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Trial Races

pawras

pawras

Stallion
People talk about trial races for major races, including my old man, but it’s not something I look at ‘yet’.

I’m always open to assimilating further thinking into my own analysis but I’m not the sort to take things at someone’s word, I like to have a good look at it and make my own judgement on how much water something holds.

I was reading an article a while ago re trial races for the Cheltenham festival and the writer quoted quite a few races so I thought this is a good opportunity to do a bit of prototyping and testing.

So I picked one of the races (JNwine.com Champion Chase) flagged as trial race for the Cheltenham Gold Cup and set out to do a bit of analysis.

Below is my very initial dabble.

I’ll work my way through all the races flagged as trial races for the Gold Cup and see what conclusions I come re how relevant they are. I imagine it will end up being another column in my previous winner stats report e.g. have they previously ran in trial race etc.

But what I’d really like to do and I think would be potentially very interesting is to cross reference as many significant races as possible against each other to build my own view on what races are relevant etc. Building the report is fairly basic stuff but the arsehole time consuming bit is reliably identifying programmatically all previous instances in my db of a race being run given that names can change slightly and even when they run.

I have a list of about 600 races in UK/IRE that are considered 'significant' and having done it for about 20 or so I have an idea of how long it will take to build the base data for the whole list i.e. a long time considering I’m not full time on this.

What comes out of the Gold Cup analysis will determine whether I’m willing to go the whole hog…..


jnwine_to_goldcup.JPG
 
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Interesting am I reading it right that it can show places? But I don't use or rely on other people's software because I can then tune things and do something more bespoke according to what drops out of my analysis.

Plus ultimately the goal is to do a data mining exercise of comparing 100s of races against each other to build my own picture of which races are 'trial' races for other races based on my own hard evidence.
 
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The next race on the article's list as trial race for the Cheltenham Gold Cup is the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby. So I plugged the Wetherby race into the report instead to see what I can see and to be honest it looks like if a horse has ran in the Charlie Hall it's a lay if it's then in the Gold Cup.
Hmm strange I've checked a couple of races horse by horse as well, better check a few more I think.

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pawras said:
Interesting am I reading it right that it can show places? But I don't use or rely on other people's software because I can then tune things and do something more bespoke according to what drops out of my analysis.

Plus ultimately the goal is to do a data mining exercise of comparing 100s of races against each other to build my own picture of which races are 'trial' races for other races based on my own hard evidence.
Click to expand...
No they are not places , The Path Race is telling you that 6 winners of the Gold Cup, LTO contested the King George at Kempton
4 past Winners of the Gold Cup LTO contested The Denman Chase

And so on down the list

You can also check out how horses perform NTO

Take the King George Chase at Kempton and if you click the Follow Button and for this example just choose winners of the King George Chase And see how they perform NTO

Blindly backing all winners NTO makes a Profit. This increases if they are also Fav NTO and they perform well in Grp 1 Races NTO

5204EE7D-9135-405D-9C96-7FBB421DEC9C.jpeg
 
With regards the Charlie Hall Chase, then NTO is the key as past winners have made a profit backed Blindly and Grp 2mseems to be the area to focus on

DB52DD17-36F7-4B6B-BB43-EB1906300D4A.jpeg
 
There are tons of Races where The Follow Button can be used and not just the big races like the King George or Gold Cup



Example

68EA7008-78FE-4771-B8F2-898B4BA8D92C.jpegB325C685-43C7-48D5-A5CA-3DEDF0CF11DD.jpeg

Result

8648102B-F76B-4395-8E1C-7A3635E40A89.jpeg
 
t will be out of date now but Malcom Howard produced a book that looked at the Better Flat Races (Trail Races) and there were certain Trail Races up races to the big event. He used a scoring system for each Trail Race

The Winning Trail 1995: How One Race Gives the Clue to Another Paperback – 9 Mar 1995
by Malcolm Howard (Author)

He was suggesting certain Trail Races worked out for Rces like the Derby etc and there could be Several Trail Races that a horse might contest along the way to the Derby etc.
 
