The Boodles Chester Meeting – Wednesday 7th May – Friday 9th May
One of my favourite meetings of the year is the three day Chester meeting held early in May, known as the Boodles. Due to the uniqueness of track’s layout, I find the races a fascinating watch. Not only that, but Chester is also such a picturesque racetrack, one of the top three in the country IMO.
In this article I am going to look at the last ten meetings trying to uncover some trends and stats that may give us an edge this year. Profits and losses will be quoted to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) to £1 level stakes. Commission on winning bets will be applied to final profit/loss figures as ever.
An overview
To begin with let at me look at some general stats for the meeting before focusing on more specific data for three of the bigger races. To begin with I am going to look at market data based on the Betfair market rank:
| Market Rank | Bets | Wins | Strike Rate % | Profit/Loss (BSP) | ROI (BSP) |
| Favourite | 211 | 70 | 33.2 | + £1.35 | + 0.6 |
| 2nd favourite | 212 | 41 | 19.3 | – £20.34 | – 9.6 |
| 3rd favourite | 211 | 27 | 12.8 | – £31.03 | – 14.7 |
| 4th favourite | 207 | 19 | 9.2 | – £47.30 | – 22.9 |
| 5th favourite | 192 | 18 | 9.4 | – £8.80 | – 4.6 |
| 6th or bigger in the betting | 899 | 36 | 4.0 | – £215.13 | – 23.9 |
As we can see, favourites have a decent win rate with a one in three strike rate, as well as just edging into a BSP profit. Favourites have performed especially well in non handicaps thanks to 41 wins from 94 runners (SR 43.6%) for a profit of £14.32 (ROI +15.2%).
Taking these last ten years as a whole, this is a meeting where outsiders have not performed that well with horses priced BSP 20.0 or bigger winning just 14 races from 653 runners (SR 2.1%) for a loss of £246.46 (ROI –37.4%).
Having said that, outsiders have performed much better in the last five years with 10 wins, and overall losses restricted to 7p in the £.
I now want to examine the number of runs the horses have had that particular season, the season beginning on the day of the first turf flat meeting at Doncaster.
Here are the splits:
| Number of Runs (That Season) | Bets | Wins | Strike Rate % | Profit/Loss (BSP) | ROI (BSP) |
| 0 | 661 | 67 | 10.1 | – £48.98 | – 7.4 |
| 1 | 875 | 108 | 12.3 | – £134.81 | – 15.4 |
| 2 | 328 | 31 | 9.5 | – £103.86 | – 31.7 |
| 3 or more | 68 | 5 | 7.4 | – £33.60 | – 49.4 |
Horses that have had at least two runs already in the first few weeks of the season have turned out to be poor value. The ‘best’ value has been on horses having their first run of the season.
My guess for why this has been the case, is that the market may have been prejudiced in favour of horses that have already run that season due them potentially being fitter. Hence their prices have been slightly shorter than they perhaps should have been offering less value.
Earlier it was noted that favourites have done well at this meeting and if we now look at favourites having their first run of the season, we can see that 21 of the 49 won (SR 42.9%) for a BSP profit of £17.30 (ROI +35.3%).
Something perhaps to keep an eye out for this year.
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