Currently going through the final stages of a house sale which will allow me to be finally de-coupled from my ex-partner. Wont bore you with the details but its been stressful given the current economic situation.

Putting has suffered as a consequence (having trouble concentrating) so decided to take my mind off things and attend Bath racecourse.

It’s not an understatement to say that Bath is the pits, the facilities are poor and probably the worst course I have attended but with coach party’s and local punters by the boatload, there is no incentive for Bath to up its game. It is clear what the main motivation is for some race goers and some paid the price for over indulgence.

Currently my Baseball, Notebook and Dosage betting strategies are not yielding profits. This was to be expected as they are basically new and I am taking a long term view with these strategies while I iron out some procedural issues so, decided to revive my approach in betting in low grade handicaps.

The strategy was shelved after the demise of Superform, however in the meantime I had time to reflect on the nature of chaos and its effect in horse races. As I wrote in my research article, there is nothing to be loved in the formbook in low grade handicaps but

In lesser of evils races, there are many horses that are one dimensional in their running style and predictably so. One paced plodders and speed balls that fade in the final furlog (though early pace in low grade races can prove to be a decisive advantage especially on the all weather) can usually be eliminated from consideration if the pace shape is against them. If the horse is basically “slow” in pace terms or gets taken on for the lead when it likes to dominate, no amount of money or the will of the crowd will ensure a positive result.

The race pace shape is unique to each race event and will never occur again. Will the winner be the early pace horse? Will the winner come from off the race? Will the draw bias aid or hinder? In my opinion race pace factor is undervalued by the public therefore an understanding of how the race will be run (including post position analysis) provides that all important edge when tackling lesser of evils races.

In addition, I have replaced Superform with information from Turftrax. At £5 per month I find that their service provides all the information I require to handicap a race and I wanted to trial some of their data in real time.

The Bath card last Saturday was full of lesser of evils races and my experiment was to determine if pace analysis allied to simple handicapping and stats could identify a list of contenders.

Obviously I paid my normal education fees (small; so I must be learning) to the gambling gods mainly due to the fact that I have been out of the saddle for a while and did not spend much time creating a tissue to determine value bets. At least I got the placepot up to offset a proportion of my loses also contender selection using pace analysis looks promising.

If I can retain my concentration, or exchange of contracts occurs soon on the house sale, the next direction is to explore further pace handicapping once I recover from my hangover!

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