Horse Racing Blogs

The Beginners Guide To Racing

The Runners Number

Horse’s are entered for a race a long time in advance of the race date. Runners may well then be withdrawn from the race due to other commitments or a multitude of other reasons. As a rule, when the final runners are declared (usually the day before), the race numbers are then allocated. This is done either alphabetically in non hadicap races or in handicap races by the weight carried. In a handicap race, number 1 is allocated to the horse carrying the most weight and so on down the weights. If however a runner is withdrawn, after a race number has been allocated, the number will not be used as it cannot be reallocated.

Race Colours

These are not chosen at random, but are the colours of the racehorses owner. If he or she has more than one runner in the race, the runners will have different colour caps.

Race Types

There are several types of race ,which basically fall into two categories. These are handicap or non handicap races. A non handicap race is where the runners carry more or less the same weight as their rivals . Therefore in theory it should be easier to select the winner of the race based on their previous form. On the other hand, a handicap race is one where each runner carries a different weight according to his or her ability. Therefore if horse A were to beat horse B and they raced against each the following month, horse A would usually be forced to carry a higher weight in that race in an attempt to create a level playing field.

Weight Carried

The weight a horse is set to carry includes the jockey, the saddle and racing cloth etc. It is balanced by adding extra weight under the saddle. Should a jockey be overweight,this will be declared, if the horse in a handicap race is not rated up to the standard or conditions of the race, it will be declared as running out of the handicap and in both of the above circumstances will be deemed to be running at a disadvantage. At the end of a race, you will notice that a jockey has to take his saddle etc into the weighing room to get weighed. This is to ensure that he is still carrying the same amount of weight as when he started the race.

Headgear

A horse may wear blinkers or similar accessories, which are to try and improve certain aspects of their performance. Sometimes they work, sometimes they do not. As a rule, the main types are Blinkers, Visors, Hoods, Cheek pieces or Tongue Straps. A combination of the aforementioned can be worn, but must be declared, as they may affect the performance of the horse on the day.

The Going

This is the description of the underfoot conditions on the day. The ground could be listed as being anywhere from Firm (which is rare in jumps racing), to Heavy. This will Affect the way the majority of the runners will perform on the day. At most racecourses the going is also expressed as a figure ie 5.6, which is meant to clarify the situation. Unfortunately these figures vary between courses, so do not blindly rely on them as a reference point.

Obstacles

These are usually either Hurdles (which are smaller fence like obstacles), which can be knocked over if hit, ( but can still be responsible for bringing a horse down). There are also Fences which are larger hedge type obstacles used in Chase races which are very unforgiving .

Jockeys

The jockey is usually retained by each yard the horse is trained in, but any jockey can ride any horse within reason. Obviously some jockeys are better than others, amateur jockeys that are still learning their trade are given a weight allowance. This is allocated to the horse he or she is riding, which makes up for their inexperience. A good amateur jockey is worth his or her weight in gold.

Trainers

Some trainers are better than others, but most trainers have a type of runner or race that they do better in. Also, some yards come into form at certain times of the year, which is worth looking into. Obviously the better the trainer, the better the horses he or she is given to train. Not all yards are equal and it can be worth following the smaller yards for better value.

Price/Returns calculator can be found via this link https://www.free-bet-calculator.co.uk/

Being A Bookmaker

Mike Horse Racing Blogs 0

I will use a dice in an effort to explain value and how a book or market is created and re-balanced according to the fluctuations in betting patterns.

A standard dice obviously has six numbers so when you roll that dice there would be one chance of any one given number coming up to every five chances of it not which relates to the fact that 5-1 would be the equivalent of fair odds. Fair odds are where you will make no profit by backing all six numbers but lose no money ie if you say backed one pound on all six sides of the dice to come up as at the 5-1 on offer you would have bet six pounds and whichever number wins you would receive your one pound stake back on the winning number plus your five pounds profit meaning you would have neither won nor lost on the deal.

That was the simple part now we get to the tricky part fair odds are calculated to be a 100% market but a bookmaker contrary to popular belief does not care which number comes up as he or she will have formed his or her book or market at over 100% and assuming he can get his market to balance he will make a profit no matter which number comes up.

Hence using the example of six numbers at the fair odds of 5-1 each number has 16.666% chance of coming up which forms the market at 100% this is is simply done by dividing the percentage you are using by the number of options being bet upon ie in this instance 100 divided by 6.

