Horse Racing Betting
Selection Criteria

Continued from previous page

"Hermes,

If you are "really" serious about being a hobby punter you need to set yourself a realistic hobby budget. I would consider myself to be a hobby punter and have set myself an annual punting budget - listing investments, forecast and expected returns. Any hobby requires a budget. Car enthusiasts don't all have an enthusiasm for ferraris or porsches.

If you don't want to spend an average of 45 minutes per race - you will have to follow a statistical selection method. Others on this forum may be able to help you with a "form assessment" model.

However, I have been down this path personally and have not been able to come up with a time efficient method that derives good selections and gives enough action.

Many posters have provided very good horse elimination criteria on this site. A recent posting provided the following information:

1. 88% of winners had a place strike rate greater than 40%.
2. 69% of winners had a place strike rate greater than 50%.
3. 72% of winners were priced at $11 or under in Friday pre-race markets.
4. 72% of winners were in the top five average prizemoney.
5. 58% of winners finished first or second at their last start.
6. 83% of winners had finished in the first five last start.
7. 75% of winners had not risen more than 2kg. from last start.

My own study would testify to the long-term accuracy of these stats. These stats are not the be all and end all, neither are they all equal. Start up your own monitoring system and measure things over time. Look for links between stats and look at which stats "promote" winners, not eliminate horses.

Best of luck.
Regards, Brumby."

Posted in the OZmium horse racing and sports betting forum by Brumby, on June 17, 2002, making use of information from Privateer.