This the fourth part about how to read horse racing markets for the purposes of trading on the betting exchanges. This is, by far, the most important video in this series.
In this video, I will explain how to read form for the purposes of trading. Form is everything in trading. Once I started to use form, I could take a trading idea that didn’t work and turn it into a strategy that does work.
So, we are talking about combining form with logical reasoning to filter out weak trading conditions, thereby leaving us only with good trades.
Don’t worry if you can’t read form. I will explain how to read form, with the assumption that some people, who are watching this video, have no prior knowledge of form.
So, let’s get started.
A. Topics Covered in this Video
This video is a sports trading video. Sports trading is gambling and I’m not giving any advice. I am just giving my opinions.
This video is part 4 and the last of this series. In the future, I will make shorter videos. In these shorter videos, I will assume that viewers have watched this series of videos. I made this series so that we are all on the same page, with the same knowledge base.
In this video, I will explain how to read form. There is a product that I am an affiliate for mentioned in this video. It’s not any old product, that I am mentioning, just to make sone money. It’s a product that I am an annual subscriber for myself and it helps me to read the form of a race accurately and quickly.
So, what is this video about.
I will cover 2 very short topics before I go on to explain how to read and use form. The first topic is about how reading form sets you on a journey. On this journey, ideas lead to more ideas. This section is fairly general. However, it’s important because I explain what we should be aiming for in our trading in the long-term.
Secondly, I will explain how form can turn a -ev idea into a +ev strategy. This is an explanation of how skill-based gambling works.
Thirdly, I will explain the most important form variables. I will explain the concepts in relation to finding a drifter. However, the idea is that you will be able to apply these concepts to any trading idea. You can take form as far as you want to take it. I will just explain the form variables, that I believe are essential in this video.
So, let’s get started.
B. The Trading Journey
Our trading game should be constantly evolving. We should always be looking for new ideas. Reading form allows us to do this. During my time as a trader, my style of trading has evolved. This video series has been about laying the favourite during the last 5 minutes pre-race. I’ve just used this as a model because that’s how I started trading.
However, I have other probably easier methods, that I use on a more regular basis..
This is what I do these days. I do morning trading, trading non-favourites at 2 minutes pre-race, dobbing, and in-play trading and. If you are not yet winning at trading, this might seem like an impressive portfolio of trading methods. However, it’s not that impressive because all of these methods are based on exactly the same idea. That is, using form to make them work.
I’m not skipping from discipline to discipline like the gurus. They use financial trading concepts, such as volume and resistance points for trading 5 minutes pre-race. I’ve already debunked the use of these kinds of concepts in sports trading in articles and in a video.
Then, they use front runners and a list of numbers that they call “statistics” for dobbing. Again, I have debunked both of these ideas in a recent article. The use of front runners is touching on form, while the use of dobbing numbers only sounds like statistics.
You can find both of these articles on my website. In the dobbing article, I go on to explain how to apply form variables to dobbing.
With the morning trades, I lay the odd favourite. I look for weaknesses in the form of last time out winners. I don’t make much money from this, mainly because I keep my stake low. Liquidity is low in the morning. In addition, as I mentioned in previous videos, if you’ve staked too high, there isn’t an easy way out of these trades, when they go wrong. You might be wondering, if I am only making a few quid out of this, why do I do it.
Firstly, all the money adds up in this game. Secondly, and most importantly, if you follow an idea and keep thinking, this idea may generate new ideas in the future.
I’ll give you an example. As I said, my first trading idea was laying favourites at 2 minutes pre-race.
I went from there to backing favourites and non-favourites at 2 minutes pre-race. All I do, is look at the form. If I think that the horse’s form is strong, I open a trade by backing at around 2 minutes pre-. However, I only do this, when the horse’s odds have drifted from the bottom of its range or better still, when they’ve just stagnated. I look for a horse, with decent form, that has been neglected in the betting.
I don’t want my horse to look as if it is in trouble in the betting. In this example the horse looks to be in trouble in the betting. The odds might come back down. However, for me, it’s generally not worth the risk to get involved, when I see a graph like this.
I also don’t want to be in a situation where the horse has been backed to a point, where I don’t think that it will be backed much more. In this example, you don’t know whether this will continue to get backed, whether it will drift or whether it will stay at around the same odds.
I just want enough of a drift for it to have room for the odds to move back down. My thinking, with these trades, is that the form is good. Therefore, I expect money to come for the horse at some point. If money hasn’t come by 2 minutes pre-race, it is likely to come after this point.
So, there are 2 aspects to these trades. The first is selecting your horse. The second is getting your timing right. Selecting your horse can be easily learnt. The timing is more about experimenting and tweaking.
So, I went from trading favourites at 2 minutes pre-race to trading the non-favourites. So, I started looking at the form of the other horses. Basically, I look for a horse, that hasn’t been running badly, and its speed ratings suggest that today’s race conditions are perfect for the horse to run its best race.
When it came to trading outsiders, there was often a liquidity problem. I like to enter a trade with a stake, that is small enough, for me to exit at a single tick point.
Because of the liquidity problem, I started to look at dobbing these horses. In this situation, I back a horse first and lay it in-play.
The next problem was that sometimes, the horse, that I wanted to dob, would get backed down pre-race. I would miss trades because I didn’t like the odds that it had been backed down to.
This led to in-play trading. Basically, I do the whole dob trade in play. Therefore, instead of placing my back bet for the dob pre-race, I would place this in-play. Obviously, I needed the odds to go up in-play. I only do this type of trade in-play in long distance races. I never try this with short distances.
I am explaining this for several reasons. Firstly, trading isn’t confined to the last 5 minutes pre-race. You can trade at any time you find an angle. Secondly, when you use form, you are going on a journey, where ideas are likely to lead to more ideas. Thirdly, all of the methods that I use are essentially based on the same idea. Fourthly, (and this is important in this day and age), we want to develop strategies, whereby we can make money by using small stakes.
Gambling isn’t just about exploiting. It’s also about adjusting to changes in the situation. I’ll give you an example. I used to be a backgammon player. I really liked the game. However, at some point, online backgammon started dying and the poker boom was still going. I had never played poker in my life and I wasn’t particularly interested in the game. However, I knew that I needed to learn the game because that’s where the money was at the time.
When poker started dying, I started matched betting as a stop-gap. From there, I discovered trading on the betting exchanges.
Another example is gubbings from bookmakers. I don’t get gubbed. It’s not even an issue for me anymore. I have only been gubbed by 3 best odds guaranteed bookmakers and, as far as I’m concerned, BOG bookmakers are the only bookmakers that count. I know what game they want me to play. They want me to back favourites, that lots of punter bet on. In other words, they want me to bet on exposed favourites. They don’t want me to bet on outsiders. So, I comply. I do what they want.
Gambling is about finding ways to stay in the game. If you are not in the game, you can’t win. All good gamblers know that you don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
I still make money from the bookies. I just make the money slowly.
So, let’s talk about How to Turn an –EV Idea into a +EV Strategy
In this video, I will explain form from the view point of laying a favourite. As I said, the backing first strategies are the easiest. If you watch this video, it should be easy to work out what criteria you need for a back first trade.
I can’t provide a recipe for winning at trading based on form. It’s about being aware of how each form variable affects your trade. So, you should always be asking the question, “Does the variable have a positive or negative effect on my trade?”
So, whatever trading idea that you are working with, you would ask this same question.
So, anyway, how can we turn an –EV Idea into a +EV Strategy? Let’s say that you start with an idea that is minus ev by 5%. In other words, your idea in its basic format doesn’t work.
Now, you look at the form and you find a variable that supports your trade. This might increase the ev to minus 4%. Let’s say, you find another form variable that supports your trade and this improves your trade to an ev of minus 2%. Then, you find another supporting form variable and your trade is now at plus ev of 1.
Does that sound logical? Well, the thing is, my results of trading like this are consistently even better than logical. I don’t think that different supporting form variables have an additive effect. I think that, when you have enough supporting variables, you hit a critical point where the ev increases massively. Therefore, a few key supporting form variables can move your trade from -ev up to 50% +ev or even higher.
So, that is how I always try to turn a basic -ev situation into a +ev situation.
Of course, you have to be asking the right questions, when you read form.
So, lets look at some factors we want to identify in the context of the early drifter.
