Place Betting Strategy

Place Betting Strategy

I have done some more work on the place betting strategy.

The basic rules of the system are...

1). Place bet (on Betfair) the top three rated horse which has the highest yield (confidence multiplied by forecast starting price) of the top three rated horses where...

2). There are 8 runners or more.

That's it; that's the whole system.

I've created a basic spreadsheet which lists all qualifying horses/races for the month of May 2015.

You may see this at... strategy-may-2015.xls

Now, this spreadsheet just lists all top on yield horses for May 2015 where the races had 8 runners or more.

You'll see that there are two tabs on the bottom of the sheet. The first shows the raw data and the second shows the basic analysis.

From the Basic Analysis tab you'll see that, for May 2015, for races with 16 runners or more, the strike rate is 32.14% and the ROI is 103.23% (in other words, you'll make a profit of 3.23% on your total stakes.

And, for races with 8 to 15 runners, the strike rate is 36.39% and the ROI is 102.71% (in other words, you'll make a profit of 2.71% on your total stakes.

Now, for a really basic system, that's a pretty good start.

However, I have done some additional analysis and have come up with the following...

Handicap Races

If we look at handicap/non-handicap races we get the following results...

16 runners or more.

HC		Races		Strike Rate		ROI
No		30		40.00%		127.17%
Yes		78		29.49%		94.03%

8 to 15 runners or more.

HC		Races		Strike Rate		ROI
No		250		40.80%		109.98%
Yes		492		34.15%		99.02%

So, by discarding Handicap races we improve the strike rate and profitability and we still end up with 280 races which equates to about 9 a day.

The Analysis can be seen on the HC Analysis Tab.

R4 Status

I did some analysis of how the R4 Status affected the non handicap races.

However, there was no obvious trend and so I'm not going to think about that any more.

The results of that analysis are available on the R4 Status Analysis tab on the spreadsheet.

If I need another filter, however, I shall discard top rated horses on races with between 8 and 15 runners; they have a great strike rate but the returns are poor. That sort of makes sense to me.

Likewise, I would discard the 3rd rated horses on the bigger races.

Race Type

I have done some analysis on the results for different race type and those results may be seen on the Race Type Analysis tab on the spreadsheet.

For the month of may it would have been profitable to have place bet horses in non-handicap races where there were more than 8 runners in the following race types...

16 or more runners...

NH Chase - Novice
NH Hurdles - Maiden

8 to 15 runners...

All Weather - all races
Flat - Maiden
Flat - Novice
Flat - Selling
NH Chase - Beginners
NH Chase - Hunter Chase
NH Flat - National Hunt Flat
NH Hurdles - all races which have a Race Type2

Now, please bear in mind that I'm only reporting on May 2015 races; I have something (that might be rather important) to say...

However, by using the new Race Type filter and only using non-handicap races we would have got, for the month of May 2015, the following...

16 runners or more.

Races		Strike Rate		ROI
11		54.55%		153.99%

8 to 15 runners or more.

Races		Strike Rate		ROI
192		42.71%		112.26%

The 203 races over 31 days would have equalled 6.5 races a day.

Summary

I have uploaded the new spreadsheet and it may be downloaded from ... strategy-may-2015-01.xls

My strategy is now...

1). Place bet (on Betfair) the top three rated horse which has the highest yield (confidence multiplied by forecast starting price) of the top three rated horses where...

2). There are 8 runners or more.

3). Only non-handicap races.

That's it; that's the whole system.

For yesterday's races, for that basic system, the results are as follows...

For all 29 races with 8 horses or more there were 13 winners (for this strategy) which equates to a strike rate of 44.83%.

30.64 units were returned to 29 units staked.

Conclusion

I now need to take a look at races with 5 to 7 runners - we may be missing out on those.

I also need to re-run the system for each month of the year as I'm pretty sure that the Race Types that are profitable will change from month to month.

It makes me cringe, sometimes, when I see people creating half decent systems and then totally to forget to test those systems individually for each month of the year.

That why, on The Builder, we can report on results month by month.

Even I know that a Novice Hurdle in October is totally different from a Novice Hurdle in February. In November, the horses are (should be) fresh; in February the horses will be tired and some of them will have won races and, thus, be carrying an extra 7lbs (the poor buggers that are actually good horses may have won 2 races in the season and, as a result, only have a 2.64% chance of winning another Novice Hurdle in that season due to the extra 14lbs that they are carrying.)

Even with the two additional filters that I have proposed today (non-handicaps and certain race types) I'm still at 6.5 races a day.

I'm only looking for 3 races a day so I guess I'll just have to find some additional filters in order to improve the strike rate, improve the profitability and...

Get me down to 3 races a day.

As always...

My kindest regards