What the pattern suggests
Together with Beverley, Chester over 5 furlongs has the most well-known draw bias in the country. Obviously you need to be drawn low, but you also need a horse with early speed to make use of a good draw. As you'd expect, the bigger the field, the more important it is to be drawn low — no horse has won a handicap at Chester in the last 5 years from the top half of the draw when there have been 11 or more runners. The catch with this bias is that everybody knows about it, so low numbers are invariably overbet. One possible angle is soft ground, where the outside stall has won half of the races run in those conditions, possibly because the inside gets very chewed up when everyone wants to race there.
How to read the chart
Each mark represents a winning stall number plotted against the total number of runners. This reveals whether winners repeatedly cluster towards the low, middle or high side.
The source chart covers horses aged three and older in handicaps from 2024–2025.
Stall-numbering note: Stalls at Chester are always positioned on the inside of the track.
Historical winning-stall chart
|
WINNING STALL NUMBER |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | ||
| No
of R U N N E R S |
8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||
| 9 | 1 | 11 | 11 | 1 | 11 |
H'caps Only 2024 - 2025 |
|||||||||||||||
| 10 | 11111 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||||||||
| 11 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| 12 | 1 | 9 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||
| 13 | 11 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||
| 14 | 11 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||
| 15 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 16 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 17 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 18 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 19 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 20 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 12 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
|
0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | |||||||||
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|
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How to use the bias
- Pace: identify where the likely early leaders are drawn and which runners can secure a good position.
- Going: consider whether the inside or outside is riding faster on the day.
- Field size: draw effects are often more meaningful when runners are crowded into larger fields.
- Recent evidence: rail movements, watering and weather can alter the effective bias.
Conclusion
Together with Beverley, Chester over 5 Furlongs has the most well known draw bias in the country. Obviously you need to be drawn low but you also need a horse with early speed to make use of a good draw. As you would expect the bigger the field the more important it is to be drawn low, as our stats show no horse has won a handicap at Chester in the last 5 years from the top half of the draw when their has been 11 or more runners. The problem with the draw bias at Chester is that everybody knows about it, so low numbers are invariably overbet. The one angle might be when its soft as you can see that the outside stall won half of the races run on soft ground, the reason for this could be that when its soft the inside gets very chewed up as that is where everyone wants to race.