Last night at Sandown wasn’t a very good meeting for me as Dylan had his friend round and I missed backing Jo’burg in the first as we were all playing G1 Jockey on the Wii. Nothing better than beating a couple of 6 year old’s over a virtual 3900 metre chase course with some superior riding tactics. I reckon Timmy Murphy (and a few others) should have a go on this game to try and brush up on their timing!

Anyway they got bored of losing quite quickly and decided to play Star Wars instead meaning I did get to back Cape To Rio, Darley Sun and Prince Seigfried. I would have been better off taking them up on their offer to ‘let me be Darth Vader’ as the force definitely wasn’t with me. Cape To Rio was beaten by a better horse but I think my money was lost on the other two before the races started. In hindsight Darley Sun at 2/1 was a crazy price and I should have left it well alone.

Why? Well, have you noticed just how bad Saeed Bin Suroor’s horses are running?

He must be a very worried man at the moment because Godolphin’s results so far this season have been nothing short of disastrous. They changed their tactics slightly this year and brought their horses over from Dubai a few weeks earlier than normal but it hasn’t helped them overcome their usual slow start and they’re finding winners even harder to come by than in previous seasons.

If you look at all the runners over the past fortnight for the Suroor stable it makes for some sorry reading…..

- Since 14th May they have sent out 27 horses throughout Europe for just 1 winner.

But it’s only when you consider how fancied their runners have been that you realise just how bad the situation is….

-26 of those 27 runners were sent off at under 10/1 (the 27th was 11/1 at Sandown last night)
- 8 of the 27 were clear favourites
-6 of the 27 runners finished stone cold last at odds of 4/6F, 8/1, 15/8F, 5/1, 7/4F and 13/2

For the whole of 2010 they have run 38 horses in Britain for just 3 winners,  £50,000 win prizemoney and a level stakes loss of -30.30. Admittedly over 50% have finished in the top 4 but well over 60% of those races were contested by 8 or fewer runners.

That’s not a lot to show for the multi-millions Sheikh Mohammed ploughs into his racing and Mr Suroor will be hoping their fortunes change in June as Epsom and Royal Ascot loom else he’ll be being served with his P45.

What price Mahmood Al Zarooni is in charge of the entire Godolphin Spring by the end of the Summer? If Rewilding wins the Derby it could be even sooner than that.

———

Lottery Numbers

For all members of last weeks Scoop6 Syndicate here are the lucky numbers we’ll be hoping come out on the Lottery tomorrow night. No syndicate member has requested their share back so there are 87 lines with, like last Saturday, everyone getting 10/1944th of any winnings……

Today…

Gary’s posted his biggest bet so far in his Tips section and if you’re interested in following him you can find the horse by clicking on the ‘Gary’s Tips’ tab on the left hand menu.

For those of you who were at Newmarket for Matt’s racing day you may remember Kristofferson who most of us backed at a big price at one of the away meetings. He got brought down by a horse falling at the top bend (although the Racing Post claimed he slipped up) when just getting back into the race and the way the front ones stopped that night he may have sneaked into the places if he had avoided the trouble. He runs again tonight in the 8.50 Stratford and is currently 25/1 with Paddy Power. Both Gary and I are looking to get our money back.

The weekend

I’m off with the family to North Somerset for half term so postings may be few and far between for the next 7 days. I’ll be back in plenty of time to see Henry Cecil win the Oaks and Derby but until then, enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend and…..

Good luck,
Gavin.

P.S. Lord Shanakill at Haydock tomorrow will decide if it’s fish ’n’ chips or the Harvester for food all next week .

Sandown holds it’s very popular Brigadier Gerard evening meeting tonight which includes the 5f Listed National Stakes for 2yo’s. Matt and I used to go to this meeting every year from the mid nineties to the early noughties but haven’t been for a few years now. But one person who’s been going far longer than us and still goes every year is Richard Hannon who has spent the last 20 years dominating the National Stakes. He runs the likely favourite again tonight in Cape To Rio.

In fact, he’s won the last 3 renewals of the race and will be looking to repeat the period  from 1992-1997 when he won it 5 times in those 6 years.
His record from 1992 reads 1/1&2/1&5/2/1/1/4/2/3/7/1/4&6/-/6/2/1/1/1 and if you had backed all his runners you would be +14.80 to level stakes.

Cape To Rio is around the 11/10 mark for tonight.

If you want to see what else I’ll be backing tonight then you can download my trends guide for tonight from …

http://www.festivaltrends.co.uk/briggerard2010.pdf

It’s 100% FREE and it’s a direct link to the Guide. No sign-ups or card details required. 100% FREE!

———-

I’ll be back tomorrow with the numbers for our Lottery Syndicate. All 87 lines of them…..

Good luck,
Gavin.

The Scoop 6….

3 winners and 3 seconds is what we ended up with. Close but no cigar.

The 3 winners were down to Gary’s very confident pick, Parisien Pyramid (more about that later), Balducci who was a trends horse plus blog readers most popular and Hamish McGonagall who was picked by all of us as a fairly strong fancy. 

Of the ones that let us down, Final Victory and Kingsgate Native were considered but I have to be honest and say that I wouldn’t have gone with Tactic over at York unless I was able to choose the whole field. Munsef was my strongest fancy from the six races and I just can’t believe that Tactic beat him by 14 lengths. Where did the winner find that kind of improvement from his last 4runs? We’ll probably never know.

We did however manage to get the Place Dividend up twice which gave us a return of £87 and therefore a payout of 45p per share.

What I propose to do, if this is agreeable to everyone, is offer every syndicate member the opportunity to reclaim their 45p share by sending me a Paypal request before Friday morning. After this time, all money that is left in the pot after any share payouts will be used to buy Lucky Dip Tickets for Saturday’s Lottery Draw with any winnings split equally between all syndicate members who have not reclaimed their share.

I will post all the lottery numbers on the Blog before the draw numbers are announced.

If anyone doesn’t want their share to be used in this way please reclaim your money before Noon Friday 28th May.

Thank-you everyone for getting involved and I’m just sorry that we couldn’t get the result we all wanted. I hope you managed to get some fun out of it, especially after the first two had gone in, and maybe we’ll do it again once the fund starts building back up.

Kingsgate Native

A couple of interesting points came about from the Scoop on Saturday. Firstly, if we had permed every horse that readers submitted in their scoop suggestions, apart from having to lay out over £150,000 to put the bet on, we would have had nothing to show for it. Quite incredibly there wasn’t a single reader who suggested doing Kingsgate Native in the Temple Stakes. I’m glad I wasn’t alone in thinking he was the weakest of the front 4 in the betting.

Secondly, in two of the races (2.15 & 2.45 Goodwood ) every horse was chosen by at least one reader which I think goes to show how tight the Scoop races were on Saturday. The fact that they went only 12/1 the outsider in the 9 runner field of the 2.15 Goodwood says it all.

