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Strategy Articles: How to create your own Betting Forecast ( Tissue )
By AH the online punter team
There must be almost an infinite number of ways in which the bettor can analyse a Horse Race. The Internet has enabled us to study a phenomenal amount of data and stats compared to the mid nineties and all at the click of a button. Fundamental principles still apply though, course form, distance, fitness, going, etc these are still the major variables up for consideration. Form study is a vital part of successful betting but is not all that needs to be addressed when studying a Horse Race. The second, and arguably the most important ingredient for profitable betting is obtaining value odds. Many people are skilled form readers and back loads of winners but still fail to make a profit because they simply do not consider value. Having the discipline NOT to back a horse that you think is an even money shot when its trading at 4/6 can be difficult, especially if you don’t back it and it goes on to win!
“the truth of the matter is that if you keep making bad value bets you are guaranteed to lose in the long run”
So how do we know if we are betting at value odds?
The simple answer is that if you are consistently making profits over a lengthy period of time using a level stakes type betting approach you are obtaining value on your bets, simple as that. An example would be that you start the flat season with a £5000 betting bank, at the end of the season your bank settles at a tidy £6150 . That equates to a 23% ROI ( return on investment) which is very impressive indeed. It also indicates that on average you are obtaining value odds + 23% in your favour. On the other hand, if your bank settles at £3850 at the end of the season then you have done 23% of your money and have not obtained average value in your favour.
Most professional gamblers will advise you to create your own betting forecast and only back horses at better odds than your forecast indicates. The trouble is that creating a consistently accurate betting forecasts is an incredibly difficult skill to master. Applying percentage chances to form interpretation can be a serious headache, and I state this from personal experience!
Using Ratings to create a Betting Forecast
So, if like myself you find it difficult to produce a betting forecast from detailed form study you may want to try this alternative approach.
The first vital ingredient I use to create my “forecast” or “Tissue prices” is Reliable Handicap Ratings.
There are plenty of Web sites / subscription services offering private handicap ratings at an average cost of around £30 per month and upwards. Many of these services produce excellent ratings and its down to personal choice as to which rating you use.
My personal choice for ratings
www.racingpost.com This site needs no introduction. “The Post” is the most comprehensive horse racing web site on the net.
www.horseracebase.com In my opinion HRB is one of the best kept secrets on the net as far as horse racing goes and is an integral part of my betting strategy. Membership costs equate to about £2 per week and for this you get access to some of the most innovative horse racing research tools available. A unique feature at HRB is that, as well as producing their own very accurate daily ratings you can use their “ratings machine” to create your own personal handicap ratings and automatically apply them to every UK and IRISH race meeting on a daily basis.
The second vital ingredient is a neat little tool called Price Finder 2 available from www.cdsystems.uk.com
Price Finder allows you to input ratings values and convert them to odds amongst other things. ( very useful ) At the time of writing it costs a one time fee of just £9.99 and is highly recommended.
How to compile the forecast.
I recommend that you concentrate on 3 year old + handicap races to begin with. This is simply because that in this type of race there will be plenty of past form which makes the ratings you use much more accurate compared to 2 year old maiden or older novice races over the jumps.
Above is an example of a ratings card from horseracebase.com. A six runner handicap at Lingfield, notice the master HRB rating on the far left. These are the initial rating values that I input into the Price Finder 2 tool. Note, I tend to stick to races where there are ratings in all of the last three ratings columns as this also improves rating accuracy.
By inputting the HRB ratings into the Price Finder 2 tool our initial forecast is automatically calculated.
This looks like quite a competitive little race on our prices so lets take a look at the Racing Post forecast which can be found on the far right of the HRB ratings card. The posts experts also have this down as a quite competitive race apart from Transfixed who they have in at 17.0 ( 16/1 ) Of course the opinions of the team at the post are to be respected so I always modify the ratings so to include their expertise.
To do this I simply take off the numeric value of the forecast price from the HRB rating.
Horse 1 4/1 -
Horse 2 100/30 -
Horse 3 5/1 -
Horse 4 2/1 -
Horse 5 16/1 -
Horse 6 7/1 -
Other modifying factors.
In addition to the RP forecast deduction I also distribute points as follows,
Course win ( C ) + 10 points
Distance win ( D ) + 10 points
Course/Distance ( C ) ( D ) + 20 points
Course + distance ( CD ) + 40 points
Number of tips from the Racing Post selections box..
+10 points per tip.
So after all the modifying factors were applied my forecast looked like this,
My final betting forecast for this race ( Target column ) still indicates a quite competitive race. The prices in the “offer column” are the actual Betfair starting prices. I was very tempted to lay Ginger Jack but a lot of late money came for him and I backed out which turned out to be a good decision as he went on to win the race but I did have a £20/ £860 bet on Transfixed because he was the stand out value bet. My overall opinion of this race from the outset was that it was competitive and although I lost money on this race it was reassuring to see all the runners finish within five lengths of each other. Transfixed went off at 43/1 and finished a couple of lengths behind the winner. My forecast had him at 7/1 which I think was a true price.
It would have been easy for me to pick a race that gave me a 33/1 winner using this method but that would be missing the point. When producing your own betting forecast and looking for value bets you must remember that just because a horse appears to be a value bet it doesn't mean that it will win. Betting in general is all about percentage chances and putting money down when the percentages are in your favour. Creating your own forecast gives you confidence in your betting which I believe is a major factor towards successful punting. If you keep backing 43/1 shots that finish a couple of lengths behind the winner they’re eventually going to get their nose in front and you are going to make good money backing horses!
If you begin to implement this strategy into your betting you may find yourself backing horses that previously you would have written off as no hopers. This is a good thing as you are betting against public opinion and therefore obtaining value! Feel free to tweak the rules regarding points allocation and make the method your own. I have backed many winners using this method at all prices but the highlight was a £10/£1500 bet on a cold afternoon at Wolverhampton in Jan 2009 and I’m going all out to beat it in 2010.
Resource for this article: www.horseracebase.com
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