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As of the end of February 2014, there are now numerous new - and very cool - features within the geegeez racecards. Below is a video which explains how the main features work. It's well worth a watch.
SUBSCRIBERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO DOWNLOAD THE LATEST VERSION OF THE USER GUIDE HERE
Beneath the video, I've highlighted a few key features as a short cut, in case you can't have sound on just now (say, for example, if you're in the office!!). If you're interested in a specific element, move the video along to that point, as follows:
Race card (horse/trainer/jockey inline form, comments, breeding, head to head) - 00:30
Full Form Filters (splice a horse's form by any combination of relevant factors) - 03:45
Race Analysis Report (the hugely popular 'traffic light' profiling tool) - 05:40
Pace Profiler (identify the likely pace of the race, front-runners, well/badly drawn horses, etc) - 07:00
Odds Comparison (go straight to the best odds for your fancy) - 10:00
Report Suite (Horses for Courses, 'Best Of', 4 x Trainer Reports, Head to Head) - 10:38
Tracker (add your favourite horses, trainers and jockeys and see them flagged on the card) - 14:15
The key features are under the various tabs.
On the 'Cards' tab, you can view the horse's last six runs by clicking the little horse icon by its name. The jockey and trainer performance since 2009 can also be seen by clicking their little icons.
To move around the day's racing, use the Race Selector dropdown or, to move to another race on the same card, just click the race time.
When you've found your idea of the winner, click the odds or the Bet button to be sent directly to the best odds bookie site; and/or click the Tip button to tip that horse in our prize tipping league, where you can win hundreds in prizes each month.
The cards also now include icons linking to Spotlight horse comments; breeding analysis; and a full head-to-head breakdown of each horse's performance against today's rivals.
Moving to the Race Analysis tab, this is where the really clever stuff starts. Here, you can see at-a-glance which horses are most suited to today's conditions. Using this form overview tool, it's possible to preview a whole meeting in less than a minute! 🙂
NB Since I recorded that snapshot, we've added rating info in blue on the right hand end. The columns T, L and D denote the following:
Ratings are as follows:
T – today’s official rating
L – last winning official rating
D – difference between today’s official rating and the horse’s last official winning rating (when the horse has won having been officially rated)
If you'd like a more in depth review of the form, no problem (I do too!).
Just click the Full Form tab. From here, you can drill down into the form of the horses, trainers and jockeys in the race. Using the exclusive form filters, you'll be able to see only runs for this course, distance, class, going, jockey... or any combination thereof.
You can also filter solely on wins, or wins and places; and you can review any specific year back to 2009. This is a very, very powerful profiling tool, and it's well worth taking ten minutes to get to know.
And that's where we're at just now. As you can see, they're pretty fricking cool!
Currently in development is a Best Odds Comparison tab, and a Pace Analysis tab. I hope these will be ready before the end of September, but time will tell.
Now, there are one or two known issues currently. Please be aware of these as you're working round the cards.
Firstly, sometimes the page will take a moment to load. This is something we're monitoring and is to do with how it accesses the database (blah, blah, etc etc). Anyway, if this does happen, please wait for a moment (say, five seconds or so). If still no response, refresh the page.
Occasionally, when navigating the full form, you'll see the word 'null' appear for trainer, jockey and owner. If this happens, also hit your refresh button.
Finally, sometimes the page actually fails to load even after refresh. This is not very often but it does happen and, when it does, you'll need to close the window and start again.
Clearly, these are annoyances, and we are working on them. But I hope that the flexibility and time-saving value of the tools will more than justify your tolerance when things go a bit skew whiff.
IMPORTANT - I'm aware of a current issue with Internet Explorer. Please use another browser (Firefox or Chrome for PC users) to access the cards.
So, what are you waiting for? Get cracking! Here's the link:
Why not add it to your favourites?