Beyond Desire

I’ve been harping on about this filly since September last year after she got stitched up and turned over when my biggest single bet of 2009. I lost a few more quid backing her for the 1000 Guineas when she didn’t run but judging by her comeback appearance at the weekend  it won’t be long until I get my money back. I had a decent bet on her on Saturday at 5/4, which went some way to repairing the damage, and would imagine she’ll be able to run up a sequence in sprints this Summer hopefully culminating in success in one of the big Group 1 races. Preferably the July Stakes as I’ve got £25ew at 50/1 on her.

Weekend Golf…

Great weather, great company, er, truly shocking golf. Thanks to some poor strokes, dodgy putting and some creative accounting by the scorer I managed to finish last of four. I’m beginning to think Paula (comments) had it right and I’ve now retired my golf clubs. I’d rather have a hundred bad beats on the poker table than suffer another 18 holes like those I had on Saturday. Apparently a bad round of golf is better than a good day in the office but whoever said that obviously didn’t have their office in a poker room or the betting shop.

Gary…

What can I say? The guy is in the form of his life and has been tipping out of his skin for over 2 months now.

Since he’s started putting up his selections on this blog he is an incredible 150 points up on both his selections and his system. Even more incredible when you consider that’s just since 18th April. If there’s a tipster in the country who can boast, and prove, those kind of profit figures I’d be very surprised and would gladly plug him on this blog.

For those who doubted the validity of his claims that Parisian Pyramid was a top priced 8/1, you were indeed correct…….. 8/1 was not the top price available on Saturday. It was in fact 10/1 and it was freely available at this price. Plenty of you have commented or emailed to say that you were on at the 10’s, I know we were. Gary gave it as a 4pt win on his selection page and followed that up with 2pts on his system page. At 10/1 this would actually have given him another 12 points profit to his already highly impressive profit figures. When news came through to us of his win the amount of whooping and jumping around we did on the golf course wouldn’t have looked out of place had any of us scored a hole in one. I’d blame my poor round on all that excitement but I’d been playing badly long before the result was in. Must have been the sun….

To all of you who are feeling guilty about getting all these winners for free then there will be an opportunity shortly to show your appreciation. Gary will be doing a special tipping guide for Royal Ascot which will give an indepth analysis of all 30 races and his selections for each race. It will be just £19.95 for the entire meeting. Check it out here…… http://www.horseraceoutsiders.co.uk/

For those of you not feeling guilty in the slightest about getting all these winners for free then don’t worry. We are delighted to say that all the system horses and tips will continue to be absolutely free of charge. Today’s horses are uploaded and I can pass on the information that he is very keen on Seneschal in the first at Leicester and you should take the 12’s at Betfred….

Good luck,
Gavin.

Thanks for all the comments and emails which have provided the following horses as the most popular….

2.15 Mac Gille Eoin
2.30 Balduccini
2.45 Classic Vintage
3.00 Equiano
3.10 Aajel
3.40 Hamish McGonagall

Adding these to mine, Gary and the Trends selections we have ended up with a perm that looks like this….

2.15 (3-4-7)
2.30 (2-4-6-15) No Hubris is a Non-Runner
2.45 (3-5-9)
300 (3-4-5)
3.10 (2-9-11)
3.40 (5-7-12)

Which is 972 lines and £1944.

I sold 183 shares at £10 each (£1830) meaning Gary and I own £114 of the perm.

So for every share you hold you will receive 10/1944th of any winnings.

I hope everyone’s happy with that and we can get a good run for our money!

Time to hit the fairway.

Good luck,
Gavin.

The Tote have annouced that the 6 races for the Scoop 6 will be….

2.15 Goodwood
2.30 Haydock
2.45 Goodwood
3.00 Haydock
3.10 York
3.40 York

Which includes 4 handicaps, a Listed race and the Group 2 Temple Stakes.
The 16 runner sprint handicap that it ends with is particularly tough so I’ll leave Gary to sort that one out!

If you would like to help pick the selections simply email 1 horse from each race to me at gavin@nag-nag-nag.co.uk or leave them in the comments box.

The two races we have covered in the Trends Guide for Haydock are included in the Scoop 6 and will play a big part in the selections for those races.

I’m off down to Devon as soon as Dylan as finished school so I’ll pick up any emails/selections later this evening before heading to the casino for a game of poker.

Gary and I will put our heads together tomorrow morning to finalise our horses before putting the bet on and posting the perm on the blog.

We’re then off to the golf course with our little bruv and Gary’s eldest son for 18 holes round Dainton.

4 Ball Betting: Gary 5/4 Gavin 5/4 Glenn 5/1 Simon 13/2

We’ll be keeping our eye on the results throughtout the afternoon thanks to the wonders of modern technology and mobile internet access although I think the use of mobiles on the golf course is frowned upon by the Club officials (I’m sure they’ll make an exception when there’s £2million on the line). It should be a fun few days……

Good luck to everyone and have a great weekend,
Gavin.

Well you certainly caught me by surprise there! I knew a lot of you were keen to have a go at the Scoop 6 but I didn’t realise just how many of you there were. Within 90 minutes of putting up yesterday’s link an incredible 183 shares had been sold and as I wanted to try and keep the syndicate manageable I decided to pull the plug. I’m very sorry if this meant any of you missed out on joining our merry band of men and women.

If you did miss out but still want to join a Scoop syndicate then you may like to try the website that I mentioned yesterday (thanks again Craig)…. http://www.iscooped6.co.uk/

So with mine and Gary’s contributions we have around £2000 to construct our Scoop6 Perm with which, while it is a lot of money, is fairly small in terms of the bigger Scoop6 perm syndicates. The biggest problem with the Scoop6 is that it costs £2 per line which effectively doubles the price of your bet and thus reduces the number of selections you can use but it should give us a perm looking something like 3×3x3×3x3×4 which is 972 lines or £1944. I can’t see any race having what you might consider ‘banker material’ but I reckon 3 horses per race should give us a fighting chance (although in some of the races I’m sure we’ll need about 10 chances!).

The Tote haven’t yet announced which races will make up Saturday’s Scoop6 but once they are published I’ll put them up here. We’ll use the trends horses, Gary’s picks, your most popular selections and good old fashioned form study to hopefully scoop the pot….

So if you want to help us out by picking a few horses yourself then simply choose one in each race and email them to me by 8pm Friday night at gavin@nag-nag-nag.co.uk The most popular ones will be used. I’ll post the full perm and selections here on the blog about 1pm Saturday.

Thanks for all your words of encouragement, I hope we can give everyone a run for their money and make it a fun and exciting afternoon.

Which leaves me only to say, ‘the very best of luck to all of us’.

——–

FESTIVAL TRENDS FREE TRIAL OFFER

Available only to Nag3 blog readers this is our best offer yet. We’re giving you a completely FREE trial of Festival Trends until the end of the month. Results have been excellent so far this year and we are up over 120pts in profit for level stakes at SP.

