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Those 'Class and Assements' really work
EMISSION - TOP RATED AT 50/1
As a longtime follower of PPM’s Class and Assessments horses, I was delighted when Emission scored recently at 50/1 in the BTC Sprint at Doomben.
As no doubt many PPM readers will know, Emission was THE selection for the race in The Optimist's Class and Assessments. Yes, clear as a bell, Emission was the one to back. What a winner. It's not often they come along so clearly sign-posted for us loyal fans of the C & A's.
So what are they all about, and how does The Optimist work such miracles, and what about ratings generally? We hear so much about them, but what are they really worth to a punter, and can the punter prepare his or her own ratings and be successful?
I'll be exploring these themes in a series of articles in PPM, and I trust we will all be a little wiser at the end of them. Firstly, though, to The Optimist.
He tells me: "My assessments have always been my own, and I make no excuses for their being subjective. I try to consider the likelihood of horses striking form, or going out of it, in the lifetime of the magazine, in Sydney and Melbourne.
"My basic figure is 60, although this has varied between about 57 and 62 over the years. A really good rating for a 4yo-plus is 64 or 65; a top rating around the high 60s, and anything that gets to 70 is quite exceptional.
"Three-year-olds do not appear until around November, and a potentially very good one will get 60 or even 61. They will be in the mid-60s by the end of the season if they are (in my view) top-class.
"Distances are winning distances. I played with these for years and found that demanding that the horse had done it worked as well as anything.
"Track conditions are for the readers' guidance and whilst I do not use them in the results, I certainly regard them as very important. For example, note how partial County Tyrone is to a wet track, as evidenced by his fine run in the O'Shea Stakes.
"Many double-figure winners have been struck over the years, but if I was able to direct my readers' use of these arbitrary figures I would say: If a horse is assessed significantly above anything else in its field, and the distance is appropriate and the track conditions favourable, take note of it. Use the specialist papers to see when its wins over the distance were, and how it handles today's track.
"In other words, the C & A's are a guide, as they have now been, and stood the test of time, for exactly 30 years.
So there you have it from the man himself, the reasoning behind the Class and Assessments horses to follow that you find in PPM each issue.
Each punter has his or her own view about how to compile ratings. The skill involved will prove the measure of the worth of anyone's ratings figures.
Most race ratings approaches operate on the basis of a universal handicap, in which every horse's ability is expressed numerically, usually in kilos weight.
Typically, the basic rating is adjusted to bring it in line with the weights allotted according to the conditions of the race in which the horse is entered. This gives the user a means of rapidly assessing a particular race.
Thus a horse with an adjusted rating of, say, 60 is 1.5kg "better in" than one with a rating of 58.5. This in turn means that, in theory, the horse rated 60 should finish about a length in front of a horse rated 58.5, depending on the distance of the race.
The words "in theory" are crucial here, because if handicap ratings always worked out, bookmakers would cease to exist, as would betting.
The best horse on form would always win. In practice, life is not so simple. In non-handicap races, only about 40 per cent of top-rated horses win, while in handicaps the figure is about 20 per cent, depending on the ratings used.
A further limitation on the usefulness of handicap ratings is that they are difficult to interpret. For example: How much more confidence can the punter have in a horse rated 2.5kg clear compared with one rated 1kg clear? Is it better to restrict betting to non-handicap races where the horses with an obvious chance stand out? How much should be staked on a horse which is clear top-rated? What odds should you be looking for?
Okay, you might ask, but what about a formula for producing ratings? Is it easy or hard? How can you be sure your ratings are going to be accurate?
Much depends on how much time, care and effort you wish to put in. There are some short cuts around which you can produce pretty sharp ratings figures.
One method, formulated by the US expert Bill Quirin, and published recently in Phillips Newsletter, goes like this:
Formula: Rating equals 2 times WINS minus the sum of the places. What this means is that you look at a horse's career record and note the number of wins and 2nds and 3rds.
if the horse has, say, 8 wins and 6 placings, you DOUBLE the number of wins, equalling 16, and then DEDUCT the number of placings (in this example, 6). The result is your rating for the horse. It works out in this example as 16 minus 6 equalling a rating of 10.
This ratings approach can be applied to any race, provided you work only on runners who have had at least six or more races in their career.
The formula can also be applied to horses who are on the first few lines of betting. It's a way of separating them apart from the price.
Let's assume you have isolated the top four horses in the betting. You know there's not too much between them. How can you separate them? Well, the Quirin theory is aimed to giving an edge to horses whose career records show they win more often than they place.
Horse A: 5 wins and 8 placings.
Horse B: 2 wins and 5 placings.
Horse C: 5 wins and 2 placings.
Horse D: 8 wins and 17 placings.
