So it is with the Brisnet Ulitimate PPs with Comments (BUPPC). Having used form guides all over the world (the ones in Hungary used to suck), we can safely say that this product - at $3 a pop online - is your best handicapping bet in the business. It's got everything you need except the 3X magnification reading glasses some of us older folks need to read it. But that's a small complaint.
Bigger picture, the BUPPC suits all handicapping tastes. Let's take the top section first from the number and name of the horse down to the comment box. On the graphic at left you will see all the figures marked off in colors - that's the part we're referring to and it's a number-cruncher's dream. It shows jockey season stats with horse run-style and trainer, trainer stats focused on today's conditions, horse's lifetime performance stats on all tracks and surfaces, bloodline stats and even wet-track breeding and sales stats. These essential tools can combine to give readers a significant value-player's edge, as we'll explain.
One way price-players can use these "top stats", as we call them, to get an edge is to see how jockeys, trainers or the two together fare with horses at a price. First, go to the Brisnet.com home page, scroll down and click on
Once you've done that, look at the last (right-hand-side) column of numbers for both jockey and trainer, labeled numbers 2 and 3 on the big sheet. There you will see a vertical list of either positive or negative numbers given to three significant figures. These are the Returns on Investment (ROIs) for the jockey and trainer in each of the situations noted in the first (left-hand-side) column. The explanation on the web-site is very helpful in explaining how the figures are derived and what they mean. It's up to the players to find value with them.
Take ROI first. Larger ROI is obviously a good thing but for longshot players the key to this statistic is the jockey's or trainer's winning percentage in the same situation. That information is in the middle column - the first list of percentages (the second list is the place percentages) - which tells you the win strike rate. A relatively low strike rate (say, less than 20%) on the same line as a positive ROI tells us that when that jockey, trainer or combination hits the winner's circle, it's at a price. The higher the differences, the bigger the longshots they brought home. And history, as we know, tends to repeat.
Nowhere moreso than in concert - and this information shows you when jockeys and trainers combine to hit winners at a price. That is in the horizontal row marked: JKYw/Trn L60. Much has been written about the importance of handicapping jockeys and trainers in tandem and we can only agree. With that in mind, we have had good wagering success in the past by finding big differences in that "combo-row" between the combination's strike rate and its return on investment.
Seems like when jockey-trainer combinations land horses at a price, they tend to do so regularly, even when their overall number of starts (the first column of numbers) together in that situation are low. Explaining why would likely force us to hack away further at the undergrowth of human psychology, so we'll leave that for another post. Maybe they just get along well. Whatever it is, the chemistry between some jockeys, trainers and some horses is both remarkable and - sometimes - revealable.
Of course, a low strike rate means it doesn't happen very often, but for price players that doesn't matter. Better to win less often at a price than more often on chalk, right? So if the price-horse you like in a particular race shows a strikingly high ROI number in the Jockey/Trainer row, especially taking into account the strike rate on the same row, you might not necessarily have the winner, but you definitely have a live one. You can't ask for much more than that from a form guide.
We'll delve into the second part of the BUPPCs - the "bottom stats" - in our next post. Good luck out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment