About rating Greyhounds

[The Hare]

Crikey, that's a tough one! There's not really a 'how to' thread on here, just a few of us comparing notes as we potter along. I 'did' Belle Vue for a while a couple of years back but found the returns just weren't that great - it simply boils down to having the data you need in some form you'll be able to process, then your chosen method of handicapping has to be sorted, that's knowing how to turn results into rating as well as knowing how to actually compile the ratings in a useable format. Throw in the requirement for being able to plug away for however long each day to actually keep it all turning over.

Do you have a source of data? I used to 'scrape' results from
Results | Greyhound Board of Great Britain

-which was a bit time consuming, it's doable but you need to be able to program or teach Excel how to grab data or similar. It's not something you can get other people to do for you if you go that route, because website coding can change and if you haven't written the scraping program yourself then all you know is it stopped working.

Not something I have the spare time for any more, the horses keep me more than busy enough I'm afraid. There might be greyhound punters around, but I've not encountered anyone doing the sort of thing me, thebluesbrother, and Outlander do for the horses.

Dave

 

[The Hare]

The quote above is from the excellent thread "Early Days" on the Horse Racing Forum in response to a question on rating Greyhound racing.

The site mentioned by Dave is a good place to get results and with a small Macro or programme you can easily put the results in order.

My personal favourite is Dog Results | UK Dog Racing Results | ukdogracing.net
This gives all the results for each UK track on a daily basis. If you select the date and "All Races", then highlight from HOMEPAGE just above the track name before first race, you will be able to copy and paste into Excel. I attach as an example today's meeting at Henlow. I paste on the HTML sheet using Paste "Match Formatting" in Office 2016 Excel.

After paste copy and paste special as values starting from Cell B1 in the Convert Sheet.
Change the fates manually in the A column. Change the Grade race by race in the M column and the Distance in column N.
Then save and all other data is copied on to a single line for each dog. Then copy and Paste Special Data into Sort Sheet.
After copying sort:
Column B (Z to A), O (Largest to Smallest), C (A to Z)
Then delete all rows without the 6th to 1st in Column B, around about the first 80 rows and after 160 or so.
Then sort again as above by Column A,O,B.

This will give you all the form in a line. Copy and insert in the Results sheet to keep the records. The Distances and SP are converted into number format in the Results sheet columns Q and R. You can move the data as you like.

The distances and Sp convert sheet will need to be changed when the year changes, add 365 or 366 depending on the year to do this.

You can then keep a record for each track as you please

Some minor issues with this site:
The Trainers are not always correct, if they change trainer they are not updated for some time.
They don't give the Going for the meeting. You can obtain this data easily from other sites like the GBGB or Greyhound Bet.

Hope this helps. Sorry not clever enough t oProgramme this but it takes maybe 15 minutes to collect all the data for a card and check trainers and going.

Kevin

 

[Outlander]

The quote above is from the excellent thread "Early Days" on the Horse Racing Forum in response to a question on rating Greyhound racing.

The site mentioned by Dave is a good place to get results and with a small Macro or programme you can easily put the results in order.

My personal favourite is Dog Results | UK Dog Racing Results | ukdogracing.net
This gives all the results for each UK track on a daily basis. If you select the date and "All Races", then highlight from HOMEPAGE just above the track name before first race, you will be able to copy and paste into Excel. I attach as an example today's meeting at Henlow. I paste on the HTML sheet using Paste "Match Formatting" in Office 2016 Excel.

After paste copy and paste special as values starting from Cell B1 in the Convert Sheet.
Change the fates manually in the A column. Change the Grade race by race in the M column and the Distance in column N.
Then save and all other data is copied on to a single line for each dog. Then copy and Paste Special Data into Sort Sheet.
After copying sort:
Column B (Z to A), O (Largest to Smallest), C (A to Z)
Then delete all rows without the 6th to 1st in Column B, around about the first 80 rows and after 160 or so.
Then sort again as above by Column A,O,B.

This will give you all the form in a line. Copy and insert in the Results sheet to keep the records. The Distances and SP are converted into number format in the Results sheet columns Q and R. You can move the data as you like.

The distances and Sp convert sheet will need to be changed when the year changes, add 365 or 366 depending on the year to do this.

