This week we are back to 1984 where Andrew Mount looks in another 'Systems Study' by Formulator, where he writes...
After throwing a spanner in the works with a system from Nick Mordin in the 00s last week we jump in the punting DeLorean and return to 1984 or thereabouts. The article I have chosen this week is a Systems study by Formulator Piece titled “Beware Penalised Winners”. Following some initial Adam Buxton-style waffle this piece got my attention with the author wrote “I remember doing a survey of previous winners about 10 years ago, finding out that the more horses the winner beat, the better chance the animal had of repeating its success”.
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I’d not previously considered this angle when studying penalised winners in handicaps, so let’s find out what happened when you bet every penalised winner in a British handicap on the Flat (turf only) since the beginning of 2021…
…not great. Only 351 winners from 1586 bets (22.13% strike-rate) for a loss of £359.85 to a £1 level stake at SP (-22.69% on turnover). Backing at Betfair SP (after 2% commission) improved the figures but not by enough to produce a profit. Laying said horses at Betfair SP produced a profit of £184.57 (+11.64%). I started researching this angle at lunchtime on Tuesday and this was the list of upcoming qualifiers…
…by mid-afternoon Tuesday’s two qualifiers had been beaten at odds of 15-2 (5th) and 10-11, suggesting that there could certainly be some milage in this as a lay system.
Now let us examine that comment about field size and split the results by ‘number of runners LTO’…
…there are high strike-rates (obviously) for tiny fields but it’s interesting to note that horses whose last time out success came in fields of nine or ten runners had a better hit rate than those who did so in fields of five, six, seven and eight runners.
The article continues with some observations… “Winning by three lengths is better than a short head. (In fact ‘head’ and ‘short head’ winners have a poor record next time out)”
No stats and figures are used to back up these observations, though it probably would have involved weeks of manual work as Formulator didn’t have computers/software to help him. It’s not easy to do with Proform software either but it’s something I will look at in the future.
“Previous winners carrying a penalty win about 20% of their next races, the percentage improving with horse running again within four days”. This is easy to check using Proform and the observation is correct – the strike-rate goes up to almost 27%. However, these still produce a loss to level stakes at SP and Betfair SP…
…laying all the qualifiers at Betfair SP would have returned a profit of £30.01 to a £1 level stake at SP (after 2% comm).
Summary
Oppose penalty carriers in Flat turf races in Britain, especially those returned to the track quickly.
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