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I regularly bet horses that are 2/1 shots or less.
My personal philosophy is, if they win, it’s value – if they don’t, it’s not.
Simple as that.I agree. If you’re backing at 6/4, you need to get two out of every five bets correct to break even, and three out of five to make a profit… doesn’t seem too bad if you’re very disciplined and only bet in quality races.
.. me too, take them away .. yours is the down south description Mike, in Scotland thinnies are usually druggies and folk with a joint income of less than £33K per year.
I don’t see why folk with a joint income of 33k per year have to be banded together with druggies.
Judging by this post, I would rather stay a lithe, endearingly boyish ‘thinnie’ than be a supercilious, look-down-their-bulbous-noses, gluttonous, slothful, crimson-faced fatty with the IQ of a fridge.
Dylan Thomas was too short for me I don’t play at those sort of prices so I didn’t have a bet but I thought he would have to get injured mid race to lose to that standard of opposition.
I’ve never understood why there still exists a stigma against backing favourites, as if doing so is an admittance of a lack of imagination, a reason for shame; its a mindset which is understandable within Lucky 15 punters dreaming of the big one but not for serious-minded backers… if Dylan Thomas would have to get injured mid race to lose, surely 6/4 was excellent value? … each to his own, I suppose.
I thought Dylan Thomas would win because I’ve always thought he’s a 12f horse. Ever since he beat Ouija Board over 10f, I thought he didn’t look comfortable over the distance – after all, Ouija Board cruised by him and would have won easily but for an overconfident ride – and since then he’s won a few poor races over the trip, and been beaten by Notnowcato and Manduro in disappointing circumstances (outbattled by Notnowcato, and should have got closer to Manduro). I’m surprised nobody mentioned in all of the previews that he was returning to the trip of his greatest performance for the first time since…
You would definitely want FOBTs if you do setup shop. They make more profit in the shop I work in than the profits from racing revenue and this is the case for more shops.
I believe most independents "borrow" somebody elses prices to make their books, the one near me uses Stan James prices and that would probably be your best option for making a book.
Experience would definitely be useful. If your not in a position to get that yourself you will need to find a cashier for the shop who does that experience who can teach you as he/she goes along.
What happens in the winter months when the tourists are all sitting in front of their warm fires at home? Do you get the winter months off or would their be other uses for the shop if you are shutting it?
And hw do people who live in the town bet at the moment? Do they not bother or do they use other methods ie the internet?
I could be way off the mark here, but do you live/work in York?
I would definitely recommend working part-time in a bookmakers first. It seems like you’re quite eager to buy this shop, etc, but I wouldn’t rush into it until you have some experience – even if it means you need to move to a slightly lesser location when you’re ready.
Working in a bookmakers is hardly a complex job, but you will learn about day to day procedures that you’ve probably never thought of: what to do if a Lucky 15 is building to a large payout (arb. the final bet, obviously – but you will need to think of a ‘warning’ system because you won’t keep track of all those bets), what to do in case of a dispute with the customer (think of every circumstance possible!), how to deal with a hostile customer who doesn’t want to leave at closing time because he’s obsessed with getting his money back on the FOBTs (will you have FOBTs?), etc. Have you thought about how you will enter the bets, calculate the payouts, and work out your weekly P/L – presumably it will all be computerized, but I’m not sure where you get the software from (or whether its a bespoke package that you need to pay a company to make). You will need lots of money to cover your outgoings until you’re setup (wages, equipment, having a losing week, etc).
I hope the following gives you some hope: I once worked for a small(ish) bookmaker chain and the bosses knew little about the sport. They’d bought the premises, installed the televisions, etc, and then paid a company to provide ‘standard’ prices for the races and send the information to the screens and the networked computer tills – you can get it all provided for you. I could talk to the bosses and I got the idea that they didn’t follow horseracing at all and couldn’t even understand Rules 4, etc – the computer sorted all of that out.
100 Hints for Better Betting will always be relevant due to its sections on, as Maxilon 5 mentioned, gambling psychology. I recognised so many of the emotions described (chasing losses, overconfidence, the self-fulfilling prophecy, the strange urge to back a horse that you know you shouldn’t, etc), and his tips for dealing with them are essential reading.
I agree. Expletives are fair enough on the Betfair forum. Many of the posts are immediate reactions to races where large amounts of money have been won and lost, emotions swinging between rapture and despair, and frustration at bad rides and tactical races, etc are augmented by this relentless rush. You couldn’t ask people at a racetrack not to swear.
Expletives do seem a bit unnecessary on here, when the posts tend to be more considered and issue-led. You wouldn’t expect to see swearing in an RP’s journalist’s column.
Yes. The wording "ground it likes" may be causing confusion. Firm ground may jar up and hurt a horse with unsound legs and joints, but otherwise horses do not actually like much anything except polos and carrots. "Ground it likes" really means, in the usual misleading jargon, ground that a horse can best compete on. It has no particular enthusiasm for that ground, but relatively slower horses with plenty of power and the right action for best traction can go better than lighter fast ground horses, with daisy cutting actions, which can slip, when the ground is softer.
It is similar to when a lower league team overwaters the pitch to slow down the pace advantage of a Premiership team in the FA Cup.
In the Eclipse, the ground on the stands side was Good so N went faster and was not incovenienced by it.
The Sandown finish is uphill which better suits power/stamina horses rather than speedsters.
N goes faster on better ground but would be likely outpaced by G1 fast ground horses on Firm ground. None of the ground at Sandown was Firm.Thanks for that Robert (and Graysonscolumn).
