Almost all of us have succumbed to the warm glow of success only to be slapped in the face the following day by the wet fish of poor preparation. There is a reason why successful punters stay successful and that’s because they realise that hard work is what made them

If you don’t put in the hard work, you will find that the clever punters have gained an edge on you and you are struggling from flagfall. It’s only too easy to fall back into the habits of the recreational gambler in such circumstances and you will find yourself potentially chasing losses or playing on events that, with fifteen minutes study the previous evening would have earned the tag “leave well alone”.

Just because you were a roaring success on Monday, don’t fall into the trap that you have the game sussed – you’ll come down to earth with a hefty bump. Honest punters will admit that for every day which they have prepared poorly can produce a loss which five days of application will take to put right.

If you are a horse player, to use an Americanism, then print out the relevant racecards the day before and at the very least give them a cursory glance and make preliminary notes on what opportunities may be available – if you have been betting with success earlier, then at this stage your mind will be surprisingly sharp and your ability to make quick judgements reliable. The same thought process applied at 2pm the following day without previous study can produce surprisingly uneven thinking.

I tend to print out a summary of the card I want to concentrate on (I will look at a maximum of two meetings per day in this way – any more and it becomes too distracting) and scribble my ratings by the side of the jockey names. Doing this race by race enables me to get a fair overview of all the races and I can get a fair handle on which races I like from a punting angle, even before I price them up.

Afterwards, I will read form summaries for the principle contenders and digest other relevant information, and then it’s off to bed before rising in the morning and beginning the process of pricing up each race. Obviously I don’t expect my approach to be the only one which will bring success but it does demonstrate that the best way to tackle the conundrum of betting on the horses is to approach it in a constructive manner.

This will improve the clarity of your thought processes and will enable you to identify a number of potential opportunities very quickly. It is these opportunities that you should then spend the majority of time maximising for your financial gain.

As always, while this approach is geared towards betting on horse racing, the principle applies across the betting board.

Category: Horse racing

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Laying is the term used to describe what bookmakers have been doing for generations, but is now available to members of the public through exchanges, that is accepting a bet on the outcome of an event. In other words, the liability on the bet is borne by the layer should the bet be successful. If the bet is unsuccessful the layer keeps the stake of the punter.

For Example – Punter A thought that Denman would win the 2008 Gold Cup, he went on to a Betting Exchange where Punter B was convinced that Denman could not possibly win the Gold Cup and had put up a price of 3.0 or 2/1 about Denman for a total liability of £100.

Punter A was happy with that offer and had a £50 bet on Denman at 3.0. In other words Punter A was due to win £100 if Denman collected and Punter B would pocket his £50 stake if he did not. Well as the record books show us, Denman bolted in winning Punter A £100 much to the annoyance of Punter B.

This may appear a simplistic approach to the laying game and yes it can get more complicated, however, at its core, laying is a bit like two blokes in a bar with an opposing opinions having a bet.

In an online exchange environment the layer does not know who he is laying the bet to, he could be laying the owner of a horse with more information than him, or indeed he could be laying a professional footballer who has decided to back the opposing side in a match he is playing in. This anonymity is the only real down side in an exchange world, where no license is required and there are no overhead costs to pay. The exchanges themselves know the activity of each and every punter, but the punters have no idea who they are transacting with.

Before you can lay a bet you must have sufficient funds in your exchange account to cover the liability of the bet. In our example above Punter B needed to have a minimum of £100 in order to put up a laying order on Denman. A laying order is when you want to lay the selection at a lower price than is currently available in the market. For example you want to lay Denman at 3.0, but the market is currently mopping up all of the 3.2 available.

If the price of Denman, through pure weight of money continues to fall sequentially all of the 3.1 and then the 3.0 will be matched including of course yours. However, if the price does not fall, it plateaus or indeed drifts, your lay order at 3.0 will remain unmatched, it is your prerogative to withdraw the lay order at any point, even if the event is actually off.

