I've just been reading an interesting piece about whether you should follow Cheltenham market movers.
The article is talking about horses that shorten in the on course market just before the off. So between the on course opening show and the off.
Their opening statement was…
Of the 232 Cheltenham Festival races, from 2002-2011, 889 horses shortened in price in the last few minutes before a race. This is 20.15% of the total horses that raced. Importantly, 30.6% of races were won by horses whose odds had shortened (71 in total). That shows that horses whose odds have shortened have won more than 10% more than the races than they should have been entitled.
They then go on to tell us how much we would have lost if we backed every horse that shortened (- 261 points over the same period)
This tells us that we need to specialise somehow.
My thought on this is that what we need to do is to classify a movement into those that are significant and those that are not. EG a horse that shortens from 33/1 to 25/1 is not as significant as one that shortens from 6/4 to even money.
Unfortunately this research will have to be an idea for another day.
But what we do get instead is some research into what types of races have been profitable to follow shortening horses.
You can read the full article and pick up some other tips and hints for Cheltenham in the free guide here.
We're having the calm before the Cheltenham storm with no selections again today 🙁