Factors affecting the favourites as a population

There is a curious case as to the fate of favourites being less or more predictable under certain conditions. Factors like in heavy ground compared with good ground. Are younger or older horses likely to be more reliable to deliver or perform above or below expected as a group? Is going up or down in grade and incoming form or official rating an influencing factor as to what is a blue chip or bad favourite? In this article we will look over the favourites in National Hunt handicap races and see what we find.

*All data from 2015+ unless otherwise stated

[Filters: Chase and Hurdle Handicaps only, SP Rank = 1, Present by Official Rating Rank]

Interestingly Top rated horses show a bigger negative WAX than any other, the top weight naturally having more evidence to proven ability may suggest how this is overvalued, or the concession of weight undervalued, by the market in the estimation of their ‘favourites chance’. Non Handicap contests especially Class 1 contests tend to be won by the top rated and those at the top of the market with far more frequency than in handicaps.

So is the state of the ground likely to make the outcome more or less predictable? On first examination of it, with respect to strike rates of favourites my hypothesis would have been slightly supported that extremes of ground, would make it more likely to discount more runners and hence could be more certain about the favourites chance of delivering. But the winners with respect to market expectation on Good to Firm or Soft/Heavy ground is negative and neutral ground coming out with a positive WAX.

[Chase and Hurdle Handicaps only, Race Classifications = NOT Maiden, Novice, SP Rank = 1, Present by Official Going]

In this case though it is also important to consider the average price and that is indeed what happens in the market, the favourite’s price on polarized ground conditions is shorter but strike rates only vary slightly from more neutral going conditions, so while their WAX is pretty high they come in profit/loss wise as about level when allowing for Betfair commission.

[Chase and Hurdle Handicaps only, Race Classifications = NOT Maiden, Novice, SP Rank = 1, Present by Official Going]

Now let’s look at the age of favourites, given the older profile of chasers than hurdlers we will consider each separately

[Hurdle Handicaps only, Race Classifications = NOT Maiden, Novice, SP Rank = 1, Present by Age]

[Chase Handicaps only, Race Classifications = NOT Maiden, Novice, SP Rank = 1, Present by Age]

We see from the two tables it is nothing unusual, a favourite is most likely to be a 6yo over hurdles and 7yo over fences, typically a horse with some experience but also likely improving.

We get a better comparison when comparing them to their numbers of their own relative generation. Over fences we have a big skew to younger horses, if a horse is a 6yo or 7yo it has about a 20% chance of being favourite compared to all 6/7yo runners, whereas with 10yo+ about 6-7% of their population every go off as the jolly. The distribution is closer in handicap hurdles, a smoother graph with a skew towards younger horses and naturally enough a sharp decline after 10yo.

From a betting perspective obviously if the favourite was profitable there would be a proverbial queue around the corner for pay-out at the high street bookmakers every day, both codes show a small loss to Betfair SP (attributable to commission).

[Chase and Hurdle Handicaps only, Race Classifications = NOT Maiden, Novice, SP Rank = 1, Present by Race Class Number]

Class 3 and 4 come in ahead of expected and investigating them the Chi Score shows that we may be onto something on Handicap Hurdle contests in that class division.

In order to make our way further towards a system we can use to inform bets, we avail of the useful Proform rating (PFR) who ran over hurdles last time out and use top ranked and avoid the top ranked Official Rated runners and we have a tidy system. Of course we need to be cognoscente that the favourite in this data is not known often until post time so are hamstrung for early or breakfast price where the market may diverge before post time.

[Filters: Race Handicap Hurdles Only, Class 3 and 4, Only Hurdles LTO, PFR Rank 1, OR Rank >1, SP Rank =1]