Well almost. My old mentor has written a piece for MSN detailing the Best Sites for Online Gambling. In the section under “Blogs” I get a heart warming mention..

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It’s always folly to tempt the patience of the gambling gods but a pleasing set of results yesterday

Southwell 9th March – Contenders

4:10
Kings Ace
Louisiade 2nd
Madison Belle 1st @ 7/1

4.40
Exit Smiling
Mozayada
Trans Sonic 1st @ 7/2

5:10
Tri Chara
Hard Ball
Vogarth

5.40
Cape Of Storms
Don Pele
Fulford 2nd
Gracie´s Gift 1st @ 22/1

My weekend review of my Pace Process and assumptions (think aggregation of marginal gains)  really helped to visualise the running of each race to great effect.

What was really pleasing was the result of the 5:40 given that my recent visit to Southwell provided a real time lesson of how efficient the market is at this venue and therefore needs to be monitored closely up to the point when the runners enter the starting stalls.

The drift on Betfair of pre race favourite Fulford gave the “kiss of death” signal I needed to dutch the other contenders for a positive result.

The other lesson from my Southwell expedition was the requirement of early pace for distances up to 8 furlongs. Below are the in running comments for each of the winners from the races above

Madison Belle – led, headed over 4f out, led again over 2f out, soon pressed, ridden and held on gamely opened 8/1 touched 9/1

Trans Sonic – prominent, led after 2f , about 4 lengths clear over 2f out, ridden out touched 4/1 £1600-£400 (x8)

Bold Diva – held up, headway to chase leader over 1f out, ridden to lead narrowly inside final furlong, driven out opened 4/1

Gracie’s Gift – tracked leaders, led 2f out, ridden and ran on opened 14/1 touched 25/1 £5000-£250 Each Way

I don’t mind being wrong once in every four attempts in my pre race pace analysis as long as I can reduce the odds in my favour when eliminating horses that are running against the pace bias for the remaining three occasions.

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Among serious handicappers there are two major schools of philosophy. In one intellectual camp are the empiricists, who view every race as a unique problem to be solved by intuition and analysis. They evaluate horses’ records by weighing many factors and subtleties, and reject the notion that a horses’ ability can be measured in any precise, concrete way. In the other camp are the rationalists, the speed handicappers, who believe that a horse can be measured by how fast he runs. Speed handicappers perform various arcane calculations to translate a horse’s ability into a number.

No area of handicapping inspires passion of controversy. The advocates of speed figures share the view of Pat Lynch, an astute New York handicapper, who says,, “Time is the one absolute truth in the game.” The critics, who include writers of most books on betting the races view speed handicappers as madmen looking for certainty and easy answer in a game in which they don’t exist. Author Tom Ainslie approvingly quotes a horseplayer who says, “very few speed handicappers are lolling in loot, In fact, one of them we know is rarely let out of the attic, and steadfastly maintains he is Martin Van Buren”

For the most of my career as a horseplayer, I shared this scepticism. But when I finally became acquainted, I was infected by their messianic fervour. I started making my own figures. I proceeded gingerly at first, with caution of a bather dipping one toe in a cold lake. But soon I was completely immersed. Discover figures were one of the momentous events of my life.

Andrew Beyer – Picking Winners

With an average strike rate of 15% and 96 pts profit since July 09, you would think that I was well on my way toward professional status. Alias when I benchmark my strike rate performance against newspaper tipsters, there is room improvement

How did the cycling team win eight gold medals?

The explanation used by the cycling performance director, Dave Brailsford, was that it was achieved through the “aggregation of marginal gains”. By looking for a 1% gain at everything they do, from mechanics upwards, they pulled together a whole series of small gains that enabled their athletes to dominate their sport

Using similar techniques I have reviewed my overall process and determine that I should reinstate the use of Speed Ratings in my approach.

Why use Speed Ratings?

The purpose of a speed rating is to take the different tracks and conditions creating a common number using a complex computer generated number that gives us a representation of how fast a horse is. The numbers are generally between a low figure (say 50) and high figure (say 100,) the higher the number the faster the horse.

Speed Ratings allow a handicapper to analyse a horse’s particular performance in a race simply and easily, without having to worry about which size track the time was run at, or what the condition of the track was during the race, or in some cases even the distance of the race itself.

As outlined in various All Weather racing books, given the nature of racing on this surface, Speed Ratings are particularly useful for contender selection (by the use of Class Pars) as most races are pace oriented and therefore truly ran (in theory)

Back in 2004 in my fledgling punting career (my mug days) I utilised Speed Ratings extensively based on the teachings of Mr Mordlin. In fact way back then I created a price of software to automatically produce “pseudo” Speed Ratings based on final time and beaten lengths. With the demise of my free online source of data for the software (Teletext), I abandoned their use in preference of form analysis.

Little did I know that it would take me years to become proficient in other aspects of handicapping before returning to Speed Ratings.

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