Warren Block's Daily Report - Friday, 25 April 2025

• Matrix Selectives - Reducing bets, improving win strike rate
• Wizard Ratings, Raceday, Matrix, and Selectives Results

 Matrix Selectives - Reducing bets, improving win strike rate

It is an unavoidable fact that the average recreational punter isn't competing on a level playing field with race-betting professionals, both professional punters and the specialist form-analysts and price-setters employed by corporate wagering companies. They can't complete in terms of resources; financial and informational, time, and for most, race-analysis skills.

Both Don Scott and I recognized this back in the 1990s when we discussed what a truly professional racing information service for the average recreational punter might look like. Now, in 2025, I think it is fair to say the current Wizard is delivering more than either of us could have envisaged as even possible during those discussions.

Much of what is now being delivered by the Wizard is due to the advances in technology. When my Superform service first computerised, an external 68 megabyte hard drive cost me $12,000 the price of a new car then! When I first published the Wizard newspaper formguide in 1988 the pages were transmitted to the printer on a 1200/75 modem! It took hours, not minutes just to get the copy to the printer.

But I have to say that it is not (just) technology determining the content of today's online Wizard: It is my desire to deliver to subscribers a service that levels that playing field on which we are playing against professional punters and the corporate wagering specialists.

One of my main objectives has been to give subscribers tools that reduce the number of races, and horses, to be evaluated, and thereby add to the time available to fine-tune their final selections. In this context, I believe the introduction of the Matrix Selectives is a key Wizard innovation.

In the first four months of Matrix operations there were 5,253 races rated by the Wizard. No recreational punter can hope to deal with this volume of racing. Over the course of 16 Saturdays there would have been more than 1,600 races. Again, to effectively evaluate these races, and identify the best wagering opportunities is not feasible using traditional sources and conventional race analysis.

This means that some great betting opportunities are missed. Wizard Matrix aims to address this issue.

Now, Matrix by focusing on the four best rated runners in each race (who win around 70% of all races) and (re)evaluating their overall chances in terms of ratings, key form factors, and market information, is highlighting the type of runner that has delivered exceptional win strike rates.

The following table shows the complete results for the assessments included in Matrix over the first four months of operations. 

The results of these Matrix Selectives speak for themselves:

W1+MaxR100 = Reduced the number of possible races from 5,253 to 1,784 (by 66%) and improved on the WRat 100 by 56% (from 27.6% to 43%).

*EO+MaxR100 = Reduced the number of possible races from 5,253 to 2,180 (by 58%) and improved on the WRat 100 by 23.9% (from 27.6% to 34.2%).

W1+*EO+MaxR100 = Reduced the number of possible races from 5,253 to 770 (by 85%) and improved on the WRat 100 by 62% (from 27.6% to 44.7%).

How you can best incorporate Matrix information into your own selecting strategies, to reflect your own preferences and maximize your own strike rates, will be discussed in the next article in this series.

The Wizard Matrix Report

Today we post an extract from a Wizard Matrix Report. All Wizard reports for this, and other meetings run today, are now available to subscribers.

 Click for an explanation of the Matrix report here.

 Click here for an explanation of Selectives from Matrix.

Wizard Ratings and Raceday and Matrix and Summary Results

We publish these full results daily so that subscribers can see the results of the Wizard's ratings options, and Report-content, and thereby formulate a selecting and betting strategy that suits them individually. The Wizard ratings should not be seen as "tips", rather as objective assessments that can be used to inform one's own judgement as to the relative chances of the runners in a race.

Below are the full day-by-day results for Wizard (Wrat) top 4 rated runners, the Raceday Qualifier, the Matrix (MaxR) 100 pointer, the MaxR top-two, and Selectives: the market-sensitive Matrix *EOam-MaxR100 qualifier, the ratings-focused Matrix W1-MaxR100 qualifier, and the multi-factor Matrix W1-*EOam-MaxR100 qualifier. The (4 weeks) column shows the results for the four weeks prior to the current week and the 2023-2024 column shows the WRat results for the full 2023-2024 racing season.

This results summary is colour coded so that it is easier to track the relative performance of the Top Rated (blue) and Top-Two Rated (green) ratings options on a daily, and longer term, basis. The best overall qualifier (yellow) is also highlighted. The number of qualifying races is included along with the win strike rate. With respect to the best-overall category, a minimum of 6 qualifying races is required to be ranked.

The following table shows this week's results of possible Matrix Selectives combinations which draw on the Raceday, Watch, and Magic reports. These combinations are accessible via the Wizard MATRIX report which is posted to our website around 10:30am each day.

(Key: The first of the two columns for each Selective combination shows number of qualifying races and the second column shows the strike rate. Headings: RWM is Raceday,Watch,Magic,  RWM 2/3 means two or three qualifying, Rday is Raceday report qualifier , Magic is Magic report qualifier, R/M is Raceday and Magic, WR1 is Wrat 100, MR1 is MaxR 100.)

The following table shows where the winner of each race run yesterday was rated by WRat, WMod, WHcp, and WExpk and was the qualifier in the Wizard Raceday Report. (Note: The Wrat [W] winner results report on both the top rated and top-two rated winners.) The Raceday Report winners under the Top Rated column are from those races where there was only one Raceday qualifier, and under the Top 2 Rated on the rare occasions where there were two qualifiers in a race.

Header: WMHER = WRat (W), WMod (M), WHcp (H), WExpk (E), Raceday (R).

For a full explanation of the table click: How to read the Wizard Ratings Results