Speedform – Final Review
Speedform is a speed and form ratings service for UK horse racing.
Ratings services are a longstanding feature of horse racing and provide a way for punters to compare horses based on a range of factors and to see how they line up for a race today. Ratings platforms such as Timeform and Raceform have been around for many years and proved popular with aspiring punters. Speedform focuses on the metric of speed but utilises other factors in its ratings calculations too.
The Speedform ratings service is pretty simple to use and after signing up you get access to the daily ratings and their key metrics.
We followed the ratings for just under three months, using a strict criteria:-
– Backing the top rated SF (the speed rating) horse when the rating is clear by 5 points
– Odds between 5.0 and 26.0 at BSP
– Only horses that have run within the last 30 days
We weren’t able to follow the ratings every day due to other commitments but that was OK, they are not “tips” as such so you can use them as and when you are able to.
Using the above criteria we did struggle however, finishing with a loss of 76 points after around 300 selections.
In this instance we don’t feel it is appropriate to give a final “verdict” as such as there are multiple different ways you can use the ratings and we only tested one, so people using different strategies may have done better than us. But at the same time based on using the criteria listed above we couldn’t recommend the ratings at the moment either.
We would like to see an option for e-mail selections to be sent out if you select certain criteria as that would make things much easier and user-friendly, so we hope such an option is added in future. It would also be useful to run various strategies in a “test mode” to see if they work and to find optimal use of the ratings, which at the moment would all have to be done manually.
Anyway, as we say we aren’t able to give a definitive verdict on the Speedform ratings for now but unfortunately using the criteria described above we did finish with quite a considerable loss for our trial.
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Speedform – Results Update
11th February 2020
Speedform is a ratings and form guide service for UK horse racing based on speed ratings. We have been following the ratings for just over two months now, using a strict criteria:-
- – Backing the top rated SF (the speed rating) horse when the rating is clear by 5 points
- – Odds between 5.0 and 26.0 at BSP
- – Only horses that have run within the last 30 days
We haven’t been able to follow the ratings every day due to other commitments but that is OK, they are not “tips” as such so you can use them as and when you are able to.
It’s been a rough time recently though, with 49 points lost since our last update a month ago.
That means we are now 57 points down for our trial overall.
You can get full results here.
As mentioned last time, there have been quite a few seconds, including a number at decent odds, so the picture could be quite different right now.
As it is though things have been a struggle so let’s see if they can turn things around over the next few weeks.
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Speedform – Results Update
10th January 2020
Speedform is a ratings and form guide service for UK horse racing based on speed ratings. We have been following the ratings for just over a month now, using a strict criteria:-
- – Backing the top rated SF (the speed rating) horse when the rating is clear by 5 points
- – Odds between 5.0 and 26.0 at BSP
- – Only horses that have run within the last 30 days
We haven’t been able to follow the ratings every day due to other commitments but that is OK, they are not “tips” as such so you can use them as and when you are able to.
Anyway, so far we are 8 points down to 1-point level stakes.
You can get full results here.
There have been quite a few second places so we could be in profit if just a couple of those had come in, but of course that is betting for you.
The ratings are easy to use and it only takes 10-15 minutes each day to find the selections and place the bets.
In any event, let’s hope a few of those seconds start turning into firsts by the time of our next update.
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Speedform – New Review
3rd December 2019
We have something a little different for you today here at Honest Betting Reviews.
We are taking a look at a service called Speedform, which is a speed and form ratings service for UK horse racing.
Ratings services are a longstanding feature of horse racing and provide a way for punters to compare horses based on a range of factors and to see how they line up for a race today. Ratings platforms such as Timeform and Raceform have been around for many years and proved popular with aspiring punters.
One aspect of ratings which has grown in ubiquity is rating horses based on their speed. In simple terms this means recording the time it takes for a horse to complete a race of a given distance and comparing it to the time taken by other horses to complete the same distance.
Speed ratings are largely an American idea, popularised by Andrew Beyer in a number of very technical and in-depth books, the most famous of which is Beyer on Speed.
Although not exactly a light read which you’d take with you on holiday, Beyer’s seminal work explained in great detail how the speed of horses is a very important, but largely overlooked, factor in horse racing. Speed ratings demonstrated they could be very profitable if used in the right way and therefore become very popular.
The Speedform website explains the value of speed ratings quite well:-
“Most casual punters will simply look at the finishing positions of the horses in a race to determine the likely winner, but this often does not tell the whole story….
For instance, say we have a 7f race at Kempton, Horse A won it’s last race and Horse B came 4th, both over the same course and distance as today and carrying the same weight, Horse A is the obvious winner right?.
Wrong. Because if we look at the speed ratings the horses achieved in those races, Horse A achieved a speed rating of 86 compared to Horse B’s rating of 91, which means although Horse A won it’s race, that race was run in a slower time than Horse B’s race, so although Horse B only managed to come 4th, it covered the 7f in a quicker time, so all other things been equal Horse B should beat Horse A today.”
Just using speed ratings on their own isn’t a surefire way to success of course, but when used in the right context and in combination with other form factors, is a potential way to gain an edge on other punters.
What really piqued our interest was the past results on the website, which show for instance:
- – 581 points profit (BSP) from 2849 runners (ROI: 20%) for backing horses to a given criteria
- – A profit of 95 points (BSP) from 546 runners (ROI: 17%) when backing at odds of 4/1 or less in given criteria
- – A lay profit of 731 points (to early prices) to a morning price of 6/1 or less when laying to certain criteria.
So very strong results there and well worth investigating further to see if they hold up in a live trial.
With a ratings service like this of course it is all about how you use the ratings, so people will get different results depending on how they use the ratings.
What we will aim to do is give an overview of the service and then also provide a sample of results from following the criteria that gave the 581 points profit at BSP mentioned above (which was over about an 18 month period).
So we will kick off a review today and will report back soon on how things are going.
In the meantime you can check out Speedform for yourself here.
