Warning. This post could get long. And it may ruffle some feathers because it goes against what a lot of others out there have advocated. Can't help that. The subject matter deserves a complete answer. Those of you willing to wade through it with an open mind I promise you can find some good info buried in here. What I'm posting about is stuff that is relevant to me whenever I think about the essence of winning. The process I go through isn't the only way to win. But the process I go through involves horses with hidden positives. And because the game is parimutuel in nature and because there is enough competition to make the pools pretty efficient - I believe at a core level betting horses with hidden positives is one of the requirements to being a winning player.
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Jeff, I agree with your assessment of the value of hidden positives, but how long does any such factor stay hidden before it starts getting noticed and overbet, requiring you to reinvent the wheel?
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You'd be surprised. Factors stay hidden from the public for a reason. Mostly because either the factor itself is under the radar or the public refuses to believe that factor to have any real relevance. We just had a couple of lengthy threads arguing the validity of speed in workouts. In that thread I showed how to create a simple model using workout speed as the basis for profitable play. Speed in workouts isn't stand alone profitable so it was something I was willing to post about in order to illustrate how hidden positives can be used to good effect. I know of a couple of other factors (which I'm not willing to post about here) that have been stand alone flat bet profitable since I first came across them about 15 years ago.
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It seems to me that using more fundamental factors provides greater durability over time, while still providing ample opportunities for finding value (especially employing a weighted blend of several such factors...
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The really interesting thing to me is that most people (and please understand I'm not picking on you) make assumptions about what I do. I get a sense from phone calls and emails a lot of people think that I use stand alone factors in a vacuum... that as soon as I discover a promising new factor that meets the criteria I posted that I'll start betting that factor as a stand alone. Nothing could be further from the truth. A lot of what I do is to take interesting and overlooked (but related) stand alone factors and use them as building blocks to create compound factors. The compound factors I'll produce will fall into one or more areas of handicapping endeavor. For example, to my way of thinking (and I need to stress that phrase so I'll say it again)
to my way of thinking the five general areas of handicapping endeavor are:
1. Pace
2. Class
3. Ability from Speed Figures
4. Current Form or Condition
5. Human Connections
Every one of the compound factors that I produce is designed to represent in a unique way a horse's ability in one of the above five areas.
The interesting thing to me is that
some of these compound factors outperform (in terms of win rate and roi) the sum of their parts. Then I'll turn around and use these compound factors and weight them in such a way as to create a decent power rating. So in essence the bulk of what I do is to do my own research and use what I discover to create my own compound factors and roll them together to make a power rating that is fundamentally better (IMHO) than whatever the vast majority of those I am betting against happens to be doing.
In essence I agree with you. I really do employ a weighted blend of several fundamental factors.
Continuing on with what you wrote:
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...and looking at the winning chances of all horses in a field, rather than concentrating only on finding a single "angle" horse, or the one most likely winner).
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From there I'll combine the power rating with the way I perceive people will bet the race to create a reasonably accurate odds line. The more work I do (the more I re-invent the wheel) the more I find I keep making better and better odds lines.
As an aside the most accurate odds line I currently make predicts race winners with more accuracy than the public does when they select the top four horses ranked by post time favoritism. But... in practice I find that accuracy (in terms of probability) in an odds line does not necessarily translate to being able to use that odds line as a pure play or pass decision making mechanism for profitable play.
I've invested a ton of my own man hours into the never ending quest to develop better and better odds lines. No matter how accurate an odds line I make in terms of predicting race winners... and as mentioned I am able to do that with a very high degree of accuracy.... one fact remains: Whenever I simulate flat win betting EVERY horse that goes to post at odds higher than that indicated as a theoretical break even point by the odds lines I create I lose significant money.
That tells me one of two things:
1. I suck at making odds lines.
2. The pools are pretty efficient by nature.
HOWEVER, using an odds line to provide a theoretical break even point for flat betting EVERY horse above that theoretical break even point is NOT how I use the odds lines that I make.
In practice I find that when I create spot plays keyed off of
combinations of hidden positive angles and run those against the odds line theoretical break even point in play or pass decision making... THAT approach consistently wins money.
And the one thing I keep coming back to whenever I think about why that approach works for me is that is has me betting almost exclusively on ONLY THOSE HORSES with enough hidden positives in their records to make this game wonderfully worthwhile.
-jp
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