Not much to report on the betting front. At the moment I am diligently executing the master plan which is to only bet when I have time to go nose to nose with the live betting shows/toteboard.

Given my current status of “busy” I’m enjoying the freedom this approach brings and I don’t get frustrated when I am “out of the game” or feel that I am missing out on something.

During these periods of inactivity (on the betting front) I now focus on the important things in life such as family, friends and job. It’s actually quite refreshing.

The added benefit of limiting my time playing the GG’s is that I have more energy to analyse my performance. Some interesting traits have come to the fore when delving deep into the depths of my A4 ring binder and excel spreadsheet!

• During pre race analysis I have a nasty habit of over penalising horses on a single factor and as a consequence they end up on the non-contenders column. You guessed it, obviously they go onto win. Even with the benefit of hindsight I can see that I am placing too much emphasis on negatives and not taking a balanced view of “opposite logics”.
• I have fallen foul of the “favourite/longshot bias”. However, having read countless research papers on the subject I actually understand the phenomenon and how it relates to the behaviour of the crowd and the decisions they make. More importantly I can take advantage of this behaviour.
• I have fallen foul of the law of “natural odds”. Which simple is the probability of any given entry winning, if all other factors are equal. Break this law and it can be dangerous to your wealth by betting underlays.

if you believe in your work, then a horse you give less than random odds of winning is not an overlay at any price
Charles Carroll

Restricting my betting also allows me to keep better records.

One such record is “what’s winning at the track”. As advocated by the author Dick Mitchell, I collect data on the race conditions for the first and second horse past the post at Wolverhampton, Southwell, Kempton and Lingfield over my preferred distances of 5,6,7 and 8 furlongs.

The statistical analysis gurus at work call this word the collection of “critical parameters”.

A critical parameter is a performance parameter of a particular kind. Critical parameters, or figures of merit, are established parameters by which designers predict or measure how well a system or artefact serves its designated purpose

Think, “draw”, “race time”, “going” etc and you’ll get the drift.

So what can I do with all this data? Well the trick is to determine what the key critical parameters for horses crossing the line in first (or sometimes) second place.

I can hear you all saying “there are too many factors in horse racing and too much for even a computer to analyse”! Normally I would agree, fortunately for me, my computer science degree has given me an appreciation of Data Mining techniques

If you are not aware, Microsoft Excel has a great feature call pivot tables. Just like my Sky Plus PVR system which allows ere in doors to record what she wants and watch it later when the remote control is out of my hands, its fruit from the gods.

Using a statistical analysis technique (Z-scores) you can compare sets of data against each other for example, a single private handicap rating against a population of ratings within the same grade.

One day I will write a piece on why I prefer All Weather Racing, but the data does suggest give a whole host of parameters that this category of racing is remarkably consistent.

What does all mean? I am not looking to create a mechanical selection system. No, with training the computer between my ears is still the preferred method. However using the techniques outlined above I have detected some interesting patterns in my betting my race specialisation that I can correct and exploit.

What this also means is that I have been very lazy and have not worked hard enough to measure my betting performance and the key factors which determine winners in my chosen specialisation of All Weather racing.

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