We’ve got Haydock and The Curragh on Saturday with Newmarket, Sandown and Redcar to come next week.

You can only sign up here…. http://www.festivaltrends.co.uk/amember/signup.php

I’ve waived the need to register your card details so it’s now a completely free, 100% genuine trial with no catches whatsoever.
The link will be taken down at midnight tonight (20th May 2010) so be quick if you want to join up.

Good luck,
Gavin.

Okay everyone, you win.

Thanks (I think) for the all the comments, emails and text messages pledging your support for a crack at the Scoop 6 this Saturday.

This is how it’s going to work (if you don’t agree to any part of the following please do not join up)…..

All payments will be made through Paypal. This is the only payment method available.
Shares will be sold at £10.55 each (£10 for share and 55p for Paypal fee).
You can buy a minimum of 1 share and a maximum of 5 shares. (Any excess shares bought will be refunded)
Keep your Paypal payment receipt as this will be your proof of entry to the syndicate.
The perm we do will depend on the amount raised but I want to keep it manageable and under £2000.
I’ll be placing the bet on Saturday at 1pm and will post the selections at this time.
Gary and I will have the final say on selections but if you wish to suggest a line please email 1 horse per race for all 6 races to gavin@nag-nag-nag.co.uk. You do not have to send in any selections to be a part of the syndicate. Any selections sent in will be added up and the most popular chosen.

 The Tote should announce the six races that will make up the Scoop6  tomorrow.

Please use the link below to enter the syndicate. If the link is missing then the Syndicate is FULL. Any money sent after this will be refunded and no claims to any syndicate winnings will be allowed. The syndicate will operate on a simple first come, first served basis.

Simply select the number of shares you require and click the Pay Now button

Any questions please email first….

Oh, and should we be lucky enough to win then all winnings will be equally distributed according to how many shares are sold. Payment will be made as soon as any winnings are paid out by the Tote.

 SYNDICATE IS NOW FULL - DETAILS TO FOLLOW

If the syndicate is full and you still want to have a go at the Scoop 6 then you may like to have a look at this site (thanks Craig) http://www.iscooped6.co.uk/

Good luck to us all,
Gavin.

P.S. The Festival Trends free trial offer will be available tomorrow. Don’t panic though as there are currently no guides available for download. This weekends guides for The Curragh and Haydock won’t be published until tomorrow afternoon.

In today’s post I thought I’d answer a few of the emails and comments I’ve been receiving lately….

Scoop 6 Syndicate

With the Scoop6 win fund proving elusive to punters over the last month or so, and now expected to top £2 million this weekend, I’ve been getting quite a few emails from readers interested in getting together to form a syndicate. Long time readers may remember we formed one about 18 months ago which, although it had an enormous response, was a bit of a disaster and we failed to scoop the pot.

I encountered quite a few problems back then, not least of which was actually getting £6000 together in 48 hours to put the bet on as it takes paypal 4 days to transfer any funds to your bank account, and I’m not overly keen to get involved again. If we had won that time it would probably have taken me another 18 months to sort out and pay everyone’s share!

Also it’s likely the 6 races this weekend will all be very tricky handicaps and actually winning the thing will be near on impossible (nobody ever said winning £2m was easy!) We all know how hard it is to find the winner of one 20 runner handicap, even if you have 2 or 3 picks in the race, and to try and do it 6 times in a day is very tough.

However, if there is enough interest and everyone involved was aware that the chances of success aren’t great I may be persuaded to form a smaller syndicate. I’ll gauge the interest over the next 24 hours and then make a decision late tomorrow afternoon. I will limit it to 100 shares at £10 each with any difference between the cost of our perm and the £1000 being made up by myself. You’ll be able to buy a maximum of 5 shares each to give everyone a chance of joining.

Leave a comment below or email me at gavin@nag-nag-nag.co.uk if you’re interested.

On thing there has been plenty of interest in is Gary’s system horses as I’ve had quite a few emails on the subject…

Where do you get the advised price from?

Once Gary has picked his selections we check the odds available at www.oddschecker.comto see which firm is offering the best price. As long as we are certain this price is accessible to everyone we advise these odds. By this I mean that at least two of the smaller firms quoted are offering this price or if it is available at one of the big bookmakers i.e. Hills, Ladbrokes, Betfred etc

We are finding that quite often these horses are being backed and would recommend taking the price advised on every runner.

What is the points system used?

I am unable to disclose his sytem but when Gary picks his selections part of the process means they are graded in strength from 1-3. He then simply allocates the relevant points to each runner and recommends each way if the odds are high enough. To apply the points system to your betting simply decide on your normal stake and bet this stake multiplied by the points allocated.

For example: If you have a bank of £500 and decide that all your bets are to be a £5 (1%) stake then a 3pt horse will be £15, a 2pt is £10 and 1pt ew is £5ew

If you’re looking for a staking system that is a bit more exciting then you may want to choose a % Stake plan. Read all about it here.

How’s he doing?

It’s still early days but so far, so good. There have been a few losers from the 1pt selections but the three big 3 pointers selections have all won and have contributed well to his current level stakes profit of over 30pts in just 3 days!. Today’s runners have been uploaded.

When’s the Bonus Ball Bet coming back?

I’ve been rounding up some more free bets from the online bookies, using various family member names, and I’m planning on bringing it back for June and July.

For those of you who don’t know what the BBB is here’s a brief explanation…..I place a series of bets throughout the month on anything that takes my fancy and all winnings are put in the prize pot. Then all readers are invited to guess the bonus ball in a designated Lottery Draw and if they guess correctly they win, or share, the pot. Simples.

It’s 100% free to enter, open to everyone and has absolutely no catch whatsoever. More news to follow.

After all these winners on the trends can’t you give them away for free?

Okay, Okay. From tomorrow at noon, as a special offer open only to those who read this blog you can have a FREE trial until the end of the Month. Simply register at http://www.festivaltrends.co.uk/amember/signup.php selecting the FREE TRIAL OFFER and you’ll have full access until 1st June.

Important please read: By signing up for this free trial you are agreeing to these terms and conditions.

The free trial will allow you full access to the Members Site and complete access to all the Guides for the period up until 30th May. Scheduled meetings for this period are the Curragh, Haydock, Newmarket, Redcar and Sandown plus an ante-post guide for the Epsom Derby and Oaks.
This offer is completely free but is subject to you signing up for the June monthly subscription of £39.95. This subscription will be taken from your account on June 1st unless you cancel the subscription. You can cancel this June subscription fee anytime up until 30th May 2010. Cancelling the subscription is the sole responsibility of the member and can be done by accessing your paypal account. Cancelling the subscription will not affect your access to May’s Trends Guides. If you wish to carry on with your subscription to include June’s guides (14 race Epsom Guide and 30 race Royal Ascot Guide) simply leave your subscription unchanged. You will not be charged anything after 1st June. No refunds will be given for any June subscriptions taken as part of this free trial offer.

A few more emails from the virtual ’sack’….

After Saturday’s (un)Lucky 15 don’t you think it’s best if you just let Gary do the tipping?- G. Priestley jnr.

Agreed, I’ll stick to the trends.

How annoyed were you when the French Stewards chucked out Liliside? -Mr N. Quiry

Tres contrarie! but not half as annoyed as I was when I found out Ladbrokes don’t pay both results on French races. Merde.

After tipping all three winners in your trends guide on Saturday we you must be off to Vegas again? - Miss S. Bell & Dylan

Unfortunately, I decided to go with trends pick Zacinto and not top rated Paco Boy in the Lockinge meaning I only had 2 out of 3 in my patent. A nice win but not enough to fund a week in Vegas. Yet.

Have you worked out which filly is going to win the Oaks yet? I’ve got it down to a shortlist of 3 - Mr H. Cecil

Thanks for the email Mr Cecil. I too have it down to a shortlist of 3 and I would imagine our lists are pretty similar. At the moment I’m favouring siding with Timepiece over Aviate and Principal Role. I’ll check the trends over the weekend and let you know for certain on Monday.

Have you worked out who is going to win the Derby yet? I’ve got it down to a shortlist of 22 - A. O’Brien

Thanks for the email Mr O’Brien. I reckon you only need to be on one horse in this race and you won’t find him in your list. It’s Bullet Train for me and as long as Mr Abdullah and Mr Cecil agree to run him I can’t see him being out of the frame. It’ll be just like the old days with Henry having the Oaks and Derby double.

Have you got anymore FREEBIES to give away?- Che Eky

Funny you should ask as my good friend Matt Bisogno has just released a FREE system that concentrates on 2yo races and has pinpointed winners at both 66/1 and 100/1. You can get your copy by signing up below…

FREE ‘2yo Bomb’Sytem

And finally, Beyond Desire is due to return to the track on Saturday. Judging by her entry the connections will be sending her sprinting this season which should give me plenty of opportunities to bet her. Having done my money on her for the Guineas I’m out to get it back and have taken the 50’s on a long range ante-post bet for this Summer’s July Cup.

Good luck,
Gavin.

I’ll start by thanking Matt for an excellent day out on Thursday where me and the missus joined up with him and a few other racing enthusiasts at Newmarket. He put a lot of time and effort into making sure things ran smoothly and he was rewarded with a trouble free day that, I think I speak for everyone that turned up, was incredibly enjoyable.

The day started with an enlightening tour around the National Stud with our very knowledgable guide, Jane . On a beautiful Spring day we got to see the stallions and the new born foals in amazingly tranquil surroundings. If I ever win the lottery I’m definitely going to buy myself a stud farm. Though I never knew there was so much planning and science involved in getting two horses together to ‘do the business’.

It was then off to Julia Fielden’s stable for a whizz round her stables where we met a few familiar faces and a few of her new inmates. I never knew how much science went into what I had thought was a pretty straight forward practice of feeding horses. There’s nothing straight forward about it here as they have an amazing array of feeds and supplements that leaves nothing to chance. They even include garlic in their meals so when the horses sweat the garlic odour keeps the flies away from them.

Next stop was the races and although it was a fairly poor card for Newmarket, a winners a winner no matter the quality. Follow the Flag at 17/1 paid for the day and a bit more besides. I never knew that one person could pick so many winners and keep a winning run going for so long until I witnessed my brother antics over the last few months. At Newmarket on Thursday he only had bets in three of their races but managed to bag Follow The Flag (17/1) and Tom Folan (8/1). Yesterday he had two bets on his new system and both won to follow up his systems 33/1 third place the day before.

Finally we ended up in the Rutland Arms where we were witness to the varying stages of inebriation. The stone cold sober (my brother Gary who doesn’t drink), the had a few but okay at the moment (me, wary of the long drive home the following morning), the well on the way and going to pay in the morning (Matt) and the totally gone and fast asleep (I’m too much of a gentleman to name and shame)…..

A cracking day out all round. Thanks mate.

——-

Onto today….

Gary has put up his tips for the sprint this afternoon and on a new page we’re going to be trialling his new system to see if the winners keep on coming. We’ve been following the horses it throws up for about two weeks now and results have been very encouraging. They’ll be available just about everyday and will be posted before 1pm so if you’re looking for daily selections to back be sure to bookmark the page and visit regularly as I won’t be able to notify readers every time new tips are uploaded.

Each selection will be given 1-3pts depending on the strength of the tip and we’ll also be recommending each way on some runners. We will also be advising prices that are available with the leading bookmakers.

If you want to see today’s picks then click on the tab on the left hand menu entitled ‘Gary’s System Horses’

——–

I managed to nab the 18/1 on Lord Shanakill from the Tote last night and he’s my main bet of the day but I’ll be having a small Lucky 15 on the following four……

Verdant 2.30pm Newbury
Rowayton 4.25pm Thirsk
Plume 4.15pm Newbury
Judgethemoment 3.25 Newmarket

——-

Tomorrow morning I’ll be taking a trends look at the French 1000 and 2000 Guineas. I’ll email everyone with a link to the guide which will be 100% free and down-loadable via one click. Until then…..

Good luck,
Gavin.

The last time I gave you an update on my betting exploits was way back in April after the success of the Scottish National. A lot has happened since then but I’m glad to say that the winners are still flowing….

In an amazing national hunt end of season flurry we were bombarded with Aintree (profitable meeting), Ayr (very profitable meeting) and Punchestown (just about a profitable meeting thanks to Golden Silver but no thanks to Denman) in the space of just a few weeks. The final hurrah took place at Sandown at the end of April where I made the big mistake of throwing out the ‘rule book of successful punting’ on the Friday of the meeting. Having gone through the races that day I found quite a few horses that ‘owed me money’ from their previous run and going against my better judgement I decided to back them all. To quote the yellow faced Homer Simpson ‘Doh!‘

…….I couldn’t have said it better myself. £30 Red Badge, £40 Solwhit, £10ew Di Stefano, £10 ew Emeebee, £20ew Inoma James and a hugely unlucky £80 Gaspara. With an added £1ew Lucky 63 on all six it meant I had indeed done my doh!

Saturday, a new day and a chance to get my money back. I fished out the rulebook from the waste recycling bin and sat down with the Racing Post and a couple of slices of toast. I had to forgo my usual bowl of Rice Krispies as I was a bit late getting up and Dylan had finished off the milk on his second bowl of Weetabix. How is it possible that a skinny 6yo can eat 4 weetabix? One of lifes mysteries. The only reason he’s started eating the stuff is because of that TV advert where the jockey falls of his horse and then wins the race.