Matt
p.s. If there's a feature you'd be interested in, please do leave a comment below and let us know. We'll do our best to add the stuff that you ask for the most. That's the kind of guys we are 😉
More Myth Busting
Today sees the third and final instalment of Tony Keenan's efforts to dispel some of the myths surrounding racing as he sets about debunking another five falsedoms in...
...The Punting Confessional – February 20th, 2013
Let’s conclude this mini-series with a few more clichés, starting with:
‘It suited to be up with the pace on that day.’
While there are a few tracks that may have pace biases – I’m thinking of the round tracks at the Curragh and Tipperary – in the main this sort of view is a ‘wise guy’ (and by ‘wise guy’ I mean trying to be too smart) call borne of American influences that would be best ignored in Europe.
There have been many great books written on the idea of track biases in the US but such concepts apply mainly to dirt racing and not to turf and possibly not even to all-weather racing here as it is run on polytrack or fibresand.
The important factor in racing in these islands is pace within the race, early, middle and late, not any inherent bias on the surface or course itself; a soft lead or early pace battle is a soft lead or early pace battler anywhere.
‘The owners are a lovely bunch of lads.’
This has nothing to do with betting but is irksome nonetheless and is beloved of the likes of Ted Walsh on RTE Racing who seems to describe every winning set of connections as a great group even if he doesn’t know them. Let’s face it; they can’t all be ‘lovely’, some are bound to be sociopathic.
By the expensive nature of exercise, racehorse owners generally have to be quite if not very wealthy and while income is hardly a barometer of character there are bound to be some well-off people where the septic tank theory applies, i.e. the biggest lumps rise to the top.
We are constantly reminded of temperamental owners falling out with trainers and jockeys over poor rides or placing or other issues and horses being moved as a result. It often seems to be over very little though it must be said that trainers and jockeys are hardly whiter than white.
I suppose it boils down to placing racing in a positive light and getting others involved but the sport certainly isn’t all one happy family.
‘This price is value.’
The idea of value, popularised by the Pricewise columns of Coton, Collier and Segal, has made its way into racing idiom and is all too often thrown out there by a pundit because he fancies one at a big price; the conflation of value with longer odds is erroneous, what it really refers to is when a price is wrong, its true odds not reflected in current odds, and can occur at shorter prices too.
When the value comment is reeled off I want to know what the price should be and the argument behind it; if one horse is value, then something else must be underpriced but in the rose-tinted world of the racing media this negative opinion is rarely voiced for fear of offending connections and biting the hand that feeds. In the media, this may be a sensible approach but in betting having a negative view is vital as a bad favourite can lead to value everywhere.
The reasons a horse could be value are manifold and boil down to calling why the market is erring: it could have false or clouded form, its trainer may be underrated, it may be facing a hype horse, better than the bare form last time, the pace may suit well now. The commentator having a knowledge of betting percentages would be a help; that said, one shouldn’t be a slave to percentages as you have to fancy the horse in and of itself and not just because there are a few points out of a hundred in your favour.
‘He silenced the doubters.’
Paul Nicholls, with his sometimes adversarial (though admirably open in media matters) personality, has a lot to answer for. He has gotten a lot of mileage out of this phrase, especially when he has managed one of his trademark resurrection in form for one of his older stars like Kauto Star or Denman but it suggests a misunderstanding that racing involves betting; it is, after all, the doubt that makes the odds and a doubtful attitude to horses (and what trainers and jockeys say about them in particular) should be nurtured rather than scorned.
Throughout my betting life, I have made money from being against short priced horses, I am by definition one of the doubters. I slag off and question ‘public horses’ (those with big reputations) the whole time and while I get plenty of them wrong – notably the likes of Frankel and Sprinter Sacre – the fact is that you need to be right an awful lot of the time when playing at those odds, such runners much more often underpriced than overpriced.
They may not get beaten often but when an odds-on shot is turned over, you are getting a price and it pays to play the long game in this regard; most punters can’t countenance defeat for such horses but those than can, profit.
‘The yard knows the time of day.’
