Morning News

Good morning...

So, a pretty average day, yesterday.

An average strike rate for the top rated horse and a pretty average strike rate for the top three rated horses.

A nice Trifecta and a few Reverse Trifectas.

The Live Ratings did their job in one of the races where we had a non-runner

There were no All Weather races (and, obviously, no Flat Turf races) so the new Speed Ratings had nothing to do.

Only three meetings and no special races;

Oh, and Spurs managed to lose the League Cup final.

So, all in all, a pretty average day (especially the bit about Spurs losing to Chelsea!)

And, just to re-assure you...

I'm not bitter about that last bit;

Disappointed, peeded off and slightly hungover but,

Not bitter.

I'm just a little bit worried that Levy will do something stupid and mess up a team/head coach combination who are doing the best things since Danny Blanchflower ("The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.") or Jimmy Greaves played the beautiful game for the team that believes in playing the beautiful game.

Anyway, that's beside the point, let's get straight on and take a quick look at yesterday's results in more detail....

Yesterday's Results

Yesterday's Results, show a strike rate (for our top rated horse) of 26.32%.

The Overall Profit Index. If you had blindly backed every top three rated horse in all of the races you would have had 41.33 units returned to 56 units staked. The Overall Profit Index was, thus, 73.8%

N.B. I'm going to explain how I work this out later on in this post.

Top Rated Horse - If you had blindly backed the top rated horse in all of the races you would have had 18.03 units returned to 19 units staked. The Top Rated Profit Index was, thus, 94.89%

2nd Rated Horse - If you had blindly backed the second rated horse in all of the races you would have had 15.42 units returned to 19 units staked. The Second Rated Profit Index was, thus, 81.16%

3nd Rated Horse - If you had blindly backed the third rated horse in all of the races you would have had 7.88 units returned to 18 units staked. The Third Rated Profit Index was, thus, 43.78%

Forecasts

There were 1 forecast yesterday.

Sedgefield 14:40:00 - The CSF paid £27.95

Reverse Forecasts

There were 0 reverse forecasts yesterday.

Tricasts/Trifectas

There were 1 tricasts/trifectas yesterday.

Sedgefield 14:40:00 - The Trifecta paid £35.20

Reverse Tricasts/Trifectas

There were 2 reverse tricasts/trifectas yesterday.

Navan 15:50:00 - The Trifecta paid £10.70

Winners

From the 20 rated races there were 13 winners (from the top 3 rated horses.) None of those were at decent prices though.

The Portfolio

There was neither a Banker's Bet nor a Chancer's Bet yesterday.

On the Portfolio Page there is now a link to the Banker's Bet Proofing Page and, also to the Chancer's Bet proofing page.

You may subscribe to my Portfolio. To do so, you need to go to your Members Page and change option 4 on the Your Profile bit.

If you haven't subscribed, the button will say Yes - just click on it and you'll be signed up.

Live Ratings

There were three races, yesterday, where a top three rated horse was a non-runner.

Sedgefield 15:10 - Our top rated horse was a non-runner. The Live Ratings promoted our second and third rated horse and brought in Gin Cobbler as the new third rated horse.

Gin Cobbler came second and, as a result, we got the Reverse Trifecta which paid £9.00.

Navan 15:20 - Our third rated horse was a non-runner. The Live Ratings brought in Some Drama as the new third rated horse.

Some Drama couldn't be faffed and came nowhere.

Huntingdon 15:30 - Our third rated horse was a non-runner. The Live Ratings brought in Fredo as the new third rated horse.

Fredo won at 6.0 ISP (8.0 BSP.) Betfair paid 3.05 for the place.

Once the Speed Ratings are finished I am going to put a bit more efffort into helping you use the Live Ratings - there will be a Smartphone/Tablet App but, before I publish that (and for those of you who don't have a SmartPhone or Tablet) I'll be offering a service (for free) whereby you can opt in to receive an email everytime the Live Ratings change.

I can't send you an SMS text message as that would cost me too much but...

I can (and will) create a new webpage which you can load (and, perhaps "pin the tab" if you use Chrome) and then, if there is a non-runner, it will beep and talk to you out loud (either with my voice or with a computer generated voice) to tell you that the Live Ratings have changed.

Speed Ratings

There were no AW races and no Flat Turf races yesterday, and thus, there were no Speed Ratings.

I'm still on target for publishing the Speed Ratings on the morning ratings email as of Saturday the 7th of March.

This week I am going to take a look at how the Speed Ratings might apply to NH races. Personally I don't think that this will show up any decent results but, until I've done an audit, I won't really know.

I've also got to run the numbers and show the results of the Live Ratings over that last two years.

So, a bit of work to do.

I'm also going to look into producing a consolidated Speed Rating for any horse that runs over all three codes.

Perhaps it would be better just to look at the horse's performance over the Flat Turf and the All Weather Flat - there's a fair bit of number crunching to do but I intrinsically feel that there may be a "magic card" lying in wait somewhere out there.

This is a purely achedemic exercise but it might show up some decent results for those horses that run in more than one code.

No promises but, it's certainly something that has to be done.

Questions and Answers

I received some emails yesterday and one question needs to be answered and explained.

After all, if one person asks a question then, perhaps, others are thinking about asking the same question.

So, I'll try to answer those questions here and now.

Please be aware that, once the Speed Ratings are finished, Jill and I will try to update the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) sewction of the site so that you can get an answer without having to wait for me to reply to your emails.

The Overall Profit Index. - This is purely the amount returned (by backing all the top three horses in every race to ISP) divided by the cost of doing so.

Thus, if the Overall Profit Index is less than 100%, you would have made a loss.

If the Overall Profit Index is 115% then you would have made a 15% return upon your investment.

Now, I don't advocate blindly backing every top three rated horse in every race;

That's not really what we are about - all I try to do is to reduce every race to the three likely contenders and then let you make up your own mind as to which races are worth looking at and which horses in those races are worth considering.

However, having a sensible overall measure of how well the ratings are doing is sensible and I'll publish that measure every day, good or bad.

Now, I'll work with Jill to try and answer one frequently asked question, every day, on the Morning News email.

If we do that every day then, sooner or later, we'll have answered every question that it's possible to ask...

Including "What's the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything?" and, I don't happen to agree with Douglas Adams who claimed in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Universe that it's 42...

I make it more like 41.92%.

But then, I've got bigger computers (but not the writing talent) than he had!

Today

Today's early test ratings show 19 rated races from three meetings.

Have a great day's racing!

Once again, if you've got anything to say about Focus Ratings, please wander over to the Focus Ratings Review at Tipsters Review and have your say.

The income that we make from sign ups from that site keeps me in Red Wine and Smelly Cheese!

As always...

My kindest regards