Top selections are proofed to the Racing-Index website, usually on the morning
before racing, occasionally the evening before.
The intention is always to proof every race, every day. In practice this is not
achieved (although we come close) and circumstances do sometimes prevent
submission of selections.
Apart from this it is inevitable that some top selections are declared non-runners.
Although the Racing-Index site allows users to re-submit, it is very easy to miss
a declaration, escpecially if it happens close to the off.
So what we do is to keep two separate supplementary Excel files, one for top
selections that became top selections due to non-runner declarations, and one
for selections not submitted. These files are merged with the proofed selections
to produce tables for all races run under rules in both the UK and Irish racing
jurisdictions.
Users who enjoy doing their own analysis are welcome to copies of the
supplementary files.
During 2006 Racing-Index introduced a way of estimating profit had bets been
placed on an exchange rather than at SP. Visitors to the Racing-Index site can
now re-rate tipsters based on their own estimate of how much more favourable
exchange prices are compared to SP.
To get to the Racing-Index site, click on the link on the left. The site is pretty
intuitive to use but it's good idea to start by clicking on 'Comparison Tables'
under 'Proofing' on the left and to play around a bit to get a feel for the site.
You can choose both an appropriate commission rate as well as the improvement
on starting prices that you think is sensible. Prior to the changes in the method
of calculating SP, a % improvement of around 16% was quite easy to achieve. The
change in SP calculation seems to have resulted in an increase in SP over round
of about 1.5%, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to hope for exchange prices about
17.5% higher than SP on average.