As long as the bet is not matched it remains a “bid” in effect. If the bid is not matched, then you may have to consider upping the price, in order to get it matched. The obvious scenario is that if you up the price you are also upping your liability. We will discuss in running betting in greater detail in another chapter, but if the bid remains unmatched, it may be a better idea to roll the bet into the race as an in running bet rather than upping your liability pre-race. The smart players who see value as critical might say that if they can’t lay the horse pre-race at the price they want to lay it at, they would prefer to walk away from the event altogether.

Laying is a very different type of gambling inasmuch as it is a negative result the layer is seeking. He wants horse x, or team y to be beaten, he is cheering on the field or the opposition. It does take a little getting used to and potential layers should be aware that as soon as they hit that “lay” box for the first time they will never watch sport in the same way ever again.

Category: Horse racing

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Residence And Spa (5.20, Carlisle) is one who appeals on an earlier piece of form, a fair third to Pintrada at Beverley in May. It’s possible to find excuses for a couple of lesser efforts since, but I’m not one to try to complicate things unless a horse has blatantly failed to show its worth, and I think Jim McGrath’s gelding has been beaten strictly on merit, with a best case scenario if recent defeats were re-run being that he wouldn’t have been beaten quite so far.

Even at Beverley, he had every chance as the race unfolded but seemed to be backing out of things in the dying strides, and I consider it no fluke that he retains his maiden status.

Category: Latest News

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Miss Lahar (LOTD), trained by the in-form Mick Channon is the strict form choice in the 6f maiden at Windsor (19:40) tonight, having shaped well on her debut over 5f at the Thamesside track. She has had rather a chequered time of it since, however, refusing to enter the stalls when stepped up to pattern company in the National Stakes at Sandown before being turned over at odds on in a maiden at Bath.

She again wouldn’t play ball when due to run in a maiden at Chester last month, and must have a temperament question hanging over her. The curious thing here is that when a horse is withdrawn at the start, no mention of the intended run appears in the formbook, so punters looking at the race will merely see that Miss Lahar has been placed twice and will note that all ratings publications have her marked as the best horse at the weights.

That’s a dangerous shortcut to take, and I’m grateful for the irishracing.com site, which is the only one I’m aware of which keeps a record of when horses become non-runners in such a manner.

Next Best – Meglio Ancora, 19:10 Windsor

Meglio Ancora takes a marked step down to selling company in a bid to end a frustrating sequence of defeats since he made a winning debut at Newbury in 2009. To give an idea of how far he’s fallen, both he and runner-up Alrasm went into handicaps with a mark of 87. While the latter is now rated 100, Meglio Ancora was beaten by a country mile off a career-low of 67 last time.

On that occasion he was tried in blinkers, and this drop in class suggests that connections, who have been very patient with this infuriating gelding, are beginning to lose patience. On his best form he looks a standout, but with his losing sequence now stretching to 16, it would be a brave man who would back him at short odds.

Alternative – Porthgwiddenn Beach, 18:10 Windsor

The 5f handicap which begins this evening’s card at Windsor isn’t the most competitive, and it’s possible to give Porthgwidden Beach a chance on his penultimate start when beaten narrowly at Leicester. Plenty will also be happy to write off a poor effort in midweek as the daughter of Street Cry was racing from 7 lb out of the weights, but to me she was disappointing in a contest which wasn’t as strong as it might have been, and she’s already failed to live up to her smart pedigree. Stuart Williams’ decision to put a visor on for the first time seems to tally with that assessment, and I’m happy to field against this maiden once more.

Category: Horse racing

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Luv U Forever will be popular in a minor event at Chester tonight after putting up a strong performance in the Chesham Stakes at Royal Ascot. She’s since “moved yards” to rookie trainer Jo Hughes, but in reality Hughes has always been in charge of her and a host of other horses to run under the auspices of Pat Murphy, Barry Brennan and/or Roger Curtis in recent times.

