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As someone who relies on form to turn a profit, all I can say is that William Blake has been a massively profitable horse to follow. Being able to lay it at 1.2x for the place at Beverley was one of the highlights of the season. I can’t believe anyone worth their salt would have had it as a value back @the 17s it was on BF during the live show, let alone 13/2.
I would suggest that it’s people that have read the form that were pushing the beast out on Friday and using the money to back Richard Hills’ mount, with much better crudentials, at the same price.
That’s not to say that there’s no larceny in the game. However, I have a feeling that the market itself is dealing with it far better than the BHA, with the market quite simply drying up on certain horses. Look at the price Lynch’s layers had to go to on his last couple of disappointments before he decided to emigrate – Miss Scarlet was an odds on poke on form yet they found very few takers at 2/1, 3/1, 4/1 5/1!. Similar story with Culhane and Royal Amnesty on Saturday.
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Despite what a lot of die hards on this forum will have you believe, you must succumb to the fact that a part of British Horse Racing is corrupt/bent,call it what you will.
Ordinarily I avoid posts like yours, no idea and Ghost Of The Fellow, like I would a young maid with open syphillis sores, but I happened on this dreadful, dreadful losers thread and feel duty bound to make an exception.
Did you know that the Levy contributed £17 million to security matters last year?
We have better stewards. Close circuit TV. Five cameras per race covering each furlong. We have Betfair account monitoring: (check the story of PD Evans this week after a horse drifted from 7/2 to 7/1 before dying. The BHA were on him in hours).
There are two dedicated channels with replay facilities. There is the omnipresent Booth with the eagle-eyed Matt Chapman. There is John McCirick (remember the Ed Dunlop horse at Great Leighs?). There are more coppers than in Sun Hill station in post at the Jockey Club. Even the geezer that does the text commentaries on the RP has a hotline to the BHA! There is the internet.
Everything is watched. Nothing escapes someones notice, somewhere.
You’d have to be insane to pull anything other than a brilliant stroke. Because they’ll have you.It’s called the Panopticon, lads. The All-Seeing Eye. Never has there been a better time to bet, hence the bookmakers defending themselves with every tactic they can think of.
So tell me? With all this gear, how can this game be any more corrupt than any other sport.
Your beloved football, no idea, doesn’t get ten percent of this level of scrutiny and monitoring, yet the betting activity on the Accrington-Bury game last May was more corrupt than anything I’ve seen on betfair in two years. How the rozzers didn’t let loose an hello hello hello I will never know!
The key to racing’s success? Uncertainty. What you percieve as corruption and misery and insider-dealing is probably just a mirror of your own incompetence and an inability to handle uncertain conditions.
Losing extensively can do that to you.
Check out Seligman’s seventies research into the Locus of Control. Essentially, you shock a dog into submission and make it believe it cannot escape. If you do it often enough and then give the dog the opportunity to escape, the dog will stay where it is and passively accept the continued shocks because it believes it has no control over the environment.
You can transfer this model to your postings which indicate to me a level of misery and despair symptomatic of long term losing – like the alsation in this example.
If you do your dough on a favourite that finds trouble and you blame the jockey (known latterly as doing a Mellish), you have lost control of the situation. Unless you stop this behaviour, you are a loser.
If you do your dough on a favourite that finds trouble and you blame yourself for bad decision making, and resolve to read the form book harder in future (draw biases, likely pace etc), you have gained control of the situation and you will be a winner.
So lets not have any more bunny out of you two. Let’s have a winners attitude in future. Or find another forum because racing doesn’t need you.
You can have all the camera and eagle eyes you want but sending a horse unfit to a racecourse whats bloody 17 million pounds worth of shite going to do.
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Totally agree with Max on this
As the Aga Khan once said – the answers are all in the form book.- and it should be the first place to look after any losing bet.
