Betting Strategy / Simon Rowlands / 21 October 2009 / Leave a comment

Mr Rowlands waxes lyrical on one of his favourite themes and draws some interesting conclusions from his investigations

"I could see no good reason why a course like Chester might not allow highly drawn horses a 7lb allowance as a “sweetener” for having been drawn “in the car park”, when the effect of the draw at the track is taken overall. Can you?"

Last week's blog could be seen as an object lesson in why it sometimes pays to look gift horses in the mouth. The gift horse in question was Arcano and the mouth, had I bothered to look at it, would have been full of cavities.

This time last week, Arcano was a suspiciously large [5.1] for the Dewhurst at the weekend: I recommended backing him. He was soon an even more suspiciously large 300 as his non-runner status was announced.

It is hard to imagine that an on-song Arcano would have done anything other than go very close in a race eventually won in a blanket finish by the habitual loser Beethoven. Timeform has the former rated 5 lb higher than the latter, for what it is worth.

You win some, you lose some, as they say.

* * *

My thoughts have been somewhat preoccupied by the effect of the draw in recent months. It started with One Way Or Another's trip to Ripon on August Bank Holiday for the Ripon Rowels Handicap. I did some research beforehand which suggested that my horse had little chance of figuring from the widest stall in a field of 16 at 1m, and he duly came back a well-held tenth before running much better when circumstances were more favourable at Newmarket.

Then again, the winner at Ripon, Wannabe King, came from a stall only four nearer the inside, which goes to show that these things are seldom cut and dried. The crucial thing at Ripon seemed to be not so much the draw as the pace, with it being difficult to come from behind in the race, but the two were inextricably linked. They always are.

It is important to remember that the immediate physical inconvenience of a wide draw is usually small in terms of ground forfeited in getting from A to B by the quickest route. But the presence of horses inside, forcing those drawn wide to go the long way round and/or making them go at non-optimal speeds, can be considerable.

"Can be" is important here. An outside draw at 5f at Chester is an undoubted major inconvenience taken overall - it is probably the biggest draw bias in British racing - but in rare cases it may not be, such as when runners from inside stalls go too quickly and a horse from a high stall can drop in without sacrificing much ground.

Draw advantages/disadvantages are generalisations, and meaningful ones at that, but in specific instances they do not apply or apply less or more than they do usually. An appreciation of this, and of the appropriateness of using general or specific information more widely, is paramount in racing analysis, though this is a point that has too often been missed by commentators on the subject.

* * *

With all that in mind, I decided to test another theory that I had heard recently about the draw, namely that being stalled wide at Wolverhampton was a major disadvantage. That seems to make sense, with the course being quite a sharp left-handed one, but it has not always appeared to be the case. At various times, quite possibly coinciding with degradation of the surface, inside stalls have performed nowhere near as well as might have been expected.

I used my customary methodology, expounded on these pages previously, to assess the draw at the course since July 7: a survey which resulted in 936 cases. The outcomes supported the theory more than I had imagined, and it would appear that being drawn wide at the course is disadvantageous, sometimes to a marked degree.

In the following table the advantage/disadvantage by stall number and trip is presented for the different distances at Wolverhampton at short of 12f. The "fair odds" measure is an expression of this information as decimalised odds if all runners in the race theoretically had equal chances in every other respect.

Before moving on from the draw, an interesting point was made on this matter by my other half (who is not a racing person, though she enjoys a day out at the races). Having bemoaned to her the hand fate had dealt us with the Ripon draw, she replied: "if so much trouble is taken to equalise the chances of horses through handicapping, so that racing is competitive, why don't they give poorly drawn horses a fixed allowance at courses where the draw bias seems incontrovertible? Fewer non-runners and closer finishes, and all that. Honey."

I could see no good reason why a course like Chester might not allow highly drawn horses a 7lb allowance as a "sweetener" for having been drawn "in the car park", when the effect of the draw at the track is taken overall. Can you?

* * *

This week's ante-post advice, which will hopefully give me more of a run for my money than did Arcano a week ago, is Elusive Pimpernel in the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster on Saturday. The colt's form is strong - stronger, I would suggest, than that of the favourite St Nicholas Abbey - and he should be very well suited by the step up to a mile.

Even better is the fact that Elusive Pimpernel's price of [5.2], while very similar to Arcano's this time last week, is appealing without being suspiciously so.

Tags: Arcano, Beethoven, Chester Draw Bias, Dewhurst Stakes, Doncaster, Draw Bias, Elusive Pimpernel, One Way Or Another, Racing Post Trophy, Ripon Draw Bias, Wolverhampton Draw Bias