Scanning the racing I came across a couple of horses that owed me money (actually I doubt there’s a day goes by where there isn’t at least one horse that ‘owes me money’  is running) so I replaced the rulebook in the bin and logged onto my Betfred account as it still had a few quid left in it.

£40 Ashkazar, £20ew I’m So Lucky and £80ew The Package with 3 £5 doubles and a £5ew Treble meant that I was about even for the meeting. I had planned to have a saver in the Bet365 on Gary’s big hope Church Island but greed got the better of me. After Timmy ‘too late’ had messed up (again) on The Package and Gary was no doubt running round his front room clutching a batch of winning betting slips I decided that I was going to play by the rules from now on. I was to be a model punter. No sentimental bets allowed, greed is not good while having savers or ’greening up’ are and absolutely, positively no bets allowed just for the sake of it. Anyone want a tenner that I won’t last a week? 

So it was back to the recycle bin to retreive the rule book and after wiping off the weetabix residue from the cover I had my new betting gospel. The new punting me was here. It was time to put it into practice.

Paco Boy and Glass Harmonium were both solid trends tips in our guides so I had £50, £20 and a £10 double on the two. Following my new betting manual to the tee I decided not to chase previous losses on Barizan (won 4/1), Val C (won 3/1) or Deutschland (2nd 9/1). You know sometimes it’s better not to play by the rules!

There following an amazing 3 days where everything went to plan and I followed all of the rules to the letter. Yes, for 3 days I didn’t have a bet.

By the time Ascot came around on the Wednesday I was absolutely itching for a bet. Aviate looked a good thing to me in the second and my £40 at 13/8 was okay at the time but looking back at it I can’t believe that’s all I had on it. Do you find that when you look back on your bets you never seem to have enough on the winners? I reckon if I had £1000 on a 50/1 winner I’d still ask myself why I didn’t have £2000 on it. Still according to my new rule book, greed is not good and I have to settle for my £65 profit.

I had the Sagaro Stakes between Akmal and Ashkar Tau but, as I am not betting with my heart anymore, I opted for the former and dismissed the old favourite of mine. Watching the race I got the impression Richard Hills had been out on the piss with his brother the night before as he didn’t seem to have a clue what he was doing. By the time he laboured home in 7th (just ahead of Ashkar Tau) it was me in need of a drink as my £50 bet never looked like collecting. I reckon they breath tested the wrong Hills brother.

Wise Dennis had plummeted in the ratings (from a high of 110 to just 82) and was now contesting a Grade 4 handicap at the end of the card. I couldn’t resist £40 on him and as he made a strong looking run from the furlong pole things looked good. But Ryan Moore pulled out a bit more on South Cape and I had to settle for the all too familiar 2nd place finish.

There followed another couple of days abstinence in preperation for Newmarket.

On the Friday I dropped Dylan and Sam at her mothers and raced back home for a weekend all to myself. Betting horses, visiting the casino, playing poker, eating takeaways all with no Spongebob Squarepants or Jeremy Kyle on the telly made for a pretty good couple of days. The missus always wonders how I keep the house so tidy when she’s away but when you’re eating all your food out of fastfood containers and falling asleep on the settee after playing poker into the wee small hours it doesn’t take long to clear away the evidence or keep the bed made.

The Friday night poker went well, too well, as I was still playing at 5am meaning I got up a bit later than planned and all the juicy early-prices had long gone. I backed Viva Vettori (£20 ew)  in the first at Newmarket, which just scraped 4th, and left the second race alone as I couldn’t make my mind up between Claremont and Jukebox Jury. I had no intentions of leaving the 2000 Guineas out of my betting portfolio though and had £25ew Al Zir, £25ew Fencing Master plus a Barry Hills retirement plan £10ew Patent on Red Jazz, Equiano and Sent From Heaven at 100/1, 13/2 and 40/1.

I picked my dad up and headed for the Grosvenor Casino for their Saturday afternoon poker tournament. On entering I remarked that it was a bit quiet for a Saturday and incredibly that’s just how it stayed. By the 3pm start time I was the only registered player for the tournament and therefore won by default. My first live tournament win for at least 12 months.

It did mean that I was able to catch the 2000 Guineas but, unfortunately,without the sound. Until you watch a horse race with no sound and you’re frantically looking through the field for your colours and horse after horse you don’t recognise challenge for the lead in various indistinguishable silks do you realise just how difficult a job racehorse commentary is. Never again will I pass remark on Derek Thompson or Jim McGrath, well not for at least a week anyway.

In transpired that Red Jazz did the best of the three 2000 Guineas horses but it was still a disappointing result for me and retirement plans have been put on hold.

Having at this stage of the day hoped to be deep into a poker tournament and have £000’s of pounds running onto Equiano I hadn’t bothered following up my bets on him at 13/2 so had to settle for £40 at sp on my Betfred phone account. Still a winner is a winner. I just wish I’d had £80 on him at 13/2.

Other losing bets that day included £2oew Dubai Dynamo (Thirsk Hunt Cup), £30 Horseradish and £25ew Azizi (things don’t look good at the Haggas stable so far this season). I also dropped £50 on the roulette table while waiting for my dad to finish his drink but rang up Betfred to put £25 of my winnings on Rodrigo des Torres at Doncaster in the evening. While I was on the phone I also had £100ew on Music Show for Sunday’s 1000 Guineas. Back home I ordered a domino’s pizza (Texas BBQ) to watch Britain’s Got Talent with and fired up the laptop for a marathon poker session. Cecil’s well ridden winner in the 7.15 reduced my losses on the horses for the day but the poker gods weren’t smiling down on me and by midnight I’d given up on the cards and gone to bed.

Sunday morning carried on where Saturday night had left off with more bad luck as the going at Newmarket changed dramatically and spelt disaster for my bets. I was really looking forward to backing Record Breaker in the first and he was all set to be my bet of the meeting but with the drastic change in ground conditions going against him I switched to a smaller bet (£20ew) on Hillview Boy. My £40 on Strawberrydaquiri made it 2 winning bets from 2 but the way the outsider Honimiere had managed to challenge the winner by racing on the stands rail looked ominous for all those drawn high later on the card.

The draw bias meant the best horse didn’t win the Guineas, in fact the ‘winner’ didn’t even win the Guineas, and all my bets were sunk. I spent the rest of the afternoon kicking hell out of my shins for not having a throwaway tenner each way on Henry’s 66/1 winner. The fact that she got disqualfied was of no consolation as nearly every firm pay out on both results. This sticking to the rulebook sure didn’t look a good idea at 3.30pm Sunday. A miserable day was rounded off with a terrible result in the sprint (£25ew Saucy Brown, £10ew Orpsie Boy, £10ew Abraham Lincoln) and a losing £100 on Principal Role in the 5.05. It looked at this stage that my luck had well and truly run out….

