When reviewing my records, similar to the American Federal Government, the game may be up in their management of the credit crunch against the will of the financial markets and my experimentation with odds compilation.
Fortunately I have history and experience on my side and these data points indicate that I may be asking too much of my handicapping by trying to create a tissue in what are lesser of evil contests. In order to construct a tissue, you need some kind of a mental template. One approach is to ask “If this race were run 100 times, how many would each horse win?” The alternative method is to determine “What percent chance of winning does this horse have?”
The flaw as identified by my research suggests that nether approach is applicable low grade All Weather races because the horses running in these events are too inconsistent to apply the logic above. That’s why they are running in that grade stupid! D’oh! 
I am not about to abandon the approach, that would be folly and repeat the mistakes of last year where I flitted from one method to the other.A slight modification. What I shall now do is create a “Qualifiers” list based on my normal handicapping methods in any A/W races below grade 4. Higher graded races will still require a tissue to determine value.
The market is still a good guide to the chances of each runner so I will apply the following filters to eliminate runners from my shortlist just before the start of the race:
- Horses whose opening show is higher than their morning line (“The kiss of death”)
- Major drifters on the exchanges (at least 4 or 5 ticks of drift in the market)
- The favourite
- The slipperytoad “x” factor
Reading this you would be correct in saying that I am abandoning value handicapping in preference of a selection method in low grade All Weather races. The reasons are due to the words I wrote in the study.
Whatever method the crowd is using when analysing lesser of evils races, their logic is flawed. “they” (the crowd) approach these races in a conventional manner when a “contrarian” or “unconventional” approach is applicable to these lesser of evils races.
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Tags: Betting Strategy
1 Response to Failed Experiment?
Slipperytoad
March 17th, 2008 at 21:17
So ensure I don’t completely abandon the “value methodology” I will adopt an approach that I used to apply during my early handicapping days.
Once I have my shortlist I will then assign fair odds to each contender equal to the number of contenders in the race. If it was a two-horse race, they’d both get 2-to-1 fair odds. Three contenders got 3-to-1 fair odds; four contenders, 4-to-1 fair odds, five contenders, 5-to-1 fair odds, six contenders, 6-to-1 fair odds.
Yep, its quick and dirty, but if allows me to focus on what I consider to be my strength which is contender selection