Bookies love it when you guess, or play hunches, or bet on underlays (odds less than true chance). Conversely, they hate it (I think) when you carefully evaluate race form, analyze race replays, and only bet on overlays (odds greater than or equal to true chance). Well, I suppose that this is just stating the obvious, though I do feel that there are still more punters that fall into the former category than those that are of the latter. There are a number of reasons for this, of which the following are just the ones that I can think of at the moment.
- Form data is only available via paid subscription
- There are too many races run to evaluate fully
- Form evaluation take a long time
- Form evaluation requires skill
- Its easier just to guess
The first three reasons are valid for a lot of racing jurisdictions. However not for Hong Kong racing, where form data and replay videos are available free of charge and there are only two race meetings a week. The maximum field size is 14 which makes for competitive racing, but also not too difficult to evaluate the form of all runners. Even so evaluation can still take quite a long time, I usually take 2-3 hours per race.
This blog is devoted to various aspects of Hong Kong horse racing form evaluation. Pages will present a discussion of each aspect of form evaluation, such as Speed Rating, Data Storage, Statistics, Strategies. Posts will show my evaluation of a single race at each Hong Kong race meeting.
I hope that you find the blog useful and maybe profitable. Comments are always welcome.