BEST of the BETS

Unlucky mate, but nice place at 5/6.

Unplaced. Two favourites finish 1st & 2nd with Home Of The Brave in 3rd.

Nice winners, Mugz.

Great shout with Addeybb, well done Mugz.

Thanks Mugz. Yes, she won very impressively again. Stick ‘Em Up gave a good race too, went as short as 6/1 in running but dropped out of places at finish to end up 5th.

Not sure how relevant it will be this season, and not sure if we would even get any racing in May. But I have looked at the record of top UK trainers in early season on flat with horses returning from a lay off.

The criteria used is same as with the Irish trainers above. These are top 20 trainers in terms of the number of runners they had in early season since 2015. I have arranged them in order of A/E figure with highest at top and lowest at bottom. If you are interested to know about any other trainer not on the list (or want breakdown of a trainer on the list by type of race, age, price etc.), let me know.

1. Mick Easterby - 99 bets, 13 wins, 16 places, LSP = +22.75, A/E = 1.54
2. Sir Michael Stoute - 202 bets, 47 wins, 46 places, LSP = +57.55, A/E = 1.21
3. Mick Channon - 99 bets, 13 wins, 16 places, LSP = -2.00, A/E = 1.07
4. Roger Varian - 180 bets, 46 wins, 38 places, LSP = -15.18, A/E = 1.06
5. Richard Fahey - 342 bets, 49 wins, 63 places, LSP = +3.52, A/E = 1.03
6. Michael Dods - 151 bets, 17 wins, 20 places, LSP = +7.04, A/E = 1.01
7. John Gosden - 171 bets, 48 wins, 46 places, LSP = -4.59, A/E = 0.98
8. Ralph Beckett - 142 bets, 25 wins, 40 places, LSP = -11.95, A/E = 0.97
9. Kevin Ryan - 165 bets, 25 wins, 36 places, LSP = -20.24, A/E = 0.96
10. Andrew Balding - 166 bets, 25 wins, 41 places, LSP = -23.87, A/E = 0.90
11. David Simcock - 108 b, 14 w, 24 p, LSP = -36.95, A/E = 0.90
12. Clive Cox - 121 b, 16 w, 29 p, LSP = -12.68, A/E = 0.89
13. Richard Hannon (Jnr) - 248 b, 29 w, 46 p, LSP = -18.86, A/E = 0.89
14. David O’Meara - 239 b, 29 w, 45 p, LSP = +50.50, A/E = 0.86
15. William Haggas - 145 b, 30 w, 43 p, LSP = -36.18, A/E = 0.84
16. Keith Dalgleish - 105 b, 11 w, 15 p, LSP = -51.91, A/E = 0.83
17. Tim Easterby - 280 b, 17 w, 41 p, LSP = -63.00, A/E = 0.79
18. Charles Hills - 136 b, 11 w, 24 p, LSP = -76.01, A/E = 0.66
19. Mark Johnston - 151 b, 15 w, 32 p, LSP = -90.22, A/E = 0.65
20. Karl Burke - 103 b, 6 w, 15 p, LSP = -74.36, A/E = 0.49

Note - if anyone doesn’t know what A/E is and why it is considered a better indicator than LSP, I will try and explain it below. But first, in above list you might have noticed that Roger Varian has a negative LSP despite having a high A/E, and David O’Meara has a big positive LSP but a relatively low A/E. Reason for this is the difference in price of their winners - all of Varian’s winners have been under 10/1 and if you only backed his runners in this price range you would make a good profit. In contrast, O’Meara has not done very well with his shorter priced runners but his LSP is boosted by some big priced winners at prices of up to 50/1.

Now for those interested, A/E stands for Actual vs Expected, it’s the ratio between actual number of winners and expected number of winners. I will try to explain it with an example. Let’s say you have 10 bets on horses at following prices, in brackets I have included the probability of horse winning based on its price. Let’s say the prices are Evens (0.5), 2/1 (0.33), 5/2 (0.29), 4/1 (0.2), 6/1 (0.14), 9/1 (0.1), 12/1 (0.08), 25/1 (0.04), 50/1 (0.02), 100/1 (0.01). Total of these probabilities add up to 1.71, which means if you had these 10 bets at these prices you will on average be expected to have 1.71 winners. Now let’s look at couple of scenarios. In one instance you have two winners from above at say prices of 2/1 & 4/1, your LSP will be -2.00 but as you had more winners than expected your A/E will be 2 divided by 1.71 = 1.17. In another instance, let’s say you only have one winner from above 10 bets but it is the 50/1 shot that wins, your LSP will be +41 but as number of winners was less than expected A/E ratio will be 1 divided by 1.71 = 0.58. Whether LSP is better indicator or A/E can be debated. If you are someone who always stakes exactly same irrespective of the price of your selection then you should follow LSP, but most people stake proportionately so they would stake a bigger amount on their shorter priced selections than they would on a bigger priced one, I don’t know many people that would stake same amount on a 50/1 shot as they would on a 2/1 shot, that’s why A/E is considered a better indicator by most.

