Saratoga Longshots
Saratoga is famous for longshot winners. The large field sizes, evenly matched fields, and trainers and owners who are aiming for a win at the track can produce some very high priced winners. What tools does Betmix provide to help you look for those longshots and how will they help you?
The first step is to find which types of races tend to produce more longshots than favorites. Using the Create My Report Tool you can search by race type and by the amount the horse paid. Here is the breakdown of the 2013 Saratoga Meet.
The race type that tends to produce the most longshots is Turf Route Races, where 15% of such races produced winners that paid over $20, and 47% of the Turf Route Races at Saratoga had winners pay over $10. On the other hand, the Dirt Route races tended to produce more winning favorites, with only 5% of those races resulting in winners that paid over $20 and the majority of winners (65%) returned less than $10, with 35% paying $6.00 or less. So, if you want to find longshots, this type of information will lead you to the types of races you need to handicap.
Once you have the race types that result in more longshot winners you can create a Report that will allow you to analyze what handicapping factors those longshot winners had in common that you can use going forward.
In Create My Report (found in the Tools Dropdown) you can enter the criteria that will build a report for Saratoga Longshots. Use the following criteria to build the report:
Date Range: July 19, 2013 - September 2 2013
Race Track: Saratoga
Surface: Turf & Inner Turf
Race Type: Select all
Distance: set the distance range to 7.5 furlongs - 1 1/2 Miles
Win Payoff: Set the minimum to $20 and the maximum to $100
You can then add the first 20 races to a report and analyze that in Test My Report. Bringing that report up in Test My Report you can click the Power Factors button to see which factors for Turf Route Races at Saratoga where the win price was greater than $20 produced the most winners, and use those factors to help you build a Mix that you can use to handicap those races at this year's Saratoga meet. Your Factor report will look very similar to this (depending on which 20 races you selected to include in your report)
Building a Mix weighing the most important factors and not using the least important factors you can then test how many of the Longshot Races you would have hit. Its a good idea to break this out in more detail and focus on specific Turf Route Races: By distance and Class. All of that can be done by making the criteria in the Report match the types of races you are looking at.
Of course, this type of analysis can be done for any track, distance, surface, class or pay range. Many users create multiple mixes for the race types they play and can use this tool to screen for longshots, favorites or other scenarios.