I have a really busy, action packed few days ahead of me so posting may be a little hit and miss this week. With my son going back to school next Wednesday (where has the Summer gone?) we thought we’d go away this weekend to see my half of the family down in Devon as it will be our last chance for a while. Fingers crossed for a nice few days weather-wise…..

On Sunday I’ve got a poker tournament to go to where I’ll be trying to win a seat in the big Grosvenor UK Poker Tour which takes place in Cardiff next Thursday. It’s £1000 to enter direct and the missus won’t let me spend that kind of money on a poker tournament so playing a satellite is sort of a compromise. I’ve got to make it into the top 10 on Sunday to win a seat. Fingers crossed for some good cards….

There’s also a side event £100 poker tournament on Monday which I’ll be playing in as, on our return from the West Country, the missus is off to her mum’s for a couple of days. While the cat’s away…

Then as I said it’s back to school for Dylan on Wednesday which happens to be the same day I have  my annual Calendar Club ‘training‘. For those of you who don’t know, I work for the Calendar Club in Cardiff 3 months of the year (October - December ) which affords me the luxury of not having to work the other 9 months and gets us our annual family holiday in Vegas. So it’s back down to Devon (Exeter) for a days refresher course on how to sell calendars. Not rocket science I grant you but it’s a good day to catch up with everyone and see this years range. It should be a good season for me this time around because Cardiff opens a brand new shopping centre in October which will make it one of the largest retail centres in Britain. Fingers crossed for a good trading year…

Right, let’s get back on track…

Brand new Welsh racetrack, Ffos Las, hold their official opening  meeting today and have put on some quality racing to mark the occasion. There’s a £30,000 handicap hurdle and a £50,000 handicap chase on the card and as you’d expect for that kind of money it has attracted all the big name trainers, including some from Ireland.

In the 3.55 (Handicap Hurdle) it’s interesting to see VALAINcontest this race as he targeted the handicap chases at last years big NH Festivals. He has though run well over the smaller obstacles on his last two starts and with Tony McCoy booked this Irish raider must go close. Helens Vision looks absolutely thrown in off just 10-03 and if she could recapture some of her old form they won’t see which way she went. It might be worth having a £1ew at 50/1 in the hope that her new stable has rejuvenated her.

The 4.25 (Handicap Chase) is an absolute cracker of a race and it’s interesting to see that McCoy doesn’t fancy getting down to 10-00 for any of Jonjo’s or JP McManusus’s runners. It might also suggest that they don’t want any of their runners putting up any overweight. HOO LA BALOO had a terrible season last year but this did result in his handicap rating plummeting to a nice looking 143. He took advantage of this new rating last week when in a Listed race at Newton Abbot he finished an excellent second to a race fit rival in receipt of 11lb. With that run under his belt he can gain compensation off the same handicap mark. 6/1 looks good.

Over at HQ in the 3.30 Henry Cecil brings Notice Given back to the track after a very disappointing run last time out. Great things are expected of this 2yo and it was therefore a bit disconcerting to see him run so poorly on his debut but I’m prepared to forgive him that run as he patently didn’t appreciate the very soft ground at Yarmouth. I think we’ll see the real NOTICE GIVEN this afternoon and if you can get anywhere near the 8/1 the Racing Post are forecasting I’d take it.

For the £100 to a Grand Challenge I’ll be having 3 x £1ew Singles and a 25pew Patent on the three.

With regards to the Challenge, for all those who entered, Round 1 saw  Odd number 21 come out and I’ll be emailing all the winners over the weekend with details of Round 2.

To keep up to date with the Prize Fund level you can click on the Tab in the Left Hand menu titled: ‘£100 - Grand for Xmas’

The next stage of the challenge will see me have a go on one of my favourite casino games….Roulette. I won’t be risking too much of the cash on this particular challenge but I have 3 Roulette ’systems’ which may help us boost the prize fund. I know it’s not horse-racing and a lot of you won’t be interested but I’ll post the 3 systems anyway just so you can see how affective (or not!) they are.

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Friday Fun

There hasn’t been too much Friday Fun recently but I just had to put up Usain Bolts blistering recent run in the 100 metres final of the World Athletic Championships. The guy is a freak of nature and a joy to watch. How low can he go?….

Good luck,
Gavin.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 9:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.