The bookmaker however wants to form the market at about 110% which if he gets it right and balances his book will provide him with a 10% profit on each race or in this case each roll of the dice regardless of which number comes up.

To achieve this we now divide his target market of 110% by six giving us a 18.33% chance of each number coming up which equates to odds of 9-2 (4.5-1) for each number to come up to make things easier I have printed an odds to percentages comparison table which you can access by clicking the highlighted link where you would use the nearest price available to the percentage on offer. Now if you tried backing every number at the advertised odds of 9-2 you will lose and the bookmaker now makes his profit this may seem unfair but not really as his is a business and he takes all the liabilities involved which can be horrendous if he gets it wrong.

The reasoning behind this is that not everything is a simple as rolling the dice and not everyone bets the same amount on each horse or side of the dice. As an example of this supposing you were the bookmaker and the first four bets placed were £2 on number six and £1 on numbers 1, 2 and 3 this means your liabilities or losses would be higher on number 6 and lower on numbers 4 and 5. hence you would have to rebalance your book by adjusting the prices to try and attract more money to be placed on numbers 4 and 5 and less on number 6.

So let us start by leaving numbers 1,2 and 3 at 9-2 which as we know is 18.18% which we times by three to obtain 54.54% our target percentage is 110% minus 54.54% leaves us with 55.46% to use up between the remaining numbers. As we wish to avoid taking any further bets on number 6 we will shorten him to half the odds of numbers 1,2 and 3 which were 9-2 so we now have him priced up at 9-4 which by using the odds to percentages table works out at 30.77% deduct this percentage from the 55.46% we had left between the two remaining numbers of which neither have taken any bets leaves us with 12.345% for each number which again when you reference the aforementioned table works out at 7-1.

Playing The Markets

Mike Horse Racing Blogs 1

Hi
After recommending Frodon yesterday in the Beat The Lotto thread yesterday I was asked why I did not tip up more shorter priced fancied horses as opposed to my usual long shots and each way extra bets.
The simple answer is that I started this site to have some fun and show people that there are other ways to place bets by thinking outside the box and have some fun along the way. Hence topics such as the Cheltenham Countdown and the 100-1 Shots threads which are linked into this blog will hopefully help to point out some of the fun options available to punters. The principle behind playing the odds in the ante post Cheltenham market and for backing the rag (the outsider in the field) is that the odds compilers (the people that form the markets) have a limited amount of time to compile odds and therefore are forced to concentrate on the runners at the head of the market, which leaves the possibility of some value to be found amongst the other runners.
I will now insert a table which I have used for the 3.45 at Punchestown today.

Runners	Opening Show	Each Way Extra 1/5 odds 10 Places	Settled Market	Betting Without The Favourite	Late Each Way Extra Markets	Late Markets	Starting Price
Blackbow	2-5		1-5	Favourite		1-4	1-3
Santa Rossa	7-2		Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner
Port Stanley	12-1		7-1	2-1		6-1	4-1
Le Musigny	16-1		18-1	5-1		14-1	12-1
Nero Rock	16-1		18-1	4-1		12-1	16-1
Powerful Ted	22-1		25-1	15-2		20-1	25-1
Arkan Quest	33-1		28-1	12-1		33-1	33-1
Wavelength	33-1		28-1	12-1		33-1	28-1
Bobby Boy	50-1	20-1	50-1	25-1	18-1	66-1	40-1
Ballydam Destiny	66-1	20-1	50-1	25-1	18-1	66-1	66-1
The Broghie Man	66-1	25-1	50-1	25-1	16-1	66-1	33-1
Hardy Man	100-1	25-1	80-1	33-1	18-1	100-1	50-1
Stowaway To Heaven	100-1	25-1	80-1	28-1	20-1	80-1	66-1
Get Crackin	100-1	25-1	80-1	33-1	35-1	300-1	100-1
Sole Trader	150-1	30-1	100-1	40-1	20-1	125-1	66-1
Midnight Wilde	150-1	30-1	100-1	50-1	22-1	150-1	66-1
Cleared To Go	150-1	30-1	100-1	50-1	20-1	150-1	66-1
Alabaster	200-1	35-1	150-1	66-1	25-1	200-1	66-1
Liam Eile	200-1	35-1	150-1	66-1	35-1	300-1	100-1
Rebel Gold	200-1	35-1	150-1	66-1	35-1	300-1	100-1
Funky Dady	200-1	35-1	150-1	50-1	35-1	300-1	100-1
Roses Queen	200-1	35-1	150-1	50-1	20-1	150-1	66-1
Seskin Bonnie	200-1	35-1	150-1	50-1	35-1	300-1	100-1
Loudest Whisper	200-1	35-1	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner
Coolnacritta	200-1	35-1	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner	Non Runner

