Morning News

Good morning...

Now, I have to apologise but...

I am going out for lunch today so I shall be away from the computer for a few hours.

Also (and more importantly) I am taking Friday off.

Yes, I know that I've already had a day off this year but...

a). I shall be working on the Speed Ratings all weekend and,

b). I need to go to Morlaix to do my Christmas shopping. I must be getting old as, in the past, I've always left Christmas shopping until 4pm on Christmas Eve!

However, I rather suspect that the real reason for going to Morlaix is to stock up on interesting wines from a discount store that sells (amongst other things), interesting wines.

After all, Christmas just isn't Christmas unless you have a nice stock of interesting wines.

But, before you start salivating too much about interesting wines.

Let's take a look at yesterday's results...

Yesterday's Results

Yesterday's Results, show a strike rate (for our top rated horse) of just 23.33%.

Now, that's not such an impressive strike rate but it doesn't worry me as, last December, we had an average strike rate (for our top rated horse) of 23.03% and, so far, this December we are running at 29.18%.

Forecasts

There were no forecasts yesterday.

Tricast

There were no tricasts yesterday.

Winners

From the 30 rated races there were 18 winners (from the top 3 rated horses) - only two of those were at anything like a decent price.

Course	Time	Horse	ISP	BSP
Leicester	13:40	Boston Blue	6.5	7.0
Kempton	18:20	Anglophile	8.0	9.0

Comments...

Here's the actual review of some of the races...

1). Hexham 12:50 - Yesterday I said... "In the 12:50 at Hexham our top rated horse, Ballyboker Breeze, has a confidence level of 200% and is the Trainer's only horse at the meeting. However, he has fallen twice in the last five races."

Well, Ballyboker Breeze went onto win by...

Was that really 71 lengths?

Wow, I'm going to have to try and find a video of that race so that I can see it for myself.

Obviously, Ballyboker Breeze reads the Morning News and wanted to impress.

2). Leicester 14:40 - We got the top three, unfortunately not in the right order.

3). Leicester 15:10 - We got the top three, unfortunately not in the right order.

4). Hexham 15:20 - We got the top three, unfortunately not in the right order.

Yesterday, I said that... "In the 15:20 at Hexham our third rated horse, Mohawk Ridge, has lousy form but is dropping in class. He has a good confidence level of 97.89%, has won twice on Heavy going (and been placed 3 times.) There’s something that catches my eye about his rating."

Mowhawk Ridge came fourth and I really (secretly) thought that he would be the surprise winner. That just goes to show how much I know about horse racing.

5). Dundalk 20:10 - We got the top three, unfortunately not in the right order.

And that, believe it or not, is all I can say about what turned out to a be a pretty boring day's racing.

The Portfolio

There was a Banker's Bet yesterday (but not a Chancer's Bet)

Our Banker's Bet was....

AW Seasonal Losers (to win!) - where R4 Status = 1 and where R4 is Greater than Average R4 and the Horse\'s Average R4 is greater than 2.5 and where Race Type = All Weather and where the Race is Not a Handicap Race and the Race\'s RC1 is greater than 60% and where Position last time out = Unplaced and the Month is January or the Month is February or the Month is March or the Month is September or the Month is October or the Month is November or the Month is December and the Horse\'s Confidence is greater than 140%

Selection = Back to ISP - Lingfield (AW) - 13:00:00 - The Gay Cavalier (3)

Races (over last year): 32 Wins: 18 Strike Rate: 56.25% ROI: 135.56%

Unfortunately, The Gay Cavalier came second by half a length.

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.

Any other business

And finally...

Winter Upgrades

I've written a post to detail the Winter Upgrades - you can see it here... Winter Upgrades

I am updating that post to show which upgrades have been implemented and, where possible, to indicate when I think that an upgrade may be implemented.

So, to quickly summarise yesterday's work...

Well, there wasn't actually too much of it as,

a). I was busy on the Dutching stuff and

b). As I mentioned earlier, I am off out for lunch and I don't really like doing too many changes if I'm not going to be around to put it all right when it all goes horribly wrong.

UPG009 – I’m going to redesign the morning ratings email to make it easier to understand.

I have swapped the morning ratings email around.

The new format is now at the top of the email and the old format is at the bottom of the email.

I'll leave it this way for a few days and then delete the old format ratings.

Dutching

I've produced a new spreadsheet and have been working on it.

And there is some new news.

You might want to take a look at Dutching - a Strategy - Stage 3

It's certainly not finished; in fact, the more questions that I ask...

The more questions that I have to answer!

Speed Ratings

Thank you for your feedback about the best way to approach Speed Ratings.

The initial stage of the work has been completed but I won't be doing any more work on it until the weekend.

Words of Wisdom

One member has kindly taken it upon himself to educate me in one area of horse racing and, even more kindly...

He has allowed me to publish his words of wisdom on the site.

I published Episode one yesterday and you can see it here... The Missing Link.

I have just published Episode two and you can see it here... What are the “big” meetings and why?.

Zero inbox email policy

I currently have an empty email inbox!

I do have a few mails in my To Do folder but I think that this does mean that I am getting better at getting round to answering your emails.

Today

I've just produced the early morning test ratings and they look a bit like early morning test ratings to me.

They show me 26 rated races from 4 meetings.

The only things that stand out (to my non-horseracing eyes) are...

Newcastle 12:20 - In the first race of the day our top rated horse, Clenagh Castle has a decent confidence level of 178.29% but this is more to do with the other horses have very low ratings rather than him being an exceptional beast himself (he's currently at 14/1 on OddsChecker.)

Kempton 16:20 - Our top rated horse, Chicago Bere, has a confidence level of 200%. A quick look at the database shows that he's pretty much the stand out horse in this race (having already beaten our second rated horse) so let's hope he's reading this and decides to prove that he hasn't got a rating of 5.57 (more than twice that of Colourfilly) for nothing.

Kempton 16:50 - Our top rated horse, Vimy Ridge, is dropping 2 classes and our second rated horse is moving up 2 classes. Now, either I'm wrong or the market is wrong as Vimy Ridge is currently 7/1 on OddsChecker. It must be said, though, that our third rated horse is currently shown as the 6/4 favourite on OddsChecker.

So, there's really nothing left for me to do apart from preparing for a nice lunch out and...

Start counting the minutes until Wine O'Clock!

Which...

According to my calculations (and I have double checked this on 2 different computers) is...

Only 11 hours and 10 minutes (and 32 seconds) away!

Have a great day's racing!

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

As always...

My kindest regards