All that NTO stuff is interesting and easy enough for me to show in my sys or over the next couple of runs even but is rather a tangent to what I'm investigating i.e. which races are trial/pointer races for principal races like the Gold Cup. And to be ultimately able to cross reference several hundred not just those designated by someone else i.e. to find out just how strong a pointer certain races are and potentially find ones others are less aware of.

I've jumped forward a few in the list and looked at the King George VI at Kempton. This looks better, although not for winners at the Gold Cup in more recent years.

1566943935596.png
 
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But I will have a look for that paperback to see if he says anything worth while for me to add to my stuff.
 
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pawras pawras Your above reads as an interesting investigation and best of for any positive out comes it produces. One thought which occurred is that the pathway topic is often puffed by the pundits but as far as i am aware confined to the top or higher class races. I prefer to bet off edges which the majority might not be considering and in this respect those positive pathways can sometimes also be identified in the lower grade contests. Often a more muddled version and i am not sure that automation would always trap them but i am sweet with this because a harder find puts points on the price. :)
 
Here's my view of the Denman Chase as a trial race for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Possibly more relevant 10 years ago than these days it seems.

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mick said:
pawras pawras Your above reads as an interesting investigation and best of for any positive out comes it produces. One thought which occurred is that the pathway topic is often puffed by the pundits but as far as i am aware confined to the top or higher class races. I prefer to bet off edges which the majority might not be considering and in this respect those positive pathways can sometimes also be identified in the lower grade contests. Often a more muddled version and i am not sure that automation would always trap them but i am sweet with this because a harder find puts points on the price. :)
Click to expand...

Cheers, I'm kind of casting a net to see what I find at the moment as I prototype stuff because like you say things are puffed up by pundits and for the big name races, now if I can achieve my end goal and cross ref 100s that might prove more interesting and ergo more profitable if few others know the paths as you find.
 
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As some can possibly be deemed to have 'run well' even if they haven't strictly placed I think I'll add an extra col i.e. did they finish in the top quartile of runners.
 
The book Chesham recommended has arrived, managed to get a 2nd hand copy but it's in good nick apart from various annotations in pencil from a previous owner.
From a quick look at it seems to be targeting the flat only where as I wanna tackle significant races whether they're flat or jumps, but I'm sure I'll be able to extract info from it to add to my own thinking.

Besides that my report is now on V0.02a , below is the info for Denman chase to the Gold Cup

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So according to Wikipedia and an article I read written by Andy Gibson, the Irish Gold Cup is meant to be a trial race for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Irish Gold Cup - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

But the figures aren't really saying that to me, well unless my generated report is bollocks which as it's still in development isn't beyond the realms.
Since 2000 I'm only seeing two winners of the Gold Cup that actually ran in the Irish Gold Cup, and only one Gold Cup winner that at least placed in the Irish Gold Cup that year. See cols in red.

1567362752786.png
 
The Newbury Hennessy Gold Cup doesn't any great pointer to Cheltenham Gold Cup winners either.

1567451039092.png
 
I’ve read that book now and what the guy has done is very similar to what I’m doing i.e.
Cross reference races to determine which ones can be deemed as trial races for target races.
Determine how relevant a trial race is to a target race.

Not being the type to take anything on trust when I can do any such analysis myself, I’m going to use one of the races he tackles and directly compare his findings to mine to help tune my own approach. E.g. for the St Ledger he identifies 9 races he considers trial races to varying to degrees of relevance.

However one wrinkle to his approach that I need to consider is that to a degree he views it as a disadvantage to have performed strongly in multiple trial races. It’s something that probably would have come to light from data mining but fore warned etc.

The book not only provides info on which races he considers are trial races for others but he also provides a ‘system’ for whereby the reader fills in results throughout the flat season and it’s points approach provides a view on which horses are serious contenders for a race, according to the authors reasoning.

It’s funny how the book works in some ways, it kind of reminds me of those Ian Livingstone books for kids where the reader is directed to a particular page according to what direction they want the story take from a range of choices.
 
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