Introduction
Hello, and welcome new subscribers.

You may have seen various websites offering to sell a system which creates untold wealth. The websites claim fantastic success rates which can be substantiated. You may have seen adverts for "Amazing! Systems" which have "Won £94,357" with accuracies of "95%+". They are often described as "The Best Systems in the World".

Caveat Emptor. Buyer Beware! The only thing the systems are good at is fooling punters into believing the systems really are the best in the world.

Recently, I was informed of a system which has created crazy profits. On first inspection, this system could be described as the best system in the world. But on closer analysis I discovered that the system was an incredibly dangerous one to play with.

This time of year there are various publications available which give an insight into all weather racing. Many contain useful stats such as sire and trainer strike rates for each of the three courses.

Whilst this is very useful information I'd like to give you something a little bit special: unique stats which are not available to the masses.

Read this newsletter and see the stats which prove why certain 'promising apprentices' should be avoided; which trainers are underbet by the public; and which sires should be avoided when their runners switch between Polytrack and Fibresand.

Stephen Mainwaring

The Best System in the World?
A couple of months ago, over at Pittsburgh Phil's Place, a message was posted which raised quite a few eyebrows. The poster claimed to have discovered a method which could make £50 profit every day, at every race meeting.

A quick check of the rules proved that the system was quite incredible. If you had followed this system since the start of 2003, you would have won over £22,000. If you had followed the system since the rules were first posted on 12th August, you would have raked in a cool profit of £11,150.

So what are the rules for this system? Is it a con? Why has it worked? Will it fail? These are the questions I asked and attempted to answer.

Rules: Lay the favourite in every race at a meeting progressively to win £50. Stop when target achieved.

This is a loss retrieval system employing a stop at a winner mechanism. Favourites are laid in succession with progressive stakes, and when the target is achieved you stop. Basically, you lay the favourite in the first race to win £50. If the favourite loses, you gain £50 and stop. If the favourite wins, you then lay the fav in the next race to recover your loss from the first and to gain £50, and so on.

e.g.
Race 1: Lucky Jim 2/1 fav. Risk £100 to win £50. Lucky Jim "wins" therefore bank -£100
Race 2: Blue Boy Evens fav. Risk £150 to win £150. Blue Boy "wins" therefore bank -£250
Race 3: Budmeister Evens fav. Risk £300 to win £300. Budmeister "loses" therefore winnings=£300, bank=+£50. Target achieved. Stop betting.

Some of you may have spotted that this is like a typical fool's gold system used on Roulette tables. This kind of system is often used at dog tracks too. Punters believe that there has never been a meeting at say Crayford where the favourite has never won. Therefore, you keep backing the favourite to win your target plus any loses from earlier races and stop at a winner.

The beauty of this system, is that it is not based on chasing losses on finding winning favourites: it is chasing losses on losing favourites and this seems to make sense. If favourites win 32% of the time, and if backing them using a loss retrieval method is so bad, then doing the opposite should be profitable. By laying the favourite instead, the system has (in general) a 68% of winning on the first leg. And it is very unlikely that all favourites will win in every race.

The thinking behind this system is sound. The reason why it is so appealing is because favourites do lose more often than they win and it is extremely rare for favourites to "go through the card". Usually, you only have to get to the first or second race for this method to achieve it's goal. Therefore, you shouldn't need to risk too much cash up front.

So is this really the Best System in the World?

No. And to be honest, it is an extremely dangerous system. If you follow it you may indeed be cleaning up £50 at every meeting, every day for the next few months. But one day the system will crash. This will happen when all favourites will go through the card, or the first five have gone in and you have to put up a huge bet on the sixth just to clear £50.

Analysing 10 years worth of flat turf data revealed the following results:

Total number of meetings bet on: 5,178
Total number of winning meetings: 5,164
Total number of losing meetings: 14

Now that does sound incredible. Out of 5178 meetings bet on, the system achieved it's target of clearing £50 profit 5,164 times. That is a success rate of 99.7%. But what about those 14 losing days? How much did the system lose on those days? What is the overall profit after 10 years?

Total amount staked: £3,600,335
Total Profit: £15,491
ROI: 0.43%

The profits do not look so good now. In 10 years, the net gain is £15,491. What is even more disappointing is the return on investment figure of just 0.43%. Even Barclays pay more interest than that. If you had just laid every favourite in every race instead you would have made a profit 10 times greater than that.

On some days you would have placed ridiculous bets which may not have got matched.

465 occasions £1,000+ bets were placed
40 occasions £10,000+ bets were placed
6 occasions £50,000+ bets were placed
2 occasions £100,000+ bets were placed

On two occasions, early wins by the favourite meant that bets of £100,000 or more had to be put up! In some instances, not even Betfair would be able to supply enough backers to match the bet. The biggest bet which had to be offered was in 1999 at Warwick. £134,000 would have had to have been placed on the favourite in the last race.

This is why loss retrieval / doubling up methods fail. At some stage you will have to place telephone number size bets. And the biggest danger is that you run out of races at a meeting and are unable to "retrieve your earlier stakes", i.e. the favourite goes through the card.

The last time this happened was two years ago at Catterick. On the 9th October 2001 all eight favourites won. Running this system at that meeting would have lost you £34,939 in just one day.

On average, there has been one meeting a year where the favourite goes through the card. The fact that this hasn't happened for two years now must flag up some danger signals that a 'wipeout' is due.

If you follow this system you may get mesmerised by it's success. You may continue to make another £11,150 in the next few months, but one day you will get shafted by this system and quite possibly lose the lot.

You can read more about this system over at Pittsburgh Phil's Place.

 The "D'oh System" - Not the Best System in the World

Jockeys to Avoid
70% of jockeys riding on the all weather today are better on the all weather than what they are on the turf.

What that means is, that the majority of jockeys who choose to ride on the all weather do so because they are good at it. They may not be up there with the big boys on turf, but they can certainly rattle off many winners on the sand. Conversely, 30% of jockeys riding on the all weather really shouldn't be doing so. They maybe good on the turf, but on the all weather they just do not have the same ability.

Jockeys were analysed to see how much better their all weather strike rate was compared to their turf strike rate. Only jockeys who had ridden 50 times on both codes were analysed.

This resulted in 143 jockeys being analysed. 104 of them had all weather strike rates higher than their turf strike rates.

In the top 70% section of the list are jockeys such as L Enstone (all weather strike rate 2.2 times greater than turf), J-P Guillambert (2.0) and I Mongan (1.6).

At the other end of the table were 39 jockeys who had all weather strike rates lower than their turf strike rates. It was interesting to note that many of these jockeys were 'promising apprentices' who were progressing well on turf. This included talented apprentices such as R Miles (0.36) and R Lake (0.61).

David Kinsella is at the bottom of the table too, and he has been very profitable for laying on the all weather. Many punters think that Kinsella is a promising apprentice and this notion is bolstered by various media pundits who say things such as '....is ridden by Kinsella who is a good lad'. The effect of this is that punters are taking the jockeys skill for granted whilst bookies are taking their wallets. In reality, Kinsella is a very poor all weather jockey.

This quite often happens with apprentices and this is why they are mostly at the bottom of the all weather / turf strike rate table. Whilst they may be gathering speed in learning the ropes, and raising many an eyebrow with enterprising rides on the turf, they are often left floundering in the sand and this can be expensive for backers.

The latest recruit to this 'he's a good lad' effect is Sam Hitchcott. This year on the turf Hitchcott has become quite a revelation. In 2001 and 2002 he could only manage strike rates of 4% and 3%, but this year he scored 45 winners on the turf to obtain a strike rate of 15%.

Hitchcott was well talked about in the later part of the season and this has stuck in punters minds. So much so that they were willing to back him on the all weather as if he is just as effective.

Last week Hitchcott rode a couple of favourites on the all weather and they both failed to win.

Those favourites should have been lays because Hitchcott is nowhere near as good on the all weather as he is on turf. He couldn't even win on shoe-in rides.

Overall on the all weather Hitchcott has only ridden 6 winners from 163 attempts. That is a strike rate of just 3.7%. In fact this year, whilst he has hit a high strike rate on the turf, he has failed to find a single winner on the sand.

Hitchcott seems to have a confidence problem on the sand. If you check his stats in small fields he is actually not too bad (14% strike rate), whilst in big fields he has only had 1 winner from 128 attempts. And if you check his draw stats you will see that he rarely wins when drawn low or middle. Only when drawn wide, away from the pack and any kickback, does he show ability.

Will Hitchcott overcome this problem? It is hard to say. He may get better with experience but this has not happened with Kinsella. Kinsella's strike rate has worsened from 5% in 2001 and 2002 to just 2% this year. (Note - Kinsella has now lost his claim so he should be even more profitable for laying on the sand).

For now, it would pay to lay all of Hitchcott's mounts unless he is drawn wide in a small field race.

All of the following jockeys should be candidates for laying on the all weather. They have really poor all weather strike rates compared to turf and could quite possibly be talked up by media pundits as 'good lads'.

Jockeys to avoid on the all weather

Underbet Trainer Favourites
Which type of favourite is the most profitable for backing: A Sir Mark Prescott favourite, or a Mark Johnston favourite?

Most punters would say Johnston. They would associate Prescott with gambles and assume that he is unprofitable. They would assume that the 'always trying' Johnston is an honest trainer, and thus more profitable.

The reality is that Prescott is the more profitable with favourites. For the very reasons given above, Prescott is actually underbet by the public whilst honest Johnston is overbet.

This information is calculated by working out the actual / expected ratio for each trainer. The actual / expected ratio is like an enhanced Impact Value which takes into the account the price of each horse. If a trainer has many shorter priced runners then we would expect him to have many winners, if he has mostly bigger priced runners then we would not expect him to win as much.

