Proper Racing

Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Nov 10 2007, 03:52 PM
Shame you can't count, Betsmate - it's 121 days that most are counting down to! :P
Click to expand...
Yes yes, we know the Jumps season starts on the Tuesday of the Cheltenham Festival.

Time to tuck in and snooze through 4 months of trials...
 
it's NH racing you are looking forward to, got you now

yep, I love watching Flat horses rated 35 and less... jumping over hedges :)

isn't it just bandit racing at that level?

don't people hate bandit racing?

where's Grasshopper?

:laughing:
 
Betsmate, the "Cheltenham Saturday - thank God the wait is over" thread is respectfully drawn to your attention. You are conforming to a tedious stereotype.
 
I prefer Jumps as a spectator spectacle, but as a betting medium it's lousy (outside of the festival and a handful of metings) and I reckon I'd be better off sticking to one of the three possible outcomes of a football match. I don't really have a penchant for odds on betting, and aren't terribly enamoured by 2/1 or less either.

Only a few weeks ago jumps enthusiasts were getting excited about Aintree's Sunday card and the television spectacle to show case 4 or 5 horses running against each other. Winning TV SP's 4/9, 4/6, evens and 9/4. Now admittedly the card did turn up a 50/1 winner, but that was a flat race anyway :P

I can't be bothered to delve through the season to date, and have just used the BBC archive which carries results from October 31st at the time of writing, but they obviously get supplanted with each passing day.

During this period (give a take a few as I had to hand count them) there's been;

148 jumps races, 26 {17.5%} were won by an odds on shot.
17 of the 22 cards (77%) featured at least one odds on winner
32% of the cards featured at least 2 or more odds on winners.

Using 2/1 or lower as another benchmark,

56 of the 148 races, a whacking 38% were won by a horse within this range.
Not a single card for the sample period featured a winner with at least a minimum 2/1 price.
12 of the 22 cards, (54%) featured at least 3 winners or more that were 2/1 or less.

Why would anybody pay the petrol, the parking and the entrance fee? Is it a question of lack of depth and class etc Well yesterdays features jumps card was Wincanton winning SP's were returned as follows

7/4, 15/2, 5/2, 2/1, 4/1, 15/8 & 4/6 = approx ave 3/1

The week before that it was Wetherby and the Charlie Hall, winning SP's were returned as follows

8/13, 4/5, 7/2, 4/6, 9/2, 11/4, & 14/1 = approx ave 4/1 (largely down to 1 horse)

Compare the flat over the same period, (and its hardly the most competitive part of the season either)

168 flat races, 10 were won by odds on shots (6%)
8 of the 24 cards featured at least 1 odds on winner (33%). This is less than half the number for jumps cards despite flat cards typically featuring an extra race.
Only 1 card (5%) featured at least 2 odds on winners compared to a jumps figure of 7 or 32%

Again using the 2/1 or lower benchmark

30 out of 168 races were won by a 2/1 shot or less (17.8%) compared to a jumps figure of 38%
Only 3 cards failed to land at least one 2/1 winner, which suggests that 'geting out' opportunities hadn't necessarily been sacrificed. Every jumps card managed at least 2/1 or less.
Perhaps the most startling difference was in the number of cards that featured 3 or more winners at 2/1 or less? Remember a majority of jumps cards conformed to this pattern (12 out of 22) or 54%. Despite havign an extra race in a lot of cases, only 3 out of 24 flat cards managed this dubious honour (12%) or four and half time less likely.

In other words the same percentage of horses that win at 2/1 or less on the flat do so at odds on over the jumps. Now where's that football coupon norty
 
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