What I find most confusing about the reactions to this post is that, even if, at worst, the question was naive, there is little need to resort to insults. Is there anything wrong with asking a naive question?
Ultimately, some of you are acting with all the charm of mechanics who think it’s funny, and justifiable, to rip off customers because its their fault for knowing so little about cars in the first place. I’m certainly having second thoughts about asking whether horses sleep standing up or not.
Welcome BOFA.
Try and ignore Venusian. He’s a bit weird. He’s only got one eye and he’s always complaining that his ‘poo don’t look right’.
For crying out loud, a horse who prefers soft ground doesn’t actually run faster on it than on a firmer surface, it’s just that he’s relatively less inconvenienced by it than his firm ground-loving rivals.
Yes; but I would have thought that a horse would run with more enthusiasm on ground it likes, than ground it doesn’t like. Surely you’ve seen soft ground horses fail to give their running on ground which is too firm for them – or are those horses actually slow, and we don’t notice on soft ground because the rest of the field are slowed down to their level?
And why are you so exasperated? I’ve never had this conversation with you before, have I?, you ugly tramp.
I’m presuming Madman Marz has a repuation of sorts, to provoke such a childish reaction, because the question itself seems fair enough to me.
I’ve often wondered the same , i.e., if a horse prefers soft ground / has a ‘soft ground action’, is it better off looking for the fastest (firmist) ground or keeping on the soft, which may be more suitable for its action?
Although with Notnowcato you’re talking about the difference between running on soft or good-soft ground (good-soft is definitely better than soft for him), not soft or firm (firm might be too firm), if that makes any sense.
Quote: from Lovely Lady on 9:47 pm on May 13, 2007[br]NWRA, your post was agreeable until the anti women rant in the 4th paragraph, at least that’s how it seemed to me.  Obviously we cannot rely on you to share our emotional outpourings.
True, I should have rephrased that as it does make me sound like someone with rather Victorian views. Obviously I’m not talking about all womankind, rather a certain (stereo)type, a minority which is nonetheless very noticable, i.e., the kind who rushed out to buy as many copies of Candle In The Wind as they could afford.<br>
Duran Duran’s take on Grandmaster Flash’s White Lines (Don’t Do It) is a shocking omission.
Katie Melue’s lounge version of Teenage Kicks is bad; and so is every other folky cover of a punk song (i.e., the one of Another Girl, Another Planet off the phone advert).
Similarly, I’m not fond of this trend for indie bands to do ironic covers of pop songs (usually Girls Aloud) either live or on Jo Wiley’s live lounge, i.e., Starsailor trying to give the lyrics to an S Club 7 song a ‘deep’ resonance. It makes my brain cringe.
Also, remember that song by Jet which deconstructed Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life and fused it together with post-millennial angst? No, of course you don’t: they straight plagiarised it, so that should count.<br>
I’m laying Boychuk in the 5.15 at Chelt. This is an awful race for the track and Boychuk is clearly the best horse. However, he’s in poor form. Since his short break, he’s been beaten at odds on (by one of today’s opponents), and has dropped away tamely (in the Mildmay Novice’s Chase at Aintree, five days ago). And he doesn’t look like the type who will appreciate two quick runs.
At odds of 5/4-6/4, I think its worth taking the risk that he won’t finish his race.<br>
<br>I thought that would be a good topic for one of your articles, after reading your reply to the thread about the Independent article.
Another strong article, and I agree with your point that Channel 4 seem to want to make the festival into a score-based game to appeal to football fans; and that there is a distinction between this, and the weary, euphoric jockeys with their excusable flag-waving.
I’m glad you caught McCirick’s assertion that Hills ‘knew’ about Sublimity because he was 14/1 instead of 16/1! Also, I thought it was funny today when he was shocked that ‘even the Prince!’ (William) didn’t back a winner at Cheltenham yesterday… even him!… assuming that monarchs are usually successful at everything they casually deign to give their attention to (even when experienced professionals fail).
Sidenote: is it me or are the graphics and the editing on Channel 4’s montages getting even wackier? Yesterday, when Mick Fitzgerald was selecting his favourite races in Cheltenham history, they had a split screen with Fitz on the left side of the screen (vertically stretched, so his face looked like it was being reflected in a funfair mirror) and his chosen race on the right side, warped and edited to synchronise with the pumping dance music in the background. It would be rife for a Brass Eye-type parody.
Overall, its hard to say a great deal about your article, and that is a compliment in itself; I don’t approach professional articles in The RP from a critical perspective (I agree with their point or not; I don’t think about judging their grammar or use of language…), and I didn’t your’s… So, as I said, a strong article, keep it up.<br>
I like the carnival.  Generally, I don’t care about half of the races on the card, and I’m very interested in the other half (the races where the form may have some bearing on my future betting: the races which feature lightlyraced European horses, like Formal Decree, Sir Gerard, Greek Renaissance, and Quijano, Laverock, etc).
And the handicaps (as Nick Mordin says) are group races in everything but name; they feature Group 1 winners, they have a narrow weight range, and they offer as much money as a Group 2 race.
I can understand why some don’t enjoy it. Sometimes, I get a vague sense that it isn’t ‘real’ racing, that its some kind of exhibition racing, the equivalent of a testimonial match or one of those meaningless World Eleven VS European Eleven football matches  – maybe its the lack of atmosphere or the way that most of the horses/trainers have a connection to the Maktoums – eventually it departs, and I enjoy it again.  <br>
