My Clubs
Start Club
Join Club
News
Risk approach towards betting
22 April 2016 10:41 AM
On Day 2 of The Championships and I was punting with a group of blokes which included a character called Shilty (a.k.a Brett). Shilty had an interesting form page that he was using which looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics. I picked his brain throughout the day and learned that each of these symbols meant something in his betting system. The symbols were a little too deep to understand in an afternoon but the principles of the system were straight forward. He calls it his Risk Approach to Punting and I've outlined the key principles below.
High racing risk factors
Shilty saw each runner in the race as a risk. The higher the risk the less likely it would win. He assigns a risk score to each horse based on factors that relate to it's form and the race. He's looking to eliminate runners based on these risk factors.
Some factors are more significant and therefore drive a higher risk score. For example the highest risk factors on Shilty's list were:
- Form - poor recent form without excuses, a sequence of bad runs and up-and-down form patterns attracted high risk scores.
- Preparation pattern - examples of risk here are resuming with a poor first-up record or the horse is over his current preparation.
- Track Condition - is the horse totally adverse to the track condition?
- Unknowns - never run over the distance, first WFA when carrying lower weight in handicaps.
Runners who scored poorly in any of these were eliminated. He especially had no tolerance for unknowns. He said that he has had more wins over time by not taking horses with unknowns in their form (e.g. first run over 2000m when previous win range was up to 1600m) than taking them.
Speed map risk
Shilty focussed on the speed map at the next stage. His logic here is that he should be left with a bunch or runners that have a reasonable chance of winning so now he is trying to pick-out which runners are likely to get the best chance in the running.
He assesses various factors including race distance, track peculiarities, runners racing styles and speed in the running to arrive at a likely tempo for the race and three groups; leaders, midfielders and backmarkers. He then assesses risk by comparing the tempo he expects in the race against where each runner is likely to be placed and eliminates runners where the two don't suit (e.g. a slow tempo assessed for backmarkers would drive a high risk rating and therefore he would eliminate them).
At this stage he usually only has between two to five runners left. He then performs comparative form analysis, where he looks to rate the chances of the remaining runners in contention against each other. He usually settles on two or three runners to back using a multi-bet staking plan.
Shilty told me he is about 3% up after using it solid for 15 months. I can't attest to that claim but he did back four winners on the day across Melbourne and Sydney.
Mike Steward