PBF BLUEPRINT.

PBF RATINGS REVIEW.

With quiet days racing today I have decided to do an overall record of the ratings so far to see which angles are worth exploring if any and also a look at fine-tuning both the book and the ratings.

Those of you that read the regularly will be aware that I put three categories up and a NAP when I think a bet is to be struck,

the NAPS are my personal view on a race and are arrived at from both a statistical and visual approach in which I like to examine the numbers and watch replays every day to attach relevance to what can often be a very grim-looking spreadsheet 

I keep my own form book and log anything of interest and also simple things such as a race visually looking less impressive than the numbers it has thrown out.

I have a full record of every horse rated and in the spirit of transparency and as much for myself as for everybody else,

I have taken the time to break down the categories of runners to see how effective the tissue and the ratings are in practice.

The total number of horses falling into the three categories of 

• MOST LIKELY
• PBF TOP RATED 
• VALUE 

stands currently at 160 as of today.

This doesn't include today's racing and effectively means since the blog began I have released 160 SELECTIONS in these categories keeping in mind that one horse can on occasion top all three.

I must admit to being pleasantly surprised in the first instance that backing all runners blindly would have given 160 bets with 37 winners, a strike rate of 23%, and 15 LSP to SP. 

This is only a small sample of bets but I am surprised that the book and the ratings combined have managed to beat the house blindly.

MOST LIKELY WINNER. (MLW)

The next thing I want to examine is the categories separately starting with MOST LIKELY. 

This is the horse that is shortest on the tissue and is arrived at by the pricing of a race

I usually avoid these horses as quite often they are short in the market and the top end of my tissue tends to be fairly close to the market, usually, because the weight added to the top of the market revolves around quite obvious factors such as horses in form from big stables, course and distance winners etc. 

I don't add punter habits to my tissue because I don't have access to them and while I do get a differential once the ratings are added to the tissue it tends to keep those at the front end of the market slightly longer than the bookmakers have them, 

This isn't the case with a long odds on hotpot however but in the general day-to-day handicaps I don't expect to find much in the first three in the betting, indeed a better description of these horses would be the most likely favourite.

MLW produced 55 bets and returned 13 winners with a strike rate of 24% and a LOSS of 5 points to SP. 

This is again a very pleasing result as it means the book does its job at the front end selecting fair to poor prices about the usually prominent market horses, in fact, an increased strike rate with a reduced profit is exactly the kind of figure I want to see.

PBF RATINGS.

This was the section I was most nervous about as I have my ego as well as my cash invested on these! For those not familiar these are my own ratings and are a raw speed figure/handicap mark that I manually adjust by the likely factors today.

PBF top-rated selections performed extremely well and certainly, encouragement can be taken from the totals which would see 53 bets struck returning 14 winners, a very good 28% strike rate, and a 15 LSP to SP.

THE VALUE.

The horses considered most out of kilter on the book returned a 5 point profit to SP despite a massively reduced 17% strike rate and performed adequately.

They did however give me another play and that was to combine the value and the PBF horses into a box and check that figure out which returned best of all at just over 20 points at SP.

I am not going to start breaking everything into groups because I am not a systems man, but certainly the lesson to take from here is the ratings are to be respected and in conjunction with the tissue can be used effectively to make some interesting and maybe profitable wagers.

I will look over these figures again next month when we should be able to take a look at how the blog performs when put under the scrutiny of 300 bets.