#6 – Don’t pick all the cherries…..

In my last blog post I looked at the Mechanics behind the LIST feature in TBM. In this blog post I want to look at the benefit of using LISTS.  

The Benefits:

So what are the benefits of using Lists?

In a previous blog I showed a graph (copied below) of a systems performance across the courses raced to highlight the advantages of closer inspection of data.

Until recently, seeing that data in Selection Hunter required the creation of a system for each course (or Jockey or Trainer). Now with lists we can group those of interest together into a single system.

Below is an example of a system that can be improved by filtering the data with Lists.

I have used the Selection Hunter Preset ‘Non Handicap TS1 (Place)’ as an example.
This is devised as a Place Market system with the orange trendline showing a reasonable, fairly steady return over the period since October 2019.

Revealing My Secrets

I’ll be honest I do spend a considerable amount of time crunching data through spreadsheets and analysing the statistics to find new angles and systems but what I’m going to show is how you can find new angles easily and quickly by using the tools built into Selection Hunter.

Also what I hope to do is to show you when to stop: It can be very easy to back fit the results and arrive at a system that looks great but then then starts to drop off.

The recent feature additions to Selection Hunter include some extra data analysis via the ‘Additional Breakdown’ button.

When you are in ‘Back Test Mode’ and have run a system, click the ‘Analysis’ Button.

Then at the bottom of the window you’ll see the ‘Additional Breakdown’ button

Then you’ll see a Table of Win Market data for the system breakdown by Course since Oct 2019

Note: The data presented in the ‘Additional Breakdown‘ is determined by the settings on the Extra Analysis window: If you want to look at the Place market data, select ‘Place bets’ before clicking ‘Additional Breakdown’.

Use the dropdown to switch between the Course, Jockey and Trainer tables.

Here is the Trainers data

The columns are sortable by clicking on the headers: Here I’ve sorted by course A-Z.

Be careful of only looking at the profit column: check how any bets have been made, especially with Trainers and Jockeys: Some may only have had 1 or 2 runners and consequently a possible highly skewed strike rate.

One way of checking this is by downloading the data.

Checking Data Using Excel Filters

So how can we use this feature to find some profit?

Here I’ll run through an example and see what we come up with. You can then apply your own ideas to some of your own systems.

Here is a list of downloaded win data by course. It has been

  • Filtered to show data where Bets >=5
  • Filtered to show Strike Rate >=20
  • Filtered to show Profit >=0
  • Sorted by Profit High to Low

(Note these are arbitrary setting I have used to demonstrate the process. You will have your own ideas about what you want to look at.)

You can see that there are 32 courses that satisfy those filter conditions from the full list of 88 courses in the data set.

So based on previous data we could expect that this smaller group of courses may provide improved system performance.

 

Lets drop it into Selection Hunter and have a look.

As a reminder, I am using the Preset NH TS1 system as an example.

Add in Criteria RaceMeet, select LIST and open the Search String generator.

The generator defaults to the RaceMeet (Course) page, remember to change if you are creating another type of List.

Go back to your spreadsheet and highlight and copy the list of Courses.

Go back to the Generator and click the button.

You will see a confirmation message and the list will be in the text box.

Next click the button ‘Tick All Matches Found‘ 

The tick boxes of all the found Courses will be activated in the top window

Now click the button ‘ Add All Ticked to Text Box’

You will see the text box fill with a comma separated list.

This shows the generator after all the steps above.

The final steps are to click the ‘Copy Created String to Clipboard’ Button.

Now go back to the Selection Hunter screen, right click in the Value cell for Race meet and Paste in your copied string data.

Now you can run the system and see the difference from using the selected courses.

Before:

After: With Course LIST based on win market data

At this point you have a new system to save and possibly filter further maybe by Trainer or Jockey or Place data.

BUT, BE CAREFUL! Don’t over do it. It could be very easy to apply multiple filters which may be over fitted to previous only good results data and therefore possibly not provide future profits.

You will notice that when I selected the profit range in the example above I include low profits to allow a broad picture rather than cherry picking exceptional results.

Essentially, use some common sense.

What you are doing is not finding the best performing criteria but excluding those that are consistently performing badly.  

The LIST feature is a game changer in terms of massively increasing the flexibility of finding profitable avenues to follow. And the sheer number of possible avenues is immense.

As I said previously I do crunch a lot of data through spreadsheets to find my avenues and I apply quite strict statistical constraints to what I follow or leave alone.

One tip I will emphasise is: Graph your data

Here is an example of one system I found recently

Exceptional performance but currently has a flat spot, however this is no worse than its previous performance so I will continue and check the stats every week or two to re-evaluate.

I have to have a few days away this week for a family funeral but when I return I will spend some time re-visiting the Preset Catalogue and modify a few with some carefully selected Lists for all to use.

Have Fun!

Mike