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Quote: from non vintage on 12:51 pm on June 7, 2007[br]
Your wild card horse would probably end up with form figures along the lines of 000100001000010. It might very well have a 20% chance of winning, but wouldn’t be one to bother with backing each-way, as the chances of it placing would be not much (if at all) greater than its chances of winning. It’s not trained by Barney Curley is it?
nv
No – but it’s probably ridden by Kieron Fallon…
Although if a horse only won every fifth race, I wonder how long it would take for folk to argue about whether this 0000100001000010000100001 represented a pattern to follow.
One of my projects at some point is to look at laying horses in the place market at Betfair, and trying to link this with the Dr Z place/win market anomaly theory. Is this something anyone has explored?
Quote: from non vintage on 9:07 am on June 7, 2007[br]As a legendary pointy-eared sci-fi character would have said, that is illogical carlisle.
If each horse has an equal chance, i.e. they are all accurately assessed as 4/1 shots, the chance of a particular horse coming second is also 4/1.
In this situation, you are better off not thinking about it as a race, but as a simple probability question.
If they were five numbered balls drawn from a lottery machine, they would each have an equal chance of being 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th. The probability of Ball(Horse) 1 filling a position is 100%, made up of 20% x 5 for each of the possible outcomes.
Clearly, in a race or in a lotto draw, once the ‘winner’ is known, the remainder of the field have a 3/1 chance of finishing second to it, but this is not a known at the outset of the event.
nv<br>
Using the lottery ball analogy is wrong here though…you’re making an (unstated) assumption that each of the 5 draws is unbiased. Consider a lottery machine that isn’t working properly, and, for the first ball drawn, gives each ball an equal chance, but for the second draw is weighted (somehow) to favour high numbers. Still think the odds of each ball (horse) finishing second is 4/1?
To further the example, consider a horse race of 5 horses, 4 of whom we know their ability (rating) to a high degree of accuracy, say a handicap mark of 95, which they’ve run to within a point of in their last ten or so races (i.e. low variance). Now consider a fifth horse, the wild card, which runs like a dog most of the time (low 70s) but every once in a while, pulls out a 100 plus performance. His average rating may be 90 (lower than the other four) but he has a high variance. This race could easily end up with all being 4/1 joint favourites, but the wild card horse’s place odds are likely to be way higher than the place odds of the other 4, as the wild card horse is much more likely to run like a dog and finish last.
On the basis that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, the organising committee must be pleased that their logo launch has gone so well…
I think like columnists from various parts of the media, Mordin says a lot of stuff just to be controversial. I think the problem with speed ratings is that, like any other form of rating or selection method, following them blindly is all too common. And how Mordin can give speed ratings for the majority of French Group races I’ll never know.
There’s already a 100% book just on that lot. None jump out, and most would need to be double the price to get any interest from me (Sublimity at 4s being the biggest joke – 4s to have more than 2 races in him next season more like).
Blythe Knight and Ikitiaf look best value to me though
Also, bear in mind that the 400k figure quoted will likely have been inflated something rotten by the tabloids – probably includes the cost of the website, the cost of the promotional video and the cost of all the stationary with the logo on it, all of which are costs which would have been incurred no matter what the logo would have been…
Urban myth! Rule of thumb comes from how carpenters and other tradesmen used to use their thumb to measure distances.
Sorry to p**s
on your chips! (so to speak) :)For me the SP debate is all academic anyway. I haven’t bet at SP for a good 5 years, and very rarely bet on anything other than Betfair these days.
That said, if the bookies "lose" the SP debate (or, for that matter, see a downturn in business as a result of the screening rights farce). Yes, the shareholders in the firms, but also ultimately racing, which is more or less propped up by funding/levies from the bookmakers.
Is there a legacy of speed figure arguments on here???:biggrin:
Have to say, I’m a fan of speed figures, and used to compile some myself (having a life…er…family and kid now kinda put the stop on it). Still maintain that they’re the most consistently useful tool available to inform betting decisions, because of the basic fact that fast horses beat slow horses (although I accept that "slow" horses may not have had a chance to run a good speed figure due to pace of races).
Mordin does seem to be the straw man for anti speed figure folks though – though does he really claim that if a horse hasn’t run fast in it’s first X outings, then it never will? And didn’t he end up giving Gay George a good figure for his QEII run?
Agree with what you’re saying steve – Mordin’s key fault to most people is that he has strong opinions, which is a lot more than most racing pundits. The fact that his tipping line is one of the worst going could have something to do with it as well…:biggrin:
Why don’t you agree with his methods btw?
To be fair to the man, I think he’s right on the Light Shift/Passage of Time thing – Passage of Time was considerably less impressive, and in a slower time than Light Shift was in her trial.
I realise the man has a bad press round these parts, not least because of his crabbing of George Washington and Kauto Star, and bigging up of Detroit City, but in terms of the Oaks and the Derby this year, he’s been spot on as far as I can see
Somebody with relevant net access will be able to answer this one definitively, (web nazis at work block most racing sites for me) but i’d strongly doubt whether many Guineas winners over the past 10 years have been seen out twice by this stage in their juvenile seasons…
Quote: from Aragorn on 12:53 pm on June 5, 2007[br]I think the likes of Rail Link are going to struggle against Authorized… <br>
I’ve never been enormously impressed with Rail Link – I have him as one of the weaker Arc winners in recent years – and this despite me winning a fair sum last October on him!
Speaking of Rail Link, is Sudan, who finished 3rd behind him twice, still in training?
