There is a lot of talk these days about making money betting on horses using trainer moves. Vendors of past performances often list them alongside horse racing lines, along with the actual ROI (return on investment) for the specific move. An example would be, down 2 classes +3.10meaning that when that trainer drops a horse two levels, he wins enough to make a nice profit.
The only problem with this is that, like all previous performance data, it’s a look at the past, not a look at the future. While you may be using past performance, what you are really trying to do is forecast what will happen today. Call it forecasting or fortune telling, or whatever you want, what you are doing is predicting the future.
The reasoning of many is that by looking at what the trainer did in the past, you will be able to tell what he is likely to do today, and of course the same is true for horses. The problem with that line of thinking is that you can’t predict what bettors will do and their reluctance to back conditioners of other horses in similar situations is why they showed positive ROI.
Are you beginning to see where this is going? If you’re sitting reading that this trainer move has a positive expectation, you can bet your sweet career form that thousands of other potential handicaps are doing the same thing and thinking it’s going to be as easy as finding money on the street. . Wrong.
Good forecasters read the form and see patterns, but great forecasters read the form and predict changes. Betting on what always happens is a waste of time – you will rarely get a good value bet. Betting on what hasn’t happened yet but could happen is a harder way to cash in tickets, but the cash tickets you make will generate long-term profits.
While we all use those trainer moves sometimes, the best way to use them is sparingly and only when the rest of the field offers no hope. Even then, however, it will be difficult to make a profit on them. The best paying moves are unexpected or undervalued moves. If the crowd sees that a trainer wins with a certain move, but it’s usually not profitable in the long run, they’re likely to write it off as a bad bet.
Think about that for a moment and you’ll see that it’s possible that those negative ROI trainer moves could, in some circumstances, be the best moves to bet on.