Mission Impossible at Warwick?

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. That, dear reader, is the trade I ply and, whilst I try to major in the latter (i.e. statistics), sometimes it is a challenge to separate the former...

So it is that a new - and very interesting - little piece of software I have for analysing draw biases tells me a fascinating fact about Warwick's six furlong course. Apparently, in the TEN years to last year, there has only been one 6f winner drawn in double figures. 94 have tried!

I tell you this, lest you were considering parting with your hard earned on any of the following in the opening 1.40 race:

- Back In The Red, Racing Post's 4/1 favourite, and drawn 10 of 17 (box 10 is 0 from 20)
- Brandywell Boy, 6/1 3rd best in RP, and drawn a presumably hopeless 15 (1 from 6)
- Music Box Express, 7/1 in RP tissue, and drawn 12 (0 from 17)
- Namu, forecast 12/1 and drawn 13 (0 from 14)

I don't (yet) have the data for this season (and, to be honest, haven't got time to look), but it's hard to take a wager for the above seriously in the context of this information. If you're of the laying persuasion, your mission is stated.

If, however, you like to back not lay, then let's use these eliminated elements to attempt to whittle down the field.

The 1 box has been the winning starting gate for 7 of 30 runners to occupy it, and shows a very tidy level stakes profit (LSP) of 36.5o. Today's incumbent is Belle Bellino, a winner last time out, and ridden by none other than the champ, Ryan Moore. It could be as easy as that...

Yungaburra in stall 2 is let loose again just 48 hours after getting royally rolled over, and a quick squint at his profile reveals five wins, all over the minimum at Wolverhampton. Strike out.

The 3 box has possibly the most interesting runner (and possibly a dog that has given up at the game, ahem) in Inka Dancer. The Inka hasn't won for a long time, but she has won over the trip and on the ground, and she's won off a rating of about the same mark she bears here. She's quoted at 40/1 and stranger things have happened.

So, there you go: the paper favourite can't win; Belle Bellino for Ryan Moore can win and may well do so; and Inka Dancer could be the biggest priced winner publicly selected by yours truly since the 50/1 shot in the last race at the Cheltenham Festival (remember Silver Jaro anyone? Leave a comment at the end of this post if you backed it that day!!).

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Today is the last day of September, so likely payday for many of you. Those of you tracking TTS with real money this month (naughty, naughty: you should have been paper trading!) will have had numerous paydays, as the profit graph now shows up at +£541 to £20 stakes and with the usual Betfair assumption of 16% over SP and 4% commission on winning wagers.

In fact, it's over £408 up to old-fashioned SP, if anyone still uses that..!

Results to date are here

So, for those of you who signed up for £1 and subsequently canceled, and are now identifying the selections for yourselves, you must be delighted to have secured what is presumably the best value horse racing system ever (he says, trying to affect a modicum of modesty... and failing patently).

For those who have stayed aboard in order to save the hassles of picking the runners yourself each day, I hope you agree that your monthly investment is tremendous value. If you disagree, you know what to do! (In case you don't, you just go to PayPal and unsubscribe!)

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Football Loophole made its debut on the weekend, and a mixed bag of results was the order of the day. The over / under 2.5 goals bets did quite well, and one of the home wins collected (Reading thumping Swansea 4-0) too.

But much of the good work was undone by Middlesboro slipping up at home to West Brom.

Still, as I said before, there is a lot of good sense in this guide, and I will continue to track its progress as I suspect it will do quite nicely in the long run. The sales page is here, should you wish to have a glance for yourself.

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Finally, today is the last day of the Winners To Losers trial. To date, the system has identified 14 losers from 16 runners. However, the two winners were both quite plump prices, resulting in an overall loss of three points to date.

There's one in the 4.20 Southwell today, and there's also one in the 1.40 Warwick.

You can see performance for yourself here. I'll post a fuller review of W2L later in the week.

