For Sale - 24 month PROFITABLE spot plays

[Cliff]

All,

In light of some recent events, I’ve decided to end my HDW subscription and forego the grind of attempting to beat this game on a daily basis. I have spent several hours a day for the last 2 years developing some spot plays to be submitted through Pinny. Well, we all know what happened to that option.

For the period 1/05 – 12/06, I have 19 plays that are profitable (positive ROI) BEFORE rebate. There are a couple more that show a profit for the period 8/05 – 12/06. There are another 5 to 10 more the past two years that show a small loss (negative ROI) but with a small rebate and/or a little tweaking will show a profit.

It doesn’t look like I would ever be able to meet Premier Turf Club’s minimum monthly activity levels. Therefore, I’m going to put these plays up for sale, on the auction block, or some combination thereof. You will need a rudimentary level knowledge of Access to generate these out of the HX4 and HX5 exports.

Again, I have no current data (and, I give Ken permission to verify that), so, I won’t be playing these spot plays. If anyone has any interest at all, please email me at: lotto winner @ hushmail.com (remove all the spaces)

And, no, I didn’t hit the lottery, unless you count that whopping $3 win. :)

Good luck…..enjoy the SuperBowl,
Cliff

Colts minus the pts
And OVR

[njcurveball]

Sorry to see you go Cliff! Shame about Pinnacle!

Good luck with the Nascar!

Jim

[Donnie]

Yeah bummer Cliff!! Hate to see ya go. Somebody will get a real steal with those spot plays, without having to have to invest the time! Maybe we'll still see you at the tournaments?

[DanG]

Best of luck Cliff…

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on racing. Don’t be a stranger!

[dehere]

Its a bummer to hear about your change in direction - i wish you the best.

[Cliff]

Guys,

Thanks for all the well wishes. For those that contacted me via email, I WILL get back to you. The phone #'s were greatly appreciated and will probably be the contact method. Will shoot for contact the first of next week as every one is tied up with the SuperBowl today.

My plans are to post the SQL view of one of the not-so-profitable plays later tonight just to give you an idea of what I've got and in what format you'd receive it.

Thanks again,
Cliff

[Cliff]

Ok, Guys. Here’s a play that’s probably not quite ready for “prime time”. It is NOT one referred to in my first post above as it ranks only 32nd on my value list. I’ll throw it out here anyway since it links to HX5. Quite frankly, any value it might have had, will be gone once it hits this public board and I’m not going to risk the ones for sale losing value with a public posting. But feel free to tinker with it and come up with your own version.

Plays % Wins Avg Mut
1/05-12/06 2955 11.40 15.97 -8.95%
Jan, 2007 103 12.62 15.18 -4.17%

MS Access SQL View:

SELECT ALL_HX4.tTRK, ALL_HX4.tDATE, ALL_HX4.nRACE, ALL_HX4.tPGM, ALL_HX4.tHOR, ALL_HX4.nMLO, ALL_HX4.nCLA, ALL_HX5.nPP1CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP2CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP3CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP4CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP5CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP1TRK, ALL_HX4.nTRCH, ALL_HX4.nCHG, ALL_HX4.nLAY, ALL_HX4.nWKSC, ALL_HX4.rWKSC, ALL_HX4.xWIN, ALL_HX4.xPLA, IIf([xWIN]>=0,1,0) AS [Total Bets], IIf([xWin]>0,1,0) AS Wins, IIf([xWin]>=15,1,0) AS Longshots
FROM ALL_HX4 INNER JOIN ALL_HX5 ON (ALL_HX4.tPGM = ALL_HX5.tPGM) AND (ALL_HX4.nRACE = ALL_HX5.nRACE) AND (ALL_HX4.tDATE = ALL_HX5.tDATE) AND (ALL_HX4.tTRK = ALL_HX5.tTRK)
WHERE (((ALL_HX4.tTRK) Not Like [npp1trk]) AND ((ALL_HX4.nMLO)>=4) AND ((ALL_HX4.nTRCH)=1 Or (ALL_HX4.nTRCH)=2) AND ((ALL_HX4.nCHG)>0 And (ALL_HX4.nCHG)<7) AND ((ALL_HX4.rWKSC)<5));

There is some extra “stuff” in my design that I use to see if a play has any longshot potential. And, I added a couple of extra columns of data that I had planned to analyze at some future date. As you can see, with a 7% rebate it was questionable, at best. With a 5% rebate, it’s probably not worth much extra effort in the long term. Questions?

