Recent Form
When you are considering having a bet on a horse race what is your process?
I would imagine everyone reading this piece would have a slightly different answer. For me it involves several things. One thing is that I do have a list of horses ‘to follow’. These are horses that I have noted down that have run well enough in the recent past to potentially be of interest when they race again. This may be because they have run well against a draw bias, a pace bias, or both. It may be that they have been unlucky in running, perhaps stopped in their run by gaps closing which stopped their momentum and ultimately severely dented their chance of winning.
Another thing I look for is horses that have been forced to run wider than ideal, meaning they have had to run further than the horses on their inside.
This list is not exhaustive but gives you a flavour of some of the things I am looking for. This list is constantly evolving with new runners being added and others being deleted. I have no set amount of time that a horse remains on my list, but it is rare to remain for more than three runs after the time it was added. If a horse on the list wins, then I do usually delete it.
Hence, when a horse on my list is down to run, I will obviously start to look at that race and assess the chance of the horse in question.
However, there are plenty of races that I consider a bet in regardless of whether I have a horse to follow running.
In general, I do bet more often on the Flat / AW, basically due to my draw bias background ‘back in the day.’ I do look at races where I perceive there to still be a draw bias. Likewise, I will look at races that have pace / run style biases, usually those course and distances that favour horses from the front. I also will look at big races – Group races on the flat, Graded races over the sticks, and big handicaps in both codes.
So let us imagine I am looking at 5 furlong sprint at a course where lower draws are favoured, and also front runners have a strong edge.
If a front running low drawn runner is in the lineup, what do I do next? I guess I’ll do what most other punters would do and try to assess other factors such as horse form, fitness, trainer form, speed ratings, etc.
For the remainder of this article, I am going to look at how you might assess one of these – recent form. In terms of data collection, I have looked at the last two full years of flat / AW UK racing spanning from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2023. I have also ignored horses that have not raced at least three times in their career. The reason for this will become apparent later in the article.
So recent form? What does that mean to punters?
Well, for some it is solely the last time out run – one could confidently argue is the most important piece of the recent form puzzle. How did last time out performance equate when we plug in some numbers? Below is the performance of LTO runners in terms of finishing position. Horses that finished 10th or worse have been grouped together. Any profits have been shown in black, whereas losses have been shown in red – the profit / loss figures have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price:
At first glance, it seems that when it comes to profits, you should stick to horses that have run ‘poorly’ last time. Of course, these figures are skewed somewhat due to some excessively large priced winners. For example, Astapor won a novice event on the 2nd of June 2022 priced at 1000/1 having finished 10th on their prior start. That completely wipes up the profits when looking at the remaining 10,900 horses that finished 10th or worse last time out.
Hence, we cannot simply be lured in by base-line profit figures from a set of past results – we do have to appreciate that runners who ran poorly last time will produce a volatile set of results with a low strike rate. Talking of strike rates, you can see that the better the finishing position LTO, the better the strike rate (excluding the slight uptick in the 10th or worse SR% compared with 9th). However, last time out winners who have achieved the best SR% were quite poor value, losing over 9 pence in the £ to £1 level stakes. Clearly the betting market adjusts their prices accordingly.
Now I would imagine some people focus their attention on horses that finished in the first three last time out, and combining their results would have seen a loss of just under 6p in the £.
Is there a way to improve this?
I thought it might be interesting to compare the number of runners in the last time out race. My thought being that a top three finish in a 9 runner race would not be as strong as a top three finish in an 18 runner race. The basic premise of more horses to beat the harder it is to achieve. I decided to split these LTO races into 12 runners or less / 13 runners or more:
As you can see the stats seem to back up the theory. We have a better strike rate and more importantly a better return.
This looks to be something you might want to consider – being aware of the number of runners in that LTO run combined with a finishing position of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.
For our Gold and Platinum readers Dave looks at some last three runs statistics which may be worthy of interest.
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