If we apply the Quirin formula, the ratings for each horse come up like this:
Horse A: five wins doubled equals 10 minus 8 placings, equals a rating of 2.
Horse B: two wins doubled equals 4 minus 5 placings, equals a rating of -1.
Horse C: five wins doubled equals 10 minus 2 placings equals a rating of 8.
Horse D: eight wins doubled equals 16 minus 17 placings equals a rating of -1.
The selection, then, is Horse C with a rating of 8. It has proven that it WINS rather than runs
a place.
The formula can be applied to any set of ratings. Maybe you work off the Sportsman's
Zipform ratings and want to be able to impose a final analysis on the best of them? You could
use the Quirin method with some success, I suggest.
These are a few ideas, then, to get you thinking about ratings. Maybe you feel they are not for
you, that it's all too much hard work? If so, then you could easily use the Class and
Assessments from The Optimist.
They have stood the test of time and continue to perform admirably.
Or you could use the Zipform ratings in Sportsman. Again, these are useful for isolating the
potential best contenders in a race. They won't be accurate all the time, but they have shown
themselves to be a pretty good guide over many years.
They are available for all the meetings covered by that formguide. But why not give the
Quirin formula a chance? It will at least help you to separate leading contenders in a race.
• Next month: I'll have more information about ratings, and how to convert them into an
odds line. I'll also be bringing you a brand-new ratings method that a Sydney reader has been
using with enormous success.
He tells me that losing runs are kept to a minimum and that the average winning price for his
top rated selections are around the 4/1 mark. Results like this will give any punter the
chance to get into profit and stay there.
Click here to read Part 2.
By Peter Travers
PRACTICAL PUNTING - JULY 2003
SUMMARY
Work out your sums the professional way
PERCENTAGES PERFECTION
The fundamentals of betting to percentages continue to plague many punters, specially newcomers to the betting game. I suppose that an education in betting via the tote machine doesn't do much for your understanding of what makes the betting market tick.
Straight percentage betting is easy to understand. An example is the 10 Per Cent Plan. A punter starts with, say, $100 and his bet is always 10 per cent of whatever figure the bank happens to stand at.
SUMMARY
More bold ideas to get your selections in order
STREAMLINE THOSE RACE RATINGS (Part 2)
Whatever ratings method you employ, I'm sure that as time goes by you will be constantly reviewing it. I know several professionals who never stop changing aspects of their ratings approach.
This is sensible. To be too rigid in this area is probably a bad sign for you as a punter. Among the first advice I ever received was to be flexible in everything I did in my betting world.
I've used many, many selection methods, and systems, in my time and I doubt I have ever kept any of them "the same". Change is good, provided you go about it sensibly.
SUMMARY
10% profit – but is it good enough?
BETTING – IT’S A SERIOUS BUSINESS
Most Thursday nights, after a long day in the trenches in my day job and after about three hours of form work for the Perth races, I have the need to find something less pressure packed to do.
The relaxation I seek is to catch up with friends and their respective partners at a local venue where we partake in the fine art of sensible conversation sprinkled with heaps of hearty laughter as we stir one another, discuss the affairs of the world, sporting issues and then, to finish off the night, we even grace the dance floor with some good old fashioned rock and roll dancing.
Improve that
WIN STRIKE RATE (Part 1)
How often has someone said, “I wish I could back more winners!” to you? I know it’s been a remark made to me many, many times. I’ve said it myself again and again.
Winning at racing, however, doesn’t depend entirely on how MANY winners you back. It’s more a case of what ODDS are those winners, and have the odds given you a profit in the long term.
You don’t need me to tell you that some punters win with a fairly low win strike rate while others lose over a year even though backing more winners. It’s all a matter of PRICE.
Get the right odds about your winners, and you can emerge in front. Back lots of winners at prices that are too low, and you’ll lose. Simple as that.
In this short series of articles, I’m going to look at the whole question of strike rate and the bet itself. Will level stakes be enough? Do you really need a staking plan and, if so, what will it be?
Firstly, let’s just go over a few bits and pieces. I think we’re all conversant with the old 10 per cent of bank staking plan. The percentage may vary but the principle, more or less, remains the same.
With the 10 per cent figure you start with a bank of, say, $100 and you bet one-tenth ($10). If the bet loses, the bank goes down to $90 and your next bet is $9. If this horse won, say, at 4/1 the bank would rise to $126 calling for a bet the next time of $12. You continue in this manner, always betting a tenth of whatever capital comprises your bank (i.e.$250 bank, $25 bet, $150 bank, $15 bet, etc).
The strength of the plan is that it takes advantage of winning and losing streaks. Your bets rise when you are winning and they go down when you are losing. You can also decide at a stop-profit point, declare yourself a nice divvie and then start again with the same, or an increased bank.