The shrewd connections argument is often based in punters’ love of a stroke and the likes of Barney Curley, Charles Byrnes et al have a whiff of sulphur off them that is both adored and detested. It would perhaps be better for racing if they were not around and we had a more trustworthy formbook but they are so we have to find a way to address them.
I am against any sort of insider nonsense and by that I mean any idea that there’s a golden circle that knows what’s going on more than others and as a general rule I want to be against gambling yards (though all yards are gambling to some extent or other) as they tend to operate a low percentages and short prices. You’re far better to be with yards whose runners tend not to be punted; the prices tend to offer better value and it is much easier to get on.
Exploding More Clichés
In last week's Punting Confessional, Tony Keenan began to explain why much of what we hear about racing from (usually) self-appointed "experts" should be taken with a pinch (or two) of salt. He expands on that topic this week, as he sets about exploding some more common clichés often heard around the race courses in...
...The Punting Confessional – February 13th 2013
In his collection of essays and reviews from 2001, The War Against Cliché, novelist Martin Amis wrote that ‘all writing is a war against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.’ He was referring to literary pursuits but could so easily have been writing about racing, an area that is jam-packed with clichés. Let’s explode a few more of them, starting with that old chestnut...
"He’s due a win."
Probability has no memory and each race needs to be taken on an individual basis so the idea that a horse is in line for a win, by dint of its form figures, is fallacious. Figures of ‘322’ may suggest success is imminent but what matters is not the figure itself but the context it was achieved in; a ‘2’ that was achieved in a low-class race may not be as valuable as a ‘6’ in a better race and the former is more likely to be overrated by the market while the latter may slip under the radar.
Similarly a ‘6’ achieved when cutting out a fast pace and just fading inside the final 100 yards could be more meritorious than a ‘2’ that came from a closer in the same race that was run to suit hold-up types.
Often horses that are running well in handicaps are less likely to win rather than more so; because their marks are rising they are becoming less well-treated. Runners that constantly hit the frame without winning, poor win/run ratio types, can also be ungenuine and in the main it pays to go with horses that are serial winners rather than serial losers. Also, it goes without saying that those that run well in defeat tend to be short prices on their subsequent start.
Runners that are "due a win" should not be confused with horses working up to something, say one that is gradually coming back to form, perhaps off a break, and who may be able to take advantage of a dropping mark. Such horses are often undervalued as their form is clouded; the combination of a slipping mark, more than typical improvement from run-to-run and a likely value price making them always of interest.
"Anything he does over hurdles is a bonus."
A cliché beloved of the racing fans I wrote about on these pages in September (seen here) and October (here) of last year, it is one of the ways to the betting poorhouse. Trainers and jockeys certainly have a lot to answer for in this regard, often filling the racing pages with comments about how they cannot wait for a certain bumper horse or novice hurdler to go over fences such is the scope they possess.
And certainly there are times when these horses make up into top chasers but they’re just the type to be underpriced when they do run and in fact the horses punters really want to be with in novice chases are the opposite, those limited hurdlers that have improved for the bigger obstacles and who are underrated by the market that places too much emphasis on their hurdling form.
Generally, it takes the market a number of starts to cotton onto this improvement, the same market that overvalues classy hurdlers that have not taken to fences and keeps them short prices.
All too often, punters and racing generally live in the future, focusing on big races and targets in the future. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this as it does help build excitement for the big days but in life it’s probably best to live in the now and that’s true of punting too. Rather than looking ahead to a big race at Cheltenham we should seek to get an edge this week in the lesser races that are far less likely to be analysed to a point where any value has been squeezed out of the prices.
None of this is to say that we can’t take a long view and such an approach doesn’t pay off, but perhaps we do it too much.
A development on this idea is that of trading a race, backing a horse in the hope that it will shorten up because of a good run in a trial race before laying back to guarantee a profit. I just don’t get this; why not just back it for the first race and not tie your money up? The price may be not quite so generous but if it is offering value in the ante-post race it is likely to be the same for the prep race and if it’s going to shorten up for its ultimate target it’s nearly going to have to win its trial.
