The Advantage Of Mixing With The Lower Classes….
When it comes to racing folk, it is fair to say that all levels of society are well represented; those at ease sipping champagne at Ascot in their finery are at least matched in number by those in jeans and t-shirts holding a burger and a plastic beaker of lager.
Whatever your social company, trust me when I say that it pays to make friends with the lower classes of the equine world. Shady characters of questionable application and ability need not be feared and long may the majority of punters turn away from races contested by those who prefer to kick the pedestal over.
Traits such as inconsistency, a shade of temperament and even the odd physical ailment can work to make a modest animal attractive as a betting medium. After all, if you had backed Frankel to win all of his 14-starts, the man who had a single bet on a 5/1 winner would have been the wealthier punter!
To switch sports briefly; if someone tells you that City are a good bet to beat Utd in The Premiership, then they speak as fools. Every tiny piece of data, every stat, every rumour, every expert analysis is boiled-up to create the prices on such events and whilst the masses clamour to bet on the top matches, the shrewd gambler has found out the striker from a Conference League team has to work overtime tonight in the bakery and that presents a little-known betting opportunity.
Horse racing is no different. Twitter is loaded by people offering opinion on whether this colt or that colt will make Royal Ascot, whether a novice hurdler skipping to victory in a small race in November will make up into a Neptune contender etc. etc.
Why on earth are so many people trying to predict the progress of 2 & 3-y-o’s ahead of pattern races or trying guess what will turn up at Cheltenham months in advance?
I do get the thrill of a challenge but why make it hard for yourself? All-aged handicaps generally feature horses who are exposed with plenty of form in the book and that has to be an easier playing field…or does it?
For a 12-runner race, the approximate average winning SP for non-handicaps will be 9/2 whereas for handicaps, it will tend to be nearer 8/1. This illustrates an important point; it is harder to find the winner of the handicap and since the average losing punter is focused on finding winners, it is often thought that handicaps are best left alone or at least treated with less enthusiasm.
The point of this article is not to champion the wonder of the handicapping system as such; rather it is to take a look at class and how we might view different classes of handicaps.
As a general truth, the lower the class of handicap, the lower the ability of the horses contesting (which is obvious) but also such horses often have broadly apparent group weaknesses as touched on earlier. Many Class 6 regulars will have minor health issues (physical or mental) which can prevent sustained runs of form and inconsistency should not be viewed as a negative. Indeed, inconsistency, a lack of clear visibility from the form book about how the horse will run and that type of ‘doubt’ is a hugely important factor when looking for a value bet.
Does Mr William Hill really dedicate as much time trying to price up a Class 6 All-Weather handicap as he does the Group 1 on a Saturday? Of course not. Not that many people care so there is not the market interest but also, the algorithms and semi-automated pricing used by industry cannot easily evaluate the true chance of these low-grade, sometimes stroppy and often inconsistent animals.
This then is an identifiable weakness of the odds-compilers and it is bizarre for any serious punter not to recognise and try to exploit this. Too many people are quick to mock and scoff low-grade racing, especially on the AW but my assertion remains that this is where the best punting opportunities lie.
Anyway, what interested me as we approached the winter AW season was how the average winning Betfair Starting Price per runner varied across the different classes of all-aged handicaps. What I would hope and expect to find is that Class 5 – 7 handicaps tend on average to be won by horses at bigger prices than Class 2 & 3. That would confirm the thinking that sweating a short-priced favourite in a poor AW handicap is a bad idea and taking a chance with the capable but inconsistent outsider is the way to go.
The first 10-days analysis across all the AW tracks backs up the theory immediately. A good start already and I will look to continue this moving forwards and follow-up with a more in-depth article later on.
Class? Mix in the higher but bet on the lower……
billyblakeman 