The Need For Speed
Discover How Speed Figures Can Reveal Hidden Clues
Looking Beyond the Obvious
"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." – Max Lucado
When looking for an edge in horse racing, it's wise to look beyond the obvious and seek out the less obvious. While most punters tend to focus on the sharp end of the market, looking to back favourites or second favourites, my advice is to look beyond the obvious in search of better value opportunities lurking further down the card. If we simply rely on the same information that most other punters are looking at in order to form their betting decisions, then, like most other punters, we can expect to lose more money than we win over any reasonable length of time. This means we need to disregard the obvious. For example, this means no more worrying about recent winning form. Therefore, whether a horse finished first or second last time out doesn't necessarily matter. And if a given horse doesn't have any previous course or distance wins, this isn't necessarily going to rule it out. In fact, we could even turn things upside down and say, "How about we look at the horses that finished outside of the places last time out and also have no previous course or distance wins?" That might sound like an upside-down approach, but there is actually a lot more merit in coming at things totally differently than the majority of other punters. Given most punters leak lots of hard-earned money over time clearly the obvious simply isn't working for most.
But why on earth would we want to back a horse that didn't even place in its last start? And what if a horse hasn't even placed in any of its last two or three starts? Isn't that pushing the limits of logic, even for a contrarian? Just because a horse finished first or second last time doesn't necessarily mean it's going to run better than a horse that only finished sixth or seventh last time out. Maybe the outsider horse that only managed to finish in seventh position last time out was running against stronger opposition. Maybe it just had an off day. Perhaps it wasn't very well handicapped. Maybe it didn't like the conditions. There could be all sorts of reasons why a horse that finished well down the field last time out might be able to turn the tables and defy the odds next time out. As such, we shouldn't place too much emphasis on recent form, as it will cause us to overlook horses with much better claims than the perceived wisdom of the crowd would lead us to believe. We need a more reliable benchmark than simply looking at where a horse finished last time out or where it placed in any of its last three starts. Relying too heavily on recent form and finishing positions is much too simplistic and limited in scope, as it's not a very accurate or reliable way to compare like for like. This begs the question:
What would be a better way to compare horses in a given race against each other?
One preferable method, as a useful means of comparison, would be to use speed figures to help circumvent the limitations of recent form.
If you would like to discover how speed figures can help reveal hidden clues, then please feel free to download the following ‘Need for Speed’ PDF file.
