Maiden Races And Koulds

Introduction

On of the things that has surprised me about maiden races is that people are willing to back and lay into the markets with little or no information. Well, to some extent I can appreciate the backers as some of the prices available are bonkers and highly-inflated.

It's always been a mystery to me why people lay horses in maidens when by definition there's little form available, if there is any form at all, at massive prices.

For years I have always wanted to take advantage of these prices but I could never find an angle. That is, until the Koulds Scores were developed.

The Theory

One of the virtues, or problems if you prefer, of any maiden race is that there is no real form data. None of the horses have ever won before and, quite often, a number haven't even raced before.

This means that we don't know what any of these horses need to have it in them to win a race. This translates to us not really knowing which horse is going to win a maiden because no-one, not even the trainers, have a full picture of what is going on.

The only tool at our disposal is going to be the bloodstock figures for the horse. Or, to be more precise, how it's siblings have fared in similar races. This is where the Koulds Scores come in. The theory being, quite simply, if a runner in the maiden has lots of Koulds points then it should have a better chance of winning compared to horses with fewer or no Koulds points.

If the horses with high Koulds Scores go off at a massive price then it makes sense to back these because, quite simply, value is on the backer's side.

The Method

The method is quite simple. I go through the cards looking for maiden races.

I use The Bet Engine for my bet placements so I just look down the list of races looking for 'Mdn' in the race description. When I have found a maiden race I then look on the Information & Statistics page within the members area and open the Koulds' Scoring System page.

I make sure that I sort on 'Time' because that will have the Score as a secondary sort to the race time.

When the information has been sorted I look for the maiden race by the course and time values. Then I look at the top two or three horses listed in that race on that page (the horses with the best Koulds Score will be at the top) and have a look at the scores. If there are one or two horses with relatively higher scores than the other then they will be backed. If there are a group of horses with similar scores but these are available to back at good prices then I will be on them.

Selecting the exact horses is a judgement call rather than by using hard and fast rules. But the principle is straight forward enough.