Ask most punters how they're doing and they'll tell you about last weekend's winner. It's the most natural thing in the world — and one of the least reliable ways to judge whether a betting process actually works. A better question is: did you beat the closing price?
What CLV is
Closing Line Value (CLV) is the difference between the price you took and the market's final price before the off. Back something at 4.0 that starts at 3.0 and you have positive CLV — you got a bigger price than the market settled on, whether or not the horse won.
Why it predicts long-run results
Betting markets are broadly efficient: by the off, the closing price reflects almost everything the crowd collectively knows. Consistently beating that number means your information was good before the market caught up. Over a large sample, that's the strongest statistical signal that a process has a genuine edge — far more stable than win rate, which swings wildly with variance.
What CLV doesn't tell you
CLV isn't profit. Commission, place terms, available liquidity and plain variance all sit between "beat the close" and "money in the bank". A process can have strong CLV and still have losing months. What CLV tells you is whether the selections carry information — the thing worth paying for. Profit then depends on execution and bankroll discipline.
How we use it
Every Algohorse tip is registered at the price available, before the off, and graded against the starting price. The share that beat the SP is our headline CLV — reported with sample size and confidence intervals, never rounded up. It's the number we'll lead our track record with, precisely because it's the one that can't be faked.