So with the trainer change not an issue, why oppose the filly now? Well, first of all, the Chesham is not only the weakest of the 2-y-o races at Royal Ascot (restricted to animals whose sires have won over 10f and further), and geared towards horses with more stamina than speed. While it’s arguable that Luv U Forever didn’t quite stay the 7f here, she’s hardly a speedball, and both Bubbly Ballerina and Vocational (who ran in the 5f Queen Mary at the Royal Meeting) have more early toe. She’ll be staying on late in the day, no doubt, but not many 5f races at the Roodee go to horses who stay, and she’ll struggle to get back to the leaders if missing the kick.

Category: Latest News

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Although he won the Dante and finished third in the Derby as a three-year-old, it wasn’t until Moon Ballad raced on the dirt at Nad Al Sheba in Dubai in the spring of his four-year-old season that he began to look like a truly top class individual.

After making all in the Maktoum Challenge on his first spin on the desert dirt in February 2003, he duly repeated the feat in the Dubai World Cup itself, coming home five lengths clear of his closest pursuer, the Todd Pletcher-trained Harlan’s Holiday, with the high class pair Nayef and Grandera behind in third and fourth places. However, impressive though the son of Singspiel looked in Dubai, it was always likely to be a different story when he lined up for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot in June that year.

There was much against him at Ascot. He was back on turf for the first time since he had been beaten, as favourite, by Storming Home in a weak Champion Stakes at Newmarket eight months previously. Three wins from four starts on dirt, he had won just two of his six starts on turf. It wasn’t that he was ineffective on turf, it was just that he probably wasn’t as good on it as he was on dirt.

Competition was strong. We didn’t know how good Rakti was then, we didn’t know that he would win the Champion Stakes on his next run or that he would subsequently win four Group 1 contests, but he had landed a Group 1 prize in Italy on his last start before the Prince of Wales’s. Moon Ballad’s old adversary, multiple Group 1 winner Nayef was also in the line up, as were Islington, Grandera and Falbrav. This was a proper Group 1 contest, and odds of 2/1 about Moon Ballad were plenty short.

The other element that was against the Godolphin colt was that he probably wasn’t going to have it all to himself up front. The only one of his five wins up to that point that hadn’t been gained from the front was the first of them, his second ever run, when he had tracked the leaders through the early stages and went on three furlongs out. In the Dubai Cup, the Maktoum Challenge, the Select Stakes and the Dante, he had more or less made all.

The presence of Nayef’s pacemaker, Ekraar, in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes was always going to present a problem for Frankie Dettori and Moon Ballad. Sit in behind and Moon Ballad could pull for his head, take the pacemaker on and he would probably be going too fast. Frankie chose the latter course of action. He led easily enough for the first three furlongs of the race as Ekraar missed the kick, but soon he was pestered by the pacemaker, and was always travelling a stride quicker than Dettori wanted.

The writing was on the wall when he came under pressure just before the home turn and, by the time they reached the two-furlong pole, the game was up. Moon Ballad faded to finish ninth of the 10 runners behind Nayef, who powered clear to beat Rakti by two and a half lengths. Moon Ballad didn’t win again in three subsequent attempts.

Category: Horse racing

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The primary mistake a lot of reasonably smart recreational punters make is that they bet on the events which are served up to them when they happen to be available to bet. This can turn a small advantage in terms of ability to analyse form and calculate percentages into a huge disadvantage betting on events on which they haven’t fully applied themselves and which may have no punting angle for them to utilise. This particularly applies to betting shop punters who are bombarded with betting “opportunities”.

If you speak to most successful professional gamblers about their success, they are liable to be coy about what exactly their secret is, but all of them will reveal that they make a regular profit by specialising in the areas where they know they have an edge – they are not dictated to by the schedules of the big bookmakers and that’s why they live in those fancy houses and look so smug all the time. They can teach you a lesson.

