Directus Horse Racing Odds Finder - MCP Hackathon

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  • Project name: Race Help

  • Project description: I’ve built an AI-powered horse racing odds comparison system for the Directus MCP Hackathon. Users ask natural language questions about race odds, and the system intelligently fetches data on-demand from external APIs, stores it in Directus, and provides value betting analysis.
    Core User Experience

    User: “What are the best odds for the 12:15 at Newcastle today?”

    System:

    1. Checks if recent odds data exists in Directus

    2. If missing or stale (>30 mins), fetches fresh data from The Odds API

    3. Analyzes odds across bookmakers

    4. Returns conversational response highlighting best prices and value opportunities

  • Challenge entered: Project

  • Team details: Just myself

  • Technical details: The Directus instance is self-hosted on a VPS with a MySQL backend. I’m using ChatGPT to design and build the system via the MCP.

  • Starting point details: Started from scratch this morning :slight_smile:

  • Demo video of no more than 5 minutes: https://www.loom.com/share/bdff51c96dad44179472ac8a0aa52f3a

    Example:
    ”Give me the best value odds for 2pm today at Ascot”.

    Outputs:
    Straight answer, no fluff.

    For the 2:00pm at Ascot today, using the current Races MCP odds, the best value plays (i.e. runners where the top price is meaningfully bigger than the market average, not just the shortest favourite) are:

    :fire: Best Value Odds (14:00 Ascot)

    1. Silver Gambit

    • Best price: 8.77 (SureWin)

    • Why value: Clear standout. Market ranges from ~7.9 to 8.77 — that’s a big spread. If you fancy this at all, this is pure price edge.

    2. Electric Rocket

    • Best price: 6.27 (OrbitBet)

    • Why value: Trading closer to ~6.0 elsewhere. Not favourite, but overpriced relative to the mid-market.

    3. Crimson Horizon

    • Best price: 4.52 (BetBravo)

    • Why value: Solid contender with prices mostly ~4.3–4.4. Small edge, but real.

    :cross_mark: Not Value (Correctly Priced / Overbet)

    • Clever Comet – Favourite, but tightly priced everywhere. No edge.

    • Midnight Arrow / Golden Premium – Efficient market, little to gain.

    • Risk Premium – Single bookmaker price only; no real comparison = no value signal.

    Bottom line

    If you’re betting on value, not vibes:

    • Silver Gambit is the clear standout

    • Electric Rocket next best

    • Crimson Horizon if you want something shorter but still mispriced

    If you want, I can:

    • rank these by implied probability vs fair price

    • flag each-way value

    • or compare early vs late market drift

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Just a quick note to say thanks for submitting @David_O! We’ll have winner’s announcements next week. Have a great weekend :sunflower: