with 8 or more runners, ignore Class 1 and Class 2 races.

A simple set of rules, one might think...

By filtering out the non profitable Classes we are left with an average of 3.79 races a day.

To £10 stakes you would have made an average of £192 in profit each month.

That would have cost you £1,140 in stakes and means that you are making 16.84% a month in profits on your investment.

The Strike Rate is 39.47%.

Race Type revisited

Now, bearing in mind that I'm also going to be looking at betting on Handicap races and also looking at the possibility of Win Betting on certain races I feel that I can lose some races by ramping up some of the existing filters.

I decided that the best place to look at was the fundamental filter - race type.

So, I took the data from Data04 and revisited the data according to Race Type (and Race Type2.)

I displayed the results on the tab named Race Type04 Analysis.

Now, I've only been able to remove 29 races from the 23 month period but, by removing 8 to 15 runner Flat Claimers and 16 runner plus NH Hurdles Unknown...

By filtering out the non profitable Race Types we are left with an average of 3.74 races a day.

To £10 stakes you would have made an average of £193 in profit each month.

That would have cost you £1,120 in stakes and means that you are making 17.23% a month in profits on your investment.

The Strike Rate is 40.18%.

Now, that's not too bad but that's where this has to end.

I can't find any other logical filters to improve the strike rate and/or profits.

So, I'll talk a bit about my staking plan.

But, before I do that, logic dictates that I look at the month on month results.

Monthly Breakdown

So, I did a pivot table on the current data and displayed the results on the Monthly Analysis tab.

This shows that we don't make so much money in February (and that's a month that I don't like - tired NH horses and bad weather.)

And we also make a loss in September.

Now, that's sort of down to the way I've selected the race types but, it certainly doesn't hurt to take a month of from betting (on a particular strategy) once a year just so you can review and adjust that strategy.

A Staking Strategy

I intend to start of with a betting bank of £1000.

Because of the 40% strike rate I want to bet to a 100 point bank.

Thus, every selection will be staked at £10.

However, then things get funny...

If I have 3 selections, I will be betting £30 on those 3 selections.

But, I want to adjust my stakes to concentrate on those selections with the highest ROI.

Thus, I may bet £15 on one horse, £10 on another and £5 on the third selection.

There's no law that says that we have to bet the same on every horse...

If you had two selections (and, thus, £20 to stake) and one of those was Frankel and the other was Dennis the three legged Donkey,

Wouldn't it be more sensible to put £18 on Frankel and £2 on the animal rescue center horse?

I'm not, at this point in time, exactly sure about how I'll split the total stakes amongst the selections but, that's just a question of maths.

At the end of every month I shall take out half of the profits for that month - that'll largely be spent on medallions de Foie Gras and Braised Lamb Shank at the local restaurant - or other similar treats for Jill and me.

Then, I shall recalculate the betting bank and adjust the stakes accordingly.

Obviously, for a place betting strategy, there may be issues with finding liquidity on the Betfair Place market and, as a result, I may end up taking more out each month as a sort of annuity.

Conclusion

I have now come up with a strategy for Place Betting (on the Betfair Place market) horses who are top on yield in non-handicap races.

The rules are, as follows...

1). Bet only on certain race types...

5 to 7 runners:

All Weather - Unknown
All Weather - Conditions
All Weather - Novice
All Weather - Selling

Flat - Conditions
Flat - Nursery

NH Chase - Beginners
NH Chase - Graduation
NH Chase - Hunter
NH Chase - Juvenile
NH Chase - Maiden
NH Chase - Novice

NH Hurdles - Claiming
NH Hurdles - Introductory

8 to 15 runners:

All Weather - Apprentice
All Weather - Claiming
All Weather - Classified
All Weather - Conditions
All Weather - Selling

Flat - Intermediate
Flat - Maiden
Flat - Novice

NH Chase - Unknown

NH Flat - Intermediate
NH Flat - National Hunt Flat

NH Hurdles - Charity Stakes
NH Hurdles - Maiden
NH Hurdles - Novice
NH Hurdles - Selling

16 runners plus:

All Weather - Apprentice

Flat - Unknown
Flat - Apprentice

NH Chase - unknown

NH Flat - National Hunt Flat

NH Hurdles - Unknown
NH Hurdles - Maiden
NH Hurdles - Novice

2). Place bet, on Betfair, the horse with the highest Yield (of the top three rated horses.)

3). Do not bet on top rated horses in races with 8 or more runners.

4). Races with 5 to 7 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of between 2.0 and 49.99.

5). Races with 8 to 15 runners, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of 5.0 or above.

6). Races with 16 runners or more, only bet on horses where the top on yield horse (from the top three rated horses) has a Forecast SP of anything up to 49.99.

7). For races with 8 or more runners, ignore Class 1 and Class 2 races.

8). Think very carefully about betting on this strategy in September.

Even without forgetting about betting on races in September we are left with an average of 3.74 races a day.

To £10 stakes you would have made an average of £193 in profit each month.

That would have cost you £1,120 in stakes and means that you are making 17.23% a month in profits on your investment.

The Strike Rate is 40.18%.

Now, this is just a strategy and there's no reason why you shouldn't ignore some selections if common sense says that you should.

Conclusion

For this strategy...

The raw data in Excel format is available at... raw_data.xls

The raw data in CSV format is available at... raw_data.csv

My eventual spreadsheet in XLS format is available at... Strategy.xls

My eventual spreadsheet in Open Office/Libre Office format is available at... Strategy.ods

Now, I need to do the whole exercise again for Handicap races - there may be some value there.

I also need to see if there are times when you should Win Bet on horses which are top on yield (of the top three rated horses.)

And, who knows, there may also be value in betting on the top on yield horse from all rated horses.

But, for the moment, I'll largely be spending the next hour counting the minutes (and seconds) until Wine O'Clock!

As always...

My kindest regards

keith-eckstein1

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