"The weight beat him."
Even the best are referring to this one, Willie Mullins using a variation on the theme when referring to his recent Boylesports Hurdle winner Abbey Lane as having a ‘lovely racing weight’ and it becomes a particular touchstone in marathon handicap chases or on soft ground where poundage is thought to have a greater effect.
Looking at this logically, it just doesn’t make sense; we’re talking about a half-ton plus of horseflesh carrying a maximum weight differential of 28lbs (more allowing for claimers) so how can a few pounds one way or another make any real difference?
What matters is not the weight but the mark as it dictates the class of race a horse can compete in; generally, it’s better to carry lots of weight against inferior opposition that having a feather burden against classier types. For me, class is a key concern whereas weight simply isn’t and punters would be advised to keep an eye on the class structure at play in their racing jurisdiction; in Ireland, the difference between competing in a 0-65 bottom grade handicap and a 0-80 can be monumental.
One offshoot of this is that classy horses at the top of the handicap are often underbet, the assumption being that they have too much weight. Preference is given to those at the lower end of the handicap by the market but there is certainly value in looking to the proven ones with plenty of weight, Tidal Bay in last year’s Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown (run on atrocious ground, incidentally) being a good example of where class won out.
Punting Confessional: Avoiding Nonsense
Tony Keenan believes that the vast majority of advice doled out by racing "experts" should at least come with a caveat or taken with a pinch of salt at best and that we need to apply our own thoughts to what we get told, as he explains here in...
...The Punting Confessional – February 6th, 2013
On the wall of my office, I have a quote from Buddha: ‘Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’ It’s one that applies to racing where so much of what is written or spoken on the subject, well-intentioned though it may be, is wrong-headed and needs to be questioned. Holding doubts, and applying them to the odds, is central to punting and we saw a good example of this on Festival Trials Day with Oscar Whisky and whether or not he stays three miles.
That question hasn’t been conclusively answered with the Cleeve Hurdle having been run in a much slower time than last year’s World Hurdle; the former was run in 5 minutes 44 seconds, the latter in 6 minutes 32 seconds. Does this mean he stayed because the ground was very deep and it was a true test of stamina or was it run at a slow pace that allowed him to get home? I can’t answer that and the odds in March would have to dictate the play; there are too many grey areas here to hold a strong opinion. Racing has many more black-and-white cases and that’s what I’d like to explore now; racing clichés that the need to be queried and what I perceive as the truth behind them.
‘He did it the hard way from the front.’
This one reared its head on RTE Racing on Irish Champion Hurdle Day at Leopardstown where the inclement conditions had Ted Walsh saying how it difficult it was for Pont Alexandre to make all in the sleet and even mentioning how it was like cycling and getting some cover would help. Getting cover is an aid in terms of settling a horse and not having it do too much, too early, but this concept of drafting and slipstreaming just doesn’t apply; wind is a largely irrelevant factor in racing, even in extreme circumstances. Unlike cycling, horse races don’t go on for long enough for this to have an impact.
To say that it is hard to make the running shows a misunderstanding of pace which is an all-important factor. There is nothing difficult about sitting on the front if the horse is getting a soft lead, pace pressure – where a number of runners battle for the lead – is the key thing. With this in mind, punters should look pre-race at the likely front-runners and prominent racers to see if a horse may get an easy lead and be flattered by the form or whether there’s going to be a battle for the lead.
A linked comment to this is ‘the pace wasn’t strong enough for him.’ It’s nowhere near as bad as ‘he did it the hard way from the front’ but it is often used in a throwaway fashion as a catch-all excuse for a poor run. Certainly there are horses that do need a strong pace, particularly hold-up types or those that need a test at the trip, but one needs to differentiate these from the ones that are getting a twee excuse. Punters should avoid the response to this that horses that want a good pace should make their own running; it’s more complex than that as run-styles cannot be changed easily.
‘The owner/trainer is in attendance; they must fancy their runner.’