Incidentally, from the same 'stable' as W2L is TAPS (The Alternative Punters Syndicate), which offers a free month trial. They had a happy Saturday, with the following advices sent out to their members:

Market Rasen 4.30 (10) MISTER WISEMAN - Each way professional bet

Current best odds with the bookmakers* are: 10/1 available with...

Bet 365 - WON 15/2

Ascot 4.50 (14) MEYDAN PRINCESS - Each way professional bet

Current best odds with the bookmakers* are: 14/1 available with...

Bet 365 Ladbrokes VCBet - WON 9/1

Those that took the early 10's and 14's would have been in clover. You can sign up for your free trial here. It's free, there's no catch, so enjoy... :0)

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Finally finally, you can't help but notice that there is a 'sign up' box below this post. You will get used to this going forwards, as it will be appended in what I hope you agree is a relatively unobtrusive fashion (after the day's Bisogno bluster).

It's purpose is obvious:
I would like more people to read my guff.
I would like more people to back the winners that we back (and, I suppose, the losers we back too).
I would like more people to understand the good ways and the bad ways of finding winners, or at least to understand my interpretation of that.
And, yes, I would like more people to read the reviews of racing systems I post here and - only if they're interested and the product is any good - to consider buying through my sales link.

I hope that's ok with you. :o)

Happy Tuesday.

Matt

Systems Update

Quick Saturday update, dear reader, on Winners To Losers, TTS, and Football Loophole.

First, W2L had two runners yesterday, Opus Maximus and Crispian, both well stuffed. No qualifiers today.

TTS continues in brilliant form, with an 11/2 winner yesterday from just two runners.

Current profile is as per the graph, and you can sign up here if you'd like to.

Finally, on the systems front, I'll be keeping a close eye on Football Loophole today, as it's first selections are matched up and played out this afternoon.

Today's racing looks tricky and, to be honest, as I'm out playing football I've had no more than a cursory glance.

Chester low draws in the sprints mean I'd be interested in Aldermoor, Doughnut and Just The Lady in the nursery; and Methaaly, Wyatt Earp and Not My Choice in the 5.00

At Belmont tonight, there's a few Breeders Cup pointers up for grabs as the sprinters, turf routers (1m4f) and Classic contenders make their prep appearances. I'll report on the BC in due course: I'm going to be there, as I have been every year bar one since 2001. And I can't wait!

Have yourself a cracking weekend, and I'll catch you soon!

Matt

System Review: The Football Loophole System

I'm not entirely sure, dear reader, who's responsible for this football system, though I suspect it has something to do with Mr Steven Lee Jones. I say 'system', but in fact this is a collection of no fewer than seven systems: five traditional 'place your wager ahead of time' approaches and two trading (i.e. change your position during the match) tactics.

As with all Sports Betting Manuals' products, I was a little apprehensive regarding the content of this guide. But the first thing to say is credit where credit's due. Despite my reservations, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are 56 pages of fluff-free content.

In fact, this guide packs in more than the vast majority of racing and betting system ebooks. It's a pretty good read, I'd say, and - as mentioned - with seven systems, there is plenty of quantity.

Click here if you'd like to track straight to the sales page

But what of quality? Ok, what I propose to do by way of a test is to put up all of the selections identified by the system in the Premier League and Championship this weekend. This will cover the 'pick in advance' quintet of systems only, as I will be playing footy myself tomorrow afternoon (at an inordinately modest level!), so cannot review the trading systems.

So, System 1 is a way to find decent Home Wins, and nominates the following:

Middlesbrough over West Brom (1.86 on betfair as I write)
Reading over Swansea (1.8)

System 2 plays Asian Handicaps:

No qualifiers

System 3 is interested in over/under 2.5 goal markets:

Cardiff - Birmingham over 2.5 (2.3)
QPR - Derby over 2.5 (2.06)
Reading - Swansea over 2.5 (1.89)
Wolves - Bristol City over 2.5 (1.9)

System 4 lays aways (Premier League only):

Lay West Brom (at 5.3)

System 5 also involves striking a wager after the game has kicked off, and so I can't flag any qualifiers here.