Now the obvious winner here is going to be Blackbow who was available at 1-3 on just before the second favourite Santa Rossa became a non runner. The question is would you have considered Blackbow at 1-3 to be the banker of the day. ? If so surely now with Santa Rossa being a non runner you would have to be thinking that as long as Blackbow stays on his feet (although now 1-5 on) he looks unbeatable especially in the eyes of the odds compilers and of course the old enemy (the bookmakers).

This is where I have a problem as although Blackbow is more than likely going to win this easily I cannot bring myself nor can I afford to take on those sort of odds. Now supposing you were hoping to make a small profit on the day of say two points this would now mean putting ten points on Blackbow to achieve your profit on the day. However if you now look at the extra markets you can either back without the favourite/s or could use the same ten points by backing five of the 100-1 plus selections at the each way extras prices and as long as any two of them get tenth or better you will have made a better profit than you would have backing the favourite and should only one of them get home you will have only have lost a point or two on the day. ?

In conclusion here are some of the options I would recommend having a look at in relation to playing todays markets. As for betting without the favourite the two horses that are the obvious stand outs for me are the 66-1 shots Bobby Boy and The Brogie Man which are now available at 25-1 betting without Blackbow. Then we get down to the tricky part which is trying to find an each way extra bet from the 100-1+ shots and this is speculative but I would suggest in this instance considering Hardy Man and Roses Queen.

Forming Tissue Odds

Mike Horse Racing Blogs 12

I will now attempt to explain the basics of forming your own odds. I will use the 4.40 at Limerick on Sunday the 31st March 2019 as the example. This is a handicap chase with 13 runners declared and the idea would be to show you how to very basically form your own the odds for that, race. Now at present this race has no weights declared, no form guides, write ups or little else, so you have to work with what you have.
All we have are the runners names, the trainers details and their official ratings. The runners are at present listed alphabetically, but we form our first market by listing them by their official ratings and price them up accordingly.
Having then listed them, we now go to the bottom rated horse which is in this case Presenting Mahler and alter that runners official rating from 109 to (2), this has meant reducing it by 107. You must now reduce all the other ratings by 107 to obtain a new rating for the rest of the field ,which will give us a workable figure to calculate our first set of odds.

Runners Name	Official Rating	Adjusted OR	Percentage Total	Initial Odds
Goulane Chosen	142	35	15.48%	11-2
Tycoon Prince	137	30	13.27%	13-2
Lucky Pat	136	29	12.83%	7-1
Impact Factor	134	27	11.94%	15-2
Nearly Nama'd	128	21	9.29%	10-1
Dakota Moirette	127	20	8.84%	10-1
Reach Up	121	14	6.19%	16-1
Call A Cab	120	13	5.75%	16-1
Carrig Cathal	120	13	5.75%	16-1
Gurteen	120	13	5.75%	16-1
All The Chimneys	112	5	2.21%	40-1
Alto Esqua	111	4	1.77%	50-1
Presenting Mahler	109	2	0.88%	100-1

To obtain our first set of odds ,we now have to convert our new ratings into a % ,so by totalling all of our new ratings for the thirteen runners we get a total sum of 226. So, by dividing each new rating by 2.26 we will achieve a % rating for each runner. This will form a book (set of odds) to 100% .Unfortunately ,although this would be fair, the bookmakers have to build in a profit margin of usually about 10% ,but we will cover that in part two.
Finally ,we compare the % rating to this chart Odds to Percentages (listed in the Reference and Help section) to obtain the odds for each runner. This is only part one of this thread , I will now wait for the handicapper to allot the weights for the race and that is hopefully where it all changes. You can usually work out what the weights would be from the official ratings but lets take it a step at a time.

The Key Race System

Mike Horse Racing Blogs 14

As promised I will try and post some relatively informative articles which hopefully give some insight into how to spot some value without following the crowd. I will link this thread to any relevant threads and articles along the way such as my Speed Ratings blog and will then hopefully progress to linking these articles to the more complicated issues and future articles of forming your own markets.