Such a comment is beyond irrelevant, the worst kind of insider nonsense. The fact that ‘Willie [Mullins] is here today’ matters little; he may have had to meet an owner or prospective owner, oiling the social wheels of racing often as important as results on the track. Also, this is what owners and trainers do, they go racing because they enjoy it or it’s their job. I won‘t even dignify the statement about backing a runner from the first trainer or horsebox you see with a comment.
Also, I place little stock in how far a trainer has sent a horse to run in a race; in Ireland, a relatively small country, this matters little. That Willie has sent one to Downpatrick, probably as an out-of-the-way track as one can find for the Closutton trainer, is more a product of him trying to find a race so bad that one of the lesser lights in his stable can get a win. Punters should base their views on the formbook, not on inside information, as the vast majority of same has had the value squeezed out of it by the time it reaches their ears.
‘I was at Navan when horse X won impressively.’
The availability bias or heuristic is a mental shortcut where people make judgements about the probability of events by how easy it is to think of examples and being in attendance at a race meeting and seeing a horse in the flesh is a good example from racing. That a punter saw a horse in high-definition at the track is neither here nor there; nothing says that it would have been any more impressive whether one was in attendance or not. In any event, watching a replay of a race on TV or a laptop is much better than live from a punting perspective as you will learn more; you now have the rewind function so you can watch it back over and over and make an informed decision on what happened while doing it at a later date means you now have more information to hand and have critical distance.
I like going racing as much or more than the next person but I attend for the social aspect and I simply enjoy the atmosphere at live sport and it gets me out of the house as being a follower of racing can mean a lot of time in front of the TV and laptop. The truth is that you learn little new at the track however, apart from perhaps speaking to some good punters on various subjects but the idea that there is some sort of inner circle at work at racecourses needs to be put to bed.
Finalising the Tissue
Last week, Tony Keenan started to show us how he would theoretically set about compiling a tissue for a given race and he continues along that line today, as he explains more specifically how to go about this task in...
...The Punting Confessional – Wednesday, January 23rd 2013
I did my best to duck the question about how to actually compile tissue prices last week – probably because it’s like an experienced cyclist trying to show a maiden rider how to ride a bike (answer: ‘you just do it!’) – but I better address it in full now. Firstly, there’s nothing mystical about putting a tissue together, this isn’t alchemy. Like most things in life, you get better and more comfortable with it the more times you do it.
At this point in time, I have reached a stage where I would find it hard to have a bet without tissue prices; I suppose one could use target prices as a guide (i.e. a price below which you are unwilling to back a horse) but it’s best to have a full sense of the race by giving every runner a price.
When compiling a tissue you need to work in a vacuum so ignore all other prices, tissue or otherwise, that are available in the public domain. This isn’t an easy thing to do – it’s a bit like trying to avoid picking a scab – but is necessary.
The last thing you want is for your attention to be drawn by a price that seems out of line and have your whole interpretation of the race skewed before you start; it’s always best to start from an objective rather than subjective position.
There is a chance here that you will miss a price every now and then taking this approach for races that are priced up early but in the long-term it will pay for itself.
It’s next to impossible to do a tissue without having done form study beforehand so go through the race as you normally would now, using the usual angles. For me, this basically means what I outlined in last week’s piece. From here, I’ll be getting a feel for what horses should be fancied and unfancied, overpriced and underpriced, the latter pair more important than the former.
My tissues will be based totally on feel, there’s nothing numerical or figures based, that’s not how I work. Feel, instinct, intuition, call it what you will, is built up over time. The argument can be made that a numbers-based approach where you assign different variables a value and work the prices from there could be used but that’s not what I do.
From here, I get down to the maths of the project. I have my list of betting percentages which can be easily accessed by typing same into an internet search engine though at this stage I know them almost by rote, a 6/4 shot is 40%, an 8/1 horse 11% and so on. It’s easy to pick this up when you’re doing it regularly. I go through the race in racecard order, not looking at the favourite or outsiders first, and assign each a price.