I have used the trading strategies, and I like the reference to going against people's emotions that underpins these.

On the whole, I think the guide is probably worth it for the trading strategies alone, if you're not already aware of them.

For the other systems, time and results will tell. One word of caution on those: it does take a little while (perhaps half an hour for Premier League and Championship matches) to find the qualifiers across the five systems.

But then, you might well just specialise on a subset of them.

This is the best manual from the Steven Lee Jones factory for quite some while, and I give it a thumbs up ahead of the matches this weekend. Even if they don't go to plan, for anyone who plays on the footy, you should at least take a look at the sales page.

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Onto Friday's racing, and we had another nice winner in the first yesterday (11/2), as well as getting the hot favourite in the sprint layed out of the frame.

Alas, Hotham (11/2) left his run too late and was flying for third - would have won in another five strides. Make My Dream, mentioned in despatches, finished 2nd. Fair play to the winner, another course specialist, called Mr Wolf.

Today, let's take a peek at Ascot. There's a high draw bias to help us in the sprint, so let's look at the trends for the big sales race at 3.20.

A massive 29 go to post for this the 8th running of this race. It's been held at Newbury previously (when Ascot was being renovated) and has also been run from 6f to 6 1/2f to 7f. For all that, there are some pretty strong trends:

- All seven previous winners had lost their maiden tag. Remarkably, this scythes through half the field (15 down, 14 left in)

- 6 out of 7 were 3rd or better last time out (the exception being last year's winner). This takes out a further 3, leaving 11

- 6 out of 7 were drawn 18 or higher. Just four left.

The quartet I'll be focusing on consists of Accede, Rosy Mantle, Golden Destiny and Shiva Adiva.

But if we consider that 6 out of 7 previous winners had last run between 22 and 48 days prior to winning, we can chuck out the dormant Accede (115 days since last run) and Rosy Mantle, who ran 15 days ago.

So my two to tackle the other 27 with are Golden Destiny and Tom Dascombe's Shiva Adiva. But it's a tentative selection in the circumstances: almost thirty stroppy pubescent teenagers moaning and flouncing their way down the straight track at Ascot. We'll need fortune as well as statistics on our side!

A final note on this race. She might win, but anyone taking less than 2/1 on the terribly drawn favourite, Penny's Gift, wants their head examined in my opinion. If you can't find a better 6/4 shot than this, give the game up! Lay. All day.

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Funnily enough, in the last race at Ascot, Rapid City runs for Julia Feilden, having been returned to her stewardship after one run for David Wintle. Before that transfer, I was a part owner of RC, and I'll be cheering heartily from the sidelines despite no longer possessing any of this horseflesh.

(Incidentally, it will be a 'transfer back' double for Julia on the day, as Spirit of Sharjah runs for her earlier in the afternoon having been moved to Peter Chapple-Hyam for a fruitless spell last season).

Yesterday (Thursday) was indeed the fine day that I hope for TTS. Whilst not as good as 2006 (see Wednesday's post), we still celebrated winners at 10/1, 7/2 and 7/4 to put us £350 up on the season - to betfair odds of 16% above SP with a 5% commission paid on winners.

If you haven't yet got hold of it (where have you been hiding?!), you can read more about it and secure your copy here.

Happy Friday!

Matt

The REAL W2L Story So Far...

Battered and bruised, dear reader, from a protracted bout of self-flagellation, I now return to the blogging fray with my mind set squarely to the task of finding winners, reporting on racing systems, and generally justifying the few daily minutes you spend in my virtual company.

I'm very sorry for the slackness of recent posts. And now, humility not being my forte, let's proceed, non-stop, to the sunny side of the street.... (with apologies to the late Francis Sinatra).

