RP TopSpeed

Slightly confused .... Racing Post Topspeed on every greyhound race has been printed in the Racing Post cards for at least 20 years

OK, so that's embarrassing. April Fool ...? Anyway, that's the answer I wanted (approximately!). Thanks. My system has taken a nosedive and I was searching for possible reasons when I noticed TS which I'd never seen. Doh.

No problem ....
If it helps ... all the below based on 1st Dec 2018 to yesterday on the main 3 (2 on Saturdays, 4 on Sunday) BAGS meetings each day... (i've archived everything before Dec 2018 and not re-opening)

Between 1st Dec to yesterday:
blindly backing TS will give you a loss
Races = 4244
Winners = 937
Winning % = 22.08%

Level £10 per selection (after 5% betfair deduction) = LOSS of £718.59

split into months
Dec '18 = -£15.79
Jan '19 = +£133.24
Feb '19 = -£509.40
Mar '19 = -£326.65

But would you use Topspeed blindly ? (obviously not based on the above) or should you use it as a qualifier ? ... ie does my system work when i only back my selection if it is ALSO the Topspeed selection .. i would need to know your system to give you those results

.. i'll do the same Topspeed analysis with laying instead of backing next ..

that's a 1.7% loss then level stake backing (after commission)...should be pretty clear that laying won't end well then either

Correct

Between 1st Dec to yesterday:
blindly LAYING TS will give you a loss
Races = 4244
Losing Lays = 937
ie Winning % = 22.08%

Level £10  LAY per selection (after 5% betfair deduction) = LOSS of £2,591.43

split into months
Dec '18 = -£762.36
Jan '19 = -£1024.94
Feb '19 = -£299.21
Mar '19 = -£504.92

but ... where it becomes interesting is if you only use Topspeed on sprint races ... ie D1,D2,D3,D4,D5 ... ie where you would expect pure speed to have a greater influence.
The reason i'm doing this is precisely because of the following ...
Great results in December 18, feb 19, Mar 19, ... but you would have virtually been wiped out in Jan '19 ... and it's pretty random going through past years for no apparent reason .. ie different months, different sprint grades, different race times, different meetings, different sex of dog. Losing months occur seemingly randomly and although there's a profit over the whole year you'd have to have balls of steel to go through some of the losses (assuming you'd upped the stakes to say £200 to try and make a living)

ie ... backing Topspeed in sprint races alone ... BAGS meetings (3 each day (2 of Saturday, 3 on a Sunday)

For 1st Dec 2018 to yesterday

Backing to £10 stake per selection

Overall profit = £231.02 (after deduction of 5% Betfair commision)

Split into months
Dec '18 = +£359.59
Jan '19 = -£427.18
Feb '19 = +£228.38
Mar '19 = +£70.23

ie .. very healthy indeed

but in other years, although they show a profit there are some months with losses of £800 to £10 ... or £16,000 to £200 with those periods seeming random and i don't know about others but i couldn't afford to take a £16,000 loss a couple of months a year

how many bets is that from 1st dec (in sprints only)?

Dec 1st to yesterday
Sprints only on the main 3 (2 on Saturdays, 4 on Sunday) BAGS meetings each day.

WINS    105
LOSERS    326
TOTAL    431 races
   
WIN RATE    24.36%

To £10 stake

£4310.00 laid out
£4531.00 returned (after 5% commission deduction)

Profit = £231.02

POI (profit on investment) = 5.36%

That do ? .... feel free to message me (click on my name in the post) as i'm always interested in winning systems that seem to have worked for a while and then went tits up. I'm very careful not to "back adjust" (ie to add filters based on illogical reasons just to turn a loss into a profit retrospectively) but there are sometimes reasons fo things that one person can't spot that another can

PS ... i have already excluded races where the TS selection is either vacant or replaced by a reserve and have adjusted winning betfair SPs for any dead heats

PPS i've also tried filtering on SP ie .. only backing those above a certain price ... or those that are NAP or NB ... or cutting it down to the larger priced TS selections that aren't the Racing Post 1st, 2nd, 3rd selection etc .. or wide runners where it's the only wide runner in the race ... or on that day's going ... but nothing seems to avoid the large random losses on some months

cheers mahoney...seems like the avg price of those TS sprint dogs was around 4.3ish

quick statistical significance test on those 431 bets...the 5% profit is not even close to being ss
in fact you'd need a minimum of 15x this sample size to even get close

re your 5.06pm post

based on the info you've provided (from dec '18) there won't be any further sub-diving of the data that leads to profit following these dogs as there is an extremely high chance the profit yielded was achieved due to randomness

remember you have already divided the data by trip to get to this point & how careful you need to be when sub-dividing data (degrees of freedom)

For those above (from Dec '18)
Av price of selections    5.60
Average Betfair SP of winners    4.43
Average Bookie SP of  winners    3.50


i agree in terms of sample size ... notes i've made show 4.28% over 5 years on 4942 races

I wasn't actually suggesting this as any sort of system ... as i posted in another thread, i don't use systems .. i merely use statistics to help me decide on which races to concentrate my attention to and as a diversion whilst sitting here all day - but mainly as a way of disproving things to myself

The whole discussion was merely a reply to someone who was asking about the Topspeed ratings in the Racing Post and i was trying to illustrate to him that the Topspeed ratings shouldn't be used blindly, but i DO think that it's logical to assume that the Topspeed ratings are more applicable in sprint races IF i was to use them

Wondersobright .. i seem to have assumed at some point that your own posts were from the original poster .. who i was trying to help out.

Apologies for that

no worries mahoney, its an open discussion for anybody to contribute to

seen your pm, will reply properly a bit later tonight