By Garry Robinson
A couple of months ago, Tabcorp came to an arrangement with Techform
to provide ratings for all gallops meetings on Austext. Now Austext is
available almost Australia wide, and by tuning into pages 560 and up you
can now get a rating for just about every runner in Australian galops meetings.
There are exceptions, of course, and these include races where there
is little revealed form, hurdle and steeple races and ratings are not available
generally for horses with overseas form, although I note that the Melbourne
Cup was an exception.
I took the liberty of carefully researching Techform ratings, which
until then were only available for private subscription. I spoke to George
Kenway who is one of the originators of the method and got a rundown on
how the ratings are assessed.
The method uses sound logic. For example, there are bonuses for track
and distance winners. There are bonuses for horses carrying weight within
their right range and other bonuses for strike rates and prizemoney earned.
The strength of the system is its objectivity. It sticks to the facts and
is not swayed by such things as favourite trainers or jockeys and so on.
George suggests that users fine tune the ratings for themselves. The
method takes no account of Jockeys, track conditions or barriers. These
things aren’t known when the ratings are generated two days before the
race meeting. As a matter of interest, the rating is generated when the
horse’s run is first logged into the RSB’s computer system. (The RSB keeps
a record of all runs in all races in Australia)
In the case of jockeys, we would know that if today the connections
have put up a senior jockey, the horse may be expected to improve. We can
also look at the horse’s barrier. If it has drawn wide and the next rated
horse has drawn well, perhaps that is the horse we should be looking at.
George’s advice is this. Try not to be too clever, simply watch the
odds.
We were able to obtain a record of last year’s Techform performance,
and that is tabled below.
STATE
|
NUMBER OF RACES
|
TECHFORM WINNER
|
% STRIKE RATE
|
VIC |
718
|
181
|
25.2
|
NSW |
743
|
215
|
28.9
|
QLD |
744
|
215
|
28.9
|
SA |
357
|
97
|
27.2
|
WA |
466
|
149
|
32.0
|
TAS |
365
|
116
|
31.8
|
NT |
170
|
52
|
30.6
|
TOTAL |
3563
|
1025
|
28.8
|
A major review of the National Ratings database has recently been completed.
The review was necessitated due to changes in race venue, strengths and
quality of field during the past five years and to incorporate the introduction
of Sunday racing. This review is anticipated to result in further improvement
to the TECHFORM strike rates.
Further information may be obtained by contacting:
Eric Jamieson
Racing Services Bureau
Phone: 03 9258 4700
Fax: 03 9258 4715
On face value, the results, which are for every top rated horse, look
very good. George Kenway felt that the results for country and provincial
venues could be even better. When you note that there were 3563 top rated
horses from a variety of venues you would expect that the figures would
hold up even though the strike rate for Melbourne metropolitan races could
be as low as 13 or 14% and as high as 31% in some months.
Our survey was for all race venues and over a period of one month in
which there were four hundred and forty races assessed. We were disappointed
in our results as we recorded only 101 winners for a strike rate of 22.9%.
More disappointing was the loss on turnover of 19.6% at TAB odds indicating
an average dividend of $3.50. Remember though, that we are looking at all
races.
A better result was obtained when the top rated horse had a rating of
3 or less on our scale.
The strike rate was a more impressive 33.6%, although the odds were
less. To arrive at this figure we simply added up every horse’s ratings
above 90 and divided into 10. For example
Horse A rated 100
Horse B rated 96
Horse C rated 92
Add up the three figures above 90 i.e. 10 + 6 +2 =18 10/ 18 = 1.8 so
this horse is a 3 or less.
Be aware of races in which there is a top rated horse scratched. In
this case, if the highest horses has say 95, then make him the 100 horse
and add 5 to each other rating and then work out as above.
Remember, our survey was for only one month and by careful screening
of the selections for value you may find Techform Ratings profitable, which
isn't bad for a free service. |