PRX 1st, 2.5.13

[For The Lead]

NOTHING in horse racing wins 100% of the time.
NOTHING in horse racing losses 100% of the time.

With that said, there are still times when betting against certain things can be profitable. The first race at PRX today presented just such an opportunity, but first, a little background.

As I usually do when researching something, I take two years and look at the statistics. I have found that using two years, which takes in more than 80,000 races, provides a stable result. In this case, I was looking at horses that just broke their maiden and are meeting other winners for the first time. These types of horses are repeat winners about 10% of the time or once in ten tries. Not a real good percentage and it means that YOU can be successful betting against these types of horses 90% of the time, as long as you can pick the correct horse.
Now I don't want any reader to think that I just looked this up for the first time today, AFTER the race. This is a statistic I have known for a LONG TIME, but I wanted to lay it out so the reader understands.
At any rate, the first race at PRX today provided a good opportunity. There were only 6 horses in the race. Three of them were coming off their maiden victory. One of them had one try at this same level in its' last race just after winning its' maiden victory two races back. Here are the horses and lines I choose for each horse. Note my markings.



In addition to noting that most of the horses in this race are coming off their maiden victory, also note that it is these same horses that make up the early running in the race, being either "E" or "EP". This sort of "sets the stage" for another horse to come from off the pace to win the race since it is unlikely one of the maiden victory horses will win. If that is true, we are left with just two horses. Let's take a look at the segments screen with all the horses.



As you can see, the #5 horse has the second best first fraction time, putting it right near the leaders. The #2 horse is calculated to be 10 lengths behind at the first fraction, giving that horse a lot of work to do. Although the second fraction shows the #2 horse catching up (I doubt that it would actually happen that way), the final segment shows the #5 horse ahead of the #2 horse.
And now the chart of the race.



This is what the PP's will look like the next time these horses run.
Notice how close the winner was to the leaders at the 1st call and 2nd call.