For instance, in an 8-runner race, you could have prices that come out like this: 33/1, 10/3, 14/1, 9/2, 4/1, 4/1, 50/1, 14/1 which add up to 100% probability. I like my prices to come out as close to 100% first time as possible, not way over or under, and I tend not to spend a huge amount of time tinkering with them; at this point, I trust my workings and shy away from second-guessing.
Pricing to a 100% book is the only way to as you’re getting at the true probability of the race outcome. Taking this approach, you’re going to have to put some of the outsiders in at big prices but that’s what they deserve to be and often bigger.
Would I lay the prices I put them in at? No, but that’s because I’m simply not a layer and if I think a horse is underpriced I want to get it beat by backing against it rather than laying it, it’s a matter of approach.
When compiling the tissues, one should have a sense of the horses that are likely to be overpriced beforehand. I’ve written about this before and there are many angles that could lead to an overpriced horse such as pace, video analysis or something as simple as a low-profile trainer.
Be aware though that horses can, every now and then, be inexplicably overpriced, particularly should a drift occur close to the off; the exchanges are the place to go to back such drifters as the Betfair market can resemble the course market on speed in this regard.
All tissue prices have limitations and you should be aware of yours; are you better at one type of race than another? In my case, handicaps are where I do best. No one’s prices are totally accurate and allow for broad error; I don’t see how anyone can differentiate between a 4/1 shot and 9/2 shot.
I don’t have a rule as to how much I want a horse to be overpriced before I make a play though obviously you want to play stronger the more they are overpriced; for instance, I would back a 7/2 shot that I think should be 2/1 stronger than a 7/2 shot I think should be 11/4.
When your tissues are in, it’s largely a case of comparing them against the available odds and making your plays. There’s a case for backing more than one horse in a race – I often do so and more – but bear in mind there are times when none of the runners will be overpriced when compared to the bookmakers’ prices as they’re betting to an overround.
This is less likely when playing into the Betfair market near the off as it will be closer to 105% (100% plus commission) and there should be a few overpriced runners at that point.
Making tissues is something that can be developed over time; it could take you a while when you start to do them but it will become old hat over time and is certainly a useful edge.
Compiling a Tissue
To make your betting profitable, it is essential to make sure you get the best value from your selections. Compiling your own tissue is the way to ensure that the odds you take represent enough value to be successful in the long run. Backing 2/1 horses at 4/1 is the way forward where possible, of course! But by not knowing the "true" price of a horse, you may well end up doing the exact opposite.
This week, Tony Keenan takes us through how he would approach the compilation of a tissue for a race in...
...The Punting Confessional – Wednesday, January 16th 2013
Back in the comments section of this diary in January 2nd, a reader Ger asked that I write something on compiling my own tissue and that’s the spur for this piece. As a contrarian I’ve never been great at doing exactly what I’m told so I’ve decided to take a race from scratch and look at how I played it, from analysis stage through pace and tissues to striking a bet.
The race in question is the 8.50 from Dundalk on Friday January 4th, a ten-furlong handicap for horses aged four and up with the top-weight racing off 89.
The first notable about this race is that it’s an older horse handicap; these are my bread-and-butter races and I know I’m not alone in such things, Dave Nevison having commented similarly in one of his books. With horses like this, inside information becomes much less relevant as their form is in the book as they have had a number of runs and this provides the pure form student with an edge.
I will have an intimate knowledge of the horses involved, having watched most if not all of their recent starts on replay, and will know what to expect. Also, this is a classic example of the middle-of-the-road racing I prefer; the horses are good enough to be reliable as opposed to the bottom feeders yet not well enough known by the betting public to have the value squeezed out of their prices. Finally, the race was at Dundalk, a track whose virtues I have extolled in the past.
My notes from the race are below. Initially I cut-and-paste the entire race-card from Horse Racing Ireland’s race administration site after which I add my own notes, pace comments, tissue prices and shortlist. It’s handy to save these files on your computer as you can look back and check them again.
