Speedmaster Online

There is so much information available on SpeedmasterOnline -- how should you actually USE it? Our own team tells you what they look for on the day's racing.

Glyn (The man at the helm!)	John (The "father" of Speedmaster, and the original creator of the system)	Steve (Our software developer and the man behind the web site)
Like John, I use the filters to give me a quick indication of what races I am going to be looking at. By default Speedmaster will obviously have a top horse in every race, but how strong is its position at the top of the tree? When backing horses for profit there is only so much we can do, after I have done my research its then out of my hands and down to the jockey, trainer and ultimately the horse on the day. With this in mind I do all that I can to give myself the best possible chance of winning, Speedmaster does this for us instantly. We need to look for horses that stick out when you open the race card. If you are looking at a card and thinking to yourself that three or four look good then its a clear indicator that the race is wide open and is best left. Speedmaster can quickly show you which horses to look at a bit closer. Any rating that is coloured red means it is top and clear by at least 20 points so one, two or all three ratings coloured red is a good sign. Even better if it also has an NB rating or the horses name is highlighted. Add to this a positive comment from its last race and some good recent form, which may even have been franked, then we are looking at a good candidate for a bet. The more boxes we can tick the better. The final piece of the jigsaw is the price. We want, and need, to be getting value for our investment. Don't be put off by a big price, the one thing we know for certain is that the horse has no idea of the odds he is running at, and with Speedmaster, because we calculate so many different variables, we can see and highlight things that the bookie or the man in the street will miss meaning our horse will be running at false odds. After all that has been done we hand it over to the professionals to do their bit. If our selection loses then we cannot really have any arguments as we have done all we can, however a look back in Speedmaster history will show you that the strong selections win more times than not and at some very nice prices. That's all we ask for.	The first thing I do when contemplating the day's racing is to look at the filters. The filters are a way of having 50% of your work already done for you. You can specify certain criteria that must be a condition of your selections and these will be filtered out for you saving you hours of browsing. Some filters can be so finely tuned, that at certain times of the year or season, they do ALL the work for you, and all you have to do is confidently back what your best performing filter suggests. It has been proved though that no filter will produce winners all year round, all of the time. This is why in over 200 years no one has ever come up with a fool proof system that constantly finds winners. Horse racing is a volatile medium. For a start, many of the horses running this year won't have run last year, or at the very least, all the horses are a year older. This alone is already enough to begin encrypting the previous years form, and there are far too many variables for the outcome of a race ever to be reduced to a simple formula. It has often amazed me when so called racing pundits have ridiculed research data that doesn't go back at least ten years. Has it never occurred to these people that at least 80% of those horses in such data are no longer racing or indeed dead, so what on earth can their influence be on today's outcome! Racing is an on going event and it is today's form that needs to be analysed, not that of irrelevant ancestors. If one said that Mohammed Ali's victory over Henry Cooper would have a definitive influence on the outcome of today's heavyweight contenders, you would be likely to be considered a "nutter". Yet when it comes to racing, apparently sane men will use the exact same argument. Remember, it is today that counts and recent form that must be considered. Recent being the last two or three races, although early in the season, or in the event of an injury, the last races may have been some time ago. O.K, so back to my filters. Going back to the beginning of the SpeedmasterOnline data it is plain to see that some filters will work very well some of the time or at certain times of the year, but no filter will work all of the time, year in, year out. I keep a library of about 20 filters, about 15 of which are permanent. The other five being current experimentation. Generally speaking, there are at least two or three of them that are performing well at that moment and these are the ones to concentrate on. After all the work that has gone into Speedmaster to obtain this level of analysis it is important not to get side tracked. So there you have it. Experiment with the construction of filters and don't discard those that are not performing as they once had. The return of another "wet" season, or whatever the conditions were at the outset can be just what you need to return to a filter's form. I have two or three filters that are definitely seasonal, and even though the window may be short, I know that these will guarantee me winnings at certain times of the year. The beauty of SpeedmasterOnline is that you can experiment all you like, find something that works for you and have the success measured in an instant. As far as I know, there is no other resource available that can give you all this analytical power in one concentrated package.	The very first thing I do is scan down the Racing Today page and look to see how many of the races have a good success ratio for the three SMOL ratings. Look out for this on the race card as it tells you just how successful that rating has been at that course for this race type (handicap or stakes). Basically, just how relevant IS the rating? Then I go to the first race and look at the race card in a little more detail. Looking at the top rated horses in the three categories (Form, Speed and Overall) I look to see if either of them matches the following - For non-2 year olds Course and distance winner (CD somewhere in the CD column) Won or placed last time out Dropping in class (not necessary, but an advantage if it did well in its last race and everything else is going up in class) On flat races, whether the horse has an advantageous draw. For handicap races, not going up significantly in weight, or better still dropping in weight by a large amount, especially if it did well last time(unusual, but it happens) For 2yr olds, I generally leave the race alone anyway. The only things I will consider is a horse which has won or placed its last two and the trainer has a high success rate. Generally, however, I don't touch them. Next, I scan down to the lower part of the page. The same horses are listed here and there is some really useful background information. The Comment provides a real insight into its last race. There is also a numeric valuation of the comment (an attempt to quantify the comments with a numeric value). The higher value representing a good performance last time out based on certain key words. You can also see here the distance by which the horse was beaten (second place by 0.25 lengths is much better than second by 18 lengths). On extreme going types (heavy or fast, for example) it is useful to see which horses have won or placed on this going. A lot of the time, a horse has a good record on fast ground but has never performed well on soft or heavy ground. The next four things I look for are Which horse has the highest win percentage over the last 450 days? This is highlighted in the Win % column. Which horse has won the most actual races. You have to scan the Win History column for this. These two elements, combined with the Prize Money value tell you which horses have been the most successful in this race type recently. The prize money is important because it often tells you the horse has not only won races, but they are higher value (and therefore more competitive) races. Which horses are form franked - have won or placed in their last race, and another horse in the same race has subsequently gone on to win. This tells you the race probably wasn't a total waste of time and that there were other decent horses in it. This is most relevant if the last race was recent (Days Since in the top table) and this horse won it or lost by a short distance. By now, I have generally identified 2 or 3 horses which look strong. (Obviously, if there's only 1 by this stage I back it of the odds are worthwhile). I then use the history record for each horse "in the frame" by clicking on the horse's name in the top table. This produces a table showing how the horse performed in all race types since May 2004. The last key thing I look for in this table, is whether the horse has a decent record at this distance - especially if it is a sprint or, at the other extreme, a long trip today. A lot of the races I dismiss instantly - because there is insufficient data, the race is among two year olds, because too many horses have a strong indication for one reason or another. That's probably the golden rule - you don't have to bet on every race and there are probably only 2 or 3 races at the most worth betting on most days. Somethimes there are more, sometimes none at all. Stuff I don't really consider that much (I don't ignore it, but only really use it as supporting evidence or possibly an indication of a threat if another horse has it) NB horses Fast Time That's it, really. It sounds a lot and it probably takes me 3 or 4 minutes per card if the race is worth pursuing.