You can then keep a record for each track as you please

Some minor issues with this site:
The Trainers are not always correct, if they change trainer they are not updated for some time.
They don't give the Going for the meeting. You can obtain this data easily from other sites like the GBGB or Greyhound Bet.

Hope this helps. Sorry not clever enough t oProgramme this but it takes maybe 15 minutes to collect all the data for a card and check trainers and going.

Kevin

Wow you have some amazing stuff Kevin, very impressive.

 

[The Hare]

So not a lot of interest! Using the sheet above I collect results at the moment only for Sunderland and attach the results a little adapted for 2020 to date. The Going Calculations here are the ones given by the Racing Manger. The trainers have all been checked. The ages are the Computer date number for the Greyhound's Birth date as recorded in Greyhound Bet.

I also had Central Park information up to the first lockdown but not had time to maintain. This is the information you can use to rate the dogs as you please. U find that using the times and sectionals and bend positions are the most important things, along with the class of race.

I have a sheet I have yet to use that took a lot of messing around to calculate goings myself and there are the occasional differences, the problem is working out when the going changes in a specific meeting as it regularly does at Sunderland official ratings.

Kevin

 

[The Hare]

For those interested in rating greyhounds, (it seems not many!), there is an excellent free service provided online.

Timeform have a website devoted to greyhounds which they give their assessment of the going and a rating for each race. This may be useful for those interested in Open Racing. You could study how they develop the ratings.

The issue with comparing tracks is to determine the comparative times at each distance and track similar to horse race speed figures. I have never really tried this but did compile the times from the Timeform Ratings. I wasn't sure they were perfect, but not a bad effort. If you do it yourself you should be able to compare a Rating of a 100 at each track fairly quickly. Can't really put my guide on here as they are Timeform's ratings. Then I suppose set 30 seconds as 1pt per hundredth of a second and adjust for the completed times of the race in question. There is a lot of work involved in compiling them for Open Races but there is plenty of reward for anyone trying it. The information is much easier than horse racing and more accurate. So good luck to anyone trying.

 

[runnerjp]

I think this is something i will 100% comeback to ... perhaps when winter proper kicks in

 

[kenny jones]

Hi,
Have you been to greyhoundstats.co.uk.
Its a very useful site.On handicapping and rating.I have never used ratings exclusively,as much as you can study the the dogs form.You rarely find good value with the dogs,but using BF you can create break even approach and turn it into reasonably lucrative systems.
It's a massive subject,but selectivity is paramount to winning.
Ken

 

[kenny jones]

So not a lot of interest! Using the sheet above I collect results at the moment only for Sunderland and attach the results a little adapted for 2020 to date. The Going Calculations here are the ones given by the Racing Manger. The trainers have all been checked. The ages are the Computer date number for the Greyhound's Birth date as recorded in Greyhound Bet.

I also had Central Park information up to the first lockdown but not had time to maintain. This is the information you can use to rate the dogs as you please. U find that using the times and sectionals and bend positions are the most important things, along with the class of race.

I have a sheet I have yet to use that took a lot of messing around to calculate goings myself and there are the occasional differences, the problem is working out when the going changes in a specific meeting as it regularly does at Sunderland official ratings.

Kevin

Hi Kev,
The TF and Sportinglife site have the results in seqential order making it easier to download the races with a scraper.
good luck
ken

 

[The Hare]

Hi Kev,
The TF and Sportinglife site have the results in seqential order making it easier to download the races with a scraper.
good luck
ken

Hello Kenny
TF is an excellent site but my scraping skills are poor! The site I use with my little converter means I can get the results for a whole meeting in maybe 5 minutes. All I need to check are the trainer names and Official going adjustments.
Do you have a scraper for TF greyhounds?

 

[kenny jones]

Hello Kenny
TF is an excellent site but my scraping skills are poor! The site I use with my little converter means I can get the results for a whole meeting in maybe 5 minutes. All I need to check are the trainer names and Official going adjustments.
Do you have a scraper for TF greyhounds?

