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Fair play, judge – all subjective.
You’ll find plenty of one-star reviews on Amazon, for Dickens, Steinbeck, et al and a quite funny one amidst the shower of 5-stars on To Kill a Mockingbird:
Its a good question and one that brings up some research that I came across a year or so back
The fact is that as we mature we greatly improve out filtering and weighting of information. We dont have to know the last ten winners of the RSA by rote or spend hours comparing pretty pointless time ratings. But what does happen is that you quickly pick your targets.
In my work i can spend a fair amount of time weighing up company accounts and business owners themselves and the fact is i would do so far more efficiently and quickly than 20 years ago. Exactly the same prinicple applies to pickimg bets
Without doubt i bet far better in last few years than back in the day
cunningham is talking rubbish imo (no surprise there) and probably suffering from the malaise of believing everything was better when “we were young” (strikes, 3 day week, power cuts)
Fair play, judge – all subjective.
You’ll find plenty of one-star reviews on Amazon, for Dickens, Steinbeck, et al and a quite funny one amidst the shower of 5-stars on To Kill a Mockingbird:
Its a good question and one that brings up some research that I came across a year or so back
The fact is that as we mature we greatly improve out filtering and weighting of information. We dont have to know the last ten winners of the RSA by rote or spend hours comparing pretty pointless time ratings. But what does happen is that you quickly pick your targets.
In my work i can spend a fair amount of time weighing up company accounts and business owners themselves and the fact is i would do so far more efficiently and quickly than 20 years ago. Exactly the same prinicple applies to pickimg bets
Without doubt i bet far better in last few years than back in the day
cunningham is talking rubbish imo (no surprise there) and probably suffering from the malaise of believing everything was better when “we were young” (strikes, 3 day week, power cuts)
Depends as well on the individual. I find myself getting increasingly anxious with the passing of years. Worrying about bets, backing more than one horse in a race and so on, things I would never have done when I was younger.
Experience only matters if you use it wisely. It’s bad experience if you keep making the same mistakes over and over. That’s why sites like this are useful, punters exchanging ideas. Listening to posters like Steve Caution and how he approaches a race. Ginger, Joe, all useful guys to learn from.
I have noticed some friends who chase winners rather than value. Almost as if they are terrified of a bad run. Its probably a fair point that habits become more conservative with age but depends on your involvement. I have always bet way within my means and feel no compulsion to at any time so its less likely to get “into my head”
Finding “winners” or finding “value”/profit?
If finding winners is all a punter wants just back the favourite/one with the best chance – ut you won’t profit that way unless extremely selective in which fav to back and which fav/race to leave alone.
Drone is right, the easier it is for a punter to find value, the easier it is for bookmakers odds-compilers to do an efficient book. There’s probably fewer ricks around, however, there is enough value for the punter to find.
There’s the fact winning accounts are closed a lot quicker which makes things harder. But on the other hand, Betfair has made things easier to get on.
For me, finding winners/value has got a lot easier, because using Timeform Race Passes often takes a quarter of the time it used to in the days of old Timeform Perspective.
I do fear for punters without Timeform, because there’s a lot of misleading information out there on the internet. Am constantly surprised at what some very knowledgeable horse racing fans/punters think “studying form” is all about.
I’d love to give away all the secrets, but sadly we are just as much betting against other punters as we are bookmakers. Only so much value out there and if you identify it before I do there’s none left for me.
Value Is EverythingHave to admit I dislike Timeform but that is just me.
I used to love Superform years ago who were excellent but the internet as changed a lot, however there is a lot of info out there and you have to pick the wheat from the chaff in regards it.
Personally I find it slightly easier however I put that a lot down to my own race reading and what I see as opposed to other peoples judgements.
Years ago you could not watch and replay all the races you can now and so had to rely on others.
However have others have said with that comes time and as I get old I do tend to forget lolI like Timeform though I think their Race Passes are priced for someone who has to make money from the game and must therefore put in a lot of time.
From time to time they latch onto a horse and take too long to let go: Tenor Nivernais was a good example. I saw them talking up Three Musketeers before the Old Roan when it seemed to me he was overrated. Their post race report suggests he might be another one they’re going to cling to for a while.
Aside from that one small complaint, I like them a lot. Good to see them picking up on GL Victoire from yesterday when a number of other supposedly pro race readers credited him with a good round of jumping. The horse is a poor jumper of a fence and has been since he went chasing, and he likely always will be. Yes, he mostly gets to the other side, but his technique is bad: he cannot get his hocks under him and he rises on a very low trajectory. I’m surprised he has not had more falls. After his fencing debut I wrote here that he was a major accident waiting to happen, and I hold to that. They ought to send him back hurdling.
Garde La Victoire fell on his last two chase starts as a novice, at Cheltenham and Aintree when against the best and ridden further back in the field than previously. I agree he’s not the best of jumpers Joe, although might do/jump better in a small field event that he can totally dominate from the front. Even then suspect Cheltenham will always be too demanding.
I thought Three Musketeers would run well but mainly through negatives for the others. Didn’t look such a good renewal this year. To be fair, Timeform’s Three Musketeers, Old Roan assessment is partly positive and partly negative.
Value Is EverythingGinger, he won’t ‘jump better’ unless they can somehow get him to change his technique and that’s a very difficult thing to do with a horse of that age and experience.
In your proposed scenario, if you are right, he might get from one side to the other in a way that won’t have his jockey’s pulse rate quite so high, but (pedantic, I know) he won’t have jumped better.
Three Musketeers
Er, mostly positive/optimistic, wouldn’t you say?THREE MUSKETEERS (IRE) was strong in the betting yet, as when reappearing as a novice, promised more than he delivered, best to assume he needed the run again for all he also finished weakly in last season’s Dipper; chased leaders, jumped boldly, pushed along entering straight, every chance 3 out, faltered before last; likely to be much closer to form next time, and he remains with the potential to prove a very smart chaser.
Suppose it depends how much emphasis you give to a horse “finishing weakly”, Joe? For me – when Three Musketeers has done it before – there needs to be quite a lot of positives to make up for a big negative.
Value Is EverythingFinding winners like ginge says is easy enough but making profit is the hard part
The majority of Peoples lives change as they get older and responsibility’s, time constraints come into it
When I was 18 working 40+ hours a week, paying next to nothing house keep it was easier to get to Anfield every other week and away games in between but now I have bills to pay and a Son it’s virtually impossible.Charles Darwin to conquer the World
I very much agree with clivexx’s views. But I am not sure that success at betting, that is winning money, has much to do with age. Two things have helped me. Learning a good set of ground rules, and having the discipline to follow them. Being fascinated by racing and everything that surrounds it, especially the changes, because they keep you on your mettle to exploit new ways to win. Being fascinated, and making yourself keep moving, are benefits at this game.
I have no idea if it is, or has been, easier for other people to find winners as they become more experienced. That is dificult to show because other things are going on whilst that experience is being gained. The bookies and the BHA have enticed into gambling a greater number of people than ever before, and a greater proportion of them are not very good at it, which makes finding value prices that much easier. The emergance of betting exchanges gives greater chances of finding value prices, but in the nature of change that edge is diminishing. The greater availabilty of data about racing, which blinds some untutored gamblers, but helps the people who understand what they are looking at. The availabilty of personal computers and data analysis software.
Talking of fascinated: clivexx’s name in Latin means “one hundred and fifty-four out of twenty”, so did he choose that moniker because his name is Clive and his wife kisses him on both cheeks before he leaves the house, or was it that when he first signed in to TRF he had just won £154 from a £20 bet?
I live about 10 minutes from the Timeform office in Halifax and have probably walked past the building over 10,000 times. I’ve never been in and it’s not thought of as familiarity breeds contempt. I did once see Jim McGrath in Halifax and it took me an age to wonder why he was here. If I’d been into racing when I was still at school maybe I could have got a job there. Maybe I still could the way the accountancy profession is going at the moment
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