C. Why Read form
Bear in mind that, compared to other trades that I’ve mentioned, such as finding a good horse to back, because it has stagnated in the betting, the early drifter is quite a difficult trade.
Firstly, for the early drifter, we want to identify in-the-know horses. These are horses, where only the stable connections know how good the horse is. I said in the first video in this series that sometimes, we can differentiate punter money from stable money. If money comes for an in-the-know horse, early in the day, this is likely to represent stable money or stable information. You could argue that all horses are in-the-know horses, since we never know whether a horse is trying to win.
However, when I talk about in-the-know or insufficient information horses, I am referring to the types of horses that punters don’t have enough information to assess the form. This means that punters are less likely to bet on such races. If punters don’t bet on a race, the bookies will not be manipulating punters.
Worse still, when there is insufficient information, trainers can and do allow their favourites to drift before coming in with the money. This means, when there is insufficient form on a horse, this part of the graph is less likely to represent weakness.
Our model graph depends on the first part of the model graph representing weakness. Since we don’t know whether the first part of the graph represents weakness for an insufficient information horse, we want to identify these favourites and
We want to identify and avoid races in which the favourite is an insufficient information and avoid such races. In fact, with almost all of my trading strategies, I exclude races in which the favoruite is an insufficient information horse. Even if the favourite is exposed, if there are too many insufficient information horses, in the favourite range, I avoid such races.
The second reason that we need to read form is to identify horses that punters are likely to bet on. It may seem counter-intuitive, but we want to lay favourites with reasonably good recent form. This is because when the market hates a horse with strong form, this is often a reliable read.
In this situation, the punters are betting on a horse. Yet, the horse is still drifting. This combination suggests that there is something wrong with the horse or that the horse has opened at odds that were too low compared to the horse’s probability of winning. When a horse has solid form, we can’t differentiate stable and punter money. However, if a solid form horse looks as if it is in trouble in the betting, it suggests that the stable isn’t behind the horse.
The third reason that we might want to read form is to assess how likely backing will be on the 2nd favourite. When you have a read on the 1st and 2nd favourite, you are in a strong position. This is especially the case, when you think that the favourite is likely to drift and the 2nd favourite is likely to get backed or vice versa. It’s not helpful if you think that the odds of both the 1st and 2nd favourite will go in the same direction as you want one to play against the other.
Most of the time, we can’t get a read on both horses. However, when you can, you have a trade that you can be more confident of.
The fourth reason for reading form is to develop your own trading strategies. If you think that all you need is a few trading strategies to be set up for life, you are mistaken. I’ve been a gambler for a long time. One thing that I have learnt is that edges don’t last forever. They come and go. This can be for a range of reasons.
Therefore, the skill is to keep finding new edges.
So, let’s move on to how to read form.
D. How to Read Form
Here is a list of form variables that I will talk about. If you’ve never read form and you think that this looks like a lot of stuff, it’s not. Most of this takes a couple of seconds to look up. The average punter knows all of the stuff on this list. So, it can’t be that difficult.
So, let’s start with form figures.
So, there are drifters that I view as having the potential to get backed. I don’t necessarily trade on these horses. However, I am looking at the horse’s potential to help push the odds of my weak favourite up.
So, I’m not talking about mega-drifters, such as this. As I said before, I have given up on such horses getting backed. I am talking about much smaller drifters.
If you have never read form, you might not understand my reasons for why I haven’t given up on some drifters. However, it will all become clear when I talk about how to read and use form.
The types of drifters or outsiders, with potential to get backed, include:
1. Top Speed Rated or LTOWs
2. Class Droppers (2 or more classes)
3. Well-handicapped on best form
4. Form lines indicate that the horse has better winning chances compared to the odds
So, let’s talk about how to read and use form.
1. Form Figures
You can find form figures by looking the race up in the Racing Post. You can also find form figures by mousing over a horse’s name on Betfair.
In the Racing Post, form figures are listed at the left of the horse’s name. The numbers represent the placings that a horse got in its previous races. Therefore, a “1” means that the horse won the race; a “2” means the horse came second in the race etc. A “0” means that the horse was unplaced in the race.
I’ve put a red rectangle around the form figures for the horse called Haqeeqy.
The form figure for the most recent race is on the right. Therefore, going from most recent to least recent, you would read the form figures from right to left.
