Forumites experiences of number-crunching/stats-based approach

Duncan - I don't study form / statistics or anything like that, I use a purely mathematical approach.  I did read a post on here some time ago where someone stated something along the lines of "results inform statistics, statistics don't inform results".

I agree with this, although I'm not knocking form study / statistics analysis if you can get an edge from it, which is what it's all about in my opinion.

Cheers, fellas. Yes, form has always been my thing and there is no doubt that form study, done correctly, gives you an edge. Have only recently branched out into stats/number-crunching, and my jury is still out, hence the thread!

wayne, i appreciate there are a lot of players on here that adopt purely a mathematics approach like yourself and in some respects i'm jealous of that! Alas, i know that's not where my strengths/interest lies, so it was more stats than maths i was referring to in OP.

fr froum = hr forum

Don't forget bookmakers also have all the access to stats. They have raceform interactive so the top rated in 2010 was 5-1, today it's only 4-1, so there goes your profit. As people get smarter and a wider range of stats become readily available, The value now lies in going against the stats. But because of commission you can't just Press lay, the value is betting something Else in horse Racing and in other markets (not match odds) football.

But As has been Said a thousand times before, the only thing that matters is value. If All the stats and thousands of people are on the same thing, the value is someplace Else.

I read a book about value and i Think the author used raceform in his systems so probably hundreds more are using raceform so it's lost its edge. There are hundreds of systems out there, some last forever. One system is not enough, you need to find lots, to feed the turnover required. Remember 5-10% roi is the max, so turning over enough bets and money is the problem.

Don't make the analysis too complex, the simplest methods make money. I used to spend hours on a race, bogged myself down for a couple of years. Now i Can go through a card in 5 mins and make money. But thinking about it, if i didn't bog myself down and work hard i wouldn't have Found Them.

odds on shots always get beat is
best approach in the right races
no point in laying them .
real value is with the winner.
you have to find it.

I've never been able to do better than a liberal reading of form, combined with an understanding of factors that aren't evident without figures extrapolated from form.

These will be based on an appreciation of the characteristics of particular horses (e.g. like to do better for a stronger pace, a rail draw, a turning track, a step up in trip, better ground, with normal improvements etc.), of particular trainer methods (strengthened by market movements in many cases) and of certain races (e.g. one side of the track was overwatered, the time was fast in relation to deteriorating ground, the race became a sprint, the race was a competitive maiden or hcap and will produce winners etc.) The more utterly specific the perception, the better the chance of making money.

For this reason, I've never been able to make stats work for me other than (a minor exception) for big-race trends.

"There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there is form!"

From The Sayings of Dr Slicer, available at all not very good bookshops nowhere in the country.

I hope this is of assistance.

"stats" can be used to 'narrow' your search for a play on an event.

Example:  When I first watched racing, Frankie Dettori was at the top of his game.  However, on horses at odds of 8/1 or better, he was rarely winning the race, often finishing out of the frame.  Punters following FD were pushing the price in.  This was not saying that the horse was a lay but probably meant the winner was elsewhere and FD's horse was not a threat.

Recently I have been preparing my horse ratings for 2012 flat season.  I've also been looking at stats for draw.  Even listening to pundits, no one seems to be taking enough of an in depth look at the draw stats to make it worth while.  I've worked the 'grid' a bit more on this which factors in the draw of all the all the horses in the race and how it weighs on the outcome.  Simply "counting" how many times a horse wins from draw 1-2-3 is at Lingfield over X furlongs is too general "a stat".

A simple example would be Football O/U 2.5.  You need to create your own criteria and not shy away from playing odds against when your approach says that is the way to go. I find it best to research the plays WITHOUT knowing the odds and betting, create my own expectation and if the odds are equal or better, put the bet on.

Stats can help you find a value play.  On football, I have five bets I look at:

1X2
Asian Handicap
HT/FT
and
U/O 2.5

I'll build a foundation using stats, then recent form and RECENT history between teams and their mutual competitors in recent matches.  I'll play one or more of the above once I have drawn my own picture of how I think the match will progress and finish.

Simple example: if Home team is 4/10 and extremely confident they will win and score, the bet can be 50% on the 1X2 and 50% U/O.  Or if the visitors have been giving away goals in the first 30 minutes, HT/FT can be factored in (though I find the value in that type of bet is usually your confidence that one team will hold the match to a draw at HT but an outcome other than draw is predicted).
 

Stats will narrow your search but cannot be the end all.  There is no value in that.

Duncan in response to your question; some would say two years of trial and error but i Call it a two year Education. You are right about the forum now, it offers nothing. I only posted because i had some time to kill in a hotel room and was trying to help someone on Another thread which didn't work by the looks of it.

Shapeshifter dó you make money predicting future events? You May say yes, But here's the big question; dó you get enough turnover (bets) a year to make thousands of pounds? Lets be honest it's very hard to get big money on unless you bet favs and are prépared to take All prices. But then you have no margin for error and roi is minimal.

Only after recording 100s of results using identical filters Can you get an understanding of what Will happen in the future. Then you don't know if the next 100 Will produce the same results, but with a bit of logic and experience you fathom which are Golden systems and will last a long time and which are just random. Anything under 6 is a small price for mé nowadays, the long losing runs are common but i have a bigger margin of error and when they hit, they hit. I don't Think i could achieve the same roi using my mystic powers even if i spent a week on a race. I certainly wouldn't get the turnover which half a dozen systems give mé or the time to dó other things.