It’s true to say that the odds compilers of the major bookmakers are clever lads but if you have your wits about you then they needn’t be a step ahead of you. The advantage you can have over any bookmaker who has to price up every potential outcome of every televised sporting event is the fact that you can concentrate on a tiny fraction of their workload and find your niche.

What that niche is is entirely up to you, but even if you have previously been a “fun” punter you will have found certain sports, race types, specialist markets where you feel that you are on safe ground. This should guide you to the specific grounds where you should do punting battle. In ignoring other events which merely take up your time and potentially your money, you will quickly become a genuine expert in your field and will find value angles that wouldn’t have occurred to you before.

The fact that most punters lack discipline will mean that on a regular basis, the unwary will stray onto your patch without having done the preparation you have they will become easy pickings as once you may have been before you learned this most valuable of lessons.

As an interesting aside, I know of one successful punter who specialises, not in Darts or Golf or even Reality TV but in those markets which are available after drinking up time at the weekend, reasoning that punters rolling home drunk and logging onto their exchange accounts are the easiest of all punters to relieve of their hard earned!

Category: Horse racing

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An easy winner of a 2m4f handicap at Ffos Las on his latest start, Paul Henderson’s Capdalight is an obvious market leader in a similar contest in the 16:15 at Newton Abbot today, a rise of 10lb for that win not looking harsh given how little trouble he had getting to the front on that occasion.

I’m concerned about a couple of things, however. He has displayed an ungainly head carriage in the past, and found little for pressure on his second outing for Henderson.

The track at Ffos Las is also something of an enigma, producing results which aren’t always in tandem with expectations, and there must be a chance that Capdalight was flattered by the run of things.

Finally, the drop back in trip is another minor quibble, and he’s not one I’d want to back at skinny odds.

Category: Horse racing

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We talked before about the importance of value and how laying at optimum odds will maximise your earning potential; if you can regularly lay a runner at 3/1 which you calculate should be 9/2, then by definition you will return a handsome profit over time (as long as your calculations are reliable, of course!). The problem with doing this is knowing when to press the “Lay” button and for what stake.

Take the following example – in the 2yo maiden at Dundalk, you have priced up Three Legged Wonder at 10/1 and don’t fancy its chances (moreover you’re reliably informed that he’s been working like a drain at home), but you know that because it is regally bred and in the care of an extremely fashionable trainer, it is liable to be well backed and is priced up at 5/1 on the “Tissue”.

Let’s say that you are happy to lay the beast at 8/1 or shorter and that the opening exchange price is 6.8 to back, 7.4 to lay for small stakes. You suspect that there may be early support from those not so clued up as you but that rumours of his poor homework will eventually filter through to the track and the horse will drift considerably in the on course market. You have two obvious choices in this scenario – go over the top and put in your maximum lay at 9 since that is your acceptable price, or take the 7.4 and leave your bid in at that price, figuring that’s where the mid-point of the market will be and hoping for the best.

If you go over the top, you increase the likelihood of your bet being accepted, but you give away potential value whereas the latter course of action increases your theoretical value but minimises your chance of getting the full bet matched. If the horse drifts significantly from his opening price and you end up laying your full stake at 9.0 then you would justifiably be feeling like the proverbial early bird who got the worm.

However, if the expected mug money arrived and the horse traded at lower than his opening price, then you would feel slightly sheepish about laying over the odds, even if the lay was successful. We all know that making money in the long term isn’t about the individual victories, but maximising profit from the successes which will insulate us against the inevitable losses.

In the words of Tony Blair, there is a third way.? It is possible, using a degree of patience, to take advantage of market volatility to lay your full at an even better price. Imagine that the on course bookmakers, being careful of the connections, chalk Three Legged Wonder up at 9/2 to see if anyone bites. All of a sudden, there’s a bit more liquidity on the exchange and the quote is 6.4/6.6 – you can now lay a considerably bigger bet at almost a point shorter than the tissue.

