Returned from holiday to face the realities of the work etc.

During the break my holiday reading material was the book Winning Thoroughbred Strategies by Dick Mitchell. In the book he enlightened me to the ways of mathematical calculations required to measure the punters “edge” and the Kelly Criterion.

To be successfully punter your method needs to be objective instead of subjective and whether we like it or not this approach forces the punter to develop a methodical pseudo scientific template that can be measured and monitored.

Once we have determined what our edge is, the trick is to play the bookies at their own game by betting our edge at the same time applying sound money management principles over a long series of events.

Over the last few days I’ve been warming up for the All Weather season by punting in my favoured races which are low grade class 5/6 handicaps over sprint distances at Wolverhampton, Lingfield, Southwell and Kempton. Great Leighs is off limits until the course configuration (pace, draw) reveals its secrets.

So, yours truly expends 1 hour analysing a race, I understand that any horse with a BHB rating sub 60 doesn’t have much going for it and therefore I apply relevant filters to dismiss factors that everyone else is using to determine the merits of each horse, my so called edge.

Armed with tissue, I am ready to pit my opinion against other punters. However just befor the off I find non contenders that I had dismissed get punted off the board and win, while my contenders drift rudderless toward oblivion. What phenomenon is happening here?

As a Betfair radio commentator said at the end of the evening after a disastrous session in the pundits’ chair,

“You can spend hours studying form but in some cases the market is better at assigning relative chances than any punter on the planet”.

I used the words “some cases” given that studies have shown that the market doesn’t always get it right. If the market was 100% accurate then it would call time for gambling on horseracing or any other form of gambling not based on mathematical probability.

So what is the market?

Applied to the parimutuel betting, Mark Cramer wrote that the market is disparate containing novices betting on favourite jockeys, trainers, names, numbers, tea leaves, Pricewise, the jolly whatever the pundits on Channel 4 racing are spouting to those who take their punting seriously (like me).

Whatever the makeup, the market gets it right approx 30% time and there are occasions when trying to outsmart the market is folly.

Like our Government I keep relearning the lesson that market trends cannot dismissed lightly. Especially in low grade handicaps on the sand.

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