Top Class Curragh Card:
Four Group 1 races down the Curragh card today What a weekends racing its been.
Here is the first ~ 206k 5f sprint. Margin bet pays 65/486 or Target down if you've got your preferences. Yesterday my St Leger pick on the day Dee Ex Bee faded in the final half furlong to 4th place. But I still made money on the race with the Dutch bets ( My tipping is definitely not worth following ~ but then neither is anyone else's long term!)
On the RH Book value chart we see the need for the 5 runner Dutch Frame to clear the minimum 82.5% book. In the Shape of the Market graph LH side we have only 1 no: additional runner in the 'Field Envelope' (those I consider active in the market at the field size)
The return has jumped a little showing 71 on the margin bet in this screen shot.
Toward the end of last week the YTD return tapped through 30k on the standard bets. Its consolidated over the weekend, hoping there's no draw down on the horizon back below the 30k.
You can see in the YTD figures at the top, the strike rate has clipped 93% with 1,248 bets placed live. In these were included 87 losing bets dumping back 42,282 of loses. If only we could avoid all or more pitfalls!
There were a lot of races eliminated yesterday leaving just seven live bets overall + 2no: additional Target bets. Not optimal live bet selection but did avoid what would have been the one losing bet in the 13;45 Listowel. In this race the Dutch frame was down to 2 no: runners in a strong market, but the 4th in the market just turned over the favorite, Joseph O'brien runner first time hurdling at 16/1.
St Ledger Dutch Field
Here is the Six runner Dutch Frame for this years Ledger.
Most of the pundits are describing it as a very average year but personally I think the top six are very competitive this year. Gosden and Frankies late confirmation of a run with Lah Ti Dah has ripped the market.
The six runner dutch pays around 50 to the 485 stake. Screen shot shows my additional Target onto 3 runners against the Gosden favourite. I'm going to have a few quid ew on Dee Ex Bee on course. He was competing above 1 mile with good speed figures as a 2yo + second in the Derby, seems a good value ew punt against a fav. to prove the distance? Perhaps a bit more rain would have helped.
The six runner Dutch Frame should have the depth in the field covered otherwise.
Third Quarter; Results Roundup
The consistent good racing conditions through the summer produced some great monthly returns.
August however reversed the trend with a large drawdown. This was coincidental with the first rainfall and change in going for weeks over the hot summer.
I'm always very loathe to ascribe any specific cause to a bunch of loses - the random variables are always a stronger effect than any other?
The change in going in Autumn would be the signal for many trainers to introduce horses they were saving for autumn campaigns. The York Ebor meeting is full of these every year.
So the old chestnut Correlation does not imply Causation.
Fact is drawdowns eating profit are hard to bet through. If your not absolutely confident of your edge you will not see it through 99% of punters fail through a combination of lack of bankroll and loss of belief that their edge will return and overcome short term volatility.
Or of course they are simply kidding themselves that they have found a long term edge.
Here is the graph showing monthly returns 2015 to August 2018 and the monthly/cumulative actual figures.
Th end result was not a loss for august and at the beginning of September the losses were recovered.
Here are the results for the weekend 1st + 2nd September.
There were 24 no: potential selected races , but unfortunately they were filtered down to 9 no: live selections. As it turned out all 24No: races would have been wins! Far from always the case.
Five of the filtered races were Group races which are heavily filtered out - strength in depth often justifies this Sometimes I take these races on placing manual bets after having done more detailed research on the field. Mainly because I like to be involved in the quality races.
P/L at the 2nd of Sept is 29,210 with a strike rate on the live bets of 92.89% So I'm pretty confident of getting through the 35k base target for another year.
I'll post some details of the August reverse in fortunes, dates etc. A disappointing April a further hard hit in August but a great summers return between.
