Horse Racing / Jack Houghton / 02 January 2009 / Leave a comment

Why should racing knowledge have any impact on punting profitability? Jack Houghton offers three tenets which have governed his punting for the last few years...

A few years back - having obliterated a significant portion of my betting bank - I took a sabbatical from punting. For two months I didn't follow the sport at all. I went skiing. Caught up with old friends. Read books without racing themes. Became human again.

Another four months passed before betting recommenced. In that time a lot of work was done trying to resolve a recurring question: how could someone, who ostensibly knew so much about racing, have lost so much money?

The answer wasn't forthcoming. But then it was the wrong question to be asking. After all, why should breadth of racing knowledge have any direct impact on punting profitability? Yes, I could tell you most things there were to tell about horseracing past and present; but none of it impacted on accurately predicting racing future. More knowledge wasn't needed; better knowledge was.

Throughout this period of extended thought, I settled on three tenets that would govern all future punting. As this is a time of resolutions, I thought I would share them here. Someone else might find them a useful starting point in redressing their own betting approach. They might also want to check out Simon Rowlands' articles on betting rules from a while back.

Tenet One: Be Analytical

It is my firm belief that all long-term losing is driven by punters' inability or unwillingness to detach themselves from the mystique of racing. The sport we bet on is a chaotic mass of not-very-intelligent beings - horse and human - behaving in not very rational ways. It's impossible to make sense of it all.

To win, you need a method of assessing horseracing chance that is slightly better than market average. It's not pretty, and - if what interests you is resolution of universal truths - not very satisfying; but aiming for anything more will turn you mental. So abandon thoughts of supernatural overlords making runic sense of racing disorder. And abandon any piece of information of the numinous ilk in general.

Early on in the sabbatical, I resolved to only use information that could be quantified with a consistent degree of accuracy. In other words, unless I could put a number next to it, and unless that number could be precisely fed in to a model that predicted a horse's chance of winning, I wasn't interested. As I've written before, for me this means using speed ratings to create tissue prices and not much else. The panoply of other information that exists - draw biases, trainer form, breeding data, jockey form - might have use to some, but I've been unable to find a way of consistently applying any of it. So it's ignored.

This approach might seem purist in the extreme. And it probably wouldn't suit most punters. But as a default position it's useful to consider. It makes you completely cynical about any piece of information you haven't dissected and proved or disproved for yourself; but given the amount of bollocks that masquerades as truth out there, that's no bad thing.

Tenet Two: Be A Specialist

It's hard to be truly analytical - however you choose to do that - if you're dealing with too much data in the first place. I constantly meet people who claim to be profitable whilst simultaneously reeling off a long list of the sports they've bet on in the last week. And I know - with certainty - that they're lying. To bet properly - and maintain any kind of non-punting life - requires limiting what you bet on. And for most of us, this should even mean specializing within a sport.

Over time, I've worked out the types of races where my approach to punting works best and now only bet on those races. On most days this means analysing between two and four races. I wouldn't have the first clue how to assess a sprint handicap, or a big handicap chase, so I don't bother. An old colleague used to say his biggest advantage over bookmakers was that they had to price up every race, but he could choose the races he bet in. Sage advice.

Tenet Three: Be Disciplined

I have a dangerous predisposition to mug punting. I just like it. Can't explain why. But the feeling of impending penury should I fail to back the winner of this Folkestone bumper just appeals to some strange, self-destructive part of my make up. So disciplined punting has always been difficult. If I'm watching a race, I find it hard not to have a bet "just for an interest."

My solution has been to hardly watch any racing. I'll let you in to a secret... I didn't watch the Derby this year. Or any other in a long list of big races. Surprised? Shocked? Disgusted? Well what about this... I hardly ever even watch a race I've had a bet in!

The thing is, what started as a method of stopping me having stupid bets has turned into more. It's hard, when you watch a lot of racing, to stop yourself developing opinions . You notice a horse that jumps left, another that seems irresolute in a finish, still another that looked to be given an easy race. All these things make for good talking points with racing fans, but when you're trying to reduce races to quantifiable certainties, opinions of this sort tend to cloud your thinking somewhat.