Greyhound Race Grader Software – Introduction and Summary
Hi constables, The Commissioner asked me to have a look at the Greyhound Race Grader (from now on known as GRG). I have decided (in consultation with him above) not to review this for the 56/84 day period for reasons that will be made clear below. I did manage to analyse some of the races over a two day period and I will offer some statistics at the end.
So what is the GRG?
The GRG is a software application that is downloaded onto your PC via a zip file, and once registered via a code supplied by the system owner, runs as a standalone program.
The system costs £28 and is available via Clickbank purchase.
The GRG allows you to grade/rate all greyhound races in the UK for the day using 2 different filters : i) Any measurable race grade or ii) Same history grade group as race grade group.
Or, to explain, for i) it will analyze the greyhound’s previous races irrespective of grade (e.g whether it was an A5/T3 race etc and for ii) If the current race is A3, it will only analyze races that began with A and ignore any races that aren’t in that grade.
The results for each greyhounds last 5 races are used for analysis but the grader works to a lowest common denominator, e.g. :
HP races cannot be rated by the grader. So, from the 6 greyhounds (that all have 5 race history), if the greyhound in Trap 3 has run a HP race in it’s last 5 races, then the grader will only use a 4 race history for it’s analysis. If Trap 3 has run 3 HP races in it’s last 5 races, then the grader will only use 2 race history for it’s analysis.
Once graded the results are shown with each greyhound allocated a points score, the higher being the best graded greyhound.
The GRG also provides a dutching calculator where you can manually enter the odds of greyhounds you are interested in backing with your profit target and it will calculate the software accordingly.
For those of you that want to have a sneak peek at the software in action, you can have a look at the video available from the link on the BST website, or the one at the bottom of this email.
How do I use the software to grade a race?
You select the race and time from two drop down menus and GRG will bring up the race. You then choose which grading method (any/same) and then click on the ‘prepare forecast’ button. If you then want to grade via the other option, you need to click on the ‘race selection’ button, choose the other grading method and click ‘prepare forecast’ once more.
Once you’ve graded a race, you can save it to a file on your computer and load it up later.
So what are my thoughts on the GRG?
Well, the software is very easy to use and very quick. I did find it frustrating, after grading a race via the Any method, having to click to the race selection screen to return back to the selections in order to change the grading option to Same to prepare another grading for the same race, although you do get in a bit of a rhythm after a while!
I would also have liked an option to grade all the races in a day via both methods and be able to print off a report with these on for further analysis. But this is not available, you have to manually grade each race via both methods…I then found myself writing down the selections, then grading the next race, writing it down and so forth.
Also, with the dutching calculator, it is worth noting that you need to enter the odds manually. This is not me making a negative point, but I just wanted to point out that there is no automation of any sort with Betfair etc.
So why aren’t you reviewing this for 56/84 days?
I found that it took about 2 minutes for me to grade a race via both methods and to write down the grading results on a piece of paper. I make it there are about 1o meetings a day with 12 races each. So 120 races times 2 minutes = 240 minutes, or 4 hours. The races start about 11 a.m. and can finish near 11 p.m. so, the way I was doing it, meant I was never going to be able to do it all and fit in 9 hours of train driving as well as my other commitments.
People with more time on their hands, or people that might only be interested in specific meetings/races, or even people who don’t document all the ratings onto a piece of paper the way I did might fare a lot better.
So what did you do?
I managed to grade two meetings on Monday Spetember 28th and two more on Tuesday September 29th. This gave me 48 races worth of data to analyse. Of course this is only 20% of the data for each day so is merely a subset (which is why this is a summary post and not a review), but there was enough information to spot a couple of positive trends.
With my 48 race data, I then filtered out some races as follows :
i) Where the Any/Same gradings produced exactly the same results (e.g. if all 6 greyhound’s 5 previous races had been A grade race, the Any/Same gradings can’t be different.
ii) Where the Any or Same races produced a joint-highest graded greyhound. e.g. the 13.12 at Sheffield on the Monday said that for the Any grading, greyhounds 2 and 3 tied on 47 points.
So I was interested in looking at races where the GRG had produced a clear top-rated greyhound in each race where the Any/Same ratings weren’t identical. That was my preference.
This narrowed the 48 races down to 18 races.
And so for some statistics
Possibly a cardinal sin here, but results below will show ISP and not Betfair prices. As it an overview, hopfully I won’t get in trouble 🙂
So, 18 races…
Option 1) Backing the Any top-graded selection : 18 races, 1 winner at 9/2, 5 places at 2/1, 9/8, 9/8 and 11/16 (based on 1/4 odds the first 2)
Option 2) Backing the Same top-graded selection : 18 races, 3 winners at 4/1, 7/2 and 4/1. 6 places at Evens, 5/8, 3/8, 7/8, 11/16 and Evens.
Option 3) Backing the top-graded selection where Any = Same : 7 races, 1 place at 11/16
Option 4) Forecasting – Back the top-graded selection for Any with the top-graded selection for Same where Any and Same are different. 11 races, 2 forecast winners paying £16.68 and £36.44 to £1 stakes. Do these 7 races as a £1 reverse forecast would give a £33.12 profit.
Option 5) Lay the Any selection : 18 races, 1 winner at 9/2 but 17 selections lost
Option 6) Lay the Same selection : 18 races, 3 winners, at 4/1, 7/2 and 4/1. 15 selections lost
Option 7) Lay the top-graded selection where the Any and Same selection match : 7 races no winning greyhounds so 7 winning bets for us.
So to summarise
I want to repeat that the above analysis was done using only a 20% sample of the day’s greyhound racing so to make any iron-cast assumptions would be unfair. Further to that, I then used my own filters to narrow down the selections to a maximum of 18.
So from that very small subset, I couldn’t seem to make a profit backing the selections. But Laying the Any selection (when it was different to the Same selection) was profitable, as was laying the top-graded greyhound where Any = Same.
Also, forecasting was interesting, you don’t need many of those to show a profit.
It may seem odd that I am advocating laying top-graded selections, this could be because my data subset is so small it has become distorted. Then again, if a system works or looks profitable, then go with the flow!
And finally
I can’t help but feel the GRG just needs an option to grade all the races of the day in one go and let you print out the results. My personal opinion. As it doesn’t do that, I found there was a fair bit of work involved getting the race information down on paper in a way that I would like it formatted.
However, even with a small subset of data, there does seem to be more than 1 way to use this software so potentially it could be lucrative.
My recommendation is that if you are curious, then buy it. It comes via clickbank so has a solid refunds policy.
I suspect that it could be used to generate a profit but you will need to set some time aside to grade the races.
All comments welcome – maybe you are using GRG and may have some points you wish to add?
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Sgt Rob.
