Preparing for a major race meeting – Cheltenham
Big meetings are generally mean big opportunities for me, so I take a lot of care to carefully prepare for each one. Cheltenham is one of the biggest.
Last year, the big meetings accounted for just short of 20% of my entire year. That’s why I put so much effort into each one. Not only that, while invites are always gratefully accepted, I’m still politely declining them. I intend to do so for as long as is practicable.
Collecting and analysing data
When a major meeting is on the horizon I have already done a lot of work ahead of it. I always have tons of data to analyse, because when I trade, I also collect data. Bet Angel is actually well set up to help you achieve this as you can run automation and / or spreadsheets in the background while you carry on with your normal trading. Therefore new data piles up in the background for you to look at later. After the event is over, be it racing, football or Tennis, I sift through the data and see what worked and if I could have done better. It’s the trading equivalent of Kaizen.
Collecting data in this way allows you to reflect on what happened in prior years, but it can also tell you how the market is changing and anticipate future change. As the festival gets underway I’ll make an effort to blog what I see, so you should be able to see my observations. You can hypothesise what is going to happen, but you will only know for sure when it gets underway.
I still screen record my trading
You may be interested to know, that I still record my own trading, especially ahead of big meetings. This gives me the chance to relive the meeting again and remember what it felt like. I’ve already watched last years races and it brought back a lot of memories, mainly good it has to be said 🙂
I tend to keep notes next to each meeting as well, as that reminds me what I am thinking and how I reacted to what I saw. It’s a mental note of how it felt, so I re-read those.
General Cheltenham observations
Of course with Cheltenham comes with some big markets and the highest turnover race will most likely top £10,000,000 in matched bet volume. So while Cheltenham is view favourable, it often doesn’t suit peoples individual trading styles. On average last year, each race reached £4.5m, so that ranks around nine times greater than the average race.
However, it’s not just about the amount matched as it’s all relative. If the rate the money is being matched is also nine times higher then the net effect is no different at all from a trading perspective. If you switch to another exchange you need to know the same information as well. I have observations from both, I’ll give you more data on this as we move into and through the festival.
Cheltenham advice
One thing you will not be short of at Cheltenham is advice. There will be tons around and a lot of it free. Everybody has an opinion from a betting perspective.
The festival is often dominated by competitive handicaps of impenetrable complexity. Trying to unpick some value from that is tempting, for the potentially huge payoff, but almost impossible. Make sure you leave the traditional betting on the other side of the book! Traditional gambling and trading do not sit comfortably next to each other.
Inplay observations
One area I looked at more than in previous years was the in-play market. It’s interesting to see that Cheltenham is one of the least variable courses on the spreadsheet. Basically, if you are looking for a big payoff, they can happen, but they happen much less at Cheltenham. You can actually stick a number of it. The average variance in-play is 25% lower than the most variable course in the UK. Some food for thought.
One thing you can be sure to pick up if you trade in-play, however, is a drifter. Only one horse can win the race, that will trade near 1.01 so everything else will finish at or near 1000. Last year the average field size was 17 so you have an average of 16 losers per races. OK, very simplistic there, but field sizes are 70% higher at Cheltenham than ‘normal’. I’ll chuck over some more stats in as we get towards the festival.
Don’t forget the bread and butter meetings
With all the hype surrounding Cheltenham, it can be easy to forget that the big festivals are just a minor part of the 10,000 or so races that face us every year. So never forget that 75% of all races are grades 4-6, that’s where your year is made or lost. While we are still awaiting spring, there is still plenty around to get tucked into and build up that trading bank ahead of the big meetings.
Category: Horse Racing