The reason anything under 6 is a small price is because most of my systems go completely the opposite of what i set out to dó. So Many would discard the system when it Becomes obvious it doesn't work, but if you keep recording and look deeper, you find something that Will work. All Info you collect is valuable somewhere down the line.

Remember there are hundreds of variables in a race or match, so unexpected results happen All the time. This is how bookmakers used to make a living, knowing these freak results Will happen regular and that humans were incredibly bad at predicting future events. But whereas they might offer a fair price on a favourite; they never used to offer a fair price on an outsider. Today it is different.

Horse Racing; some 16-1 shots should be 33-1 shots, but some should be 8-1 and often you get 20+ on here. Same with the 25-1 shots, 40+ on here, 7-1 shots, sometimes 10 on here. I play Mostly on the aw where there are less variables and it's a more level playing field. In horse Racing (low grade) alot of the races, recent form goes out the window As the trainers play a cat and mouse game with the handicappers. They know the horse is not going to be a World-beater so its All about getting enough prize money just to cover the fees and if you Can get the owners a Nice little plot at a big price- even better.

Football: it's amazing how accurate the match prices are. You Can record a thousand matches and you Will break even ( backing) and lose laying with commission. But it's a different story in other markets.

Dog Racing: great prices but low liquidity. But every penny counts.

General betting folk can't get there head around backing outsiders and i must admit it took mé a long time.

"There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there is form!"

Statistics don't lie, it is the reliance on small data, dirty data or the interpretation of them which leads to lies.
There are more lies in form than in statistics imho.

"It's called variation, nothing more."

Actually it's called knowing which of the third of all faves are the ones that are going to win!

Hope this helps.

interesting thread.

all weather racing.
never check the going.
getting a value price
is more important.
usually dont back the
favs most of the time.

For me after years of research though not constant work, more many mini projects the logical conclusion that I have arrived at is to firstly rate all the runners in a race using points system that has the points as relative as possible to some form of measure of the runners
recent runs, beit lengths, parts of time or offial points ratings, then one can focus on the top third of the ratings that you arrive at, then you can search the market results for this top third for each race also taking into account the spread patterns of points and then it can be seen what parts of the markets are profitable on betfair and what is historically loss making.

This may seem quite simple a method for rating but dont forget you can add any points you want in for anything including the going so it does trully work and will arrive at a means to an end, that being profit!

deep study or overall awareness?

I found out that I do much better if I only have a very limited knowledge of what the stats are, it keeps my mind open and prevents what I call, the dreaded "surely/they must" sindrome to kick in, thats also why I use an exchange, it allows me to give stats the relative value they have and bet according to what I'm seeing
Thousands of bets made over the years and a lot of incredible situations witnessed over those same years gives me a pretty good notion of where I am when faced with the ever changing conditions of whatever I'm betting on, but I never take nothing for granted and leave all possibilities on the table
I think I've became a pretty good judge of those situations (finding value), there is only one problem... me, myself and I
Unfortunately I´m not always in that same optimum frame of mind and the time it takes me to acknowlegde that...maybe...I'm not in the right frame of mind and actually making the decision to leave it alone, it´s when the swings start
Whatching my graph over a big period of time, it becomes quite noticeable that those optimum frame of mind periods deviations aren´t a day to day affair but many times weeks if not a month periods where I just should've taken a longer break and regroup
When I started I obviously studied really hard and made countless excel sheets with ever increasing number of stats but at some point those became less important and what became of utter importance was/is where am I

So stats are important but to me are far from being the holy grail of betting (at least in my experience of betting on soccer)

Having said that I've been betting more and more on the horses and it seems a lot more dependable on the stats because it has much more variables to take into account than soccer

From my experience one should be most careful when trying to apply these trends and factors
for a number of reasons, firstly to study a profile or set of factors that have been profitable in the past is no guarantee that this will be reproduced in the future as the profit could just be random clustering and not robust co-efficients that can be relied upon, secondly the fact one has then to find rare combinations of form profile means one arrives at a smaller set of examples possible over time thus limiting the effectiveness of the selection process !

Thats where common sense comes into play, some are Golden eggs, some go in the dustbin.

Why is everyone so obsessed with the Best stats and the Best rated? Long way it continue for my sake. Like shapeshifter just Said there are so Many variables in sport that we just Cannot measure. All i know for a fact is that these variables (freak results) Will ALWAYS happen in sport, it's what makes it so unpredictable and it's how the bookmakers used to make there money. Cos they wouldn't give you value on an outsider.

IQMC -

All depends how high your standards are. If you believe that a STRONG WIND will not indicate what type of horse can run well, then so be it.

YARMOUTH is a seaside course, and GOOD TO SOFT going can change by latter races to GOOD or GOOD(GTFIP) etc , depending on strength of wind +sun shining.

If you believe that GOING is only a 10% factor for AW racing .......generally over course of year that might be OK for STANDARD going. Though SLOW / FAST AW tracks will effect the outcome of races, and 10% is far too low then...IMO.

However, with TURF and NH racing GOING it is extremely important, and understanding how changes in going will effect outcomes is well worth pursuing.

You are "not interested" in "jumps" racing......so perhaps the GOING FACTOR has not been fully considered by you. As for TURF racing, I suspect you do most of betting when better weather is on......GOOD TO FIRM.....therefor as there is some CONSISTENCY in going when you do your betting, the impact of CHANGES IN GOING perhaps has not been fully considered. Perhaps you use other STATS in your appraisal.

Anyway , as long as you are "happy" rating races the way you do, then fine........I'll continue to rate using factors relevant to conditions.

GL with bets.