[Cliff]

Spreadsheet attached showing some specifics of the plays (names removed as some of them are very obvious). Right portion of the spreadsheet shows my crude attempt at a weighted average Hit Rate and ROI for the top 12 plays.

Answers to questions rec'd via phone and email today:

1) I only plan to sell to ONE person.
2) Many of the plays ARE track specific.
3) The plays range from speed based, to trainer angles, to HTR ranked angles, Workouts, etc, etc.
4) I cannot make any estimates as to where they'll end up performing. My goal was to play them and track them after the tournaments in January. Never got to that point.

[Cliff]

MS Access SQL View:

SELECT ALL_HX4.tTRK, ALL_HX4.tDATE, ALL_HX4.nRACE, ALL_HX4.tPGM, ALL_HX4.tHOR, ALL_HX4.nMLO, ALL_HX4.nCLA, ALL_HX5.nPP1CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP2CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP3CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP4CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP5CLA, ALL_HX5.nPP1TRK, ALL_HX4.nTRCH, ALL_HX4.nCHG, ALL_HX4.nLAY, ALL_HX4.nWKSC, ALL_HX4.rWKSC, ALL_HX4.xWIN, ALL_HX4.xPLA, IIf([xWIN]>=0,1,0) AS [Total Bets], IIf([xWin]>0,1,0) AS Wins, IIf([xWin]>=15,1,0) AS Longshots
FROM ALL_HX4 INNER JOIN ALL_HX5 ON (ALL_HX4.tPGM = ALL_HX5.tPGM) AND (ALL_HX4.nRACE = ALL_HX5.nRACE) AND (ALL_HX4.tDATE = ALL_HX5.tDATE) AND (ALL_HX4.tTRK = ALL_HX5.tTRK)
WHERE (((ALL_HX4.tTRK) Not Like [npp1trk]) AND ((ALL_HX4.nMLO)>=4) AND ((ALL_HX4.nTRCH)=1 Or (ALL_HX4.nTRCH)=2) AND ((ALL_HX4.nCHG)>0 And (ALL_HX4.nCHG)<7) AND ((ALL_HX4.rWKSC)<5));



I had a request to translate this into layman's terms for those of you who don't use Access or use another type of database for your analysis. Here goes:

TRK= not like npp1trk (in other words a track change from the previous race)
nMLO >=4
nTRCH =1 or 2
nCHG >0 and <7
rWKSC <5

I ran this query on the 2 days for the NHC, and, it went 2 for 2. AND, ironically, included the horse that began Ken's mini-run on that final day, Navy Lass.

[njcurveball]

Cliff,

I took a look at your spreadsheet and I am just amazed that Pinnacle has sent you to the bench. It looks like you could average over 10 plays per day with 20% or more profit. WOW!

That is really impressive! I hope you get a nice profit from them. I can't imagine you getting more than you would just betting them, but there are time constraints that you are probably up against.

Thanks for sharing. I have done something similar, but I am way down in A ball compared to what you have done.


Jim

[Cliff]

Jim,

Thx for the kudos. I'm sure there is an option out there like WinTicket, but, I'm not sure what tracks, compared to Pinnacle, that they cover. Looks like they might actually carry a few more.

Also, I can't get ATR to work which means scratches would have been a PITA. Obviously, getting the scratched horses out is important to one's final numbers. Ken and I talked at length about this Friday evening at the NHC.

Fred4Now? has some good posts about that exact subject on this board somewhere.

As you have noticed, some guys over on the PA board are hassling me about an extraordinarily high mutuel payout distorting the ROI (amongst other things). That's a legitimate concern with ANY spot play. So, if anyone reading this has a specific play that they'd like to question, please list it here by Hit Rate, Avg. Mut., and ROI and I'll look up the max payout for the last 2 years for that play. Nothing to hide. Of course, the low is always $0.00 and I don't remove those either. I had hoped to getting around to looking at some of these plays via Harmonic Mean, but never got around to it.

Later,
Cliff

[km]

Cliff, plays # 6, 16, 18 look like bomb hits to me, what are high mutuels on those?

