Our Senior Form Analyst Rick Williams returns to the podcast this week to discuss betting on favourites.

These horses (by definition) carry more punters money than any other so it's worth knowing the difference between a false favourite and a true one.

We've analysed the last two racing seasons to look at a number of scenarios where favourites are overbet and others where you can find some value. We discuss these on the podcast and you can download the accompanying pdf on backing favourites.

Punting Insights You'll Find:

The best tracks and track conditions to bet on favourites

The best (and worst) trainers and jockeys

When field size is important

Which barriers are the most profitable

The importance of fitness

Whether unlucky runners out-perform the market

Today’s Guest:

Rick Williams

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: I’ve put together a few stats. Now I know the way you approach things it's only a very small part of what you look at. Being data driven, it's more about the class and the speed ratings and the sectional times and that type of data more so than just generic stats, but I thought this might be a bit of a talking point.

Looking at the record of favourites over the last 2 years I've broken them down by area. In a small percentage way, the metro area is underperforming or you'd lose money a little bit quicker than country or provincial. Any reason you could see behind that? This is looking at the last two years, so a full 24 months of data.

Rick Williams: Even in some of our own analysis on our information, metro versus country and provincial, there does seem to be some discrepancies in different measurements. As far as this measurement goes, I'm not quite sure exactly why the country and provincial are about equal and a little bit better than metro. Certainly the racing can be quite different. I'm not exactly sure why there's a bit of a difference there, but from my experience it's not a surprise to see the difference.

David Duffield: Because we had someone feed a whole heap of data we have for internal use through their pretty sophisticated software, and it did come up with the fact that the mix that you need to look at or to consider is different, metro racing versus country racing and even to provincial.

Rick Williams: Yes, if you're looking at a variable weighting of model contributors to a rating- If you had four measurements, and you included them in your rating saying everything would be equal as a starting point, then running it through a program and asking it to give you what means more of those four in order for metro Saturdays, to metro mid-week, to provincial, to country, it changes a lot for a few of those different things and certainly the sample size is significant. This doesn't surprise me. It goes a little bit with what we've experienced.

David Duffield: What about the track condition? Again, this is probably not surprising. It would confirm what a lot of people think and that is the wetter the track, the less reliable the form, or the more work you have to do.

Rick Williams: Yeah, if you're looking at favourites, the more you or the market favours a horse, I guess the more certain you are. To be very certain, you need to have less doubt. To have less doubt, you need less variables. When you analyse the information when tracks get wet, there's more variables. There's just a host of different variables that come into it. I guess the market is very stats driven, so the stats do tend to probably stack up more on the better ground and deteriorate as far as their accuracy as the ground gets more rain affected.

David Duffield: What about the record of favourites by state because there's not a lot of difference other than Victoria's a bit of an outlier. The performance of favourites in Victoria in the last couple years has been, in relative terms, poor.

Rick Williams: It's a significant margin, isn't it? I don't really know the answer,