It strikes me that there is an increasing need to identify "false" favourites.

To qualify...

1. Must be in top 5 average prizemoney.

2. Must have wins in today's class or higher.
(E.G. Group 1...must have won a Group 1 prior)

3. Must not have been beaten by more than 3 lengths last start.

4. Must have minimum of 40% place strike rate.

5.No hurdles, maidens, wet tracks.

Any criticism or additional rules or ideas?

This system throws up quite a few winners and erradicates many false favs.

One thing I have noticed (but don't have any figures for yet) is this formline...
141
121
161
etc.
There seem to be not many winners % wise that string consecutive wins together. Usually, they tend to win, run a place or worse and then win again. A high percentage seem to go this way. As I say not a lot of data on this yet but could be worth consideration.

Also got this off a U.K. horseracing guy, here is his "system" and it's doing very well trialled over two months!

The basic idea is to look at a horses last run. Note the the prize money for the race. If that race is more than double the price of todays race ,we then go on to see if that animal was placed,
if so we have a basic selection.



Still can't sleep, so I have more ideas......

:lol:

Favourites tend to have a better record in say Open or Group 1 races. Maidens class 1 etc seem to have a much lower strike rate. I have just seen a U.K. punter who swears by backing the Fave in the highest class / prizemoney race of the day. I suspect he is doubling up though.
More thoughts welcome.

I need a sleeping tablet!


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[ This Message was edited by: Equine Investor on 2002-08-08 06:02 ]

Hey, EI, interesting thoughts. I would tend to agree with 'classier' favourites being more predictable than maiden, low claiming, etc.

Two things caught my eye (that I treat as related) about a) your win/loss/win comment and 2) the 'U.K. System'.

First your comment about win/loss/win. What percentage of that group also either jumps back and forth in distance or claiming price/stakes or other 'class-related' factors? I am often looking for these switches or 'snaps'.

Second, the U.K. guy does something I do. I'm often looking for trainers returning their horses to 'comfort zones'. For example, coming back to a successful distance or inching up in class and then jumping back to a successful classes. I assume these are training or conditioning runs and now we're going to try for the gold.

But identifying false favourites would be very handy. I have a simple formula to sort of dutch horses but it takes out the favourite. The result is, more often than not, positive even in our annoying tote-only betting (where the odds don't settle down until "they're off!"). If I know when to take out this favourite I may have a serviceable lock situation.

-Duck

Prepared to admit when I am wrong....

Based on Cox Plates, Caulfield Cups and Melbourne Cups the favourites only still hold the 30-40% mark.

>>>>>Kaboooom<<<<< goes my theory!

Maybe the rest of the above post still has some worth though.
:???:

[ This Message was edited by: Equine Investor on 2002-08-08 09:48 ]

It would be interesting to know what the strikerate of the favourite is in every main race of every metropolitan meeting say for the past five years.You would have to know what the average price was and then work out the staking maybe doubling like you said but in saying that you would also have to know the biggest run of outs, is it possible to find out the info that I have asked about and if so we could analyse pretty well.

Plugga,

I had thought that the strike rate of favs would improve when eliminating maidens right up to Open class, Hurdles etc.

No the strike rate remains exactly the same!

Shane Dye was quoted about five years ago saying that if you had one bet for the year on the Cox Plate on the favourite, you would come out ahead.

Again not true. It worked for about five years as a string of favs won. However, the numbers always seem to even themselves out over any decent duration of time. Anywhere between 30-40% is the strike rate.

EI,
One method of picking false favourites is to have your own rating system. Compare quoted prices to your ratings to find the FF's. As I've said here previously, WA racing has far more FF's than the East. Don't know what the stats for last year were, but we must have much less than 30% of favourites get up here.

PS A dead set certainty for a false favourite at Belmont tomorrow (if it starts favourite)is Dangerous Play Race 2 or Race 7. Can't win either race.

Dangerous play made you eat your words hey rainlover, the only no chance horse in a horse race is the one that doesn't race !!!!

Too right Plugga. Think I'll keep my outrageous cliams to myself in future. I also said elsewhere that the Eagles were a good bet against Melbourne. Unfortunately, I followed both my tips - hope nobody else did.

Tell me if this rings true. If you see a favourite in the Morning Line at above 2:1 ($3) then it's likely that horse won't be #1 across the line.

By the way, where are your morning lines? I use equibase.com here but I don't seem to be able to find anything like that 'down under'. Can you tell me where to look?

Thanks,

-Duck