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Is that the one that focuses on profitable favourites that must be a good five years old now?
If it’s a new version, I haven’t seen it.Hello Billion
I hope you don’t mind me adding my thoughts on what looks an interesting method. I ran it through Horseracebase to test it with the following rules. I couldn’t do it exactly with your rules, but went as close as I could:
UK handicap races
First six in the betting (SP)
Top weight
Won one of its past three races
Running within 23 days
6lbs or more clear of second top weight
I also added Class 4 or above because the results on Class 1-3 races were terrible.
That brought up the following result since 2003:
Bets Wins WinStrike £1 bet Places PlaceStrike
1863 556 29.84% -8.01 974 52.28%
A 30% strike-rate betting in handicaps is excellent and a tiny loss at SP. That suggests to me that betting at early prices or on the exchanges could make a decent profit.
Or, if you stick to the above rules but focus on horses that 8-12lb clear of the second top weight you massively cut down the number of bets, up the strike-rate and increase the profit:
Bets Wins WinStrike £1 bet Places PlaceStrike
740 235 31.76% 72.73 396 53.51%
That’s at SP averaging just over a bet per week.
So an excellent method all roundBillion – glad you’re still getting some use out of the Racing Ahead 20 systems book. I compiled that several years ago and it actually saved the magazine – along with the Fenman book — at the time because it sold so many copies.
That was before I passed Racing Ahead on to the current owners, who have much stronger resources than I could ever have. I can definitively say that it’s just non-handicaps – no other caveats. Maybe except races where hardly any of the runners have previous form.
Will be interested to see if your Clive Holt addition brings in the winners.The Daily Mirror system from my youth was to back horses that were the Spothorse, forecast favourite and SF.
It all stemmed from one Bank Holiday in the late 80s when all 12 qualifiers won. It’s burned on my memory that we did some multiple bets and picked up more than £100 for stakes of pennies. To a 15-year-old, that was a fortune!
Pretty sure more care was taken with the Spotform ratings and the SF selections in those days, would be amazed if it wasn’t all computer generated now.
To illustrate that was probably just a fluke, today’s selections would be:
Ozzie The Oscar, 2.00 Newbury
Aston Cantlow, 2.05 Uttoxeter
Belardo, 3.55 Doncaster
Volunteer Point, 4.10 Kempton
Calling Des Blins, 5.30 UttoxeterWhile the Festival will never go back to three days, there’s no reason why it can’t be four six-race cards, which would go some way to addressing the issues raised above.
The racing today felt of a lower quality – Gold Cup aside – than you would expect from the Festival. It might be an idea to move the Arkle to Friday as day one would hold up well enough without it.1 Anchor – John Rickman
2 paddock commentators – Jimmy Lindley
1 post-race interviewer / Roving reporter – Julian Wilson
2 analysts – Graham Rock, Jim McGrath
1 betting ring reporter – Len MartinMark – Following your love/hate relationship with the placepot was one of the highlights of your pieces for Odds On back in the day. Do you think the bet has any merit these days?
It would also be interesting to read your thoughts on the ‘cult of Pricewise’ that has grown up around Tom Segal. How would you have coped/reacted to the hype?
David – Given that our old friend draw analysis has been done to death, do you think there any other areas that are under-exposed when it comes to form study or interpreting past performances of runners?
Interesting phrase, the "cult of Pricewise"; a cult suggesting something irrational, unstable. Tom Segal’s tipping has been world class so why this need to mock him up in silly hats and costumes ahead of big meetings? Why can’t his work be left to speak for itself?
How would I have coped with the hype? Would have tried to turn my back on it. Thankfully, it was muted in my day, not least by the withering stare of the chief sub. Hype and over-excitement were fine for children’s parties but not for the serious business of journalism. So much has changed.
I intend putting in extra hours with the formbook this summer too, as there are traditionally good prices about evening runners that may have had their form boosted by afternoon events, while a horse winning the 8.30 at Windsor may frank a horse’s chances in the first race at Folkestone the next day. Such factors can’t be built into the Racing Post’s betting forecast, plus, with Euro 2012 and the Olympics taking place, a large majority of punters and bookmakers watching Rooney & co fail once more could get caught napping by those doing the evening hours with a formbook.A good example of how ‘live’ form can present good opportunities could be seen on Sunday 8 January at Southwell when Bird Dog won the 12.50 having finished 4l behind Beachwood Bay 10 days prior. Beachwood Bay then won three hours later at a generous 4/1.
Another angle punters can exploit is finding a trainer who is about to hit form – which isn’t easy. I reiterate ‘about to hit form’, not when a racing pundit tells us that a particular yard’s runners have finished 2113011331 with their last 10 runners, as that’s usually a lazy way of identifying when a good run is about to end. To my knowledge there has never been a computer programme or newspaper/web column that has predicted when a yard is about to blow hot, not yet anyway…
I thought the BBC’s coverage of Ascot this year was a slight improvement – a bit less fashion without that dreadful bitchy man (name escapes me) who has blighted the coverage in recent years.