So, Haqeeqy has won its last race. The dash represents a change of racing season. So, the horse won its last race of last season. It was unplaced in the race before that and it won its 2 previous races.
If you look at Maries Diamond, it has more of a variety of numbers. It came second in its last race. The dash represents the difference between seasons.
There are usually a maximum of 6 form figures, including the dash, that are on the Racing Post’s race cards. We wouldn’t be trading on Maries Diamond because it is not favourite. However, if a favourite had Maries Diamond’s form figures, we could consider trading on the horse.
What we are interested in is the difference between horses, where there is insufficient information and horses, that are exposed. Maries Diamond is fully exposed because it has run a lot of races and it hasn’t won recently. Even if you don’t know anything about form, the fact that it has run a lot of races without a recent win means that the horse is likely to have shown its limits in terms of its ability.
Haqeeqy, on the other hand, is not fully exposed. Because it has won, 4 out of its last 5 races, the horse may be better than its best form. It does have a race in which it was unplaced. This could have been a bad day. The main reason that Haqeeqy is a candidate for trading is because it is a last time out winner, which will make it attractive to punters.
So, what does an insufficient information horse look like. Here is a race, where the 1st and 2nd favourite have run just one race and won it. Even if they didn’t win the race easily, they might improve after just one run. The 3rd and 4th favourites have never run a race. You can tell this because there aren’t any form figures next to their names.
Therefore, the 3rd and 4th favourites are at the extreme end of insufficient information. By the way, this also illustrates how easy it is for bookmakers to identify matched bettors, who use odds-matching software and don’t look at the form. Such matched bettors could be betting on any random horse. Normal punters don’t back horses, that are having their first ever race. Arbers, who don’t look at form, can get caught the same way.
Here is a table with all the form figure numbers and symbols that you might see and what they mean. I won’t go through each and every symbol as the Table is self-explanatory. So, we look at form figures in order to categorise a horse into unexposed, exposed and last time out winners.
Lots of form figures generally means that the horse is exposed. A small number of form figures means that the horse is relatively unexposed. A number “1” as the horse’s most recent race means that the horse is a last time out winner.
There are a couple of other symbols that I want to point out. The “c” next to a horse’s name means that the horse has won previously at the course that it is running at today. The “d” means that the horse has run over today’s distance. When the “c” and the “d” are combined in one grey box, it means that the horse has won over the distance at today’s course. If they were in 2 separate grey boxes, it would mean that the horse has won at this course, but has only won over today’s distance at another course.
When a horse is a course and distance winner, it is more likely to get backed. This is because horses often run better at particular types of courses. I’m not saying that such horses always get backed. I’m just saying that a horse that has won over the course and distance has an extra variable in its favour.
The other symbol that is important is the “BF”. This stands for “beaten favourite”. This means that the horse was the favourite in its last race and it got beaten. Again, such horses may get backed. You would have to look at the form in full. However, the trainer might be positioning the horse for a win after missing out in its last race. In addition, it’s worth looking at whether the horse was backed heavily in its last race, which I will show you how to do later in the video.
2. Race Comments
You can read comments on a horse’s previous race by clicking on the horse’s name and either mousing over a race or clicking on the link for the race in the Racing Post.
So, what do I look for?
I mainly look at race comments for last time out winners. I want to see if the horse won its race easily or if it was a tough finish. So, here, you can see that the horse won its race readily. That is an easy win.
Words, such as “easily”, “readily”, “comfortably” suggest that the horse had a lot spare in the tank. If I am considering laying such a favourite, I want to see stronger signs that the horse is weak in the betting, compared to a last time out winner that looks weak on form. In other words, when the horse has very strong form, we want to have less doubts about it being weak in the betting.
For horses that didn’t win last time, I don’t really bother looking at the race comments.
However, for all horses, I look to see if the horse was heavily backed in its previous race. My thinking is, if connections thought the horse was going to win its last race, they have high expectations of the horse. Therefore, even though it messed up its last race, they might be expecting it to win the next race. Obviously, I need to know that the previous and current race are comparable.
Ideally, the horse, that I am thinking of laying, won’t have been heavily backed in its previous race.
