Have you ever heard the sayings odds on look on, back outsiders in small fields, or avoid horses with wide barriers?

In this interview on RSN - Radio & Sport conducted by Nadia Horne, Dean the Trial Spy covers the statistics pulled from our database that disprove these commonly held beliefs by the general public.

Read the transcription here: 

Nadia Horne: We now talk to Dean the Trial Spy. How are you Dean?
Dean Evans: Yeah I'm great thanks Nadia. How are you?
Nadia Horne: Extremely well. Look today what we’re going to discuss is; just trying to bust some punting myths, and there are some of those old sayings that we hear in racing time in time out, and really the theory isn't justified.
Dean Evans: That's right, there's a lot of myths out there, and a lot of what has been passed down over generation to generation doesn’t actually apply, and just because something has been repeated over and over again, that doesn't make it fact.
Nadia Horne: Well let's talk a little about some stats that you have been able to derive and some of the myths that we know of. A common one is backing an outsider in a small field.
Dean Evans:  Yeah that's right, with outsiders in small fields, it’s part of what we’ve discussed before around the favourite-longshot bias in previous weeks. Even small fields don’t defeat the favourite-longshot bias. Many punters shy away from small fields because they don't think there's much value to be had, or a lot of people hear that myth that outsiders have a great record in small fields, and then every time the outsider wins you hear the race caller mention that always happens.
But it's interesting when you have a look at the data, and we had a look at data from the beginning of 2012 until currently, so almost three years worth of data. What it shows is even in seven horse fields, the profit on turnover percentage (POT%) for the horse ranked SP1 is a loss of around 6%, and it just keeps getting worse and worse as you go out to the 6th favourite which was a loss of 23% on turnover, and for the rank outsider a loss of 31% on turnover, so that there alone just shows quite clearly that this myth is completely busted, and that indeed whether it is a small field or a larger field the favourite-longshot bias continues to hold true and the runners at the shorter end of the market do far better than the rank outsiders.
Nadia Horne: I suppose this is another point that works under a similar theory is the old saying about odds-on, look on.
Dean Evans:  Yeah that's right, that's another one that's heard many many times. We looked at around four years of data here. What we're looked at here is analysing it based on best tote and we're analysing it based on a proportional staking plan so that you’re aiming to collect four units on every runner that you’re backing. The profit on turnover loss of 3.78%, which is a far smaller loss than the 9% average backing every runner (which is basically the tote take out). You can see there immediately that odds-on runners are far more profitable than simply backing every runner.
It's interesting, on the provincials, the profit on turnover on odds-on runners was only a 1.95% loss, and in metropolitan races it was around 5.5%, so it suggests at the moment the market is a bit better with the short priced runners at the provincials than in the city. But interestingly, in the city races the odds-on runners were very close to profitability in Sydney and Perth, they seem to be bang on there, but a lot worse in Queensland and Victoria.
Nadia Horne: Amazing stats there, look also another point people say is to avoid horses drawn wide; wide gates being a massive negative.
Dean Evans: Yeah, just on that odds-on section, if you look at barriers it was interesting. Barriers 1-3 they all showed a loss of around 5% to 8% on turnover which is a lot worse than the 3.78% for all odds-on horses, while barriers 11 to 13 all showed strong positive profit on turnover percentages. So that was interesting.
We looked at a years worth of data here for barriers, and we looked at the inside 25% and the outside 25% of barriers. So in an 8 horse race the inside barriers will be 1 and 2, in a 16 horse race barriers 1 and 4, and the outside barriers 7 and 8 or 13 to 16.
At a simple level, simply backing every runner in the inside 25% of barriers will give you a loss of 10.57%, and backing all the horses in the outside 25% of barriers will give you a lower loss of 8.7% profit on turnover. So that’s quite a significant and interesting number on its own, to show that you would do much better blindly backing horses from the outside barriers than inside barriers, and that suggests inside barriers are overbet and outside barriers are underbet.
Another interesting reason way to look at it is by position in running, so the leader with an inside barrier lost around almost 7% on turnover, but a leader from an outside barrier lost only around 3%. So you can see if a horse has the ability and speed to cross and lead, than the market underestimates the winning chance of these horses who can simply jump well from the wide gate and cross and lead, and they are actually better betting propositions than leaders from inside barriers.
Nadia Horne: They’re very interesting points that you bring up. I think some of the points that you have really clarified there say that when you’re doing your form analysis there are various other aspects that you just simply have to take into consideration other than just simply being black and white in a lot of your theories.
Dean Evans: Yeah absolutely, that’s the key. It’s vitally important to test everything and not trust everything that you might hear, whether it’s from friends or in the mainstream media, because everything that you hear isn’t always correct.
Nadia Horne: Very true, Dean thank you for your input today.
Dean Evans: No worries, thank you very much Nadia.