Top 10 courses for c&d winners
I have looked at the beaten favourite angle and they do tend to do a little bit better than average. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between UK and Ireland when it comes to performance of beaten favourites, very marginally better in Ireland but not enough for it to be a factor. Biggest clear factor, not surprisingly, seems to be class of race, those dropping in class do few points better than average, horses running in same class perform average, and those moving up in class perform worse than average. Note: I know they don’t use class system in Ireland, but it can be worked out by looking at difference between prize money. Another big factor, although sample size for this isn’t huge, is if the horse is running very quickly after last run. Those beaten favourites who run within 7 days of their last run show much better return than those with a bigger break. And when you combine these two factors of beaten favourites dropping in class and also running within 7 days, you have a system that has shown a profit over last 10 years, blindly backing these qualifiers has shown a profit of 4% at SP and 9% at Betfair SP, but you only get on average about 60 of these qualifiers in a year. You can further enhance this system by only betting horses who are favourite again, and I am actually going to use this as a system. Horses who meet all 4 of these conditions of beaten fav last time, dropping in class, running within 7 days, and favourite again, have returned a 30% profit at SP over last ten years. Only trouble is you only get about 30 of these bets in a year, another drawback is you have to wait till before the off to see if the horse will go off favourite. Record over last 10 years is 157 wins from 329 bets for a strike rate of 48% and +99 LSP, two qualifiers so far this year both won at 3/1 (Foreign Legion, who has incidentally run up a 4-timer) and 5/2 (Space Bandit).