Wizard Daily Report and Research - Monday, 15 January 2024.
First Four Favourites - results overview.
Recent Daily Reports have focused on the Starting Price (SP) favourite and how that horse has performed under different conditions.
The SP favourite is a very useful benchmark horse when doing this research for there is an inherent stability and predictability about this sub-set of runners.
However, we won't always be backing the favourite - though we should always be mindful of the overall success rate of this horse - and it is appropriate to cast our net wider.
Two approaches to win-only selecting and betting that have been followed by successful punters worldwide are:
- Concentrate on the main chances as reflected in the betting market, as this filter does a very good job of identifying the most likely contenders.
- Look for exceptional overlays by focusing on horses unfavoured in the betting market or badly mis-priced at the lower odds.
Naturally, we can combine both approaches to take advantages of opportunities when they arrive, and both approaches will be discussed later in these Daily Reports. (You can't ignore the opportunity offered by the longer priced Wizard 100 pointers, for to do so will cause you to miss winners like Another Balconyboy who paid $32.30 late last year, one of numerous double figure Wizard winners.)
For now, however, the emphasis will be on understanding the pattern of results of those horses favoured in the betting markets.
Today, we will look at the success rate of the first four favourites at the close of betting across three locations:
- Metropolitan venues
- Provincial meetings
- Country meetings
The period covered is the last five years.
Table - First four favourites metropolitan, provincial, country.
| | 1st fav | win | win% | 2nd fav | win | win% | 3rd fav | win | win% | 4th fav | win | win% |
| overall | 101650 | 34621 | 34.1% | 97924 | 19289 | 19.7% | 96704 | 13064 | 13.5% | 96839 | 9487 | 9.8% |
| metro | 19633 | 6484 | 33.0% | 19014 | 3647 | 19.2% | 18677 | 2414 | 12.9% | 18760 | 1830 | 9.8% |
| provincial | 33123 | 11556 | 34.9% | 32173 | 6402 | 19.9% | 10313 | 4345 | 13.7% | 32116 | 3026 | 9.4% |
| country | 48894 | 16581 | 33.9% | 46737 | 9240 | 19.8% | 46255 | 6305 | 13.6% | 45963 | 4631 | 10.1% |
For the record, the strike rates for favourites 5th to 10th overall are:
| 5th | 96179 | 6592 | 6.9% |
| 6th | 91975 | 4739 | 5.2% |
| 7th | 84102 | 3085 | 3.7% |
| 8th | 72064 | 1905 | 2.6% |
| 9th | 57273 | 1103 | 1.9% |
| 10th | 42985 | 620 | 1.4% |
Some take-aways from this analysis:
- The pattern is an expected, the strike rate falls off as the SP increases.
- There is a remarkable consistency across all locations.
- In terms of wagering opportunities, provincial and country racing are not the "poor relations".
Warren - Wiz-Ed
If you have any comment or suggestions about the Wizard Daily articles please feel free to drop me a line at:
Wiz-Ed@everyrace.com