Morning News

Good morning...

Just a quickie to say that I am going to have a day off today and am going to be putting my feet up and relaxing a bit.

Doing the Speed Ratings has really been doing my head in and I've sort of realised that it's time to take a break.

After all the hideous data entry that I've been doing, I am starting to obsess about the "Shape of the Races" - did you know that races have shapes (in terms of the shape of the Seconds per Furlong plotted as a graph?)

Some horses run better in certain shaped races; others run better in other shaped races.

If I could predict what the shape of the race was going to be, I could better predict which horse will do well (and otherwise.)

And that could lead to more accurate ratings.

And one of you has mentioned the dreaded P word...

Pace!

I now have realised that Speed Ratings aren't the be all and end all of the secret to identify which horse is going to win a race; we also need to consider the pace of the race.

I'm going to continue my work on the Speed Ratings but I'm also going to put things into perspective by including an element of pace.

However, in order to hit the ground running, I do need to take a day off in order to clear my head and relax a bit before moving on.

Moving on...

From tomorrow, I shall be reporting on the results of blindly backing every top three rated horse in each rated race.

Now, this might not such a good idea but I feel that it is a good metric to explain the quality of the ratings.

Yesterday, if you had blindly backed every top three rated horse (to £1 stakes) you would have paid out £100 and had £87.77 returned.

So, not a profitable day but not too far off.

Today...

I've just run the 3am test ratings and they show 14 races from 2 meetings.

I'm not going to try to do any analysis as I've been at it for 20 hours and the brain cells are starting to die off in mass.

Today, I shall largely be relaxing and trying to forget that horses run around a track.

I'll also be trying to forget that my football team is crap and and probably shouldn't be allowed to ever enter the FA cup ever again.

As it happens, I'm a Spurs supporter (for my sins) but I guess that all you Man U, Man City, Southampton and Chelsea supporters must feel much the same way?

It really is a very silly game, isn't it?

Horse Racing is so much more sensible!

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