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In the past week we've had the collapse of the Fallon trial followed, almost immediately, by the news that Fallon failed a second drugs test in France.
More interesting for the punter is the news that Betfair are rolling out a new feature from the 12th of December, Starting Price or SP Betting.
What this means to the future of betting is open to question; will we start to see multiple SP prices reported in the press, will we see one SP value reported and, if so, which one or will we stop seeing SP reported at all? Clearly we're entering a new phase of betting history, whether we like it or not, and there will be changes on their way though, at the moment, we have no idea what these changes are nor what they mean.
Tomorrow sees the start of SP Betting where, if the backers and layers so wish, can back and lay to what Betfair call SP.
This project of theirs starts off with the UK horse racing markets before this rolls out across the board. Though on the first day Betfair are, wisely, taking it calmly with just having this facility available only for the Southwell race meeting.
From what Betfair describes it seems that the SP price isn't determined from any starting price at all. Although the name SP seems to imply that the prices are connected to the prices available before the event starts as in how the traditional SPs are calculated on-course. It seems that the SP price is calculated solely by the weight of money on both sites of the event.
An example on the Betfair shows a selection with £6,000 wanting to lay and £1,000 wanting to back the selection. This ratio of 6:1 creates the price of 6/1.
This means that the price of SP may not bear any resemblence to the actual available prices at the start of the race.
One interesting feature is that it is possible to place any unmatched bets into the SP market at the off which gives the bettor an alternative tactic rather than just letting the bet lapse unmatched.
When one bets to SP one bets to a liability. So one places a back stake (minimum £2) which by definition is a liability stake (i.e. one risks that stake) and for laying one nominates a liability stake (minimum £10). When the SP prices are calculated after the off then the layers and backers will be notified at which price that their stake was matched at. It must be stressed that the layer can only lose their nominated lay stake.
On the whole Betfair's SP betting sounds interesting but one immediate concern is whether their computers can handle the extra loads and we've got the Boxing Day and New Year's Day Bank Holiday meetings coming up on the horizon.
More information can be read here on the Betfair site.
We mentioned the Trainer Calendar in the last issue and we're pleased to see that they have been warmly received.
The Trainer Calendar has been updated since the last newsletter in that they have been tidied up (they are a lot easier to read now) and, more importantly, we have added more data to the calendar. We've added the figures for the trainer for the whole of the five year period so that one can see how the trainer performs at this time of year compared to his overall performance.
Here's an example of the Trainer Calendar for the Hexham 1.20 (12th Dec, 2007).
Recent example of the Trainer Calendar can be found in the ratings on the Archive Server.
What exactly is value?
Value is a term which we hear all too often, usually by TV pundits to mean that a horse's price looks interesting and they may say "There's value at that price" and at which point we usually end up shouting at the television set explaining to the pundit that he's a blithering idiot and that the 3/1 on offer is certainly not value at all.
The problem, quite simply, is that the pundit doesn't know what value is. And if they do understand the meaning of value they don't have an idea what value is in this particular instance.
We, on the other hand, think we do.
Value has a simple definition. Value is simply the horse's chance (if we're talking about a horse race) of winning the race expressed as a price.
So if a horse has a 20% chance (one in five) of success then the value price will be 4/1. Similarly, a horse with a 50:50 chance of winning will have a value price of evens.
And that's it.
If you look at our selections, backs and lays, and on the ratings you will see that every horse has a value price. We believe that we are unique in that we calculate this figure whereas no-one else seems to be willing nor able to do the same.
Which is not surprising as it's rather tricky to calculate as it involves all sorts of nasty bits of hairy calculus, but we've looked at this over the years and we think that we've made the best possible value forecasts.
The issue is not how we calculate value but the fact that we calculate it for you and it's there for you to use, if you so wish.
Quite good really. We've gone through 400,000 recent horse ratings (well, we've used 399,368 to be precise) and when we did a back check we made sure that there were no no-runners to skew the data.
So when we say that, for example, a horse has a 4/1 chance of success we would expect that one fifth of these would win. When we say that a horse has a 9/1 chance of winning we would hope to see that one tenth of them win.
What follows is our results table.
There's a couple of points which ought to be made. First that we didn't have enough horses running at high value prices to give us a good enough figure. And look how few there are valued at odds-on. Yes, we rarely say that in a race with a medium sized field that a certain horse has a more than a 50% chance of success.
This is one reason to be wary of backing odds-on runners; clearly the bookies are having a laugh. Anyway, have a look at our value predictions and they're not too bad. Not perfect, we admit, but rather strong. Certainly the range from 2/1 to about 15/1 is good.