The premise of this article will be to show you how I would go about looking for a value selection to follow later in the year and that may also be capable of springing a suprise or two along the way.

We will start with a sample Key Race which was a NHF race run on the 27th of April at Punchestown.

The result was as follows: Lone Wolf 1st, All For Joy 2nd and Fontley House 3rd the beauty of this race is that none of the three first past the post have gone on to run again so hopefully the old enemy (The Bookmaker) will not have taken a huge interest in the race to date.

However both the 4th horse home YouRaised Me Up and Boot Camp who came 5th both went on to win next time out and the 6th horse home Willing was pulled up but having be adjudged to having been clinically abnormal after the race can be excused the run. The 7th horse home was the beaten favourite and may well have attracted some attention so we will bypass this one for the time being. The 8th placed horse although not setting the world alight has done little wrong and the 10th horse home has gone on to win and be placed twice.

Now we get to fun part the 9th horse home was First Approach the 11th horse home was Aforementioned and the 12th horse home was Southern Nights the rest of the field was to all intents and purposes at no time really in contention. The three horses highlighted have several things in common they were all giving weight to most of their rivals they all hail from decent yards and are all lightly raced five year olds. Two have winning or creditable PTP form and the last has already been placed over hurdles.

The hope now is that although obviously the first three home especially Lone Wolf (who won with what looked like a little in hand) will probably go on to win again I am hoping that the above mentioned selections (which I have posted in Rob’s Tracker thread) will run first before the game is up and there is still some value to be had. I believe it would be worth keeping a close eye on these three especially when going back over the hurdles or jumps. This idea of looking for Key Races is not new the odds compilers do it all the time but I hope the spin I have put on it will give you some food for thought along the way.

Speed Ratings

Mike Horse Racing Blogs 14

Speed Ratings.

Basically you need to work out how fast your horse is likely to travel carrying a set amount of weight over a set distance. In the case of horse racing underfoot conditions the jockey and the mood and fitness of the individual horse on the day are however variables. However for the purpose of the basics the following is the science part and although the equation used below is not perfect it is one we may all possibly remember from school and is a reasonable starting point for the purpose of this example.

Velocity = mass x acceleration (measured in feet per second)

To obtain an average or constant as a comparison we need to relate the science to the racehorse by using the following figures which obviously need to be converted into feet or seconds to make the equation viable.

An average racehorse is ten foot long
A two mile race is approximately 10560 feet in length
An average two mile race will be run in 4 minutes which is 240 seconds
Therefore 10560 feet divided by 240 seconds equals 44 foot per second divided by 10 foot means a horse running over two miles in distance will be travelling at approximately 4.4 lengths per second.

Now we have an average we need to work in some figures for the going conditions which will be as per the chart below which is applicable for National Hunt racing. These are not industry standard figures and are my own work so feel free to use your own.
Good Ground    = 100%
Good To Soft Ground = 103.5%
Soft Ground                     = 107%
Soft to Heavy                  = 111%
Heavy Ground                = 115%

Now we will attempt to put this altogether and include an allowance for the weight carried on the day using genuine form from a horse called Artifice Sivola which has run over a variety of conditions.
04/03/16 @ Newbury 2m on Good To Soft carrying a weight of 11-12.

The race was run in 4 minutes 17.80 seconds (the time the winner crossed the line) which is 257.8 seconds. Artifice Sivola finished the race 6 lengths behind the winner so we add on at 4.4 lengths a second approximately 1.2 seconds giving you a finishing time of 259 seconds for our runner.
Now divide our runners time of 259 seconds by the distance of the race which is 2m (but officially 16.5 furlongs) which leaves you with a finishing speed of 15.70 seconds a furlong. The ground conditions that day were Good To Soft so you now divide the 15.70 by 103.5% as per the above list and you achieve a figure of 15.17 seconds per furlong. You now have to make an allowance for the weight carried which was 11-12 which is 166 pound. Divide the 15.17 by the 166 and then times by 100 (to give you a workable figure) which in this case is 9.14.

Confused yet.. you should be because I still am as there are lots of ways to do your own figures but if you get a calculation that works for you it can be a money spinner when used in the right circumstances as although speed ratings are primarily used on the flat they are a cracking reference point over shorter trips especially in hurdle races and of course when used in NHF (National Hunt Flat) races.