I am going to assume there is only a small subset of variables that step down semi smoothly with the odds. Barrier is going to be one I am sure.

When you say categorise favourites/races I am a little confused. Im not sure what you mean by categories. Are we categorising favourites based on the variables we found ? or based on something else ? Im confused.

hmmm ... I jsut reread it and I am still confused. Im trying to work out how this is different to just a set of mechanical rules ?

We have categorised things based on odds and not profit .... But how does this help. sorry I know it muyst be frustrating for you to try and point this out to me but its frustrating the ******** out of me that I can't understand it.

Hi Uselessbettor,

If you don't mind I'm going to send you a quick email with a question?

The Schmile

__________________
The Schmile

"I buy when other people are selling.”
― J. Paul Getty

As I understand it, categorising is probably the confusing term here.
I think an actual to expected ratio could be what woof's implying (I could be wrong).

This information is calculated by working out the actual / expected ratio for each parameter. The actual / expected ratio is like an enhanced Impact Value which takes into the account the price of each horse.

You can work out the actual / expected ratio (A/E) by dividing the actual number of winners by the expected number of winners. The expected number of winners is worked out with the following formula:

Expected Winners=sum of all 'odds' where odds=1 / (SP + 1)

If you exclude any bookies over-round for now, then the odds of each runner is 1 / (SP + 1). An Evens shot is therefore expected to win 0.50 of the time, whilst a 3/1 shot is expected to win 0.25 of the time. If we had 100 3/1 shots, then we would expect 25 of them to win (100 * 0.25).

The A/E ratio can be used to show how efficient a parameter is. A figure of 1.00 means 'as expected'. A figure less than 1.00 means not as expected.

In situations where the figure is above 1.00 this means that the parameter is being underbet by the public.
Figures below 1.00 indicate that the parameter is being overbet by the public and is not winning as often as it should.

There are flaws contained within, you cannot account for unknown differences, you can only identify underbet or overbet by joe public.

I abandoned this, because the unknown factors are more than three times the influence on price, than the known factors.
Using the above can identify what market order should be and even price, but does not account for the most important factor of all.
The fluctuations in betting.

The differences are quite apparent when you take all favourites at Top Fluctuation, drifters at TF, and Firmers at TF.
This is exactly why, bookmakers won't let you take TF on firmers once the betting has commenced.
Joe Public has been betting on this horse, but Joe Private has lumped ten times the amount on the same horse for reasons that aren't in any database, formguide or video.

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Are you sure that is what he is talking about ?

If that was the case you can do it with any combination of variables.

Im not so sure thats what woof was trying to describe.

Exactly..

All your first steps are, is to categorize the Fav and how strong or the gap over the 2nd fav. and to find correlations in the odds to finished odds nothing more or nothing less.

You will be testing as many variables (in formguides or tipsheets) as possible to find ones with a correlation and know which ones don't.

I didn't tell you, but once you find a variable or combination, you would then breakdown this down into subsets of races based on the fav odds <3.00 etc.

Of course there is holes in what I have been explaining, the above approach is to provide very good first order approximation to those precious crowd odds.

Just with the above information I'm able to provide trifecta combinations that provide positive expectations for each race catergory.

Once you have completed the above your then ready to move onto actually using your own handicapping in "cluster analysis".

Is this some sort of Twilight Zone or something?

No wonder I'm no good at picking winners OR losers.

If that's the sort of detail one has to go into I am obviously doomed to failure and should just stick to trading.

Hey Ocho,
Its called Bamboozling one with ****.
Are you sure that one of these posters is not Mistermac?

Mistermac? I feel like a Big Mac now.

But I actually feel like Mister Magoo who can't see where he's going with all that bamboozling that's going on.

Mmmmm pickles!

Woof has a nice system that has evolved from 1000's of hours of work going back many years. To simplify it matches race types against previous fav results and strongly factors observations less utilized such as 'turn times'. I suggest it also weighes heavily on determining 'false favs' as the races to bet up on with tri's/quinella's/exacta's, etc. He will continue to do nicely from it and he'll prosper from his effort.

I understand his study but prefer to keep rules to a minimum and keep the system much simpler than many of those posted here. A bit like Darky. It makes the data easier to interpret and adjustments become obvious.

To try to give an example of keeping things simple, does anyone share the belief the 6 box is automatically disadvantaged in a dog race for whatever reasons? There's a pure gut observation shared by most and it's surprisingly not hammered out yet by punters.

I thought the same thing about the 5 box on the UK dogs (6 runners) where the stats for most tracks also agreed. Suffice to say that when it came time for ME to lay them it didn't pan out too well.