The best of the coverage came on the "red button" races where the whole thing calmed down and Mick Fitzgerald and Rishi Persad spent most of the time talking about the actual horses. There was also the ever-amusing sight of Aidan O’Brien calling him Ritchie all the time.
When it comes to Willie Carson, he really should be kept to the paddock where he has a fantastic knowledge of breeding and of interpreting a horse’s general demeanour pre-race.
The reason why he’s used more is sadly down to the fact that if you asked your average lay sports fan to name five Flat jockeys, you would probably get the usual "Frankie, er, er, Pat Eddery, Willie Carson, is Lester still riding?" response.
Think we just have to accept that racing isn’t as important as it used to be hence fewer nationally-known names – my granny did a 10p Yankee every day in the 60s and 70s – she would be buying a scratchcard to get her gambling thrill these days.
Anyone who saw the episode of Pointless on BBC2 a few weeks ago where the contestants had to name Derby-winning jockeys would despair. They didn’t say Mick Kinane for example.
Going off topic I know but until there’s a way of winning vast amounts of money for a £1 stake any initiative will struggle to get the general public more interested in racing.
However much RFC has cost, funding a £1m pot each week (would get a lot of it back through stakes) would do a lot more to boost racing’s profile. Get some kind of tote direct slip printed in the tabloids on a Saturday morning and away you go! (the marketing boys can have that idea for nothing – maybe I could have a cut of their massive fee).I was on my first visit to Uttoxeter on Saturday and thought the crowd took it pretty well considering it was a well-backed favourite in the last race. There was a bit of booing but nothing too severe.
Didn’t see the ‘baying mob’ and I thought the atmosphere was much nicer than spending a Saturday afternoon at somewhere like Haydock – a few people were hammered but not the majority of the crowd like many other tracks.
I’ll definitely go back. As for Mr Carberry, can see why he did it with the post and track across the road. Given that I’d backed the horse I wasn’t happy – but the other half backed the ‘winner’ so she was thrilled!Rather than dramatically cutting the number of fixtures which, we are told, will lead to the closure of some tracks, why not just cut the number of races instead?
A standard six-race card at every meeting could be an answer. Take today, there were 41 races at six meetings – cut that to 36 and you have effectively reduced the day’s racing by one meeting without the tracks suffering.
I don’t believe for one minute that people look at a card and say "only six races, I’ll not bother going today". The vast majority of afternoon cards have seven races now, with plenty having eight. Insisting on six races per meeting could knock 15% off the number of races – and demands on prize money – at a stroke.
I realise there are costs in holding a meeting – like ambulances, stewards, officials etc, but racecourses should cover the costs of this from admission and other commercial activities.
This could be a fair compromise that reduces the demands on the levy without decimating the courses’ revenue.Thanks for the replies – davidbrady which site would you say gets closest to what I am looking for?
The first eight/nine years of his time at Old Trafford and his extremely patchy record in the transfer market surely disallow Sir Alex Ferguson from being the greatest of all time.
People like Brian Clough, Stan Cullis and Herbert Chapman did more to change football and had, by the standards of the day, great success – Clough particularly so.
But there is only one person for this title – Sir Robert Paisley.
He played a huge part in building Liverpool through the Sixties as Bill Shankly’s assistant manager and then took the club to a whole new level. He was manager for only eight full seasons – the same amount of time it took Ferguson to win his first league title.
In that time, Paisley won six league titles, three European Cups, a UEFA Cup and three League Cups at a time when it was an important competition.
He didn’t do that just by inheriting Shankly’s side, within four years, there was hardly a Shankly player left.
In the transfer market, he bought a host of players from the lower divisions or smaller clubs and only Frank McGarvey from Celtic didn’t work out: Phil Neal, Alan Hansen, Ian Rush, Bruce Grobbelaar, Jimmy Case, Terry McDermott, Ronnie Whelan, Steve Nicol, Alan Kennedy all came from lower divisions or struggling division one clubs.
His big-money buys: Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish, Mark Lawrenson, Craig Johnston all became stars and only Dalglish was before he arrived at Anfield.
Plus, in all that time, he remained the humble, courteous man he always was – and that shouldn’t be forgotten when assessing ‘greatness’Maxilion – that’s all fair enough but there’s nobody around now who could possibly make the impact of McCririck in the early 80s.
And when C4 do features that may connect the viewers with the horses they are watching, they tend to feature the same handful of trainers and jockeys each time.
And if I never see Alistair Down and Martin Pipe tucking into meat and two veg before Cheltenham again, I’ll be a very happy man.
That said, all of the above is preferable to no terrestrial racing coverage.
If the sponsorship of C4 Racing now amounts to £2million, surely the bookies would have to put their hands in their pockets. Over 12 months, the loss of turnover and effect on bets like the Scoop6 would surely mean industry action would have to be taken to keep racing on terrestrial TV.
If I ran Channel 5, I would be quite happy to pick up racing and the ensuing sponsorship plus BHA payments if C4 walked away. You could then host it from a studio and take RUK/SIS pictures for the racing itself – after all, it’s the races that matter, not the cast of thousands waffling away in between.
