Spot Plays by track?!

[Carl]

Early on in establishing a db, I and every db player has too make two decisions that were/are toughies.
1) To sort by time/month or sort by track for storage purposes.
2) What paceline to use.

I think these two decisions are critical, because they go on to determine how you use your db, and hence what you "discover" (or think you discover).

This is by way of answering Mike's question about have I looked at my spot plays by track. Answer: yes, but my db is sorted by month/quarter. It is easy to query by track though. Last time I did was October, and it drove me nutty. I found plays going 1-fer-35 -70% ROI one month, going 7-32 +187% ROI the next at the same track. My samples are much bigger now though, it might well be worth revising again to see what I find.

A few questions for those of you advocating a track-by-track use of spot plays.
1) What type of "angles" (early speed, jockey, trainer, other factors) do you think work where? I would be interested to see if various independently developed spot plays show track preferences.
2) How often do you check other tracks to see if they have started working there also?
3) Why would a spot play work at one track and not another? That makes no sense to me. As in creatures of habit (people) ride horses around on a semi-flat surface in a oval Everywhere. What would be different? I personally find ev1 for instance has no more edge at AQU than it does at Prescott.... am I looking at this too simply?

later,
Carl

[MikeDee]

I found plays going 1-fer-35 -70% ROI one month, going 7-32 +187% ROI the next at the same track
Well if most of your spot plays are low win % and high ROI (long shots), wouldn't you expect big swings on a month by month track by track basis?

1) What type of "angles do you think work where?
I really try to develop plays on an overall basis and then see how they look on a track by track basis and just not play the ugly ones.

2) How often do you check other tracks to see if they have started working there also?
Since I only keep the tracks that I am playing and are running in my db I look at them at the beginning of the meet.

3) Why would a spot play work at one track and not another?

To my way of thinking why would one expect the results to be the same? Everything is different, such as competence of the jockeys and trainers, average field size, how the surface is maintained, tightness of the turns. Distance to the first turn in routes, length of stretch, purse structure, type of races run, overall quality and fitness of the horses at the track, overall weather conditions during the meet, price of the hot dogs and beer:) (just to name a few).

I personally find ev1 for instance has no more edge at AQU than it does at Prescott.... am I looking at this too simply?
I don’t have AQU and PRE in my db but I do have the following PL5 all dirt fast fr1 (ev1) =1:

TRK nWin nBet Win% aMut aBet aWon aP/L ROI
WO 531 2299 23% $8.82 $4,598 $4,682 $84 2%
SUF 359 1856 19% $10.05 $3,712 $3,608 ($104) -3%
MNR 164 963 17% $10.80 $1,926 $1,771 ($155) -8%
DEL 362 1873 19% $9.16 $3,746 $3,315 ($431) -12%
RD 251 1259 20% $8.59 $2,518 $2,155 ($363) -14%
PHA 584 3142 19% $9.15 $6,284 $5,344 ($940) -15%
TDN 432 2281 19% $8.15 $4,562 $3,519 ($1,043) -23%

Why is WO 23% win and MNR only 17%. Why is WO a 2% ROI and TDN and -23% Why is ave mutual so high at MNR and SUF. I don't really know why (maybe it really is the price of the beer), I just know it's different.

Mike Dee

[George]

Eibar Coa!! One play I have used for a long time is top jockey along with a couple
other factors. That play only works at tracks where the top jockey also is a
longshot artist. Eibar at CRC is a prime example.

One of my most successful plays concerns RES in impact. It works best at tracks
with long final stretch. Don't do diddly at bullrings like PENN & EVD.

Mike Dee points out many differences between tracks. I do know many horsemen
who have told me they won't take their horse to a track because of the surface
and/or the length of the stretch.

Am sure there are many factors that remain the same across tracks. Think you have
to examine each play to see if they do appear to be track specific.

[MtKen]

Carl:

I’ve just been coming around lately to this track-by-track approach. This week I broke down a 1600 horse sample of a query that has broken even since November into a month by month & track by track chart. It’s just on paper, I’ll try to enter it into a spreadsheet soon. There are some tracks that are clearly dogs & a few produce most of the profit. Many are up & down or vice versa but most seem to hold their form. The good ones are often the smaller tracks with cheap horses & purses (Suf, Tup) but Santa Anita looks good in this study too.

