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Personally wasn’t particularly impressed by Mogul the other day. Soft lead, didn’t beat a great deal and seemed to lack real gears. No doubt will be a slow burner and improve with time/distance though. Lacked genuine WOW factor and didn’t get a great rating all the same.
The Sun (if you can believe it) reported that Coolmore were looking to buy Mums Tipple. Interesting if that does come to fruition as it might suggest they feel a little ‘light’ on 2yo talent this season.
Betting (at least in the run-up to the race) would be much less stressful if I had potato’s confidence in my selections.
What a boy.
A good betting race this – I think Tis Marvellous is a huge lay at the price away from Ascot on softer ground.
Danzeno also opposable from a poor draw, Copper Knight badly-drawn, Judicial perhaps a bit of a muggy one as he *should* be there on ratings/course form but feels like one with problems nowadays. I did want to like Spud’s one but has a huge amount to find on the raw figures.
I’ve backed Tarboosh @ 7/1 – plenty of pace to pull him into it and actually owns four of the top ten individual figures in the race. He shaped better last time and hopefully is tuned for this by one of my favourite trainers of sprinters. I’d love to see him win it – the figures actually suggest he is capable of running to a higher level (on a good day) than some of these rivals who have struck in higher grades (Judicial, Danzeno, Copper Knight) so he deserves to start getting the big returns for his ability.
Intense Romance also an interesting one but perhaps lacks something in race sharpness after an interrupted season. I’d certainly add her to the team if the market signs were right, though.
Constantly amazed at your ignorance, Cormack. Your points have been shredded and you’ve been made to look rather silly on this thread.
Going walkabout for a few weeks and returning when there’s a news story doesn’t make your viewpoint any more valid that it was before.
I don’t think he’ll shake up any of these named horses so far but one in my tracker for novice and handicap hurdles is Old Jeroboam.
The bare form of his two bumper wins isn’t anything to write home about really, but there’s something a bit sexy about the way he puts his head down and finishes his races. He powered home both times, suggesting the crawl-sprint nature of bumper racing wasn’t seeing him to best effect at all.
I’d almost like to see him beaten in a few novices around sharp tracks in small fields because I think he’ll be a real weapon in big field handicaps.
Good luck today, Spud.
How many people are in ‘the team’ behind potato then? Sounds like a military operation!
The main positive (beautifully illustrated by this thread) of Chapman is his ability to rattle the Alpen-eating, cardigan-wearing group of fuddy-duddies loosely described as ‘Racing People’.
Whenever the exchange price is level or fractionally below the bookies price they adjust it very quickly
They are much slower though to raise the price when a horse is drifting
Interesting. Probably true but depends on how lazy the trader is! For me, I’ve got people in my ear nagging away about the importance of being competitive with overrounds – there are even alert features in the trading software that shame you to all when you’re being too stingy.
Of course there are times when you might have more than one meeting and you’re just firefighting movers across four or five races at once, but the pushouts follow eventually.
“Paddy Power restricted my account shortly after they bought/found out I buy Timeform and my Betfair record.”
Ironically Paddy also restricted me when they found out a few details about me! I’d probably have a case against them as I saw a Paddy Power person had been snooping on my LinkedIn profile – data protection/GDPR anyone? I like to think I’ve got a pretty much spotless record with my bets too: would be a dismissal offence if anything bet was shown to be me acting on inside information etc. Plenty of ugly drifters dotted through my bet history if they look closely enough.
No, I wouldn’t be “shocked”, LS. Yes, some deserve to be restricted. But whether a punter is a serious punter that goes through form or not, I’d expect most punters to try and get the best price. It is only natural/sensible to hold off betting when the market is “static” or with lots of that price available – in the hope even bigger becomes available. Only natural/sensible to get on when the price starts shortening and only natural/sensible for that to be “consistent behaviour”… And the quickest way to do that is keeping an eye on betfair. Odds comparisson sites are slower to react. The vast, vast majority of punters won’t be arbing, just taking the best price they think is going to be available. Even mugs look to get the best price available.
Honestly I still think you’d be shocked at some of the things I see. Maybe the ratio is something like 70/30 – ‘vast vast majority’ is way too strong. And of course, a lot of that paragraph is true RE: taking best price, especially when odds comparison is so readily available via Oddschecker for everyone. There is an enormous population of people with arb-finding software like OddsMonkey guided by threads on forums like MoneySavingExpert and ArbUsers. These types are very easy to distinguish from price-sensitive racing enthusiasts.
Yes, each way thieves bets do make restriction or closure more likely if doing loads of them, LS. But if the number of each way bets I make/tip (a very small minority of my bets) is a problem to Ladbrokes enough to restrict or close accounts… then imo Ladbrokes are the ones at fault.
More so for your status as a tipster with a number of highly-vulnerable and impressionable followers – I’d suggest that’s the bigger moral issue with bad e/w plays here. If bad e/w (e.g. a bet with an inbuilt edge even without any insight) makes up any proportion of your selections, then we can no longer us the P/L to objectively judge how good you are. For example, Neil Channing’s ‘BettingEmporium’ tipping site shows a profit on racing and probably always will but his bets are pretty exclusively bad e/w or tight e/w in 8 or 16 runner handicaps. Would you fancy your chances staking old Channing if you told him “by the way Neil, all bets win-only please”? I don’t think you’d get a positive return.
Am aware that betting each way in races with a short priced fav is advantageous to punters, but it is not the actual reason for my each way bets.
If looking at the way I bet it’s all about main bets on what I consider the best value and savers on lesser value. With – adding all prices up (combined chance) – usually a big (often better than 50%) of getting the winner. So what do you expect me to do when there’s an odds-on fav that I don’t consider value? It’s bloody obvious my “saver” will be the place part of my (usually) one each way selection.
