Showing posts with label William Scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Scott. Show all posts

  • Bet Against the Best in the BC

    POSTED Oct 18, 2013 By Derek Simon

    From the time I made my first trip to the track at 15 years of age until well into my 20s, I thought horse race handicapping was all about finding the “best” horse.

    Steve Davidowitz wrote about his 50-percent winning average in “Betting Thoroughbreds” and I was enthralled; William L. Scott explained how concentrating on the top three betting choices could produce consistent winnings in “Investing at the Racetrack” and I was mesmerized.

    By the time I reached my 30s, I was disillusioned.

    It’s not that those books have no value — at the time they were published (about 30 years ago), they were great. And I still consider them required reading for any aspiring horse player.

    But the game has changed over the last three decades. The hordes of novice players that used to pack the grandstand are gone, replaced by veteran players packing a laptop and a printout of sophisticated speed and/or pace figures.

    I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: The average horse bettor today knows more about the game he/she is playing than the average investor knows about the stock market. As a result, the pari-mutuel market is very efficient and finding the “best” horse simply doesn’t cut it. Sure, you may be able to win a fair percentage of the time, but invariably you’ll get paid $5.20 or less for the trouble.

    No series of races quite drums home this point like the Breeders’ Cup. Since 1997, favorites have won just 29 percent of the time, largely due to the highly competitive nature of the races and the bigger-than-normal fields.

    But this got me to wondering: Is there a way to profit from the knowledge that the best horses don’t always perform up to expectations on Breeders’ Cup Day?

    After some exhaustive research, I had my answer — yes. Better still, there are numerous ways it can be accomplished.

    The first test I conducted related to the Brisnet Power Ratings.

    Now, under normal circumstances, horses with the highest Brisnet Power Rating do about as well as favorites in terms of winning percentage and even ROI — with the added bonus that one needn’t monitor the tote board (to determine who, exactly, the favorite is).

    However, in the BC, this is definitely not the case. Take a peek at the digits on horses possessing the highest Brisnet Power Rating for the race in which they were entered (since 1997):

    Number (races): 131 (131)
    Winners: 21
    Race Win Rate: 16.0%
    Net Return: $1.10
    ROI: -44.89%

    The numbers aren’t much better for horses with the second-best Brisnet Power Rating (BPR) either:

    Number (races): 131 (131)
    Winners: 16
    Race Win Rate: 12.2%
    Net Return: $1.59
    ROI: -20.50%

    Yet, if we toss the top two BPR horses in every BC race and insist on minimum morning-line odds of 5-1, we get the following stats:

    Number: 970 (131)
    Winners: 54
    Race Win Rate: 41.2%
    Net Return: $2.02
    ROI: +1.11%

    Granted, these numbers wouldn’t have made you rich, but at least they’re positive.

    The second test that I did was even more straightforward — I simply used the morning line odds to assess who the best horses were. Like the Brisnet Power Ratings (only in reverse), the lower odds represented the best horses and, therefore, the horses I suspected one should bet against.

    I was right.

    The sole morning-line favorite (I eliminated entries to keep it apples to apples) in BC contests performed thusly (since 1997):

    Number: 153 (153)
    Winners: 39
    Race Win Rate: 25.5%
    Net Return: $1.48
    ROI: -25.78%

    Once again, however, we see profits if we toss the morning-line favorite and ask, instead, for a morning-line price of 5-1 or greater:

    Number: 1,484 (154)
    Winners: 92
    Race Win Rate: 59.7%
    Net Return: $2.08
    ROI: +3.89%

    These are just a couple of ways to find value in the Breeders’ Cup races; obviously, there are many, many more. The key thing to take from this, though, is that the “best” horse isn’t always the one to bet… especially come Nov. 1-2 at Santa Anita Park.

  • When Speed Figures Matter... And When They Don't

    POSTED Jul 11, 2013 By Derek Simon

    Andrew Beyer
    One thing my 20+ years of racetrack experience has taught me is that good handicappers adapt to changes in the game.

    Initially, upon having read Steve Davidowitz’s book “Betting Thoroughbreds,” I cared only about my winning percentage. Davidowitz often talked about his 50 percent success rate in his book and I wanted to join that exclusive club.

    Of course, I eventually realized that doing so meant sacrificing price, which became untenable when casual bettors (like grandma and her winner-picking hatpin) were displaced by more experienced players — players who, just like me, had read Davidowitz’s book… and Andrew Beyer’s books… and Jim Quinn’s books…

    It was at this point that I began experimenting with angles.

