Effects Of The Draw is a very much talked about subject among the horse racing fraternity and I will try and explain some of the complexities that can affect analyzing the results of the draw.

Some of the problems you will encounter are, number of runners, ground conditions, round or straight course, position of stalls and left-hand or right-hand course.

I will start with the number of runners in a given race. At first glance this seems a simple enough process, just see how may have won from a low draw compared to a high stall position. But as with all things in life, it’s not quite as simple as that and I will explain why.

Let’s assume there are ten races to be run on the straight course which is perfectly flat and with no draw advantage what so ever. In each of these races there are five runners and each stall takes its turn and wins a race. At the end of the day each stall will have won two races each and have a twenty percent strike rate.

The next day they run the same ten races, only this time, there are ten runners per race and again each stall wins it share of races. So today each stall has managed one win from ten and now has a ten percent strike rate. If we now get a ten horse race on the third day of racing the stats will show that stalls one to five have a 15% strike rate.

This is an average of the first two days racing which were 20% and 10% and stalls six to ten will show a 10% strike rate. This again is an average of the first two days racing but as there were no horses occupying stalls six to ten on the first day it is shown as 10%.

So despite the fact that all stalls have won in turn the low draw is shown as having a 15% strike rate and the high draw is exposed as having only a 10% chance. When in reality both high and low drawn horses would have the same chance of winning.

Given this situation it would make sense to back one of the high drawn horses as the general public would over bet a horse with a low stall position and hence push out the prices of the higher drawn horses.