Again I just think you’re missing the point a little. Obviously that’s the best value way to play the selection, but for the long-term life of your accounts, you really shouldn’t. I have a lot of bets in low-grade racing but generally resist the urge to play e/w in these specific situations. I’ll play win-only if I believe there’s value in the win side, otherwise I’ll leave it or try to get a little bit on the exchange. I have a similar winrate but keep accounts going much longer than many of my colleagues who just can’t help themselves with a dirty e/w. You’ve just got be pragmatic sometimes. Restrictions are often overly harsh but from experience we know how the game is played by the firms nowadays and have to duck and weave for the best long-term result. If a reckless bad e/w bet draws attention and costs me an account that might have otherwise lasted another 25+ +EV win-only berts, I’ve made a horrendous mistake.
Generally, you surely know punters are put off betting on any race with an odds-on fav… Because they know the odds-on chance has a massive chance of winning. ie Not wanting to take such a short price and yet don’t want to oppose it either in a win only bet. So it is only natural for punters – that do want to oppose the odds-on fav – to back each way when backing against an odds-on fav… Just as – another one of your gripes – vast majority of punters don’t “arb”. What they’re actually doing is simply taking the best price available. ie Betting with bookies when bookies offer the best price and exchanges when exchanges offer the best price.
I just think this is a bit naive. I’m looking at bet tickers and scrutinising accounts all day and you are not. You’re right in that there are many punters will do things like Dee Ex Bee each-way as part of that kind of thought process while also having numerous fair bets at general market prices based on their opinions. That’s the key thing and pretty easy to discern when looking through a profile, like yours. However there are also a vast amount of users for whom bad e/w dominates their business. You’d be shocked I think. Mindless exchanging/arbing is also much more rife than you’d imagine. It’s groan-inducing how, for example, a horse might be static in a market at a general 8/1 for hours. Then suddenly when it’s 5/1 and dips to 5.8/5.9 on Betfair, everybody wants the bet. Could these people answer three questions about the horse/race if put on the spot?
Of course there are times when your hand is forced because you want to be on one and have to act quickly because the price is beginning to go. I certainly appreciate that and will give people the benefit of the doubt as far as it is in the my power do so. We all have to do it once in a while. I saw when you backed Logician @ 11/10 last night it was 2.08/2.10 on the exchange and heading south. Though I jest somewhat about the e/w stuff, I know you’re a thinking punter who would have deep reasoning behind the selection – you just knew the 11/10 would not last. I have no problem with that. But if it’s a consistent behaviour for somebody to be utterly exchange-motivated and obviously betting to directly arb, then I think they can have no complaints when they are caught and restricted.
If any bookmaker doesn’t want to offer the same prices each way as win only they don’t need to. Some bookmakers sometimes offer shorter each way odds and – if you’re so down on us taking each way prices against odds-on horses – you/Ladbrokes Coral should consider doing the same.
This is true and something everyone would love to do ideally. It’s just not viable for one firm individually though – turnover would drop off too sharply versus the competition, especially in retail. Hopefully one day the industry will get together and make the move together to stop the problem. I think punters would benefit too. Each-way betting is just so deeply ingrained in UK betting culture, especially among the older punters. We were the first major UK firm (in the Coral days) to offer enhanced win-only/place-only markets, but they’ve never been popular. A few firms have started doing the ‘guaranteed bet’ markets online with drastically reduced e/w prices for accounts that have been restricted on the main sportsbook. But with those you’d probably get something like 2/1 Dee Ex Bee e/w – reducing the whole exercise to ‘window-dressing’ I think. Ultra-selective restricted customers aren’t going to take that bet and the firm aren’t going to lay more than a bowl of rice on the market as a result. Defeats the object to some extent though would garner some positive PR at first.
It’s an interesting debate though and I do enjoy talking about industry issues (and racing in general) with you. I know I come across rather abrupt more often than not but hope you know that I respect you and admire what you do. I wish we could do a podcast or something where everyone can chime in – I think we’d have some really spicy discussions!
In a ‘bad e/w’ situation Frenchy, you’re getting value on the place part of the bet. Usually occurs in a race with an odds-on favourite.
e.g. Dee Ex Bee there: 4/1 is roughly the correct win price, but at 1/5 the odds you’re getting value versus the true place-only price on that half of the bet.
There’s a kernel of truth in there! I don’t think any serious tipsters should include bad e/w selections in their totals/daily bets. It accelerates your route to restriction and can give a misleading impression of the tipster – we’d all make steady uninterrupted profits if we were playing bad e/w.
Would I like £5k e/w on Dee Ex Bee? Yes please. Should I bet that for the overall life of my accounts if I back myself to find ‘straight’ value elsewhere? No way. Win-only or place-only is the honest way to go.
Sadly what Mtoto describes is standard practice for weak ante-post markets now. Online-only apart from the really top-tier stuff before final decs. Many markets (even decent TV races) are too weak and you just get picked off by insiders who know what will run and what won’t. It’s a sad reflection on the lack of integrity at many high-profile stables.
GT, don’t you feel you have a bit of a duty of care to your followers on here? There are some rather vulnerable people on this thread who follow all of your selections religiously.
I’d suggest horrendous e/w selections like that are best avoided. It’s just not sustainable for your accounts if you’re already beating prices and killing the game. I must say it does seem something of a theme with you, as well – I’ve pulled you up on this at least three times before. I’d also say that any serious tipster shouldn’t be including bad e/w bets (i.e. bets with an inbuilt edge) into their P/L figures. It’s just not cricket at all.
