Handinaps - How did you do?

With Johan winning the Lincoln on Saturday, 21 tipsters in the Handinap competition will be very happy.  But we all know that a good bet can lose and a bad bet can win.  It is about the process rather than the outcome. 

So what were the good bets?

The Experts

StarSports had released a market on who would win the Handinaps competition.  It quickly reflected the money as a couple of users clearly wanted the honour of going off as favourite.  Some unknown names moved to the top of the betting and the compiler has mentioned some losers in the book.


However before the market was turned upside down I took a screenshot.  It would be handy to have a list of twitter profiles which were rated highly for their tipping ability, coming from another expert on racing and trading.  So this is the list that I will use as the experts.  The list is solid, I've enjoyed any content, interviews and guests on podcasts this list have put out.

Below are their reported picks. 



And broken down by frequency:


The standout difference between the experts and the rest of the competition is "Darkness" picked 18% of the time by the experts but only 8% overall (the popular horses were given in the googlesheet shared by Handinaps).

This is a French horse that had never raced in the UK before, had not raced in 286 days and was racing for a new Trainer for the first time.  Maybe then a hard one for the betting public to get behind, maybe a good angle there at finding a generous ISP.

There were some write-ups on Darkness here and here.

The Markets 

As well as the experts, we can benchmark our picks against the market.  The market is often the ultimate expert.  Which horses did the market favour?  Lets look at the horses BSP's.



Most horses were negative EV compared to the expert opinion of the market. So its more a question of which were the least bad picks rather than which were the best picks.  Marie's Diamond each way the only one that indicates (tiny) positive EV.  The next best picks were also each way selection on What's the Story and United Front.

So even if you are sitting on -4, there might be still some reason for you to feel vindicated by your picks.  

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