Follow the bettors

[patternfinder]

I make part of my living mining data for patterns. My clients are big companies who are trying to solve tough problems.

I have to warn anyone reading this, I know nothing about horse racing. What I do know about is finding patterns in data.

Something that I am curious to test out is how good are fans at a given racetrack at picking winners?

Since the bettors set the odds for the race, and they bet on the horses they think are most likely to win, I'm wondering how good they are at it?

My premise is that for a given racetrack, if you looked at the results of all the races for, say one year, and compared the actual results to the odds, the results might show that some racing fans are better than others at picking winners. Perhaps some racetracks would show actual results consistent with the odds, and other racetracks would show a large inconsistencey between the actual results and the odds.

This would be predicated, of course, on the assumption that the same fans go to the same tracks often.

Has anyone done this analysis before? I downloaded HTR, but it is going to take some phone calls to customer support for me to get it to actually work.

[DanG]

Pattern, welcome to the HTR!

Quick and dirt stats that cross over several years including all the changes in surfaces etc…

Parameters;

• Winners only
• Average “rank” of odds at post time
• Adjustment for field size = .193 with a base of 8.5 runners.
• Ranked from "most predictive” to least.
• Min races 99, and min purse >4k

Hope this helps your cause…

If not there are much more advanced members here who you would enjoy a dialogue with, but it’s a holiday weekend so I’ll take a shot. :)

RANK tTRK FORMULA
1 STK 2.49
2 FNO 2.52
3 RET 2.54
4 PM 2.56
5 FPX 2.58
6 SR 2.61
7 HOU 2.61
8 LS 2.65
9 ALB 2.66
10 TIM 2.67
11 SUF 2.69
12 LA 2.71
13 SOL 2.71
14 PEN 2.71
15 GG 2.73
16 HOO 2.73
17 CBY 2.73
18 RP 2.73
19 DEL 2.73
20 TDN 2.74
21 CLS 2.74
22 RD 2.74
23 BMF 2.74
24 FON 2.75
25 LAD 2.75
26 WDS 2.76
27 MNR 2.76
28 FG 2.76
29 DED 2.77
30 FMT 2.78
31 PLN 2.78
32 DMR 2.78
33 ELP 2.79
34 CRC 2.79
35 TUP 2.79
36 BM 2.79
37 PRM 2.80
38 PIM 2.80
39 FL 2.80
40 WRD 2.80
41 LRL 2.81
42 AQU 2.81
43 IND 2.81
44 BEU 2.81
45 SUN 2.82
46 CT 2.82
47 BRD 2.83
48 AP 2.83
49 TAM 2.83
50 MTH 2.83
51 RUI 2.83
52 FP 2.84
53 BEL 2.84
54 MED 2.84
55 PHA 2.84
56 SA 2.84
57 HAW 2.84
58 FE 2.85
59 EVD 2.85
60 LBG 2.86
61 SRP 2.87
62 OP 2.87
63 CNL 2.88
64 TP 2.89
65 YAV 2.89
66 HST 2.89
67 SAR 2.89
68 GP 2.90
69 ASD 2.90
70 ZIA 2.90
71 GLD 2.90
72 HOL 2.92
73 KEE 2.92
74 LNN 2.92
75 CD 2.94
76 EMD 2.95
77 NP 3.01
78 ARP 3.04
79 WO 3.04
80 STP 3.08
81 MAN 3.08