Handicapping Statistics
 

Big Al and Pandy brought up the topic of using age when considering blinker changes in the Barry Meadows book thread. Sounded like a good idea for a thread, but not in the Book section, so I put it here.

I looked at blinkers on from 7/15/16 - 9/30/18

Here are the results, broken down by 2yo, 3yo, and older.

I'll do blinkers off later today.

Tom, if you can, take those same stats and break them down in each age category, adding the odds filter of all horses 6-1 to 30-1, all horses 30-1 and up, then filter all horses 5-1 and down....Let's see what we find in those categories now, might find a nugget here.

Here are the results for Blinkers OFF.
Same time period.

Barry picked a good name for the book.....Skeptical!
Surprising results?

Wow opposite of how I think.

But those are the facts.

Allan

I think also important to know is how individual trainers do.
I saw some that were 20-25% winners with B ON for 3UP horses, so there is still more to know.

Blinkers on is usually a shot in the dark when nothing else is working so I'm not surprised it doesn't work much. I remember reading in one of Nick Mordin's books how blinkers on was considered a negative in Europe and he had stats to back it up if memory serves.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting Tom.

Interesting stuff, and this is a difficult one to track, but I see many of the high percentage trainers using a large shadow roll and the Flair nose strip. Jason Servis seems to have them on quite a few of his claims

Tom,
Could you post horses that wear blinkers v horses that don’t wear blinkers.
In Barry,s book he said that horses that don’t wear blinkers race better than those that do.

I wonder if the betting return bears that out.

Allan (thanks in advance for the stats, if available)

This back's up the stats in the new Meadows book, blinkers off better than blinkers on. The key with blinkers on is that horses can improve dramatically. Some things to look for, a lightly raced horse that's racing greenly, adding blinkers, or a lightly raced horse that seems to race greenly or shy from horses.

For instance, riders like to float wide in the stretch to try and intimidate a horse closing to their outside. For professional racehorses with experience, they're usually not intimidated. But some maidens are and they basically start to take up or hesitate enough to stop their momentum. A horse like that can improve sharply in blinkers.

Good post, Tom.

I remember something similar. in the Fotias book he claimed that Racing Form stats showed the vast majority of trainers have a lower win percentage with first time blinkers.

Would be interesting if these stats were controlled for and broken down by odds groups.

Suggestion for groups?
This might be beyond my competency, but I am willing to try.

I'd think you'd want maidens vs. non-maidens, to see if it's a sign of a horse about to wake up. Then maybe MSW vs. Maiden Claiming. Then as Randall suggested earlier, by odds ranges (up to 5-1, 5-1 to 10-1, 10-1 and up).

As you noted, the most important breakdown is probably by trainer, but that is already in the PPs.

There is one angle that goes back long time is backing favourites in the first three races of the card and stop at winner.
No idea if any good in North America but seems.????