If you are right about the horse’s ability then there will be no takers at the miserly opening show and the 9/2 will quickly become 11/2 and 6/1, and in the absence of takers will drift further; meanwhile this drift will be even more dramatic on the exchanges and double figure prices will be the order of the day very quickly.

Having the combination of the patience needed to wait until the opening show and the balls to go in a point or so above the on course price will have seen you well rewarded. On another day, of course, the bookies may have less fear and open up at 8/1 and you will struggle to lay a bet at a price which is acceptable to you. The key is being familiar enough with the mechanics of individual markets to know when to be patient, and when to take the money and run.

Value laying, as we’ve said is about maximising value, and to do so the shrewd layer must be able to read the market on more than one level – it’s not enough to ask if the available price is value to lay, but to have a strong idea whether that price is liable to drift or contract.

Let’s examine standard horseracing markets; I would subdivide the market into two phases, the tissue market (the early price market or morning line as our compatriots stateside would say) which is in essence a theoretical market and what I would term the normalised market in which the layers and players have backed their opinions with hard cash and beaten that theory into a more robust and liquid market. Layers need to treat these markets as separate entities although each provide their own unique opportunities.

There are more ricks in the tissue, but considerably less liquidity to take advantage and you should never overexpose yourself on a particular selection; I would recommend betting to no more than 10-20% of your maximum exposure on this market. Enjoy the easy pickings, but don’t bite on someone else’s hook!

Category: Horse racing

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Soorah represents a top trainer/jockey combination in the 1m Coral Challenge at Sandown, and comes here having “won” the battle of the horses who raced towards the far side in Ascot’s Royal Hunt Cup last month, having previously finished an excellent second in a fillies handicap at the track.

Plenty of good judges fancy her chances today, and one or two are citing her draw in stall 1 of 17 as a bonus for her. I couldn’t disagree more. Stall one should logically be an advantage on a round track when that stall is next to the inner rail, but the issue with Sandown’s 1m course is that it’s set on a slight spur and there is no rail to the right of the runners for 100 yards or thereabouts.

The impact of this is that as the field naturally converges towards the inside, those in the lowest stalls are pushed off a true line in the run to the bend, causing them to be disadvantaged. An analysis of success rate by stall numbers show that stalls 1-3 show a surprisingly low win and place strike-rate which supports this theory, as does a head on view of the start of most 1m handicaps at the track. Ryan Moore will, in my opinion, do very well to keep Soorah from being shunted towards the rear of the field by the first turn, and while it won’t be impossible for her to win from there, she will face a mammoth task to recover the ground, and I’d be happy to lay her, and lay her for a place too.

Next Best – So You Think, 15:10 Sandown

Concerns over So You Think are simple. It’s impossible to choose between him and Workforce on ratings, and it’s only a combination of rhetoric and some amateurish analysis of Sir Michael Stoute’s form which saw him backed into odds-on for this contest during the week. Arguably it should be 6/4 the pair, and I’d happily lay anything south of 11/10. If So You Think then drifts to a bigger price, there is an option to trade back that bet, and that’s the stance I would take. Should he go off at shorter odds, I’d be content to let the lay ride. It’s purely a matter of mathematics on this one.

Alternative – Ship’s Biscuit, 15:40 Sandown

I expect Sir Michael Stoute to saddle at least one winner today, but it would be somewhat surprising if that horse was Ship’s Biscuit. She’s got a bit to find with a number of her rivals on official ratings, and needs to prove her stamina over 2m. She does tend to stay on at the end of her races, but I’m inclined too see that as at least partly her tendency to drop anchor at crucial points in her races, and such indolence makes her a difficult ride. She took little interest at Newbury until consenting to run on when the race was effectively over, and a similar display today will see her backers grinding their teeth in frustration.

Category: Latest News

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