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You can probably make a bit up by arbing. As you’ve made losses the bookmakers probably won’t restrict your account. My preferred arb is e/w in 17 runner handicaps. Go on oddschecker . Find a bookmaker offering say 16-1 on a horse when Betfair is about the same. You will get 4/1 for the place but Betfair will be around 3.5/1. Lay for the win (and if you have to, lay for the place) and away you go. Watch out for non-runners though.
I see the race panning out a bit differently.It would be unusual to have a slow pace in a big race like this. And horses have their preferred speeds. So I think there will be a leading group including Kauto and Nacarat going quite fast.I think Long Run would be best off running slightly off the pace, so he can jump without interference, and then trying to catch up later on as the others tire in the stamina sapping conditions. This might not enable him to beat Kauto (unless Kauto is well below form or makes a big jumping error) but it should give him a good shot at a place.
There is some discussion on the Betfair forum about WH and Ladbroke refunding antepost bets on IC and Sizing as a goodwill gesture. Maybe worth asking the question to see what response you get.
I see Hooray is rated 117 whereas Dream Ahead is 128 on the international ratings and I believe most handicappers have a similar gap. But they ran almost identical times over the same day and distance at Newmarket when Dream Ahead won the Middle Park and Hooray won the Cheveley. So why the gap in the rating?
Hughes is 8/1 in places, so very good value if you think he is up for it and won’t get too many suspensions.
Imitation is the sincerest flattery. I think TAPK would have been better off stealing my Nightingale idea at the original 90/1 though.
I see The Nightingale has come in to 12/1 now with Totesport. The ground is going to be pretty soft so he has a place chance but 12/1 is too short IMO.
Somebody recommended him at 90-1 earlier on this thread and was promptly ridiculed.
I have felt pretty stale about this race what with the postponements and IC’s non-participation but I am now getting more of a feel for how it will play out.
We can now discount forpady, Albertas ,Madison, Planet and Olly as they have a strong preference for non-soft or are outclassed.
My guess is that Nacarat will lead then off but run out of puff towards the end. That leaves 5 possible contenders. Kauto should win by several lengths but if he has a mishap then it will be between Riverside, Sizing, Long Run and The Nightingale. Long Run likes soft and has scope to improve his jumping. Riverside might be short of stamina but is a possible. Sizing might not turn up but I think he probably will and should do ok based on his Down Royal form in soft conditions. The Nightingale should plug on and has a place chance if some of the other contenders screw up.
So my tissue is Kauto 4/6, LR 6/1, Riverside 8/1, Sizing (WAR) 9/1, Nightingale 20/1, 33-1 bar these. (includes overround).
Best value Kauto win and the 4 named others e/w. I am on all 5 of them already.
I am not sure that Dream Ahead is that good. His time in the Middle Park was the same as that of the very moderate horse who won the Cheveley Park on the same day.
I had a lot e/w on DA when he had his showdown with Frankel so am perhaps a bit disillusioned. I think he can be forgiven one bad run but if his best run wasn’t that good then maybe he still has something to prove.
Incidentally I notice you have copied my trick of giving coded tips in your postings. The use of the unusual word ‘malarkey’ a while back was my coded tip for Major Malarkey who dotted up the next day. Nobody noticed though…like scattering pearls before swine.
To be fair, I think the handicapper has done pretty well here. About 18 horses have some sort of chance. Incidentally, I see Adrian Massey likes Imoncloudnine, but I have never been able to follow how he arrives at his ratings.
Surely this is an opportunity rather than a problem. Adam Kirby has a respectable average strike rate of 10% on the all weather. If we can tell which races he is more likely to be suited to then we can probably infer an adjusted strike rate of around 20% on horses that might go off at around 7-1.
As Patrick Veitch has pointed out, the point about horse racing is that it is complicated. That’s why sophisticated punters can do well at it whereas other sports like football are more easily analysable and lead to fewer good betting opportunities.
On the other hand you might regard it as an insurmountable opportunity if you can’t work out what’s going on.
With heavy rain forecast for Monday I reckon Kempton will be soft or good/soft by Jan 15. This should favour Long Run and the Nightingale. However, I haven’t noticed the weather affecting the prices much.
It’s an interesting issue with Grayson runners. Presumably the handicapper ought to be downgrading them more quickly, whereas for most of the other runners in your thread he should be less lenient. Unfortunately I don’t see how he can do this unless he makes some judgement on the extent of non-trying in each race. I would guess he is not allowed to make allowances for lack of effort as it would raise integrity issues.
Like Barry, I don’t like synchronised odds changes. They seem to happen around 5 min before the start when all the online bookmakers seem to operate in unison. I haven’t noticed this happen in the betting ring so I’m not sure who is setting the price that everyone follows online. Can anyone enlighten me?
Funnily enough I included both horses in a speculative 50p lucky 15. I did so on the basis that the exchange prices were a bit lower than the bookmaker’s so it looked like I had a slight advantage.
Unfortunately the day after this accidental coup the bookmaker decided to restrict my account. Perhaps they (wrongly) think I am in the know. So I suppose I am now one of the hordes of disillusioned punters as a result of these shenanigans.
Nevertheless I think there is hope for punters if they don’t rely too heavily on form. Form alone only works in certain circumstances and as our discussion shows, it would have been clear to anyone studying these races (which I didn’t at the time) that other factors needed to be considered. In particular the reasons why horses with poor form are entered in a race need to be analysed very carefully.
On a slightly different note, I have some sympathy with the handicappers. It remains the case that top-weighted horses win disproportionately. The obvious remedy is to downgrade weaker horses a bit faster and I understand this is Phil Smith’s approach. Although this plays into the hands of non-tryers, the handicapper must assume that the horse is trying unless proven otherwise. I don’t see an easy way round this problem.
I notice you took down your handy guide to antepost betting in an earlier thread. But perhaps you could say what the ‘look’ is. So far I have come to the conclusion that horses that look and are big tend to do better at NH races but I don’t know what to look for in a Derby horse – maybe a leftfooted horse if there is such a thing.
