Tuesday, 20 August 2019: The Racing and Sports Priceline for the 2019 Juddmonte International on day one of York's Ebor Festival.

CRYSTAL OCEAN winning the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Ascot in England.

There are three Group races on the opening day of York's Ebor Festival, headined by the Juddmonte International where Crystal Ocean   stands out both in the public market and the market implied by Racing and Sports' pricing model. 

Assessed Prices: 

Acomb Stakes: Persuasion $4.50; Kingbrook $4.50; Valdermoro $5.50; Harpocrates $6.00. 

Great Voltiguer Stakes: Logician $2.70; Constantinople $2.70; Jalmoud $9.00; Nayef Road $9.00. 

Juddmonte International: Crystal Ocean $2.50; King Of Comedy $5.00; Japan $5.50; Elarqam $13.00; Circus Maximus $13.00. 

As we've mentioned in these articles through the season so far, The Model takes an array of ratings, tweaks for some simple variables (jockeys etc) and simulates races to arrive at a set of probabilities/prices.

One of the major problems with this method is that a horse's ratings profile evolves as it gets older, stronger and more experienced and the chance of that array representing what is likely to be produced in the future is dependant on those factors. Sophisticated modellers may use trendy mathematical methods for estimating these things - Markov chains, random walks etc - but even then races like the Acomb Stakes, where eight of the ten are last start winners with just one or two runs to their name, are going to make out-predicting the public market, with it's wisdom of crowds, tough going. 

We can take some heart in the fact that early markets seem even more confused about the Acomb than The Model. Kingbrook  is the biggest difference of opinion with double figure prices available despite The Model seeing him as being at least as likely a winner as any off a strong winning figure last time. 

Japan  is closest to a bet based on the Model's prices in the feature, but it's a bit of a stalemate. More appealing as a bet is his stablemate Constantinople  in the Voltiguer where he is one of two that are spiralling upwards along with race favourite Logician. Nayef Road beat Constantinople last time but is considered unlikely to improve much if at all now while Constantinople looks like he will keep moving his profile in the right direction. Early markets have him a couple of rolls bigger than The Model.