    Armed with literature from American Turf Monthly’s former editor Ward Clever, a.k.a. Ray Taulbot, I started insisting that the horses I bet meet certain criteria that I determined — via a sample size of 20 — to be relevant.

    A few of those angles were good; most were not. Worse, I discovered that angles, especially those that sought “price horses” were maddeningly inconsistent — I wanted steady profits, not the occasional windfall score.

    Mr. Simon meet Mr. Scott.

    It seemed like a match made in heaven. When my step-dad bought me “Investing at the Racetrack” by William L. Scott one Christmas, it renewed my belief in Santa Claus. Here it was, I thought: the Arc of the Covenant, Fountain of Youth and Philosopher’s Stone all rolled into one, neat 287-page package.

    In his book, Scott detailed his unique way of assessing equine talent via “Ability Ratings,” which were comprised from fractional times and various modifiers.

    I was hooked. Not so much by Scott’s overall method — that didn’t work for me (nor, I suspect, did it work for Scott very long, judging by his subsequent books) — but by the concept. In fact, I credit Scott for putting me on the path that led to the development of my own pace figures.

    And it was my pace figures that literally changed my approach to the game. I soon realized that the numbers were so powerful that they could crystallize and, better still, quantify what before had been only nebulous theories and ideas.

    Take, for example, a recent study I did on speed figures.

    Now, I don’t think I’m going to shock anybody when I say that the effectiveness of speed figures as a predictive/profitable betting tool varies based on the type of race one is analyzing. For many years I have heard handicappers grouse about speed figures in grass races or races run over the various synthetic surfaces we lovingly — or not so lovingly — call “all-weather.”

    In fact, realizing there was a problem with his numbers on these man-made surfaces, Andrew Beyer and associates altered their approach to synthetic tracks in 2009.

    “… When we finally had a great deal of data about figures on synthetic tracks, we found a subtle flaw in our calculations that we never could have anticipated,” Beyer told Ray Paulick of the Paulick Report in November of 2010. “The top-class races at a track were producing figures lower than they had on dirt; at the same time, the bottom classes (such as maiden-claiming fillies) were producing higher figures.  This was not logical, and the same phenomenon was happening at every track.”
    What changes Beyer and his team made one can only guess, but Beyer hit at the heart of the problem later in his discussion with Paulick.

    “… Synthetic tracks pose other problems that we rarely encounter on the dirt. The early pace on synthetics is sometimes so slow that the horses can’t accelerate fast enough at the end to run the fastest final time of which they are capable.  If a horse is capable of running a mile in 1:36, but the first six furlongs of a race have been run in 1:14, he won’t get to the wire in 1:36.”
    And therein lies the problem: Often, races on turf or all-weather surfaces come down to a single burst of acceleration — usually in the stretch — rather than sustained speed throughout the course of the race. Beyer and crew likely “fixed” this problem by assigning greater values to each fifth of a second and adjusting for abnormally slow paces — but it didn’t work.

    The fact is pace, at least as I define it via my early speed rations (ESRs), which measure early energy disbursement, still has a huge effect on the viability of speed figures.

    To prove this, let’s look at some data.

    We’ll start by examining the stats of horses that earned the best last-race Brisnet speed figure (ties included):
    Number: 13,815
    Winners: 3,890
    Win Rate: 28.2%
    Return: $22,835.40
    ROI: -17.35%
    About what one would expect. But, now, let’s add in the pace component, beginning with slow-paced races (events that have an average ESR of +5 or greater on my Pace Profile Report):
    Number: 218
    Winners: 49
    Win Rate: 22.5%
    Return: $332.50
    ROI: -23.74%
    As you can see, the numbers are substantially worse than those obtained above, validating (if one can trust such a small sample, which is open to debate) the notion that speed figures are less predictive/profitable in slow-paced races.

    However, to fully endorse the theory that pace makes the case (sorry, I couldn’t resist) for or against speed-figure handicapping, we’ll have to see the opposite phenomenon in faster-paced races.

    We do.

    In races with an average ESR of -10 or less, we get the following:
    Number: 468
    Winners: 158
    Win Rate: 33.8%
    Return: $917.30
    ROI: -2.00%
    Surprised? If you’re like me, the answer is both “yes” and “no.” I am startled that the statistics on fast-paced races are so kind to a speed-oriented approach, but I am not surprised that such an approach is ineffective in slow-paced affairs.

    The lesson here for speed handicappers is to be less dogmatic in races that figure to feature a slow pace. Change your approach, adapt to the conditions… your wallet will thank you.

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