In the comments, you can see the odds that the horse opened at and the starting price. So, this horse opened at 10/3 and the SP was 9/2. Therefore, the horse drifted from its opening price from 4.3 to 5.5. This would be positive variable, if we were thinking of laying this horse, although just because it drifted before, it doesn’t mean it will drift again.
However, if we are considering laying a horse, heavy backing in its previous race, would usually be a negative variable.
We can also look at the non-favourites and see if any of these were heavily backed in their previous races. If they were heavily backed, this is a positive variable.
So, here is a list of terms that are used by the racing media to describe ways that horses win races. The term “pushed out” is a relatively easy win with the jockey just using his or her hands. Therefore, I would view the top 2 on the list as easy wins, with the horse winning with something left in the tank.
“Driven out” and “all out” are tough wins. I consider these terms to be a weakness in the form. It usually means that the horse won without having much left in the tank.
“Ridden out” is somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t see this as strength or weakness.
3. Speed Ratings
You will need speed ratings to assess form. This is a screenshot of Inform Racing, which is where I get my speed ratings from. I’ve blurred the horse’s names for the video. On the race cards, you can see the speed ratings for the horse’s last 3 races. You can see more of the horse’s past speed ratings of you click on advanced search link.
I am an affiliate of Inform Racing. Therefore, if you buy Inform Racing through my affiliate link, I get a commission. I’m an annual subscriber myself. My affiliate link is on my website..
You could shop around for speed ratings. There are other products. I’m just saying that I use Inform Racing.
There are speed ratings in the Racing Post. However, they are not set out so you can easily see the speed ratings of the past races of horses. There are a lot of other benefits of using Inform racing.
You can see the Draw, Runstyle, whether the horse is racing in a higher or lower Class that in its previous race, and how many pounds the horse has gone up or down in the weights. These are all on the race cards and you don’t need to go clicking on links and waiting for information to load.
You can also click on advanced search and get speed ratings just for the racing conditions of the current race.
For example, you can just get the speed ratings for a particular distance, going and course direction either individually of combined. In this example, I have looked up the speed ratings on good going.
So, that’s Inform racing.
We use speed figures to:
Assess the speed of the favourite compared to its competitors.
Determine whether non-favourite drifters might get backed during the last 5 minutes pre-race
Speed ratings are important. Firstly, there are top-speed rated favourites. Occasionally, you get a favourite that has a speed rating that is a lot faster than its competitors. These are the types of horses that can end up getting backed down to very short prices.
These are the types of horses that non-form reading traders end up losing money on, because they see that the odds have gone down by a large amount and they believe that the odds must go back up at some point.
If I am considering laying such horses, I need to be more sure that they are weak in the betting compared to a standard trade. It’s a similar principle to laying easy last time out winners. The horse has to look as if it in trouble in the market for a lay first-back second trade.
Then, there are top speed-rated non-favourites. These have potential to get backed heavily. This doesn’t always happen. However, if I see a horse with the top-speed, that has just flat-lined or been on a slight drift at the 2 min pre-race point, I consider it to have potential to get backed.
4. Days Since Last Race
The number of days that a horse has been off the track is a variable that can influence market confidence. In the Racing Post, the number of days, since a horse’s last race is shown below the horse’s name and to the right.
For trading, I like to see recent form on the favourite. There are 2 exceptions to this which I’ll explain in a minute. I only consider form to be recent if the horse has had its last run within the last 30 days over long distances. This would include 1m 4f and above on the flat and all jumps races.
For shorter distances on the flat, I like the horse to have run in the last 3 weeks.
If a horse has been off the track for over 6 months, I am starting to view it as an unexposed (insufficient information) horse.
Most punters like to see recent form. Therefore, if we trade on favourites, with recent form, we are trading on the same races as punters.
As I said, there are situations, where we might consider trading on horses that have been off the track for a long time. The first is high class races. I will talk about class a bit later. For now, you need to know that high class horses don’t race often. They are usually saved for the top class races.
What about low class races? In this case, I want to be able to measure up how strong a favourite is. If a horse has recent form, you have a good idea of its limits.
However, if the favourite has been off the track for a long time, I try to figure out why it has been off the track. Then, I try to figure out if it is likely to have returned as a better horse or a worse horse.
Horses can be off the track for a wind operation or because they are being gelded. I’m not sure how this affects the horse’s performance. However, I assume that the purpose of the operation was to improve the horse’s performance.