Okay, that all seems fine and dandy. There is nothing much wrong with a plan like this one. In fact, it has a lot going for it if you use it in tandem with a selection approach that provides a good percentage of winners.
The weakness is the percentage in relation to the type of horses to be backed.
Now, what do I mean by this? Well, let me explain. If you bet level stakes, each bet NO MATTER WHAT ITS PRICE MIGHT BE is bet at the same level. A 5/4 chance is bet the same as a 10/1 chance, despite one having a far better chance of winning than the other one.
What many experts say is this: The percentage to be used should be based on the expected pattern of winners and average prices, in order to PROTECT your betting capital.
They say that unless we take these two key points into account then a percentage plan is more than likely to be useless.
Some time ago, I was looking at an American publication, which suggested the 10 per cent of bank plan could be used on a longshots system.
To this, I say NO. For such selections, the percentage of the bank to be bet is much too high when compared to the expected number of wins and the expected number of successive losers. The system embracing the selection of longshots might well spin off into a run of 20 or 30 losers in a row, making the 10 per cent approach look very shaky.
It would reduce the capital far too rapidly and when a winner did arrive the bet on it would be too small.
If you like to play a percentage staking plan (and many punters do, even if only to get away from boring flat bets) then you should determine the percentage of capital to be employed in relation to the AVERAGE odds of your expected winners.
You can decide this simply by looking at previous results. With the approach I am going to outline the punter can make allowance for the bad runs which come to everyone at some time or another, yet still have capital in hand to gradually recoup losses and turn the red ink into black.
It’s a rational percentage play for horses in different price ranges, and I am assuming you are betting to a capital of $100 (but this can be any amount you like).
ODDS-ON TO 7/4 AGAINST: Well-selected horses in this price range win a very high percentage of races. You could bet to a 15 per cent plan. If you began with eight successive losers there would still be capital of $26 left. At this price range, a long run of outs should be very unlikely. In fact, you could work the plan on the PLACE and it would work like a dream.
2/1 TO 3/1: If this is the average price of your winners, then the 10 per cent plan is the proper approach. Should you start with 10 straight losses there would still be $35 in the bank. Frankly, I would say that if you are picking your “spots” carefully then MOST of your bets should be in the 4/5 to 3/1 range. I wouldn’t go below 4/5; wait for another race.
7/2 TO 5/1: Now you are starting to get into slightly risky territory. The correct wagering, I suggest, should be 8 per cent of the bank. This allows you to get started with 12 straight losses and still have $35 left in the bank.
11/2 TO 9/1: We now enter true risk territory and it’s time to pull back the bet to 6 per cent of capital. Fifteen straight losers would still leave you with $36 in the bank.
10/1 OR OVER: If you are confident enough to be backing horses in this price range, I will assume they will only be occasional bets, unless you have a special “longshots only” bank going, running alongside your main one. The percentage for these bets should be 4 per cent of capital. A run of 20 successive losses would take $57 but you’d still have $43 left in the bank.
Of course, if you are a careful and sensible punter it may be that you won’t suffer such horrendous runs of outs but it’s always good to be mentally and financially ready for them.
I have stressed them in order to show that under this planned percentage operation they can be taken care of without eroding all the capital you have on hand.
It doesn’t matter whether you are betting level stakes or using a staking plan, you should always have provision to cover bad periods.
Let’s sum up the situation: You bet to the percentage of capital to fit the price pattern of your selections, OR you can use the percentage bets I’ve outlined in any sequence, shifting from one to the other depending on the price of the bet.
Let’s say your first three bets are 15/1, 3/1 and evens. You have a starting bank of $100. Your bet on the 15/1 chance is 4 per cent ($4). The bet on the 3/1 chance would be 10 per cent and the bet on the even money shot would be 15 per cent.
So the percentage of your bank to be invested is governed by the price of the horse to be backed.
So this is the approach for this month. I think it’s a worthwhile way to bet. Sure, it’s not new, and we have discussed it before, many years ago, in PPM, but it will suit those punters maybe new to the game or the oldies who want to review what they’ve been doing, and fancy a shift away from oft-repeated ways of betting.
I do know one semi-professional who has been using the staking percentages for years and he’s done pretty well out of the game. He never makes enough to live off but he does make enough to give himself a nice annual bonus over and above his day job salary.
This is the best most punters can hope for, isn’t it? Surely a steady plan, whereby you know exactly how much to bet and when, is better than the usual hit and miss approach that most punters fall into?
I think so. In the next part of this series, I’ll be looking at selection ways and means to lift your strike from average to above average. It’s not that difficult if you use commonsense, and use the form guide to advantage and you ensure you back top jockeys, like Corey Brown, Darren Beadman, etc.
By Alan Jacobs
PRACTICAL PUNTING - NOVEMBER 2004
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