Wizard Daily Report and Research - Sunday, 19 November 2023.

• Better betting - Specialise - Comparing Group race quality.
• Research - Trainers - Trainers Notebook.

Better betting - Specialise - Group racing, quality differences.

In this  series of articles I am dealing with the issue of the amount of horse racing on offer, and how we might find a way to focus on certain special circumstances where we can exploit a general lack of information.

Today, continuing with details of the class/type of races run on the Adelaide metropolitan track.

                                          Race classes and types Adelaide Metropolitan 2022-2023 racing season

Adelaide hosts 24 all age Group races which can be added to the 86 in Sydney, the 112 in Melbourne, and the 40 in Brisbane, making a total of 262 Group opportunities, with more to be added when I cover Western Australia tomorrow.

A focus on Group racing is just one area of specialisation that you can exploit. Others are: geographical (local and preferred/limited interstate), level (metropolitan, provincial, country), trainers (but not individual jockeys), trainer/jockey combinations, types and classes of races, various form factors (specialising on horses with proven form cycles, distance specialists, speed mappers, etc), market movers (matching with form/ratings), switchers (distance, class, location). The list of possibilities is extensive. (And you can specialise in more than one area, of course.)

As we have been discussing this topic mainly in the context of Group racing, it might be interesting to see how the quality of the all-age Group races varied across the mainland states in the 2022-2023 racing season. This analysis is based on my final class figures for these Group races, after I had completed the Q (quality) re-rating after the event. This is the process we go thorough to ensure that the Wizard base ratings are as accurate as possible. We do not simply use a formula to calculate a post-race base rating. Every race in Australia is re-analysed after the event and a quality level assigned.

For the Group 1 races, the average Sydney G1 has been used as the standard (and so is zero). Other races in Sydney, and those other centres, are either better (+) or worse (-) than that standard. For Groups 2 and 3 races, the assessed average quality in Sydney and Melbourne was the same, so they form the base standard on zero. For Listed races, Sydney again provided the benchmark zero.

Here, we are looking at the average post-race standard over the course of a full season, and the lowest, and the highest. As you can see there can be quite a variation within one Group level, even in the same state. Whilst one season is a relatively short period over which to conduct this analysis, I believe the results will be representative of the longer term.

Note: There were insufficient G1 and G2 races run in Adelaide and Perth for this analysis. Later, I might redo this analysis over a longer 5-year period to bring them into the analysis. Also note, that in all States we are dealing with small numbers and that must be taken into consideration.

  Group racing - Metropolitan comparisons - Quality/Field-Strength - 2022-2023 season

In 2022-2023 there was a clear difference between Sydney and Melbourne and the others centres. I believe this general conclusion holds for the longer term as well, so this difference is worth bearing in mind when assessing the runners, visitors and locals, in Group races run in the various cities.

Wiz-Ed

Research Trainers Trainers Notebook.

Today the Wizard Trainers Notebook examines trainers ranked 1 to 10 on the Western Australia metropolitan tracks in the 2022-2023 racing season.

For this notebook presentation I have broken down the overall stats into age groups (2yo, 3yo, 4yo and older) as there can be a difference in how these various age groups are prepared and perform. Also, I have limited the analysis to only those runs that were at odds of 10/1 or less, thereby removing the noise created by the longer odds runs which are really of no relevance in this exercise.

The results shown are only those where the trainer had an impact value of 1.3 or better, so a significant performance, and one can say under these conditions the stable has outperformed its expected result.

Note: It is possible to have more than one entry for a single factor. For example, the stable may have outperformed when backing up both within 8-14 days and 30-60 days.

Because the data is drawn from the Wizards national database, the form factors will be the same for trainers when they appear in the top trainer list in more than one state.

Wiz-Ed

                             Wizard - Trainer's Notebook - Trainers ranked 1 to 10 in the Western Australia 2022-2023 metropolitan premiership table.