If you are a regular (or even casual) punter, you are probably familiar with the look and feel of a ‘traditional’ form guide. 

Not a 'traditional' Form Guide

While traditional horse racing form guides provide us with some of the information relevant to the future outcomes of a race, they are not always displayed in the most user-friendly format, and can often be hard to decipher, particularly for the untrained or casual eye.

Similarly, if you are a punter who likes to crunch the numbers and get down into the detail of every runner, when pulling together your own form for any given horse race you may find you spend a lot of time collating - and manually calculating - information from the wealth of data available. This is time you could better spend analyzing what that information actually means!

That is exactly where Stats Insider's new and exciting Race Pro comes in. 

What is the Race Pro?

Stats Insider's Race Pro digs deeper into the form of all the runners in a given race, focusing on factors relevant to that particular race, and presents them in a simple, easy to read format that allows you to make meaningful comparisons between each of the runners in the blink of an eye!

For example, you may wonder how ROYAL THUNDER has performed when racing over the distance of today's race. Or you may notice the track has been rated a Soft 5 for today’s meet and want to know how all of the runners in Race 7 have faired on a Soft track. Further still, you might think BOULTOUTOFTHEBLUE has a pretty good record at Sandown and want to see if the data backs up that hunch.

Race Pro answers all these questions, and - because it is prepared on a race-by-race basis - makes it easy for you to benchmark different runners in the same field.

For example in the screenshot below, ROYAL THUNDER has a 40% win rate at the 1600m distance, having won two of its five runs at the distance. Likewise, your hunch about their good record at Sandown (albeit from a small sample size) is somewhat correct, with BOULTOUTOFTHEBLUE one from two historically at the track.

You may notice two columns on the Race Pro page that you have not have seen before: SI % and Av MP(under Value).

Here at Stats Insider, we are known for - and love - predictive analytics, particularly in the sporting world, but for us, racing is no different. We've custom-built our own predictive Horse Racing model, which gives us SI %.

What is Stats Insider %?

We are all used to seeing a 'market price' for a horse, which is essentially the bookmakers' odds. The Stats Insider model has also been trained to project what it thinks the starting price of a given horse should be - based on a variety of different data points. This is what we call SI Market Price. We display these as percentages, hence, SI %.

The SI % can then be compared to the bookie's odds - average market price (or Av MP) - to determine if the Stats Insider model has identified any ‘value’ in backing that runner. 

For example, in the below screenshot, we can see that the average market price (bookies odds) equate to a 40% win probability - or $2.50 odds - for MADISON COUNTY, while our SI % has that probability slightly higher at 42% indicating the SI Market Price would be about $2.38. 

While it's not a massive edge, we're essentially getting an extra .12c on the model's valuation by taking the $2.50 available, and finding better odds is even more of a bonus!

It is important to note that whilst the Stats Insider models are trained to achieve long term success in the betting market, the SI % is not a tip or a confidence rating for any given runner. 

Like the other factors on Race Pro, these are just some of the key racing indicators you may wish to consider when pulling together your racing form, and how you wish to use all this information is up to you!

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Keep an eye out for more horse racing content over the coming weeks and months, and, as always, if you are using this information to have a punt please always remember to gamble responsibly.

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