Much more productive than moaning on internet forums too.- Total Posts 17716
Totally agree with Max on this
As the Aga Khan once said – the answers are all in the form book.- and it should be the first place to look after any losing bet.
Much more productive than moaning on internet forums too.Yes but there’s not class 1 races every day where the form is genuine rather then having to look outside the box and figure wether the jockey booking means the horse is trying for example
Mr Wilson if you believe racing is as corrupt as you seem to be suggesting then I presume you do not bet?
Anyone who suggests the sport is 100% clean is either a delusionist or on happy pills – wherever there is money to be gained there will be potential for corruption.
However as Maxillion so eloquently pointed out the sport is better policed than it ever has been.
Yes there will be unfit horses sent to the races – there always have been, always will be and nothing can be done to prevent it happening – it is part of the puzzle that punters have to face each day.
If every horse ran to form every time it races there would be no sport from a betting perspective.
It is something that punters have to accept – if they cannot accept it then there is nobody forcing them to have a bet – find a tiddlywinks tournament to bet on instead.
Over the years I have tended to find the volume of the complainant about racing being "dodgy" is directly proportional to the amount of loosing bets they place.
If you do your dough on a favourite that finds trouble and you blame the jockey (known latterly as doing a Mellish), you have lost control of the situation. Unless you stop this behaviour, you are a loser.
If you do your dough on a favourite that finds trouble and you blame yourself for bad decision making, and resolve to read the form book harder in future (draw biases, likely pace etc), you have gained control of the situation and you will be a winner.
Spot on
Terrific post Max (again
)Over the years I have tended to find the volume of the complainant about racing being "dodgy" is directly proportional to the amount of loosing bets they place.
That is pretty much exactly the opposite of my take on it. I think the people who are clued up enough to know when a horse is trading at a price that the formbook says is nonsensical are those best placed to spot non triers and dodgy rides. The betfair forum is chock full of rubbish, but a lot of the posts highlighting dodgy betting patterns and rides are from the big winners, not the big losers.
Yes but there’s not class 1 races every day where the form is genuine
Do you have to bet every day?
And look how many top class races there have been over the last seven days. Right from midweek Group threes at goodwood to yesterdays Group one bonanza with a valuable handicap or two thrown in
And more this week. Point is that there is too much at stake in these races for "not today son" instructions and fat horses wobbling into the paddock (inspection of which is open to punters anyway of course as Aragon states). AOB, Bolger, Head and even dear old Clive Brittain were not messing around with this weekends targets
Well said, Max – an outstanding post.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Absolute quality Max , well done on an outstanding post , we will struggle to beat that one this year
Its about hard graft and effort , and if after all that you are still on the wrong side of the bank account , its simple , just take a break and after a few weeks or even a month you will be back wining again
no more losing moans please , (unless your Clive and actually forget to place the bet in the first place
)cheers
Ricky
Excellent post, Max.
Racing is about as straight as it can be, certainly a lot more so than in the past. Not perfect, by any means, but subject to such rigorous scrutiny that the only way to cheat is to send an unfit animal to the course. Anything else and the trainer or jockey risk their livelihood or liberty.
Form doesn’t always work out, but you can usually find some reason in the Form Book why a horse wins or something that happens in the race to diminish a horse’s chance of winning. Races are chaotic events and so much can go wrong that punters tend to believe that it is crooked rather than admit to themselves that it’s just part of the game.
It is usually stated that low grade racing is much less predictable than higher grade racing and more susceptible to non triers, but I’m not so sure. Perhaps you will get more unfit horses in the lower grades, but the results seem to demonstrate that form works out about the same regardless of the grade. I carried out an experiment with form and speed ratings and found that in a recent sample of over 700 races, lower graded races were more profitable.
For quite a few years, I had assumed that form and speed ratings for better class racing were more reliable than those for lower grades. I’m now persuaded that all racing is equally unpredictable.
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How can a jockeys error be your own mistake?
Answers on a postcard please
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