The query is ESD >= 5, dis= 1 (dirt spr.), class= 1 or 2 (non-mdn), layoff =< 75, & final odds of 2/1 or better.

On all tracks this ret’d $35 profit on over $3200 bet with 16% winners.

Using only 10+ Esds narrowed the sample down to 530 qualifiers, 17.7% winners & an ROI of 1.16.
You might be wise to stick to the 10+ ESDs but then you might go stir crazy waiting for a play. I have to remember that DISCIPLINE is the key, ha ha.

November was the 1st month I had Impact2 in the db so I started with Nov.

4 tracks had big Novembers with this query with a 1.50+ Roi which included several winners.

In the next month these tracks were entered in the db (not necessarily DEC.) They ret’d $217 on $170 bet for an roi of 1.21. This was despite 1 qualifier (CRC) totally bombing with 1 lone $10 winner out of 37 qualifiers. Hopefully one would have given up on Calder at some point & avoided some of the losers.

In the remaining months I looked at tracks that had 2 or more successive good months or an overall ROI of 1.20. These ret’d $428 on $310 bet or 1.38 ROI in the months to follow.

Of these TUP & SUF have recently gone in tank a bit. TUP was 0 for 19 in March (though breaking even on place bets) & is close this month with $21 won on $24 bet. Suf is having its 1st bad month with $14 won on $40 bet. BTW these horses are probably good place bets as well with well over 10% profit there as well; but I need to recheck some of these.


The losers, overall, continued to lose as a group with 2 major exceptions.

Those in Nov with an ROI of 0.50 or worse with 10+ qualifiers continued to bomb in their next month.
$372 won / $462 bet for a $90 or 0.76 ROI.

Those with 2+ bad months or an ROI of 0.80 or worse over 2+ months actually broke even.

$686 won / $666 bet…

BUT the main reason for this was MNR which is having a monster April (Is Glen’s $70 horse in here?) . $169 won on $30 bet. Prior to this month I only had MNR with $21 won on $48 bet……but I wonder since I have been only sporadically downloading MNR prior to this month & since MikeD’s spreadsheet shows MNR as the leading EV1 ROI track , if MNR hasn’t been more consistent than my little db had shown. Anyway w/o MNR’s big April these ‘underperformers’ only returned $518 on $636 bet…..

Also Aqu was a bomb on the inner track---I don’t know when it switched exactly---but Nov through Jan $152 bet won only $54. In March Aqu won $54 on $46 bet & in April has ret’d $96 on $32 bet. Maybe this trend could’ve been spotted before all the April profit.

I don’t know if a track by track approach works like this for all or most spot plays but I certainly think its something to consider. Myself, I plan to use the modeler much more than I have been.

MtKen

[MtKen]

I went back to my ESD+ spreadsheet & looked at another query for the Nov-April time frame above. I found another break even proposition with ESD+2 to +4 horses that were also EV1 #1's but went off @ 3/1+ instead of 2/1+.

The 10 or so positive tracks from the ESD 5+ study won $387 on $236 bet on this variation...1 of these was a $96 Suffolk horse. They also had a 1.33 ROI on place bets. This further convinces me that I need to throw the 'dog' tracks out of my horse spot plays.

[George]

MtKen........wondered if you had taken a look at ESD on dirt routes.
Have had great success with esd greater than 5 on dirt routes.
Hit rate about the same as sprints but roi nearly doubled.
Makes sense as many bettors "back-off" early speed on routes.

Again most of the profit came from 8-10 specific tracks.
The other twenty or so tracks all were negative or marginal roi.

[MtKen]

George:

I looked very briefly today & then I got off on another route angle for awhile. This was another break-even 'shotgun' approach that I put on the back-burner long ago but seems to work very well @ about a dozen tracks.

I'll definately check the routes for ESD, thanks for the heads-up. The above angle had to do with SP so maybe the ESDs will work well at some of the SP losers....