So the next time you hear a pundit describing a horse going out to 4/1 as "good value" confirmation or not can be found by looking at the value column. If we say that the value price should be nearer 8/1 then you know that the pundit really hasn't got a clue and is talking out of his hat. Sadly, most of the pundits are like this.
If proof is required that this value figure works then look no further than our results pages for our Value For Money Lays. These lays are simply the lowest price:risk in each race calculated by looking at each horse's price and each horse's value and finding the best ratio.
This system is unique is that it doesn't look to avoid laying winning horses but to lay the horses with the best value lay. If our value figures didn't work then these results wouldn't look so good.
| Value Price | Runs | Wins | Expected | Error % |
| 1.29 | 11 | 2 | 9 | 350.00 |
| 1.30 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0.00 |
| 1.33 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.00 |
| 1.36 | 26 | 2 | 19 | 850.00 |
| 1.40 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 20.00 |
| 1.44 | 22 | 5 | 15 | 200.00 |
| 1.50 | 42 | 6 | 28 | 366.67 |
| 1.53 | 23 | 10 | 15 | 50.00 |
| 1.57 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 25.00 |
| 1.62 | 29 | 10 | 18 | 80.00 |
| 1.67 | 75 | 19 | 45 | 136.84 |
| 1.73 | 44 | 30 | 25 | 16.67 |
| 1.80 | 33 | 18 | 18 | 0.00 |
| 1.83 | 47 | 29 | 26 | 10.34 |
| 1.91 | 97 | 52 | 51 | 1.92 |
| 2.00 | 141 | 70 | 71 | 1.43 |
| 2.10 | 178 | 99 | 85 | 14.14 |
| 2.20 | 161 | 83 | 73 | 12.05 |
| 2.25 | 205 | 97 | 91 | 6.19 |
| 2.38 | 372 | 171 | 157 | 8.19 |
| 2.50 | 449 | 204 | 180 | 11.76 |
| 2.62 | 499 | 210 | 190 | 9.52 |
| 2.75 | 519 | 220 | 189 | 14.09 |
| 2.87 | 636 | 227 | 221 | 2.64 |
| 3.00 | 1,071 | 376 | 357 | 5.05 |
| 3.25 | 1,687 | 532 | 519 | 2.44 |
| 3.50 | 1,905 | 589 | 544 | 7.64 |
| 3.75 | 2,157 | 612 | 575 | 6.05 |
| 4.00 | 2,725 | 718 | 681 | 5.15 |
| 4.33 | 2,643 | 683 | 610 | 10.69 |
| 4.50 | 3,850 | 887 | 856 | 3.49 |
| 5.00 | 6,284 | 1,374 | 1,257 | 8.52 |
| 5.50 | 6,936 | 1,310 | 1,261 | 3.74 |
| 6.00 | 7,270 | 1,247 | 1,212 | 2.81 |
| 6.50 | 7,708 | 1,302 | 1,186 | 8.91 |
| 7.00 | 8,108 | 1,234 | 1,158 | 6.16 |
| 7.50 | 8,055 | 1,190 | 1,074 | 9.75 |
| 8.00 | 8,370 | 1,117 | 1,046 | 6.36 |
| 8.50 | 8,358 | 1,102 | 983 | 10.80 |
| 9.00 | 12,582 | 1,500 | 1,398 | 6.80 |
| 10.00 | 16,543 | 1,796 | 1,654 | 7.91 |
| 11.00 | 16,959 | 1,697 | 1,542 | 9.13 |
| 12.00 | 16,634 | 1,441 | 1,386 | 3.82 |
| 13.00 | 24,009 | 1,942 | 1,847 | 4.89 |
| 15.00 | 29,783 | 1,988 | 1,986 | 0.10 |
| 17.00 | 39,222 | 2,181 | 2,307 | 5.78 |
| 21.00 | 43,205 | 1,757 | 2,057 | 17.07 |
| 26.00 | 46,639 | 1,279 | 1,794 | 40.27 |
| 34.00 | 53,285 | 773 | 1,567 | 102.72 |
| 51.00 | 11,545 | 98 | 226 | 130.61 |
| 67.00 | 3,221 | 20 | 48 | 140.00 |
| 101.00 | 3,177 | 39 | 31 | 20.51 |
| 151.00 | 1,427 | 12 | 9 | 25.00 |
| 201.00 | 382 | 1 | 2 | 100.00 |
Yours sincerely,
The UK Horse Racing Team
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