Betting System – Horses Returning Within 7 Days

I was looking at a horse called Muntadab running today who won 6 days ago and it made me wonder what the stats are for horses who have a quick return to the track.

A horse that ran recently, say within 7 days should be fit and I know I have seen some very big priced winners in the past.

So I opened the Inform Racing system builder and typed in some basic rules.

Handicap races, on the flat turf, since 2018, where the horse last ran within 7 days.

After using the Result Breakdown categories to filter the overall results, I finally came out with the set of rules on the image below.

(You can click the images to make them larger.)

A good set of results with nice profits for win and place bets plus a profit to Betfair Starting Prices in each of the previous to current four years.

Filtering a system using common sense.

When you are filtering the results on the system builder, you want to make sure what you are doing 'makes sense'.

For example I have it set to only count horses that are 10 years old or younger. This makes sense as older horses win less races.

However if you had it so that you were not counting 4 year olds or 6 year olds but were including 5 year olds, where is the sense in that? Why are these not qualifiers when 5 year olds are?

Do you see what I mean?

Another example.

On the image below you can see one of the categories in the system builder breakdowns that I decided to leave in. It shows the difference in results for the goings that the horses ran on.

As you can clearly see, when the going was Heavy, the strike rate is dramatically different to those for the other goings.

As there were only 39 races on Heavy going and the loss was just 20 odd points I decided to leave this, but you can clearly see how filtering out races on Heavy ground would make sense as it is a going that very horses really do go on and would be something you could filter out of your results.

Just add: Going >> Not Equal >> Heavy

You will find far bigger losses on other categories when you use these result breakdowns and as long as the filter you use makes sense, you will be able to improve most of your system ideas very easily.

So don't just filter out all of the bad results, try to use common sense and find a good reason why a form factor is not producing results.

I could have used more filters on this 'system idea' but there was no real reason to leave certain other factors out.

So to clarify the rules that I set along with some reason why I have used these filters.

    ** Flat turf racing only. No all weather races.

    ** Horse must have last ran within 7 days.

    ** Handicap races only.

    ** Race class should be restricted to class 5, 6 and 7 only. Perhaps too competitive in better classes and top horses are trained to be fitter to run in the better, more valuable races.

    ** Just to ensure we have UK runs and stats only, the horse must have had at least 1 previous run in the UK.

    ** It must have come between 3rd and 10th last time out. Horses finishing 1st or 2nd showed a loss as they were obviously being over bet and horses outside the first ten didn't perform well next time.

    ** It must not have been dropped in class, so either running in the same class as last time (0) or raised in class. Interesting but overall horses do win more when not dropped in class in all flat racing.

    ** It's SP last time out must have been 20/1 (21 as a decimal price), or less. Had to be expected to run fairly well last time by connections which can often be represented by the SP

    ** The horse must be aged 10 yers or younger. Fairly consistent that older horses don't win so often.

    ** It's Master Speed Rating must be one of the top 7. Quite clearly, those with better speed ratings win more.

    ** If the jocky is claiming an allowance, this must be a 5lb claim or less, OR the horse can be ridden by a pro jockey without a claim. Jockeys claiming more than 5lb's win less races as they are less experienced.

There are of course many other stats you can look at with this and many other system ideas you may have but it is not a bad start I think you will agree.

Losing streaks and betting bank sizes.

The longest losing streak you can see is 34 which is fairly normal when the average winning price is around the 8/1 mark, or BSP 9.30.

To ensure a decent bank whatever system you are following, I would suggest you take the longest losing run over a decent period as we have above.

Multiply this by 2 and then add another 20%. Given the longest losing run is 34, this would equate to a bank of just over 80 pts.

If you are betting £5 each time, this would be a bank of around £400 to start with and so far this would have made you over £2,815.

As it happens the worst loss at the start was just 15 pts, so a bank of £75 would have actually worked but you need to be set up correctly and EXPECT things to go wrong!

Testing the validity of this (and other) systems.

I have run this set of results through The Staking Machine Software and get some good 'feedback' on the strength of this system working long term.

You can see the image below that shows a lot of stats and figures but let me highlight three important ones.

    * We have a strike rate of 17.3% which is much better than the required strike rate for this system of only 10.8%

    * The E.L.S (Expected Losing Streak) is 36.6, very close to our biggest so far of 34

    * The Archie Score is 14.8. Anything over 8.5 means that it is unlikely your system is winning down to 'chance' and can esxpect to continue long term.

Declarations

As you may know you can use the system builder to get a set past results or use it to find all horses that qualify running today or tomorrow.

You just need to switch between the Results and Declarations buttons at the top of the system builder.

Whilst there are no qualifiers today, there are 5 running tomorrow that you may want to look at.

These are, (now with results added):

1.30 Hamilton - Rose Bandit 2nd 11/4

2.30 Hamilton - Clay Regazzoni Won 4/1

3.30 Hamilton - Captain Vallo Won 11/4

4.55 Leicester - Teemlucky Lost

6.10 Epsom - Ascraeus Lost