Quote:
Originally Posted by DeltaLover
As a bettor you do not care a lot about the ability of jockey.
If your interest in horse racing is limited to its gambling alone, the skill of the jockey must be completely transparent to your approach and at no point it should become a central topic in your research and handicapping.
When it comes to jockeys (as in any other handicapping factor) what really matters is not their absolute skill or their classification as better and worse but how these are perceived by the betting public and how this perception is reflected in the betting pools.
Take as an example the following data set which comprises of all the jockeys who have more than 100 starters at more than 8- 1 since 2017 in 'AQU', 'BEL', 'SAR', 'GP', 'SA', 'DMR', 'LRC':
https://gist.github.com/deltalover/4...ee96ed8c6f71b6
Using this table it becomes obvious that Irad Ortiz (ROI 0.79) is certainly inferion to let’s say Aby Medina (ROI 1.08) for betting purposes. My objective as a bettor is not to decide which of the two might be more talented, smart or fit; it is enough to know that the betting crowd is commiting a huge error when estimating the chances of this two, meaning that it is overestimating the ability of Ortiz while simultaneously is underestimating Medina's. |
while essentially that may be true, there is still two things out there in the race......a horse AND a rider.
i have always been of the opinion the rider is the more important of the two.
and your chart could be influenced by one or two long priced winners?
not to mention it is very fluid, so it probably looks very different month to month.
or you could have riders that are profitable......depending on how you filter, but you have less than 1.
there is seven zillion ways to analyse it.
you could have a rider with negative expectation, but in the circumstances could be a great bet.
rider IS VERY very important, but it's just one factor.
personally i would never bother analysing a rider the way you have done. it does not work that way.
if all your factors as one give positive expectation then what does it matter if the rider in this case, is a losing proposition according to his/her past history.
you job is to predict the future not the past even if the past may help to an extent.