Another legitimate reason for taking a horse off the track is the going. For example, let’s say a horse runs well on firm ground and poorly on soft ground. If the ground has been soft for months, a trainer might choose to give the horse a break.
If you can’t think of a legitimate reason for a horse being taking a break, the horse could have had problems. If the horse was running well before it took a break, I assume that it was taken of the track because of problems. Although the problems may have been fixed, I expect the horse to be as good as its last performances or worse. This makes it a candidate for a drifter. In this case the market will usually tell you, quite clearly, if the horse has lost its form.
If the horse was running poorly before it took a break and comes in as a favourite, I would be cautious about laying the horse. This is especially the case in a handicap. If the trainer has fixed the problem, the horse could be a handicap good thing. This is because, the horse will have dropped down in the handicap, while it was running poorly. Now, its problems are fixed, you don’t know how good it is. It could be as good as or even better than its best ever performance and have a really low weight. If such a horse is getting heavily backed, I wouldn’t want to oppose it.
However, this doesn’t matter for non-favourites. If a non-favourite was running badly BUT has a good speed rating, has dropped low in the handicap or is a class dropper, it may get backed.
As punters will be uncertain whether such horses are on form, the connections can allow these horses to drift and come in with the money close to the start of the race.
This will help our favourite drift.
6. Going and Distance
You can see the going and the distance of a race on the Racing Post’s cards.
Punters prefer horses that are running over a distance that they have won on in the past. If I am considering laying a horse because I think that the odds will drift, it helps to know that the horse does not perform well over today’s distance. This means that the horse has run over today’s distance in the past and performed poorly.
This is not the same as the horse never running over today’s distance. If a horse has never run over today’s distance, you don’t know whether this horse will perform over the new distance. Only the trainer and connections to the horse will have this information. The betting will tell you whether the trainer and connections believe the horse can run over the new distance. As this information is hidden to the public, connections can and (often do) allow such horses to drift before coming in with the money.
The going is the state of the ground (ie firm, good-firm, good, good-soft, soft, heavy). As with distance, a horse that has never raced on the going is not a proven failure on the going.
You need to use deduction to be sure that a horse can’t race on the going. Let’s say that a horse raced on soft ground years ago and failed. Does this mean that the horse can’t race on soft ground?
If the horse ran well on different going at the time, it could mean that the horse can’t race on soft ground. However, if the horse was a failure on every type of going that season, it doesn’t mean that the horse can’t race on soft ground.
As with the distance, the betting will often tell you whether connections believe the horse can run well on the going.
If you want to see how a horse has performed over the distance and going in previous races, you just click on the horse’s name and look through the horse’s previous races. You can see the horse’s position in each race and the distance and going it ran on.
So, why is this important?
It should be obvious that in-play traders should need to know whether their horse can run over the conditions of the race.
It’s also important for 5 min pre-race traders. If a horse drifts, it’s important to know why. In addition, if money suddenly comes for such a horse, you need to be aware that the market is saying that the horse does get the going or distance. In this case, connections have waited until there is a lot of liquidity in the market before making their move. Therefore, the odds could come down below the bottom of the range.
7. Class
If you look at any race in the Racing Post, you can see the class that the horse is racing in today. If you look up the horse’s history, you can see the class that the horse has raced in, in previous races.
The class of race goes from Class 1 to Class 7. Horses in lower class races tend to run fairly regularly. Therefore, you get a lot more recent form.
There are also sub-classes, within the Class 1 category. So, these are the ranked lists for Class 1 races on the flat and over the jumps.
The class horse can get backed heavily, even if its speed rating isn’t great. I’ve never been sure why. My guess is that, because most races aren’t true run races, the class horse has superior finishing speed.
If the class horse is favourite and getting backed, I would avoid opposing this. In other words, class is a negative variable for laying at the bottom of the range.
Awareness of Class horses is important, when looking at silent drifters, among the non-favourites. As I have said, when I am looking to lay a favourite within the 5 min pre-race period, I decide whether there is any likelihood that the non-favourites will get backed.
