"Which Punting Edge Have You Lost Over the Years?"

Kingsley on SEN radio with racing.com. Segment courtesy of SEN x racing.com.

Someone asked me which edge I used to take advantage of that no longer works. The honest answer is speed ratings. They were a genuine edge for a long time. They are not anymore, because they are so widely published. And it goes further than that. Sectionals have gone the same way. The last 200 metre sectional used to be a big advantage. That edge has gone too. Anything that becomes really publicly available loses its edge very quickly.

Why speed ratings stopped working

There was a time when working out how fast a horse actually ran, rather than where it finished, put you ahead of the market. You had to do the work yourself, and not many people were doing it. That is the definition of an edge. You know something the person betting against you does not.

Now the ratings are everywhere. They get published, they get quoted, they get discussed. The moment that happens, the information is in the price. You are not being paid for knowing it, because everyone knows it. The numbers are not wrong. They are just no longer worth anything on their own.

Sectionals went the same way

Sectionals followed the exact same path, just later. The last 200 metre sectional was a strong angle for a while. It told you something about how a horse finished off a race that the result alone did not show.

Then it became part of the standard conversation. You now see Vincent Coddy and plenty of other very good analysts come on and talk through the sectionals and the speed. They will tell you a race was run hard early and slower late. That analysis is sound. It is also public. Once it is said out loud to a big audience, the market adjusts, and whatever edge sat in that piece of data is gone.

What this tells you about edges in general

The lesson is not that speed ratings and sectionals are useless. The lesson is about how edges work. An edge lives on the gap between what you know and what the market knows. Publicity closes that gap. It closes it faster now than it used to.

So you cannot treat an edge as something you find once and keep forever. Whatever is working for you now is on a clock. The better it works, the more likely it is that other people find it, talk about it, and publish it. Then you are back where you started.

That is not a complaint. It is just the landscape. If you accept it early, you spend your time looking for the next thing instead of defending something that has already been priced in.

Have a look at what you are relying on and ask how public it is. If the answer is that it gets discussed openly every week, assume the edge in it is thin or gone, and put your work somewhere else.

Every race on the card, rated, with Kingsley's selections and the speed maps behind them. Your first day is free, no card needed.

More from Kingsley

• "How Do You Analyse Your Losing Bets?"
• How Should You Stake a $1,000 Betting Bank?
• "Should You Bet Against a Jockey Who Is Out of Form?"

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