FAVOURITES
REPORT -
A couple
of years ago we decided to run a 1000 race study of how
favourites performed under different circumstances in
an attempt to gain an understanding of what made certain
favourites layable and what made them backable.
It was an
interesting exercise but, of course, on a sample of 1000,
(all the time we had to spend on it in March 2008), it
was never going to be a definitive work.
Recently,
fellow Tasmanian Roger Biggs, mathematician and author
of such things, dropped me an email to helpfully correct
some of the figures that we arrived at based on his sample
size of nearly 200,000 races. Wow - great database! That
size of database to draw on makes his calculations far
more valid than mine.
Here are
those corrections that he e-mailed:
Winning Percentages
of favourites by Days Since Last Start: (196755 races)
>= 301
days................ 31.7%
201 - 300 days.............33.6%
100 - 200 days.............33.0%
50 - 99 days.................34.8%
29 - 49 days.................34.1%
21 - 28 days.................32.1%
14 - 20 days................ 32.3%
8 - 13 days...................33.1%
1 - 7 days ....................36.9%
Winning Percentages
of favourites by field size: (196,755 races)
17+starters...........
23.2%
16 .......................26.2%
15........................27.1%
14 ......................27.8%
13 ......................29.2%
12 ......................29.7%
11 ......................31.2%
10 ......................32.3%
9 ....................... 33.1%
8 ........................35.4%
7 ....................... 37.3%
6 ....................... 41.5%
What a kind
person to take the time to do that for us.
Roger has
a number of books on this issue and other really good
racing "stuff".