Often, a non-favourite class-dropper will get backed at some point. When I say “class-dropper”, I am talking about horses, that have dropped 2 or more class levels. In this case, I am not concerned about the number of days that the horse has been off the course for or the going or distance. These factors are probably the reason that the class dropper is not at shorter odds in the betting and why it has drifted.
You do have to check for other factors. For example, you should check that the horse has been racing at a higher level regularly and that they weren’t racing at a higher class as a one-off. In addition, you have to make sure that the horse has been running ok in the higher class. It doesn’t have to have been running well. However, if it is always coming last, in the higher class race, or not completing the race over jumps, I wouldn’t take the class-dropper seriously.
7. Handicaps
So, let’s look at handicaps. There are 2 main types of races: Handicaps and non-handicaps. I trade on both.
When you are looking at the Racing Post, a handicap race will always have the label “handicap”. If the word “handicap” is not in the title, the race is a non-handicap.
a) Non-Handicaps
The betting in non-handicaps is often volatile. Compared to handicaps, the rewards of trading are often bigger in non-handicaps, especially novice stakes on the flat. However, the potential losses of trading in non-handicaps are greater as well.
The reason for this volatility is because there is often only a small amount of form on the runners. As I showed earlier in the video, you get horses, who are running their first ever race in some non-handicaps.
In non-handicaps, the rules vary concerning the weights carried by horses. Horses may be weighted by age and gender. In addition, there may be a weight penalty, if the horse has won a race at the same grade in its current race.
b) Handicaps
Although I trade on both handicaps and non-handicaps, I trade much more often on handicaps. In handicap races, horses carry different weights. The weightings depend on each horse’s past racing performances. The idea is that horses are weighted such that, the race will end up in a dead heat. However, there are several reasons why horses may have different winning chances in a race.
For example, a horse may have been running over an unsuitable going or distance. This would get its handicap rating down. Then, when the horse is entered in a race with suitable conditions, it will have a better chance of winning compared to its competitors.
So, another way of assessing a non-favourite drifter is to look up the horse’s last winning handicap mark and compare it with today’s mark.
I will give you an example. Where it says “OR”, this is the horse’s current mark. “OR” stands for official rating. The horse I am interested in is “Where’s Jeff”. I’m not interested in laying this horse.
Let’s say that I’m thinking of laying the favourite. Therefore, I’m interested in figuring out, whether Where’s Jeff might get backed heavily at some point.
So, Where’s Jeff’s current mark is 68.
So, let’s look at Where’s Jeff’s past races. The last win the horse had is here and it was off a mark of 81, which is significantly lower than his mark of 68 today. That’s a good sign. Another good sign is that, the horse won in a Class 3 event and today’s race is a Class 4.
There is another race where the horse won off a mark of 74.
However, there are questions marks. The going and the distance are different from the horse’s wins. The distance is 1m 1f today. It’s wins were over 1m 4f and 1m 2f. Although the 1m 2f is close, the mark it won with was the lower of the 2 wins.
The going today and is good to soft and its wins were on good ground. So, I checked the horse’s speed ratings on good to soft ground. I used Inform Racing for the speed ratings and I found that the horse can run on today’s going.
The next question is why today? The horse ran of the same mark in its last race and didn’t win that race. However, as traders, we are not interested in the result. We are interested in the betting.
So, we can bring up that race and we can see it was backed from 4/1 down to 3/1. The odds ended up at 100/30. It’s not mega-backing. However, it was backed.
Therefore, all in all, I would expect this horse to get backed at some point.
Handicaps are easier than non-handicaps for trading. This is because generally there is more information on horses in handicaps.
I say generally because, you need to be aware that you do get some horses, with very little form in some handicaps. Usually, these horses have moved from non-handicap company into handicap races. Therefore, you can’t just assume that all handicaps are good for trading. I avoid races where the favourite hasn’t run, at least a few races in handicap company.
There are trainers, who are good at moving their horses from non-handicaps into handicaps on a low mark. For example, the trainer might have a horse that is suited to run over long distances. He might run the horse over short distances in non-handicap novice races. The horse will perform badly because it is running over the wrong distance. Then, the trainer will run the horse in handicaps over the suitable distance. This means that their horses can string a load of wins together before the handicapper catches up with them.
If you can figure out, who those trainers are, you can make some money. Even then, it can be difficult as the bookmakers know, who these trainers are. Therefore, their horses will often be put in at short odds.