Bank Holiday Monday. The racing matched the weather, dull, and after picking up the family I spent the afternoon pottering around Porthcawl which if you were to look up the definition of dull in the dictionary I’d imagine that you’d find a picture of Porthcawl. I spent 9 years running a betting shop there and I can honestly say that was about 108 months too many. Tuesday, like Monday, was a no bet day as my attention was firmly fixed on the Chester Cup.

It’s no secret that Mamlook is one of my favourite horses and as he scored well on the trends he was the only horse I was interested in for the big race. I had £200ew at 9’s with Ladbrokes and put him in a £10 trixie with Gertrude Bell and Bathwick Bell. Richard Hughes is now my new favourite jockey and Vegas for my birthday is looking good! If Mamlook wins the Queen Alexander at Royal Ascot he may well dislodge Mtoto as my favourite horse of all time. It wasn’t all good news though as I had £40ew Sohraab in the sprint and he ran Sobaad.

I spent Thursday in Devon at my mums but in between playing golf, baseball and football I managed to sneak out and have £40 on Debussy who we’d made a very strong trends runner at Chester. My £40 on our other trends choice Critical Moment didn’t fare so well but the last two days had rebuilt my confidence and I was ready for my big poker tournament on the Saturday. Friday at Chester and my £40 double was only half right when Doctor David was 2nd and Harbinger won.

For the second consecutive Saturday I was heading to a casino for a poker tournament. Before I set off I placed my bets in the local Betfred but after watching them run later that day I wish I’d just concentrated on the poker. £20ew Clairvoyant in the 250 Ascot (lost), £25ew Oratory (lost), £20ew Hunterview (lost), £10ew Fin Vin De Leu (lost) and £20ew Atlaal (last). The last named was bitterly disappointing especially seeing as he came from the white hot Jarvis stable. The writing was probably on the wall when he drifted from 6/1 out to 12/1.

As for the poker, it started out well and by the tea break I was sitting quite comfortably with a nice pile of chips but within 2 hands of coming  back from the excellent buffet I had lost 3/4 of my stack when my pocket kings got beat by pocket queens. For the next 4 hours I battled to stay in the tournament and won a couple of nice pots but I could never get a run of hands going and eventually went out in 44th place.

I think it is safe to say that Saturday was a bad day all round and I felt much as I had the previous weekend that maybe my luck had run finally out. We’ll see later this week at York whether that’s the case….

Good luck,
Gavin.

My new favourite horse.

After his win in the Chester Cup Mamlook is now my new favourite horse. His win over hurdles in January paid for a trip to Vegas and it looks like I’ll be going back again for my birthday in July thanks to his latest success. If he wins again at Royal Ascot I’ll coincide my trip with the World Series of Poker and play in one of the tournaments. By the way, what a superb ride from Richard Hughes. Great stuff all round.

——–

The Swinton Hurdle Trends

Gary’s been sweating all week on his fancy making the line-up and now that it has, he’s a happy man. His choice won’t be too much of a surprise to his band of happy followers but I know he really fancies it.

I on the other hand will take my usual look at the race and apply the trends. Up until last years winner came along and spoilt the party this was always a pretty good race for the stats. I’ll put that result down to one of those trends-buster winners you get every now and again and try again…

- 10 of the last 11 winners were aged 4-6 (exception last year)
- 10 of the last 11 winners were rated between 125-136
- 10 of the last 11 winners had won at least 1 of their last 4 starts
- 9 of the last 11 winners had raced no more than 9 times (1 of 2 exceptions was last year)
- 8 of the last 11 winners carried 10-08 or less (2 of 3 exceptions carried 11-04+)
- 8 of the last 11 winners finished in the top 3 last time out (all 3 exceptions finished 10th or worse)
- 8 of the last 11 winners were from the top 5 in the betting
- 8 of the last 11 winners had finished in the top 2 of a handicap hurdle

Let’s see what that does to the field….

I reckon that makes it between Hunterview (8/1) and Aather (25/1)

———

Over the Rainbow

I’m not sure whether any of you are watching this latest BBC advert for a Andrew Lloyd Webber West End show (I’m not, I’d rather watch You’ve Been Framed) but there is betting on it and I have a little bit of inside information. My mole works for Talkback, who produce the show, and he tells me that every week since the competition started Jenny has won the public vote.

She may not be Mr Webber’s favourite but the public love her and they’ll be the ones who decide in the end. There are 5 left in the competition and she’s currently 13/2. It might be worth a pound…..

——–

FESTIVAL TRENDS

Our recent good run shows absolutely no signs of stopping and at Chester this week we have again been in amazing form. From the four races we’ve covered so far in the guide we’ve selected Gertrude Bell (5/2), Mamlook (7/1) and Debussy (11/1). Our other runner, Critical Moment, didn’t stay and didn’t act on the course.

In yesterday’s 2.15 the only horse who ticked all the boxes was the complete outsider of the field. He was a pretty confident selection at Festival Trends and was also our top-rated horse. Debussy didn’t let us down and won very nicely to reward the 14/1 I, and many others, took with Ladbrokes. Just for good measure we also nominated the first 3 home in correct order!

Can you afford to keep missing out on all these winners? We’re now well over 100pts up since the start of this year. (That’s at SP and includes every selection made. At advised prices or Betfair odds this figure would be much greater.)

It’s still not too late to join us and our May Madness offer is still available. £19.95 for all guides until the end of May…..

http://www.festivaltrends.co.uk/amember/signup.php

That’s Chester today, Lingfield and Ascot tomorrow, York next week and then Sandown, Haydock and the Curragh to come. Or sign-up for the whole year and get every guide until Jan 1st 2011 including Epsom, Royal Ascot, Glorious Goodwood and The Breeders Cup.

——

Gary

He hasn’t stopped kicking himself since the Chester Cup for picking the wrong two from his shortlist of four but given his previous run we’ll have to forgive him this minor blip (as long as it doesn’t happen again! ) He did however console himself by backing Flying Medic last night at Wetherby at 33/1 and doubling it up with my hot tip Debussy over at Chester.

Today he’s offering his thoughts on the Ascot Victoria Cup and the Swinton Hurdle.

——-

Poker

I’m off to Bristol tomorrow to play in the Corals Masters and if anyone wants to follow my progress you can read the live updates at

http://www.aworldofpoker.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=23  from 3pm tomorrow.

I emailed Corals to see if they were betting on the event but apparently they only bet when it gets to the final table so unfortunately we won’t be getting any 100/1 on me this time. We’ll have to wait for the World Series for those kind of odds!

——–

Friday Fun

It’s been a while since we last had a Friday Fun feature but as the football season draws to an end what better time than now to show how overpaid these prima donna’s are. I reckon I’d fancy my chances of scoring in at least 99% of these (well 50% anyway)….

It’s difficult to pick a favourite but the miss at 2 mins 38 secs is particularly awful….

Good luck,
Gavin.

