Rabbits, Irish Guineas, Red Bull, Max, and a very dangerous Northerner. HEAT WARNING!!!
Finally, a chance to report back on life in the slow lane at The Château d’If. The fact is that it has been far from slow. Firstly, we’ve been working hard on trying to get the BOP ratings into some sort of presentable order. The number of rabbit holes that we have explored would beggar belief.
We had something of a breakthrough this morning: Betty and George, my two AI helpers, have told me that some of the figures we have produced over the last two weeks have been quite encouraging.
One of the rabbit holes - and I use the term advisedly as shall be clear - was revisiting the work done by my late, old friend John Carrington, who developed what was essentially a stochastic method for measuring trainers’ form. I have been trying to replicate his work, but let me manage future expectations by suggesting that a fair comparison of my developments would be to suggest that Mowgli could recreate Einstein’s work. It’s doable - but in much the same way as monkeys will eventually write Taming of the Shrew, given sufficient time and paper.
Anyway, in brief, this week we consistently achieved sensible ROIs for the top 2 in the ratings, and, when combined with a high trainer score, they generated an 18.5% win ROI. Combine that with a speed rating, and we get a 27.1% win ROI. One of the key alterations in our rating set is that we have started utilising a percentage of runners beaten (PRB), which is combined with the ratings to give us a more clearly defined score. With me so far? Keep up at the back there, Snodgrass!
The problem is, of course, that every time we fiddle with it, we have to go back to the drawing board and recount everything to check our figures, so it is quite a long process. So slowly, slowly - but I do think we will have a clear daily set of ratings ready by Royal Ascot.
This, of course, assumes that betting will be allowed in the future. I can’t believe the Gambling Commission hasn’t had the cojones to simply say they are not qualified to make a decision on affordability checks. The nonsensical argument that they have been putting up, driven entirely by corrupted data, some of it possibly deliberately, plus the machinations of a health lobby, which is already incapable of managing a decent computing system, beggars belief. I’ll say it again, just in case anybody from the Gambling Commission is reading this: you cannot ask for affordability checks on people having a flutter and at the same time run the National Lottery. You can’t ask people to justify having a bet and yet not ask them to explain how they are on benefits and able to afford a car on credit, have a Sky TV subscription, and purchase season tickets for football matches. It is just grotesque.
In the meantime, the Canadian Grand Prix paddock at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve is deluged by new levels of gossip, innuendo, politics and evil deeds, much of it - who would have guessed??? - surrounding Red Bull, Horner and Max Verstappen.
Despite publicly cooling the fires at every opportunity, Max remains the epicentre of the paddock’s biggest long-term narrative. Speculation refuses to die that