Glyn
(The man at the helm!)

John
(The "father" of Speedmaster, and the original creator of the system)

Steve
(Our software developer and the man behind the web site)

Like John, I use the filters to give me a quick indication of what races I am going to be looking at.

By default Speedmaster will obviously have a top horse in every race, but how strong is its position at the top of the tree?

When backing horses for profit there is only so much we can do, after I have done my research its then out of my hands and down to the jockey, trainer and ultimately the horse on the day. With this in mind I do all that I can to give myself the best possible chance of winning, Speedmaster does this for us instantly.

We need to look for horses that stick out when you open the race card. If you are looking at a card and thinking to yourself that three or four look good then its a clear indicator that the race is wide open and is best left. Speedmaster can quickly show you which horses to look at a bit closer. Any rating that is coloured red means it is top and clear by at least 20 points so one, two or all three ratings coloured red is a good sign. Even better if it also has an NB rating or the horses name is highlighted.

Add to this a positive comment from its last race and some good recent form, which may even have been franked, then we are looking at a good candidate for a bet. The more boxes we can tick the better.

The final piece of the jigsaw is the price. We want, and need, to be getting value for our investment. Don't be put off by a big price, the one thing we know for certain is that the horse has no idea of the odds he is running at, and with Speedmaster, because we calculate so many different variables, we can see and highlight things that the bookie or the man in the street will miss meaning our horse will be running at false odds.

After all that has been done we hand it over to the professionals to do their bit. If our selection loses then we cannot really have any arguments as we have done all we can, however a look back in Speedmaster history will show you that the strong selections win more times than not and at some very nice prices. That's all we ask for.

The first thing I do when contemplating the day's racing is to look at the filters. The filters are a way of having 50% of your work already done for you. You can specify certain criteria that must be a condition of your selections and these will be filtered out for you saving you hours of browsing.

Some filters can be so finely tuned, that at certain times of the year or season, they do ALL the work for you, and all you have to do is confidently back what your best performing filter suggests.

It has been proved though that no filter will produce winners all year round, all of the time. This is why in over 200 years no one has ever come up with a fool proof system that constantly finds winners. Horse racing is a volatile medium. For a start, many of the horses running this year won't have run last year, or at the very least, all the horses are a year older. This alone is already enough to begin encrypting the previous years form, and there are far too many variables for the outcome of a race ever to be reduced to a simple formula.