Anytime i get a big ROI from a sample size that is < than half the number of days in the sample (365 in this case) or a win% < 10 with a high ROI, i'm suspicious that it won't go forward and is likely a backfit on a few lucky bombs that won't repeat.

[Cliff]

LOL, Ken,

You don't follow instructions very well. You must have been the non-conformist all through school? Anyways, since you didn't list the numbers requested above, I'm gonna assume you're referring to Line #'s on the spreadsheet? (Was trying to avoid having people click back and forth from the spreadsheet to here)

I've added a column to reflect the max mutuel for those requested and uploaded the new sheet.

Related comments:

Line 6 - Is a trainer play that really was not included in my original post. If you'll notice, I posted I had 19 profitable plays for 2 years (not 365 days) and 2 for a shorter time frame for a total of 21. There are 22 +profit ones on the spreadsheet list. I purposely left this one off my original post because I felt everyone would question the ROI. It's a very simple play that may or may not "regress to the mean". I'd put it this way-I wouldn't leave him off my pick 4, or, a tournament entry, at satisfactory odds. And, yes, I caught one of his $50+ dollar horses last year just following this play.

Line 16 - Is a play that was posted by our old friend, Glen. Choppy? Sure. Runouts? Sure. But I always watch for this play to pop up if I'm at a tournament.

Line 18 - Early speed play that might have 0 plays for the month, go 0-fer, or be the most profitable play for the month.

I don't really worry too much about <10% win rate, although I do understand your logic. What I have noticed through observation only (no statistical evidence) is that when the win % added to the average mutuel is >30 over longer periods of time, the plays tend to be profitable. Except, when one of the 2 factors is extreme. In other words, a 40% win rate for an average mutuel of $2.40 add up to 42.40, but it probably wouldn't show a profit. By the same token, a 4.5% win rate for an average mutuel of $48.00 add up to 52.50 but it probably wouldn't be profitable either. Again, no stats. Just noticed this month after month, year after year of tracking plays.

[njcurveball]

What I have noticed through observation only (no statistical evidence) is that when the win % added to the average mutuel is >30 over longer periods of time, the plays tend to be profitable.


Cliff, This is either very simple or very confusing. Basically you need 10% @ $20 or 20% @ $10, etc.

I do not see where you can have a profitable combination and NOT go over 30. Shame because I like these short-cuts!

I think you do really nice work, shame about ATR not working for you.

Jim

[Cliff]

Jim,

I've always believed in the K.I.S.S. method.

To address another question that came up consistently over the past few days. Many of the plays were developed after researching tournament results. Some of the plays were actually posted on the old board by people like George, Carl, Glen and Frank....or, was it FrankGuru? (They always had something of interest to research). Sometimes the other boards had characters that posted some really fascinating stuff. Anyone read Boxcar's posts over on the PA board? The only problem with his posts was that it was hard to match his criteria to the fields that HTR exports. Alot of the plays were simply the result of hours and hours in front of the computer tinkering. Way before the days of the Robot with multiple fields to query.

All this after being dragged into the 21st century.... which meant no DOS program,...... At least 2 or 3 Access database blowups because they would get too big, etc. etc. A lot of "grunt" work by hand of which I'll attach an example.

I was tracking a 1 year rolling average of all my potential plays by hand before I got my DB in a nice, orderly format. The P/M column (see spreadsheet) would have a 0,1, or 2.

0 = <-7% ROI (in other words, it couldn't be helped even with a 7% rebate)
1 = >-7% and <0% ROI (in other words, it had potential WITH a 7% rebate)
2 = >0% ROI (in other words, it showed a profit for the month without a rebate)

This also allowed me to see the monthly flucuations while searching for that elusive '24' total in the YTD column. Never did find a spot play that was profitable every month in a twelve month cycle without a rebate. They might exist. More power to the guys that have them.

Anyway, that's a long-winded way to say I looked at very simple information to observe that the Win% + Avg. Mutuel = 30, would "usually" be a profitable play. This observation has absolutely NO statistical validity. But, then again, I took a few statistics courses and there never was a horse sitting in class. I'm pretty sure there weren't any trainers or jockeys in there either.:eek:

[Cliff]

This got waaaaay too complicated.

Offer to sell anything retracted.

Thank you.