Racing Questions From The Pub

I was down the pub the other day having a drink with a good friend of mine. He has been a punter for many years, but unfortunately too many of them have been unsuccessful years! I always tell him that he only has himself to blame as he only buys ‘The Sun’ newspaper and relies far too heavily on the tipster in there, Templegate. Having said that, I felt that during this particular conversation I was starting to convert him towards my way of thinking. The reason I say this is that he actually asked me about what I research and why. He had never done that before! In the past most of our conversations have centred upon the number of hard luck stories he has had in the previous month or months.

I told him about numerous angles I have looked at in the past, and those angles I have yet to look at, bemoaning the fact that the vast majority of my good ideas are either impossible to research or would simply take too long. He asked me about article writing and whether I ran out of ideas. “I never run out of ideas” I replied, “but there are times when I get halfway through an article and realise I have not got enough data or material to write a whole one.” He suggested that I wrote an article that covered a variety of different angles or ideas, so there was more chance that the reader would find something interesting or stimulating within the article. He said that if I wrote about a specific subject, one which some readers were not that interested in, too much of my hard work would be wasted. That actually struck a chord with me because there have been numerous times when I have picked up racing or betting magazine and ignored any article which covered a subject that I was not particularly interested in.

We spent the next couple of hours discussing what I could put in this article, so I am hoping that there will be something for everybody. If not, at least I have tried! The data for this article has been taken from January 1, 2004 to August 17, 2010.

Trainers with one runner in a day

“Hey Dave. I often look to see if a trainer has one runner at a meeting or one runner on the day, especially if it is one of the top trainers. Is there any angle there?”

“I suspect there may be I said. My gut feeling is that there may be an angle if we look at trainers that have one runner a day in a really low quality race.”

The argument being for such an idea is simply “why would they bother?”

When I got home that night, I decided to look at Turf races only on the flat, as so many all weather races have poor prize-money. The figure I settled on was a winning prize of under £3000. Here are the trainers with the best strike rates:

Saeed bin Suroor has the best strike rate, but clearly punters have latched onto his runners contracting the prices. Hence, despite a good record here is a trainer to avoid in such circumstances. Howard Johnson on the other hand has produced excellent profits from a similar strike rate. More renowned for his exploits over the sticks, this is an angle perhaps worth following. Others trainers worth close scrutiny include Dandy Nicholls, and John Gosden, as well as the lesser known pair of Andrew Haynes and Stuart Kittow. Indeed Haynes has done particularly well with horses that have been fancied – those from the top 3 in the betting have secured an impressive 11 wins from 26 (SR 42.3%) for a profit of £17.07 (ROI +65.7%).

This article continues with the following extra zones of questioning  which Dave answers

1 - “Dave .... have you ever looked into what happens when a horse runs for the first time for a new trainer. I know a fair few horses are sent to Bin Suroor for example at the end of their 2yo career. Any mileage in that general idea?”

2 - What about 2 yo Old Debutants from September onwards?

3 - What about when there is a jockey change to a jockey with a good record?