Thanks for all the comments and emails regarding the feature I did on ‘Value Betting’. I’m glad you enjoyed it. If you missed it you can either scroll down to find it below or you can click on the tab on the left hand menu as I have put it together on a separate page.

Funnily enough the horse ’system’ I made up actually picked the winner of the race at 17/2. Probably beginners luck!

———-

Gary’s posted his thoughts on today’s Chester Cup and will back on Friday for a look at the Victoria Cup and Swinton Hurdle, though I reckon I already know what he’ll be backing in the Swinton.

———-

5 things from Newmarket last weekend…….

Beware backing any French horse on the Tote this Summer.

If anyone backed Makfi in the 2000 Guineas then congratulations on a fine bit of picking, I just hope you didn’t back it on the Tote. When he won as an unfancied, unheralded and unheard of 33/1 shot you would have quite rightly expected the Tote dividend to have been a lot higher than his starting price. You’d have been wrong though as he paid a paltry £12.80 (a little under 12/1). Apparently the Tote has joined up with the French Pari-mutuel to allow their customers to bet into our pools on the big races this Summer. And with over £15,000 of the total pool being for the winner, courtesy of his loyal home supporters betting into the Pari-Mutuel, the dividend was badly affected. As if to emphasise the point, the 1000 Guineas winner Special Duty, who is also French, paid just 5/2 on the Tote compared to her 9/2 starting price.

Tom Queally…

Regular readers will know that I really like Tom Queally and think he’s one of the best young riders around but I think even he will look back to his ride on Jacqueline Quest and admit that it wasn’t his finest hour (well 1 minute 40 seconds anyway). Having watched the head-on it was plain to see that he should have pulled his whip through to his other hand as Jacqueline Quest was lugging right handed and needed straightening up. In his defence I guess you could say that he was fending off a persistent challenger and probably didn’t have time to change his whip over but given the narrowness of the victory the stewards were always going to look at the fact he didn’t take corrective measures when making their judgement at the inquiry. It will be interesting to see what happens at Royal Ascot on a right handed track.

And no I didn’t back her, I’m absolutely gutted.

The Going / Draw

After a fairly decent Saturday where the trends had come up with Juke Box Jury and Equiano I was all set for a good Sunday as I had a couple of really strong fancies running and I know Gary was very keen on Saucy Brown in the sprint too. But (to paraphrase John Steinbeck) ‘the best laid plans of mice and men’ and all that….. After a heavy downpour overnight the going changed, the draw bias shifted and my hopes went down the pan. I know a lot of you were alert to this shift in bias and took the necessary action, well done if you did, but it was still annoying for me as I had placed a couple of my bets on the Saturday.

Mick Channon

One of those bets, and my biggest of the weekend, was on Music Show in the 1000 Guineas and I’d be very surprised if any horse suffered more at the hands of the draw bias than her. A strict reading of her Nell Gwyn victory over Jacqueline Quest and Distinctive would have put her right in the mix and the way she pulled clear on the far side makes her, in my opinion, a very unlucky loser. Heavy rain on a watered track is a recipe for disaster, as it produces uneven going, and for that the Clerk of the Course must shoulder some of the blame. Mick Channon must be wondering what he has to do to win the 1000 Guineas as I doubt any recent trainer has had a worse run in the race than him. His star fillies Queens Logic and Bint Allayl both got injured before making it to the Guineas, Nahoodh was an unlucky in running 5th behind Natagora in 2008 and now the ground goes against Music Show and she ends up with the worst of the draw. Since 1999 Mick Channons 1000 Guineas record reads: 7460-8004506. He must be due a change of luck sometime.

2 to follow

A couple of horses I’ll be taking from the meeting are Viva Vettori and Record Breaker.

Record Breaker ran in the first race on Sunday but was another horse to suffer at the hands of the going. Forget his tailed off run here as he needs good to firm ground. It should mean that we’ll be able to get a better price next time out and as the horse seems to really like Ascot I’ll be looking out for him in an all aged 12f handicap at the Royal Meeting. He ran second their last year off a 3lb higher rating and he will be the first horse in my Royal Ascot portfolio.

Viva Vettori has run three times this turf season and looks to me like a horse needing a step up in trip. After running over a mile in the Lincoln and the Spring Cup connections ran him in the 9f handicap on the Saturday where again he was staying on nicely at the finish. I’d be very interested in him if there are any 10f handicaps at York next week otherwise I’ll wait for him to be entered in any big handicap over that trip.

——–

Mamlook

In the Chester Cup today I’m chucking away the trends book to back my old favourite Mamlook. He’s got a nice draw and although he’s being going up in the weights without winning I reckon he can still get competitive off his current rating. A nice win here then back off to Royal Ascot for the Ascot Stakes Handicap followed by a little break before finally winning the Cesarewitch. Ahhh, the joys of wishful thinking……

Good luck,
Gavin.

I’ll apologise now to Henry, and anyone else who found the last post a little maths heavy, as in today’s post I’ll be carrying on my look at value betting by examining betting shows and, unfortunately, there’s no other way of doing it than by the numbers. I hope it doesn’t feel too much like a double maths period first thing on a Monday morning…..

It’s pretty much accepted that the best way to find the value in a horse race is by first making up your own idea of the betting market (sometimes called a ’tissue’) to see how ‘in-tune’your odds are with what is being offered by everyone else. Only then can you see where the value lies and bet accordingly e.g. if you reckon a horse is a 4/1 shot yet you can back it at 10/1, you now have value. But before you can make up your own betting market, or tissue, you need to know how they work and this is where the maths comes in, sorry!

Say we go back to our coin-flip. We all know that it’s 50/50 that either Heads or Tails will come up so, obviously, if you want to bet on the outcome of said coin flip you’d want at least even money for your bet. You have a £1 on Heads and get back £2 if you’re right.

But if you’re a bookmaker taking the bet you can’t win because if Punter A has £1 on Heads and Punter B has £1 on Tails you have £2 in stakes but will have to pay out £2 no matter what side the coin comes down. There’s no profit for him so the Bookmaker will offer you 10/11 Heads or 10/11 Tails. You now have to bet £1.10 to win that same £1. If Punter A has £1.10 on Heads and Punter B has £1.10 on Tails the bookmaker now has £2.20 in stakes but no matter what side the coin lands on he only has to pay out £2.10.  The bookmaker wins again!

If we convert the odds to a percentage you can see how the market has changed in favour of those nasty bookies. The easiest way to do this is to imagine how much of a stake you’d need to return £100 at the odds…

So even money can be expressed as 50% (as 50 at evens is 100)

3/1 is 25% (25 at 3/1 is 100)
4/1 is 20% (20 at 4/1 is 100)
9/1 is 10% (10 at 9/1 is 100) and so on.

With me so far? I hope so

In our coin-flip before the evil bookie comes along we were happily betting even money heads and even money tails which means our betting market totalled 100%  i.e. 50% for Heads and 50% for Tails and we couldn’t lose because a betting market of 100% means you can theoretically bet every runner in the field and get exactly your money back.

When the bookie gets involved and he alters the odds to 10/11 this market now shifts to 105.6% as 10/11 is 52.4 as a percentage (100/21 x 11). This extra 5.6% is called an over-round and is what makes bookies rich and punters poor. The higher this over-round becomes the richer the bookie gets. A normal horse-race will usually be bet to about 110-125% but in this years Grand National the returned prices made for a 155% book or 55% over-round!! Don’t believe any of those newspaper stories saying that bookmakers lost money at this years National. Oh no, no, no they’re all holidaying in the Carribean eating caviar and drinking Champagne at our expense!

Conversely on the rare occasion that you are able to bet in a market that has an ’under-round’ i.e. under 100% you can theoretically bet all the runners in the field and make money no matter what the outcome is. It happens quite a lot in sporting events where there are only two players involved (say snooker) and different betting firms have differing opinions on the outcome. This is called ‘arbing’ and you simply back them both. You then sit back safe in the knowledge that, despite both snooker players have taken a bribe and the result is known before they start play, you’ll still win.

However, before you give up the day job and become a professional ‘arber’ a word of warning. You have to be very quick as there are plenty of people doing it and they have bots and computer programs running all day sniffing out these market errors and pouncing as soon as they become available. Also, the amounts you can win in any one market are fairly small as the bookmakers soon find out when they are out of line with the general consensus and either limit your stake or alter their odds accordingly. There’s no fun or excitement in it and it’s a really boring way to grind out a living.

I digress. Back to our betting markets.

We now know how they work so how do we go about making up our own tissue?

You could of course cheat and look at somebody elses, say the betting forecast in your daily paper.

Take a look at the betting forecast for a race in the Racing Post. These are prices put up by their expert race odds compiler and are his views on how the market will be formed. If you look for the discrepancies you can see, in his opinion, where the value lies. Say he thinks a horse is a 5/1 shot but you can get 20/1 at Ladbrokes then this would seem, according to him, to constitute a value bet.

But where’s the fun in that? Much better to make up your own market using your own opinions or system.

The easiest way to do this is to have a system that gives some sort of numeric rating to each runner. For the benefits of this example I’ll use a basic system that I’ve just made up. PLEASE NOTE: This is purely an example and is NOT recommended as a system to follow.

Our system is for handicaps and looks at the last 3 runs for each runner and gives…2pts for each win and 1pt for a top 3 finish. Then 2pts for a win on the course & 2pts for a win at the distance. Then finally 1pt for every horse it beat last time out (so if he finished 3rd of 16 he scores 13 points).

We do this to get a score for each runner. Let’s look at today’s 5.40 Warwick and see what scores we get….

Sounds Of  Thunder (3), Queen of Wands (8), Gordon Flash (5), Rose Alba (8), Head Hunted (3), Blinka Me (7)

Now to work out your betting market. Add up all the scores to find a total…..

3+8+5+8+3+7= 34

Then for each runner divide their rating by this total to get the probability….

e.g. Sounds of Thunder’s probability is 3/34= 0.088
Queen of Wands is 8/34=0.235

and finally convert these probabilities into odds….

odds = (1 / probability) - 1

We now have our market which looks like….

3/1 Queen Of Wands, 3/1 Rose Alba, 4/1 Blinka Me, 6/1 Gordon Flash, 10/1 Sounds Of Thunder 10/1 Head Hunted

compared to the actual betting market which looks like….

9/4 Queen Of Wands, 5/2 Rose Alba, 11/2 Head Hunted, 9/1 Gordon Flash, 10/1 Sounds Of Thunder, 12/1 Blinka Me

 Et voila! Our value bet is Blinka Me which our system reckoned was a 4/1 shot but is available at 12/1

REMEMBER! THIS IS JUST A FUN EXAMPLE TO SHOW HOW YOU CAN MAKE UP YOUR OWN BETTING MARKET!!

And there you have it, A fun way to bet for value. Devise yourself a system that rates each runner numerically, work out your betting market using the steps above and back the value runner according to your system and the odds available.

There now follows a short announcement from the ‘Betting for Value’ Party……

The case for the defence (of value betting) is presented by Gavin.

Picking the winners is the easy(ish) part, it’s getting maximum value for your money that makes the difference between being a winning punter and a losing one. In the world of poker, the notion of value betting is a well accepted concept and every good player knows their pot odds. It’s quite alright to call a bet even if you know you’re losing as long as the odds are in your favour. If you keep doing this over time then the odds will even themselves out and you will win in the long run. And it’s the same with horse-racing. If you keep betting horses that have a 9/1 (1 in 9) chance of winning a race and are able to bet them at 20/1 then over time you will win. It’s simple maths.

But betting for value doesn’t just stop at getting betting odds than you think a certain horse should be, it also covers getting the best odds available over your minimum price. If you steadfastly refuse to place your bets anywhere else other than your local Ladbrokes, or the only online account you hold is with Skybet or think that Betfair offer the best odds on every horse in every race then you’re not getting the best value odds for your bet. To keep taking 20/1 when you can get 33’s or betting the first four each way when you can get the first 5 (even if it means taking slightly shorter odds) is financial suicide.

Yes, you’ll back losers and yes, you’ll miss winners but there’s no point in backing a horse at 2/1 if he should be a 4/1 shot. No, it’s better to back horses that will win 1 in 3 times (2/1) and get paid 4 times your money (4/1). Quite simply backing horses at bigger odds than they should be is the best way to make money long term.

There now follows a short announcement from the ’Forget Value’ Party……

The case for the prosecution presented by Gary.

What a load of poppycock! ‘It’s okay not to back a winner if the odds aren’t right?’Perlease!

It may work in poker as the odds are set according to how many cards are left in the deck but applying this to horse racing is never going to work. How do you work out whether a horse is a 2/1 shot or a 4/1 poke? It’s impossible. I’d rather pick the horse I think is going to win the race and back it at the best odds I can get. If I think a horse is going to win (and obviously I do else I wouldn’t be backing it!) then whatever price I get is value. Until someone invents a system that can work out the true odds of a horse winning a race that doesn’t involve market forces or guesswork then I’ll continue to back my horses whatever their odds.

Yes I agree that you have to shop around to get the best price, it’s common sense. You don’t go to Currys if PC World have the same laptop £100 cheaper but that is a completely different argument than backing, or not backing, horses at 2/1 because it’s the wrong price!

A winning bet is a winning bet and as long as you keep picking the right one you’re going to win in the long term regardless of whether you took 33/1 about a horse someone else thought would win 1 time in 50. Backing enough winners at odds that more than cover your losses is the only way to win in the long term.

I’ll leave it to you to decide which party you wish to support…..

Good luck,
Gavin.

P.S. I’ll be back tomorrow to have a look at the very exciting, controversial and wet weekend that just passed at Newmarket.