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Winners To Losers is a simple enough laying system and, as with all systems, it's very important to get the qualification criteria correct. I had misread one of these prior to heading South and now see that only a subset of those geegees I flagged actually qualified.

Alas for the system thus far, that subset contained the winner (and, therefore, a loser for the system) but not so many of the losers (and thus winners for the system).

The true current state of play is:

Date	Course	Horse	Odds	Result	P/L to £20	P/L
17-Sep	Yarmouth	Grand Vizier	3.5	9	£19	£19
18-Sep	Ayr	Wicked Wilma	5	10	£19	£38
18-Sep	Yarmouth	Jagger	14	5	£19	£57
19-Sep	Ayr	Highland Warrior	7	4	£19	£76
19-Sep	Ayr	Regal Royale	12	9	£19	£95
19-Sep	Wolves	Strike Force	7.5	1	-£174	-£79
20-Sep	Catterick	Woody Waller	7	4	£19	-£60
20-Sep	Ayr	Kings Point	5.5	2	£19	-£41
22-Sep	Kempton	Armure	6.5	1	-£151	-£192
23-Sep	Beverley	Mr Toshiwonka	6.5	12	£19	-£173
24-Sep	Goodwood	Patavium Prince	11	12	£19	-£154
24-Sep	Redcar	Pride of Northcare	11	5	£19	-£135
24-Sep	Goodwood	Blessed Place	7.5	10	£19	-£116

So, just past the half way stage in the trial, and W2L is currently about six points down, and has it's work cut out to make the grade - on the evidence of the trial fortnight at least.

But don't write this one off just yet. I've got a sneaking feeling that it'll come up trumps in the end...

There are no runners today.

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A system that may or may not give me that same warm feeling is one that you've almost certainly received emails advising you about, and that is the Football Loophole system, due for release this Saturday.

I'll be reviewing it on the blog over the weekend, so my advice is keep your money in your pocket for now and await the results of the Geegeez review.

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They race at Pontefract today, and in the opening maiden, I can't see Big Apple Boy being out of the frame. He's well drawn (much better than when finishing fourth over course and distance on debut), and might just upset the odds on favourite, who seems to have a penchant for chivalry (form figures of 222 imply a touch of the 'after you's' about this one).

In the 3.30, a fillies' nursery, the topweight, Maid For Music, looks like she'll go well. She had no chance against much better oppo when running in Listed class the last twice and, upped in trip to a mile, she might just see it out better than her lower weighted (and less able?) rivals today.

In the 4.00, the short priced favourite has a very wide draw to overcome and looks solid lay material to me at anything shorter than 5/2. Although clearly on the upgrade, Kevin Ryan's inmate has had extremely supportive draws for his two wins at Beverley and Hamilton. He also likes to lead in his races and, from box 15 with plenty of speed inside him, he might just get overwhelmed. Not for me.

Top weight Hotham, from an inside position, looks much more worthy of each way support. A track specialist with two wins and two further places from just five runs here, and a winner last time out, he must go well. Incidentally, he also won the corresponding race last season.

Tough and consistent Make My Dream is about the best supported horse in the race, so keep an eye out for him too. But for me, it's lay the jolly and back Hotham to bring home the sizzling bacon (hot ham, geddit?!)

In the Apprentice Handicap that closes the card, Jamie Kyne is on a hat-trick, having brought his last two rides home in front at odds of 12/1 and 9/1, and his mount, Paradise Walk, might give the favourite most to do. If they were all professional jockeys though, I'd say that Princess Flame was nap material. They're not, so each way on the Paradise for me.

Also look out for Brendan Powell at Fontwell and Nigel Twist and Shout (or Twiston-Davies if you prefer) at Perth. I'm expecting winners... I'm just not sure where and when!

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Finally, it's Thursday, so in the brave new world of Geegeez that can only mean one thing - it must be time for some Fursday Fun!

From the makers of Family Guy, this is exceedingly off the wall, and ever so slightly not quite right....



Ciao pronto,
Matt