 

[kenny jones]

Hi Hare,
I did have a scraper but it just kept stopping!!!!.So I plod on now with copy and paste and use a few macros to organise the data.I am developing a few programs in vb.net at the moment,but have hit a lot of snags.I will let you know if they come to anything.
What is your main sport,Dogs,horses,footy or do you do a bit of each one.I know databases for footy are prolific but I have not been able to get my head around the stuff.
good luck kennny

 

[The Hare]

Hi Kenny
I guess a few really. I have spreadsheets for the Hong Kong Horse Racing. I don't bet on it, just found a lot of data on the internet and it is fairly easy to get the results in easy formattable version from the Hong Kong website. Started just to test if I could set up a rating system or automate Speed Figures. I came up with versions but they are nowhere near perfect, see the thread on Horse Racing Speed Figures. Needs working on still.
I find betting on football is very hard, there are lots of people with more time and effort and money than I to do that! The markets are very accurate usually.
Horse Racing I don't do a lot of now, it takes a lot of work and committment and I don't really have the time though it was my favourite, Jump Racing rather than Flat.
Greyhounds were really my main interest, used to go most nights of the week but then there were less meetings and I had more time to study. I think Greyhounds offer the best chance as there are many very short priced favourites that are very overbet, so keeping the database and attempting to work on a formula to calculate my own ratings, or going allowances. I prefer Graded races, Sunderland the only track I have a database for as it fits in well with my time availability. Devised a method to calculate accurate goings for their but not got round to completing yet. I have the last 15 months Open Race results that I have started downloading the last couple of weeks, needs checking as sadly not all the sites I mentioned have the data I require so have to combine them, so more work than ideal. Lots of checking needed to correct name changes fro dogs, trainer names, goings I need to get from another site and the TF ratings are a useful starting point in developing ratings.
My main gambling though is snooker, I have results for many years for relevant tournaments and have a rating system similar toELO for tham, the problem is it takes all my time watching and the liquidity on the Exchanges is a lot lower than it used to be.
So I would prefer to concentrate on Greyhounds but it is addictive watching snooker!
No scrapers unless I find any on the internet, only for Horse Racing have I found useful ones for myself. My Greyhounds I collect as above then manual correction.
Kevin

 

[The Hare]

Kenny, if I ever get ratings for Open Races will put them up on here, will be a while though!

 

[The Hare]

So I have finally managed to collect together 3 years plus current Open Race results for UK Greyhounds. The information is readily available on many sites but being fussy it is difficult to collect all the data I wanted from 1 site.

The best and quickest way is to use the converter I pasted earlier on, if anyone wants an updated version for 2021 I will paste on here. Just the converting of Sps and Distances is dependent on the year to convert the figures correctly.

A scraper is by far the best method but I haven't the skills to do that and i my converter had everything I needed would be just as quick.

So the Converter requires the checking of trainers as the website doesn't alter the trainers as they change and when it does it alters all the old data to that trainer.

So I collected the data from
www.ukdogracing.net - trainer details are not correct, every now and then they update the current trainer data which alters all the old data. Also the Age information of the dog is just in years. There is no Official Going
www.timeform.com/greyhound-racing/ Timeform having the trainers correct. The age information is the current age in years of the dog and the weight of the dog is not included. Timeform provide their own going and ratings but not the official going which as yet I haven't collected.
The Sporting Life doesn't give the Bend positions which is very important and also misses the ages and Sectionals.
www.greyhoundbet.racingpost.com is very close but misses the Bend positions and weights. It does give the Official Going though.
www.gbgb.org.uk is where most collect the data and is fine except it misses the Bend positions and the Official Going is not always accurate, though for recent results they are more reliable as the site improves.
www.greyhoundstats.co.uk is excellent for comparing times and they give ratings for dogs in each race but aren't too easy for collecting results.

So all in all I had to combine 2 sets of data and find dog ages manually. I think I will design a conversion in Excel for the GBGB site which will leave me just the Bend positions to collect in future.

I hope to start devising a ratings method using this information and start posting on here. But it has taken 2 months and many hours to combine the data collected and correct the errors. I have a spreadsheet I can adapt for ratings but it may ne a while!

 

[ArkRoyal]

Sounds like a meaty project The Hare

 

[runnerjp]

Brilliant mate - I am going through a similar process but with football to build into a machine learning model. By far the hardest part is data collection and also making sure its accurate.


Looked forward to following the journey on this as I know nothing about greyhound racing from first past the post wins!

 

[MorganP]

Useful information, thanks to everyone who wrote