Funny how you started a thread that went like this then isnt it?

if ap was on sunnyhillboy wins comfortably


OnTheSnaff
14 Apr 12 16:40 Joined: 12 Jun 11 | Topic/replies: 5,792 | Blogger: OnTheSnaff's blog
without a doubt imo

Phuck me, what do people want? I tip a horse weeks before the race at 64/1 and it trades 1.03 in running and gets "headed on post"

Then the same people say "would have won with AP on it"

On The Snaff what a snippy, jealous p r i c k who couldn't tip a wheelbarrow

limestone,as i said,he's just a pathetic condescending fool who likes to think he knows it all about racing,
with comments such as "please don't use this thread for general discussion thank you" just sums up the childishness of the clown,
slightly ironic though,as himself and harry callaghan would constantly hijack threads on the cheltenham forum to discuss the tennis

yep,load of sh!te,no mention of the winner.
Plus he said it had no chance on another thread.

judorick
13 Apr 12 23:21

what about the national?

nicholls wont be collecting any money from it

Judorick

Big thanks for your thread and analysis. Followed your early advice and got a good price. Whilst I would have loved the win, the place money is great.

I'll look out for your thread next year.

Cheers

Judorick seems a little touchy but it was an interesting thread which is what this forum should be about.

Very pleasing result all round (short post)

Each to their own, of course, but there was actually very little interesting contribution in this thread. As usual it was a trends-based thread that not only required no original thought but went the extra nauseating yard in suggesting any horse outside those trends couldn't win.

I had to re-read the result as I was sure there had to have been a mistake...

in fairness lads he advised a horse at 65 that was beaten a millimetre!!with a bit more luck and effort from the saddle it would have been a great tip.

thanks judorick,i followed your thread and managed to make a few quid not the £1500 i should have got if the jockey had ridden the best horse in the race all the way to the line, i would also have had £800 going onto Taylors sky (one of the best dogs ive ever seen) to win the greyhound derby again which is very very feasable.Thanks again heres to next year

I had no problems with his analysis though somewhat flawed he came up with reasonably sound selections. His failure to justify  his dismissal of other horses and his attitude pi$$ed people off. However, I think its wrong to label him as clueless. A fair amount of effort went in, he got good prices and had reasonable criteria though somewhat outdated.

You trends boys really do make me chuckle.

Surely to goodness, after this result, all this backfitting has to stop.

No?

There are at least three major pitfalls, as I see it, with using trends in finding likely winners.

Firstly, as The Headmaster points out, they are all backfitted to existing data. Even if conditions never change, there is a danger that all you are doing is putting too much emphasis on chancy-ish results and assuming that common factors caused previous winners to win, rather than that they were simply correlated. Of course, the other issue is sample size; realistically you want at least 30-40 previous races to form firm opinions from, and how many races are run at courses ad feature horses that are basically the same year in, year out, for 30-40 years?

Secondly, it is impossible to know how much weight to give each factor. In most of these trends-based threads, 8-10 different ones seem to come into the argument (official rating, number of runs this season etc...). But posters usually give horses 1 point per trend that they meet. Who honestly believes that all of these factors are as important as each other? So why rule out one horse than scores 2 points less than the top-rated few, when the two trends it doesn't meet might not even be very important from the data that has been backfitted?

Finally, these trend-based threads don't tell you anything about value! If one horse scores 8 out of 10 and is 5-1 but another scores 6 out of 10 and is 66-1, which one should you back?

I appreciate that these approaches work for some people, but there will never be a substitute for good, in-depth, subjective race reading and value analysis. I'm no punting God but I certainly know I would be more confident in putting in 5 hours of race reading before a big one and backing my judgement rather than spending the same amount of time playing with old data that doesn't affect the horses that are actually running the race in x amount of hours.

Tom, that's a very interesting post. Your second point is the fundamental problem imo (and it's where Paul Jones is a master - i.e. at weighting the value of trends and integrating them with form). Your first point is correct for an individual race but it's smoothed out to some extent by applying trends to a lot of races.

However, despite the flaws, looking at trends can be an interesting and useful supplement to form study. If you have a robust set of trends it can be valuable to think about why these apparent patterns arise and what that tells you about the sort of horse that does well in a particular race. In some races (the RSA Chase for example) the trends are extraordinarily strong and reliable.

It can work in your favour, id oppose every Guineas winner that turns up at Epsom because they nearly always are overbet, what other time would a horse be fav going up 50% in distance, dont remember many 2m animals going up to win the King George, for every Nashwan and See The Stars, you'll get three Entrepreneur's

Year after year you will get horses from wide out in the Totesport mile being backed because the meeting has thrown a few winners wide, thus forgetting that on Thursday of the meeting the false rail is opened up and the fresh ground is on the inside

Ask yourself if a trend has any logical explanation to it

Curiously, on the trends I use the top picks have come second in each of the Irish, Grand and Scottish Nationals this season. Irritating as I rarely back e/w

*raises.

(Freudian slip)

Anyone know what's happened to Judo?

Ha ha relying on Mordin.

have you seen his long term record in the National