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The real truth about it all is that the racing calendar has indigestible binges of good racing followed by days and days of rubbish.
Look at today. Far too much to get to grips with but plenty of value around if you can drive yourself out of bed at 5am to get on the form. Then Saturday is over and we’re back to low grade rubbish. Exactly what the bookies want, of course, but.I had five winners at R Ascot, including York Glory.
A lot of it is about confidence, or rather keeping hold of one’s confidence when things go wrong. That is the test of a punter. The minute you your confidence goes your analysis skills degrade. You get a little bit sloppier, and then make more mistakes, which degrades your judgement a little more, and so on.
There are periods when losing runs are BOUND to occur. In my opinion it isn’t worth having a bet from the start of the Flat till Chester May meeting. And I increasingly question the point of betting in large parts of the Jumps high-season, when horses are being laid out quite shamelessly for Cheltenham. It seems that every year I have a losing run in the two to three weeks before the Hennessy, then it starts picking up again.
What would be a nice irony now is that if racing became a bit of a cult now switched to channel 4 and in years to come the BBC, whose pinko executives wanted shot of it, end up fighting to get it back. Yes, probably won’t happen, but.
I had a good ascot in the end. Three winners on the last day. But why didn’t I have them in a trixie?
Fakenham and Southwell on a Derby weekend? When glamorous racing was all over the media yesterday?
Let’s be quite clear: for me, the essence of British racing takes place on gaff jumps tracks throughout the winter months. The utter joy of the "Fred Bloggs Is 80 Today NH Flat Race" at Plumpton on a Monday in January is patently superior to anything Ascot, Newmarket or Goodwood is likely to throw up in the next few months.
Until now, I thought that this was basically an insane minority view held only by me. But I can joyfully report that it’s also held by the BHA’s fixture-list organisers!
Even I can see how ridiculous this is. Sundays are a great way to introduce the young and those with families to racing. We need big events on big tracks dovetailed into a day-out experience. Charming though Fakenham and Southwell (jumps) are, they do not fit that bill in any way.
This really has to change. The BHA needs to look at incentivising courses on Sundays.
Mike
You should have been at lingfield last night . . . deary me.
He’s not an obsessive punter, i think that’s the problem. When I’ve seen him interviewed he’s healthily self-effacing and gave the impression he simply doesn’t care if a bet comes off or not. He also knows a lot of racing is play-acting and/or rubbish, and makes mention of this from time to time. That is all very healthy and good from a sanity point of view but no good for the pricewise column. I would be embarrassed by the run of dodos he has put up over the years.
Starscope’s come second in a group one. One day when you’ve discounted it because of Timeform’s squiggle, it will piss up at 20/1. I see a lot of ‘racing experts’ getting crinkly mouths that way.
I found swiss spirit by my own efforts so I can’t be as incompetent as you are always so desperate to say I am. Of course Buick did well to get the horse to where he got it.
What I like in expensive races is to see everyone trying like mad. So refreshing, is it not?
I was delighted that Clare Balding asked the Sheikh that question. I thought HE was the one who was discourteous and rude by walking away from what was a perfectly reasonable question. She could hardly have done the interview without some reference to the drugs affair and he could hardly have expected to face an interview without having to face a question or two on the topic.
Graham Cunningham, on the other hand, is growing on me. The combination of him and McGrath is infinitely preferable to his awkward pairing with Mick Fitzgerald.
They do need to find a way to show the horses properly though, especially before a classic.
Agreed. Balding was being a good journalist.
The doping scandal has been hurried through to try to save racing’s already deeply tarnished rep from sinking futher in the eyes of a largely incredulous and contemptuous public.
Cunningham is good; knows his onions and stays off the claptrap in the main. Could do with some more red-blooded commentary on the gambling and some more mickey-taking of the game in general.
Interested to read the blog, Betlarge.
I picked four winners today at Ascot, but only backed one. The one with the smallest price.
I will appreciate a how-to guide to keeping sanity and temper.
Did you have Excellent Guest? Did anyone?
Obviously, the day approaches when we will download the form and print it. The form has use.
Hey guys,
I’m absolutely new to horse racing and betting so my question is a simple one: What is the most basic advice whan placing a bet? Do I just go with my gut randomly or is there a method to it? Or any way of making an ‘educated guess’? Sorry to bother all you veterans with this trivial question but I have to start somewhere
cheersMy honest answer would be: don’t start. It isn’t worth it. Such novelty as can be taken from a day at the races is perhaps worth the price of admission; but the gambling end of things is a rotten little business which would be extremely hard work if the game was transparent. As it is, it is a maze that is made deliberately difficult and the complication of races is actively encouraged.