It has often amazed me when so called racing pundits have ridiculed research data that doesn't go back at least ten years. Has it never occurred to these people that at least 80% of those horses in such data are no longer racing or indeed dead, so what on earth can their influence be on today's outcome! Racing is an on going event and it is today's form that needs to be analysed, not that of irrelevant ancestors.

If one said that Mohammed Ali's victory over Henry Cooper would have a definitive influence on the outcome of today's heavyweight contenders, you would be likely to be considered a "nutter". Yet when it comes to racing, apparently sane men will use the exact same argument. Remember, it is today that counts and recent form that must be considered. Recent being the last two or three races, although early in the season, or in the event of an injury, the last races may have been some time ago.

O.K, so back to my filters. Going back to the beginning of the SpeedmasterOnline data it is plain to see that some filters will work very well some of the time or at certain times of the year, but no filter will work all of the time, year in, year out. I keep a library of about 20 filters, about 15 of which are permanent. The other five being current experimentation. Generally speaking, there are at least two or three of them that are performing well at that moment and these are the ones to concentrate on. After all the work that has gone into Speedmaster to obtain this level of analysis it is important not to get side tracked.

So there you have it. Experiment with the construction of filters and don't discard those that are not performing as they once had. The return of another "wet" season, or whatever the conditions were at the outset can be just what you need to return to a filter's form. I have two or three filters that are definitely seasonal, and even though the window may be short, I know that these will guarantee me winnings at certain times of the year. The beauty of SpeedmasterOnline is that you can experiment all you like, find something that works for you and have the success measured in an instant. As far as I know, there is no other resource available that can give you all this analytical power in one concentrated package.

The very first thing I do is scan down the Racing Today page and look to see how many of the races have a good success ratio for the three SMOL ratings. Look out for this on the race card as it tells you just how successful that rating has been at that course for this race type (handicap or stakes). Basically, just how relevant IS the rating?

Then I go to the first race and look at the race card in a little more detail.

Looking at the top rated horses in the three categories (Form, Speed and Overall) I look to see if either of them matches the following -

For non-2 year olds

Course and distance winner (CD somewhere in the CD column)
Won or placed last time out
Dropping in class (not necessary, but an advantage if it did well in its last race and everything else is going up in class)
On flat races, whether the horse has an advantageous draw.
For handicap races, not going up significantly in weight, or better still dropping in weight by a large amount, especially if it did well last time(unusual, but it happens)

For 2yr olds, I generally leave the race alone anyway. The only things I will consider is a horse which has won or placed its last two and the trainer has a high success rate. Generally, however, I don't touch them.

Next, I scan down to the lower part of the page. The same horses are listed here and there is some really useful background information.

The Comment provides a real insight into its last race. There is also a numeric valuation of the comment (an attempt to quantify the comments with a numeric value). The higher value representing a good performance last time out based on certain key words. You can also see here the distance by which the horse was beaten (second place by 0.25 lengths is much better than second by 18 lengths).

On extreme going types (heavy or fast, for example) it is useful to see which horses have won or placed on this going. A lot of the time, a horse has a good record on fast ground but has never performed well on soft or heavy ground.

The next four things I look for are

Which horse has the highest win percentage over the last 450 days? This is highlighted in the Win % column.
Which horse has won the most actual races. You have to scan the Win History column for this.
These two elements, combined with the Prize Money value tell you which horses have been the most successful in this race type recently. The prize money is important because it often tells you the horse has not only won races, but they are higher value (and therefore more competitive) races.
Which horses are form franked - have won or placed in their last race, and another horse in the same race has subsequently gone on to win. This tells you the race probably wasn't a total waste of time and that there were other decent horses in it. This is most relevant if the last race was recent (Days Since in the top table) and this horse won it or lost by a short distance.

By now, I have generally identified 2 or 3 horses which look strong. (Obviously, if there's only 1 by this stage I back it of the odds are worthwhile). I then use the history record for each horse "in the frame" by clicking on the horse's name in the top table. This produces a table showing how the horse performed in all race types since May 2004.

The last key thing I look for in this table, is whether the horse has a decent record at this distance - especially if it is a sprint or, at the other extreme, a long trip today.

A lot of the races I dismiss instantly - because there is insufficient data, the race is among two year olds, because too many horses have a strong indication for one reason or another.

That's probably the golden rule - you don't have to bet on every race and there are probably only 2 or 3 races at the most worth betting on most days. Somethimes there are more, sometimes none at all.

Stuff I don't really consider that much (I don't ignore it, but only really use it as supporting evidence or possibly an indication of a threat if another horse has it)

NB horses
Fast Time

That's it, really. It sounds a lot and it probably takes me 3 or 4 minutes per card if the race is worth pursuing.