You can work out the actual / expected ratio (A/E) by dividing the actual number of winners by the expected number of winners. The expected number of winners is worked out with the following formula:

Expected Winners=sum of all 'odds' where odds=1 / (SP + 1)

If you exclude any bookies over-round for now, then the odds of each runner is 1 / (SP + 1). An Evens shot is therefore expected to win 0.50 of the time, whilst a 3/1 shot is expected to win 0.25 of the time. If we had 100 3/1 shots, then we would expect 25 of them to win (100 * 0.25).

Summing all the 'odds' of Prescott's favourites in the past 10 years on the all weather gives a figure of 127.2. This means that he was expected to win with 127.2 of his favourites. He actually won with 133 of them, thus his A/E is 1.05. Johnston on the other had, was expected to win with 118.8 of his favourites but he only actually won with 105 of them. His A/E is therefore much lower on 0.88.

The A/E ratio can be used to show how efficient a trainer is with a certain event. A figure of 1.00 means that the trainer is winning 'as expected'. A figure less than 1.00 means they are not winning as expected.

In situations where the figure is above 1.00 this means that the trainer is being underbet by the public - he is winning at a rate more than his odds say he should. Figures below 1.00 indicate that the trainer is too popular. He is being overbet by the public and is not winning as often as he should.

Top 10 'Underbet' Trainers for Favourites

Andrew Reid is the most underbet trainer for favourites. The odds of his favourites were such that he was only expected to win with 19.7 of them. He actually won with 26 of them. This shows that the public were letting his favourites go off at prices higher than their ability.

Top 10 'Overbet' Trainers for Favourites

Bill Turner is the worst trainer for favourites, although to be fair, the sample size is a little bit low. He had a total of 32 favourites in the past 10 years. The odds indicated that he should have won with 11.3 of them, but he actually won with only 5.

Useful Resources
There is a new free SP Analysis Tool you can use for examining prices. The tool shows how often certain prices win and place. You can choose to analyse all courses and / or all different race types. A report is generated which shows how often each price range wins. e.g. Evens shots (who should win 50% of the time) actually win 48.3% of the time. The reason for the difference is because of the 'bookie over-round'

 SP Analysis Tool

Sires Switching Surfaces
Have you wondered why a horse may run well at Lingfield, but then so poorly at Southwell or Wolverhampton? The answer could be due to the horse being able to handle the virtually kick back free Polytrack, but not the harsh, dusty Fibresand at the other two tracks.

Once a horse has had sufficient runs on both types of surfaces then there is enough evidence to determine if a horse can handle either surface. But by the time the horse has had sufficient runs, it is usually too late to know that information for betting purposes. Punters may have backed a horse two or three times on an unfavoured surface and lost their money.

Sire stats are very useful here as they can indicate if a horse will be suited to a surface or not.

The following analysis compares sires offspring on the Polytrack (Lingfield) with Fibresand (Southwell and Wolverhampton). Only data since November 2001 is used as this is when the Polytrack was first introduced in this country.

Top 10 Sires for Polytrack

Shaamit tops this table. But the stats for that one are slightly skewed because of the success of his Lygeton Lad at Lingfield. A better example is Cadeaux Genereux. On the Polytrack, his offspring have won 12 from 87 attempts (13.8% strike rate), but on Fibresand his runners have only won 4 from 112 (3.6% strike rate). This means that Cadeaux Genereux runners are 3.86 times more likely to win at Lingfield than at the other two all weather tracks.

This information is useful on two counts. First, if one of the above sires has a runner at Lingfield, and it does well, then it would pay to oppose it if it later ran at Southwell or Wolverhampton. Secondly, if one of the above sires has a runner at either of the northern tracks then you could expect some improvement (at a bigger price) if it ran down south at Lingfield.

Top 10 Sires for Fibresand

Topping this table is Robellino. This sire has never had a winner from 34 attempts on the Polytrack, and yet he has won 11 from 106 on Fibresand. Sheikh Albadou is probably the most striking example. He has only had 1 winner from 33 attempts at Lingfield, whilst at the other two tracks he's won 12 from 50.

Again, you can use this information for determining if a horse switching codes is likely to perform badly, or is likely to improve. Use this information specifically in Maiden Stakes or with seasoned handicappers fresh from the turf.

Special Offer and Competition
We have recently dropped the price for subscribing to Flatstats to just £19.95 for one month or £64.95 for the rest of the all weather season. Flatstats has never offered such value!

Signup today at this new low price and start accessing the Systems Builder Database, Sire Ratings and the 1.8 Million+ unique stats only available at Flatstats.

We are running our 'win a flat turf season subscription' competition again. On the 1st of each month from now until March our computer will pick one Flatstats subscriber at random. This lucky person will win a free subscription for the whole of the 2004 turf season. This is a prize value of at least £150!

So signup today. Take advantage of the special all weather season offer and you will be entered into the draw for the next four months.

Note that there will also be a special Boxing Day draw for all newsletter subscribers. On Boxing Day our computer will pick one lucky person at random from the newsletter mailing list.

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