It is the sport most likely to leave a bad taste in the mouth and generally deserves its unsavoury reputation with the wider public.Rich people get the most out of it; punters feel the pain. That’s why it’s called the Sport of Kings, not the Sport of Everyman. Everyone loses most of the time and a kind of religious observance and practice has grown up around how one should lose, because everyone loses most of the time. The sport only exists because everyone loses most of the time.
The punter is supposed to ‘take it like a man’ when he loses, which on the face of it is fair enough if you’ve stuck a pin the card and backed that. However, after a short while most intelligent players will notice sharp practice of one sort or another from various elements in the game.
This forum is roughly divided into those who broadly accept the views above and those who fiercely dispute them.
It is perfectly possible to make a profit over a season. I have done this once or twice on the Flat and over Jumps. It takes a lot of work and dedication to find value winners, and this only part one of a two-part discipline. Once you have settled on a likely bet, you then need to work out what you’re going to bet, how much, in what way etc.
As I say, you can come out in front but you’ll need a decent-sized betting bank and a good deal of patience. A good mathematical mind also helps. Most people who have turned a profit at it find they need to walk away at some point because there are no half-measures with it, you are either immersed in form study, which is often highly unreliable, or you are not. The minute the attention or the spirit flags, which is what happens most of the time, you will start to make errors, which deflates the spirit and interest further and a vicious circle begins. Before you know it you can go from engaged, absorbed racing enthusiast to embittered, cynical punter. I am firmly of the latter camp these days and to be totally honest I think it is the most clear-eyed way of looking at the game. Nine times out of ten it is not worth having a bet. I always say to people who ask me about racing: If you like losing money you will be OK.
My own techniques for picking winners would be to stick to handicaps at a decent level and pay close attention to what surface the horse acts best on. I advise handicaps because you can weed out horses that can’t win. This makes the ‘narrowing down process easier’ than in non-handicaps. Theoretically, when you find a horse that is on a decent mark – ie a mark he should be able to win off – that is going on his favourite surface, and in the direction – right or left handed – that he likes then it could be worth a bet. Nine times out of ten it isn’t because something else is in there that can win but for various reasons you didn’t spot it or see the signs.
The best way to start is theoretical gambling, an imaginary ten quid. Most people who do this are soon down hundreds and learn the central lesson of horse racing very quickly. The game being what it is – the most merciless demonstration of Sods’ Law in the universe – you may find that having won a fortune theoretically, you start betting with real money and it goes the other way. This the kind of pain racing is brimful with.
Now and again you will have a touch, or even a multiple bet, come up and it is a great feeling. But it doesn’t happen very often and the money you win is only the lucky recovery of many losings. In this game, even winning can be painful.
IF you can keep your stake when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being baited, don’t give way to baiting,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can bet – and not make wins your master;
If you can lose – and not ask jocks to take the blame;
If you can meet with Triumph at Doncaster
And still smile when your bloody horse goes lame;
If you can bear to hear the tips you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the nags you gave your dosh to, broken,
And never try to break or bend the rulesIf you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and money
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing funny
Except the desperate urge to shout ‘Go on!’If you can bet online without restriction,
‘Or enter Hills and not hear ‘Hey, you’re barred!,
if losing runs don’t damage your conviction,
And missing winners doesn’t leave you scarred;
If you can fill the unforgiving wallet
With sixty smackers worth of gambling fun,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a punter, son!Very good! But it’s even harder than that I’m afraid, and you have painted a picture where misery and misfortune is entirely the handiwork of the punter. In other words, no criticism of the insiders.
Maybe you’re right. But I find myself more and more recalling the sad words of a racing journalist I knew some years ago: ‘It just gets harder and harder.’
My interest gets smaller and smaller though. It’s too hard to win, simple as.He’s no worse or better than any of the others. I dare say they are all micromanaged in that horribly tedious PR methodology that has made everything banal. McCririck, love him or loath him, was clearly never going to be reined in and so had to be sacked.
Racing needs humour, characters and colour to compensate for the dire truth at the core of the game: we’re only here because most of you lose most of the time.I find it revealing how swiftly this has all happened. How can they be sure there isn’t a wider problem? This has all been done at breakneck speed so that it can be forgotten about by the wider public.
I was thinking Sire de Guruggy would have a chance today. However i changed my mind when the trainer said on Timeform he wouldn’t like the track or the fences, and probably wouldn’t run well today. Needless to say the money came flying in before the off, and the jockey said he was prepped for a big run today which was expected. What a @*$?#.
This game is the biggest p*ss-off that mankind has yet devised in the name of human diversion. It’s what I’ve come to realise, even when I’m on a little roll; it will NEVER stop being 96% waste of time and money to 4% fun, if it’s as big as that.