Thanks Mugz. Nature Strip made all as expected and won by easy 2 lengths. Other selection Exccedance never got going and was a disappointing 9th. Profit made.

Excellent thread, Brian, thanks for your hard work in putting this together. I use the dosage method for top races like Derby and Guineas etc but not all races, I will refer back to your thread for other races too. The way I use dosage figures for big races is, I look at CD of last 10 or 12 winners and find the median and back horses that are close to this figure, this method used to work very well for Derby but hasn’t done so well in recent years as some with very low CD have won the race, I think the last Derby winner with above 0.40 CD was Sea The Stars.

Thanks again, I love threads like this.

First 3 were all course winners.

Tiz The Law wins very easy, always looked in control, that even money looks good price now.

Well done with the earlier winner, Mugz.

8 of last 10 winners had previously won at the track, so that’s a strong stat in favour of the favourite and he has beaten one of his main rivals Ete Indien before, price is short enough though. I had a very small each way on Candy Tycoon @ 66/1 just for a bit of interest. He shouldn’t be good enough to win as he got thrashed by Ete Indien last time, but he has won here before and Todd Pletcher has won 4 of the last 6 runnings of this.

Thanks, Doubler.

Very poor run to finish. There is not going to be any racing for some time, but there are more important things right now. Hopefully, we will pick things up again once this is over. Take care of yourselves and your families. Stay safe.

LSP: -2.82 (win), -1.13 (place)

March LSP: -5.00

Well done, Ascot.

Bet 16

Elusive Star (2:30 Clonmel)

LSP: -4.00

Wins - 3/1, 6/1

2:30 Clonmel - for a maiden hurdle, this looks very open and there are a few possibles. I have backed ELUSIVE STAR, who had run well when 4th of 18 (50/1) on hurdling debut in better race than this at Punchestown in February last year. Well beaten 4th in a bumper last time, but he would have needed the run after over a year off, and market is very positive about him today. Michael Hourigan’s record with horses priced in single figures in maiden hurdles is very good, 59 winners from 264 (+16 LSP). I also considered Immortality, but she is very weak in betting. Any of the first 4-5 in betting have chances, but Elusive Star looks the best to me.

Selection - Elusive Star @ 7/2

Good luck.

Thanks. 15/2 winner for Joseph, and 8/1 winner for Ger Lyons too. There were total of 11 qualifying bets from top 5 trainers, would have returned LSP of +6.5 today.

Finished 3rd, clearly needed the run as the betting also suggested, will do better next time. I would have been better off backing Getawiggleon each way, but that’s how it goes.

LSP: -1.82 (win), -0.13 (place)

I will do the UK trainers later, but for now here is how the top Irish trainers have done at start of flat season with horses returning from a lay off. Data is for all races in March, April & May over last 5 seasons for horses that were returning after an absence of between 5 to 10 months.

1. Willie McCreery - 73 bets, 12 wins, 17 places, LSP = +20.30, A/E = 1.44
2. Mrs John Harrington - 110 bets, 17 wins, 19 places, LSP = +63.58, A/E = 1.42
3. Joseph O’Brien - 55 bets, 7 wins, 16 places, LSP = +43.00, A/E = 1.06
4. Ger Lyons - 123 bets, 20 wins, 22 places, LSP = +15.11, A/E = 1.04
5. Dermot Weld -138 bets, 37 wins, 30 places, LSP = +24.99, A/E = 0.99
6. Aidan O’Brien - 197 bets, 33 wins, 47 places, LSP = -63.15, A/E = 0.72
7. Jim Bolger - 154 bets, 12 wins, 29 places, LSP = -30.60, A/E = 0.61
8. Johnny Murtagh - 53 bets, 2 wins, 9 places, LSP = -43.40, A/E = 0.39
9. Mick Halford - 74 bets, 3 wins, 15 places, LSP = -64.10, A/E = 0.33

Top 5, especially 2, are worth following. Others should be avoided it seems. If you want to know about any other trainer not in list, let me know.

Bet 15

Knight of Malta (2:30 Naas)

LSP: -3.00

Wins - 3/1, 6/1