With Good Friday providing a little relief from the daily business of timing and rating every horse in the United Kingdom and Ireland, we thought we’d present some of the findings of our recent audit of our tips from the past 3 or so years.

The findings have been interesting, and the enhanced filters we fitted as a result, at the start of March 2009, have seen us regain our position at the head of the layers table (see Racing Index lay tipster table – click here) – at least for the past month’s racing tips!

Events Causing Above Average Rates of Adverse Laying Results

This was something that we have long known was an issue, though it became tacitly clear when we ran every race we’ve tipped in over the past three years, that the following types of events were consistently losing:

• All Weather Handicaps – over 45% of ALL losing lay bets were in all-weather handicaps;
• Amateur / Conditional / Apprentice Races

The first filter we added removed all of the above except hunter chases, which generally follow a more successful pattern.

100% Success Rate Events

The reason for the adverse performance in the above types of races can be speculated at, but maybe not in a productive way: all we can do is avoid those types of races as laying propositions for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, however, our tipping audit has highlighted several races that we are particularly good at laying in:

1. All Weather Selling races – 100% successful laying
2. Claimers and Sellers generally – 99%+ success rate

Conclusions

We arrived at many conclusions, though they have mostly been rolled into our systems – hence the pickup in our results over the past 45 days or so, which we anticipate will only continue. Interestingly, and for obvious reasons, we have, over the past 4 or 5 years, performed at our worst during the crossover between flat and jump seasons, so the current high profit level bodes well for the turf flat season ahead.

The main result of this recent audit is that we now lay in fewer race types, and have stricter criteria for what we will or will not lay: there’ll be less selections, with a higher strike rate (indeed, it is pushing 95% presently).

We will hopefully have all of the figures tabulated and graphed for you in a fuller report in the coming weeks. For the time being, enjoy the break from racing for a day out with friends and family – we are!