8. Course Direction
Horses often have a preference for running on a left-handed or a right-handed course. If you are using speed ratings, you will often find that a particular horse’s speed is dependent on the direction of the course. In other words, a horse might run faster on a left-handed course compared to a right-handed course. The situation may be the opposite for another horse.
If you want to look at the course direction in the Racing Post, you have to click on the course and then on “course map”.
This is the advantage of using a speed rating service, such as Inform Racing, is that you can put in variables, such as the course direction and it will give you speed ratings for just that course direction.
However, I would say that course direction is more important for in-play traders than pre-race traders.
9. The Draw
Again, the draw is probably more important for in-play traders than pre-race traders. On flat races, the stall that a horse comes out of is numbered. This is known as the “draw”. Some racecourses have a bias, where winners are more likely to come from certain stalls. Depending on the race course, it is usually high or low numbers that have an advantage.
If you want to look up the draw, you should just google, something like “draw bias UK horse racing”. There are a lot of websites that will give this information for free.
10. Run style
Run style is probably more important for in-play traders. Horses have a running style. I’m showing you an Inform Racing card.
The run styles are listed in this column. You’ll see that there are the letter, H, M, P and L at the top of this column. This is what they mean.
- Front Runner
- Held up behind Front Runner
- Held up in mid-division
- Held up at back of the field
You might wonder why this is important. An in-play trader needs to know if a race is going to be run in a way that suits his target horse. There are a lot of scenarios of how a race might be run.
I will give a simple example of how the race is run can be important. Let’s say that you want to back a front runner pre-race and lay it in-play. Let’s say that your trade depends on your horse being the front runner for at least, half of the race. If your horse isn’t the front runner, you will probably lose your trade.
If there are other horses, in the field that usually front run, that is going to hurt your trade. This is because your front runner will have to battle with the other front runners to be the front runner. This can lead to all front runners burning themselves out early in the race.
11. Direct Form-lines
Form lines are useful for pre-race traders. Here’s how direct form-lines work.
Let’s say, Horses A and B have raced previously and they are racing today. The last time that they raced Horse A beat Horse B by 1 length. Horse A doesn’t necessarily need to have won the race. Horse A could have come 2nd and Horse B could have come 3rd or 4th. The main point is that there was a length between them.
Let’s say that Horse A is 2 lbs worse off in the weights compared to its previous race against Horse B.
How do we calculate where the horses should finish in relation to each other? It depends on the distance of the race. Here is a list of distances and the number of lbs/length that I am currently using. I’m not saying these numbers are correct. I saw a different set of numbers, in a racing publication, years ago. When I was making this video, I decided to check, on the pounds per length adjustment
12. Collateral Form-lines
With collateral form-lines, Horses A and B have never met. Both have raced against Horse C. In this case, we have a line through Horse C whereby we can compare Horses A and B.
It doesn’t matter whether Horse C is or isn’t in the race today.
So, we would work out where Horse A would be at today’s weights in relation to Horse C. Then, we would work out where Horse B would be at today’s weights in relation to Horse C. Horse C might have been carrying a different weight in the 2 races. Therefore, you would have to make an adjustment for that.
I am assuming that, if you have got this far in the video, that you can do this type of calculation.
Form-lines aren’t precise. Factors, such as the going will affect the impact of weight. You would expect extra weight to have more impact in soft or heavy ground compared to good ground.
Form-lines are especially useful when the betting says the opposite to the form-line. For example, let’s say Horse A is supposed to win against Horse B. However, Horse B is put in as favourite.
Let’s assume that the bookies and connections to the horses are intelligent and this is not a mistake.
The betting is saying that connections of Horse B believe that their horse will show an improved performance compared to its previous race against Horse A. So, they know that their horse is supposed to lose based on previous form. However, they believe that their horse has improved since its previous outing.
I would expect a betting battle to occur. It’s unlikely that connections to Horse A are just going to roll over and say, “Oh ok then. You’ve got us beat”.
When we look for drifters from the bottom of the range, we want a betting battle. So, when the betting shows the opposite opinion to a form-line, this is a positive variable for our trade.
I could do this without thinking about volume bars, without worrying that there is bit more money on one side of the ladder than the other and without any magic.