Pair of impassioned but overly-aggressive punters.

I hope you both have tons of winners at Cheltenham - and that neither of you are anywhere near me when you do.

The trouble with not applying a method - and that is really what judo and JOCI are doing, just theirs is fundamentally trends/stats based - is that you are unlikely to be disciplined in your approach. It is very difficult to be rational under pressure when you have no method. I'm very grateful for their input and use it extensively but not to the exclusion of other factors.....like Hendo/Mullins/Nicholls will probably win up to half of the races between them and are very likely to dominate the championship races. Why?.....because they are given the best horses because they are the best trainers, who also employ the best jockeys. Virtuous circle sort of thing. It may of course be that the trends/stats will also satisfy my additional factors but I would be very worried if the selections gave these 3 trainers less than 9 winners between them.

very entertaining, some people take everything to heart.

Winners of the rsa come from the feltham

Who cares what way others bet? Do what you think works for you.

Can someone tell Judoriick to get off my threads. He's a dirty dog taking a dump in my garden path, and i don't want him on my threads corrupting peoples minds before they get a chance to learn about punting.


Diamond Joe. It's not about what matters, but these synthetics are leading people astray with useless statistics. The Irish horses in the triumph is another in a line with no enhanced analysis.

You're another one Jasey. Go and pester someone else. This is a thread that i made, so if you don't like it then go and post your useless statistics in someone elses thread.

Stats are facts from the past though,and imo if a horse is good enough it wont matter what stat or trend he has to overcome.
I dont use them at all,just watch races and look at form.

I really do not want to pick a horse out and then not back it cos of a stat/trend,and then watch it win.
Would do my head in.

Each to their own though,and its all personal choice.

indeed Budd each to their own

I simply could not contemplate betting the way you do with no stats and no use of ratings. For me that is just guessing based on what your eyes tell you. But I wouldn't criticise you personally for doing so unlike some horrible ****s on this forum. I would argue the case but in the end you put your money down and see the results ... how we got there is a matter for ourselves. I know people who only follow tipsters, have systems of all kinds, spend hours with the Timeform black blook, back only their visual notebook horses all sorts

Just for clarity, I didn't say Judorick was nasty, rather 'antsy', ie a little crabbit at times like us all :-),personally I have high regard for Judorick and his opinions, as do I when you make valid points, the facts are NONE of us KNOWS for sure about any of the plethora of variables we assign values/weightings to, it is highly likely many of us back winners and then assume why we picked it was a good solid MO, when in fact it was simply luck and the reasons for the winner were not why we backed it. One thing that stats/trends AND form appraisal gives us is a solid basepoint to build a judgement on, an MO to avoid random whim based picks, its not easy as we all know, and tbh we all must be a bit mental to be obsessed with this lol.

One thing not factored in above is price - single most important factor in whether I will place a bet. Will happily back a horse if I feel on current or past form he can win the race in question and the risk of it not winning is compensated by its odds.

I am far from a serious punter and it suits my personality. I do okay but it's more fun for me so going in depth about stats/trends is a little off-putting.

But each to their own and try very hard to never criticise someone else's style

roobuck -> I agree completely with your post. I am not a big trends/stats man at all but one element that seems to be overlooked by many people is the value aspect. We very often see excellent, detailed stats analyses that pinpoint a horse that comes out top based on the trends used without any justification of whether it is a bet at the price.

The estimation of the 'best form' is open to interpretation though and is not written in stone and therefore no one can claim they are definitely on the 'form horse' unless it really stands out like Sprinter Sacre.

Who has the better form Silviniaco Conti or Bobs Worth? How do you decide that? If you think it's BW how come he's been beaten twice by SC?

The stats are indisputable. Their interpretation is not.

there are no sides that's the point

everything is information and all we are talking about is different ways of analysing data to come to a conclusion

it's fecking pricks that want to turn it into a personal tirade as if it really matters what other punters do or don't do or if it affects them what others do

exactly jasey, there are no sides just as I said right before you

there's prices and how you decide which are worth taking and which aren't

everything else is just peripheral

was reading this thread and to be fair i can see where everyone is coming from, what are stats they are figures from the past that add up to some thing being unlikely to happen or likely to happen.the problem is people getting crazy with stats as in the word and not why,i have on here stated why long run trying to win against the so called stats is nonsense as he was younger than most stats  figure out.yes stats will help when you look deeper in to them and then get angle why they might be correct,but then is that not you studying form now which i think is the thread starters point. but to counter act that i will give you all a true story that how i picked a grand national horse and you could say that was stats or form. this was when  the fences  where tougher i might add.

the first  i done was elemenated any horse that had ever fell,then i decided any horse that had pulled up in any race,this was my whittling down the field,then i decided any horse that had never run over at least 3 miles. once i had got all these form point or stats of there form out way, i now  looked at the form and anything that was clearly no form of note i scored them out.
with just about had every horse scored out by now, it left me with 5 horses to really digg in to form.
there was two horses i really could not make up my mind with to get my main bet on.now for the fun of elimination guessd what the 5 horsesi had not scored out where the first 5 home.so the form stats worked a dream, the two i could not decide between where first and second, namingly RUBSTIC AND ZONGALERO and to my amazing luck i decided to bet rubstic which won me a right few quid and likely my girl friend to at time lol , who im married to for 30 years now.swo the point is do trends work better than form ,ofcourse not they are all part of the analysing the equine equation because that is what we are effectivly doing,betting on the value of our mind over the mind of the horses that are running in the next race.

DEAR oh dear Graeme 83 prize pri*k,read his post again without blinkers.

duffy
Good post

Agree with that,however there seems to be this myth that all stats followers will use this approach alone?
The form has to be there,chelts is different to 95% of the dross we see in uk racing,most of the time we are looking for form in the book at chelts,not form hidden on the racecourse.

judo, Thats not slagging anybody off, it could be descibed as pulling your leg a bit, I'll tell you what you won't find in any of my posts though is foul or insulting language if someone doesn't agree with me

Interesting thread but there's an inherent lack of respect for other people's methodologies here. Put simply no one can be 100% sure they have read a race right. Personally, the thought process is important as there will be finite answers as to why a horse won a race or did not win the race. Our job as punters whether for fun or serious is to create those angles/answers/theories and select the most convincing angle as to why a horse may or may not win. How we choose those angles/theories is up to us. Everyone is different. If everyone shared the same methodology, life would be very boring.

Stats is good, personal opinion is good too. A combination of the two is also very good too. Graeme83, Judorick, you guys seem to be on the opposite side of the debate here. JR, your work is always a good read as it gives me food for thought. My method is probably similar to yours and I always question why why why and push the envelope. It's time consuming but worthwhile and it is something I enjoy.

Graeme83, I'm not sure why you're so against the use of statistics. When you make mistakes, do you not revisit and try and learn from those mistakes? If you were a chef, do you not look at exactly how much of ingredients you used if the dish doesn't work? You remind me of self taught chefs that sneer at classically trained chefs who use exact measurements and tried and trusted cooking techniques. THere's nothing wrong with using tried and trusted methods.

Bottom line: you are effectively saying history is irrelevant but it applies to everyone who likes a punt. Call it stats, call it intuition, call it personal opinion, the point is we all look back at history in order to learn what it takes for a horse to win a race. Statistic is history. Opinion is history. What happened in your past makes you the man you are today. Like it or not, history in the various guise of statistics, opinions, intuitions forms your very opinion in the present. Best of luck to all! Happy punting (and studying!)