Newcastle Draw Bias: 6f

Track: Newcastle
Distance: 6f
Stalls: High (Occasionally Centre)

Summary: Advantage being drawn high.

Newcastle has a straight 6f track, where the stalls are normally high. That means the highest stall is nearest to the stand’s side rail.

To overcome this problem we have called the highest stall (nearest the stand’s rail) stall ‘0’. From there we work across the track from highest to lowest. The bigger the minus number, the further away you are from the stand’s rail. e.g in a 10-runner race, stall 10 is against the stand’s rail and denoted as stall ‘0’.

Moving Average: Actual v Expected wins (2008 to 2012)

Graph depicts number of actual wins above or below expected number of wins, when taking into account bookmaker margin. E.g. If a horse raced 10 times from stall one, each time with an SP of 9/1, you would expect 1 winner and the difference between actual & expected wins = 0

To get around the problem of a small sample size, I have used a moving average. This groups together adjacent stalls (two either side) as a block.

Conclusion: Horses in the highest five stalls enjoy a big advantage over the rest of the field. When the stalls are placed in the centre this bias evaporates, unless there is a big field. It takes 16 runners to fill the width of the track. The spike around stall 16 is an anomaly because of small sample size.