Inform Racing Systems Builder
In this new series of articles, we are going to explore potentially profitable avenues using the excellent Inform Speed Ratings and in particular, the System Builder, which evolved to help develop systems and strategies to use in conjunction with ratings.
Inform Racing has been a partner of OCP for some time now and we are currently using their Speed Ratings to produce daily selections for the Platinum Members which at the time of writing are having a positive time of it during April.
Given that the new turf season is building momentum after its recent start with the Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster it makes sense this time around to take a general look at the period May through to the end of October which covers the core period of the Flat turf campaign.
For those of you that might not be familiar with the Inform Racing System Builder let’s take a quick look at what the tool offers in way of research.
Benefits of the Inform Racing System Builder
Analyse past racing results and create your own profitable betting systems.
Test your ideas against our results database and gain a winning edge before you part with your money.
See the full profit and loss for your systems up to the past 10 years, along with the longest winning/losing streaks, ROI% and more.
Check the comprehensive results breakdown categories and clearly see where you can improve your systems.
Test for back and lay systems by switching between the Back or Lay buttons at the top of the system builder.
Run your systems against the days Declarations and find any bets for the day in a matter of seconds.
Use a choice of staking plans to see how your results perform to level stakes, the percentage plan, 80/20 betting, each way and more.
You can find out more about the System Builder here
To keep things relevant, we will be focussing our attention on the most recent 5 year period for the Flat Turf between May and the end of October.
Master Ratings
The above image shows a typical race card and the column that we will be starting our research on this time around is the Master Rating which is simply the best speed rating achieved during the last 12 months.
In theory the horse with the highest number should have the best chance assuming the race conditions and a number of other factors count in its favour.
Given no other factors, the top rated on the Master Rating produced a 20% strike rate and close to level returns (-0.09% ROI) to the Betfair SP after 5% comms. The A/E of 1.03 is also a solid indicator as anything above 1.00 is considered a positive.
A great feature of the Inform Racing System Builder is the ability to drill down into the results by numerous categories and one of these is to split the races between Handicaps and Non-Handicaps: –
Whilst the winning strike rate is lower for those in Handicap races the P/L produces a better return to BFSP from those top rated on the Master Ratings. The A/E has also moved up from 1.03 to 1.04.
With that in mind we will continue our research from the Handicap races category.
For a number of years now with the improvements in training techniques and the introduction of a variety of new race types such as veterans there has been a tendency to keep horses in training for longer and you see a good number of 6, 7, 8 and 9yo+ horses plying their trade in flat races.
However, as the table below shows, whilst they are still capable of winning, the overall strike rate drops as the top rated runners from the 6yo’s and upwards competes.
We will therefore home in on the 5yo or younger Handicap top rated entries which now reads as follows over our research period: –
This simple tweak has removed 3629 bets but has improved the strike rate to just shy of 18% and also moved the P/L at BFSP into a positive 3.20% ROI.
The next category we will consider is the Class of the race: –
The best Handicaps through the Flat campaign are the Class 2 and whilst overall the +25.84pts gained at BFSP appears a positive we can also see that the strike rate dips below the 17.99% benchmark so if we focus on the Handicap races away from the Heritage type races, we find an improved ROI from fewer bets.
The folks at Inform Racing regularly share ideas on their blog and twitter pages and one item caught my attention in the recent past and the more I considered it the more it made sense.
Handicap races by their nature are intended to be competitive events and therefore horses that go off at 3/1 or less Starting Price are really fancied to win the race, but of course, they may or may not win.
If we add one final factor into our research which is, to be a bet, the horse in question needs to have returned an SP of 3/1 or lower in its last time out run: –
So, with a few sensible filters we have homed in on a simple method that would have made a profit in each of the last 5 Flat campaigns.
No doubt a further check on the usual key factors such as does the horse have solid form on the prevailing going, is the trainer in decent recent form etc. would help us home in on the solid bets amongst the qualifiers.
Until next time
Steve Carter
Featured Image: www.canva.com