(8:50) 4E Floodlit Friday Nights At Dundalk H'cap
€6,900.00 ( 1m 2f 150y - 4yo+ )[MAX 14]
1 2 King's Trail (JPN) (89) (TKodama) - RCoakley(7) ................ 10,00 – no recent form – NO – prominent – 20/1
2 7 Salam Alaykum (82) (JFEgan) - JFEgan ..... 9,07 – is likely one that is ahead of his mark still, the Placere form worked out; interesting in a race like this – tracks pace/prominent over this trip – 9/2
3 4 Denny Crane (GB) (81) (ELynam) - SFoley(V) ..................... 9,06 – isn’t in form nor well-treated – NO – held up – 12/1
4 1 Shake The Bucket (79) (NMadden) - LPDempsey(7) ............. 9,04 – obvious chance with affinity for course – tracks pace – 9/2
5 6 Alghanem (76) (MPhelan) - DEMullins(3)..... 9,01 – rising out of bottom grade to take on decent types; one to be against in this good company as also a dodge – ? – chases pace – 8/1
6 3 Prince Of Fashion (76) (JGeoghegan) - PJSmullen(T) ............... 9,01 – met trouble last time and drop to this trip won’t be a problem; player and does go well for Smullen – mid-div – 9/2
7 5 Shukhov (76) (GMLyons) - GFCarroll ........... 8,13 – would be one to take on having gotten a rise in the weights, taking a long time to win beforehand; last time out winner likely to be overbet – chases pace – 8/1
8 9 Hurricane In Dubai (73) (DMarnane) - FLynch ......................... 8,10 – stable switch – NO – new connections; hard to call – 20/1
9 8 Silverlord (FR) (69) (GElliott) - .(T) ............... 8,08 – dog – NO – chases pace – 16/1
PACE: King’s Trail may go on with Salam Alaykhum a possibility but it’s unlikely to be break-neck.
SHORTLIST: This looks between Salam Alaykhum, Shake The Bucket and Prince Of Fashion; the first-named most likely to be overpriced.
First to explain each note; after all the factual stuff about weight, trainer and such like I add my own comments. They tend to be quite short here as I’m dealing with horses I know well and after that I put a NO if I think they have no chance, a question mark if I have doubts or leave it blank if I give them a chance. Next I put in the pace comment which is an amalgam of their run styles over their last three to five starts with a mix of intuition if I expect something different today; perhaps there is a dramatic change in distance or headgear being applied.
Having done each horse in sequence, I’ll look their pace comments to see how the race is likely to be run and only then will I do the tissues; they come after the pace as the I want to factor that into my figures, pace being an underrated aspect that can provide an edge. I price up the race to 100% and for a small field like this it only takes a matter of minutes and if I’m out on my first set of figures, I’ll adjust them until they’re right. Only then will I put together the shortlist which is more of list of overpriced horses than likely winners.
Now the really interesting part comes as you compare your prices to others in the public domain and those offered by the bookmakers.
Here, in three columns are the relevant prices, the first is my tissue, the second the best morning odds and the third the final starting price:
King’s Trail 20/1 16/1 18/1
Salam Alaykhum 9/2 8/1 9/2
Denny Crane 12/1 9/1 7/1
Shake The Bucket 9/2 4/1 10/3
Alghanem 8/1 3/1 4/1
Prince Of Fashion 9/2 11/2 5/1
Shukhov 8/1 7/1 7/1
Hurricane In Dubai Non-runner
Silverlord 16/1 14/1 14/1
It’s pretty obvious the horse(s) I’d want to back looking at those prices but one also needs to know why they, and others, are the wrong prices. Let’s start with Alghanem who is the key horse in the race in many respects as he’s a bad favourite. A bad favourite is the best thing a punter can have as it makes it a betting race. Alghanem was a bad favourite for a few reasons; he was just one from sixteen before this race, having shown head carriage and weak-finishing tendencies in the past, and he was also coming out of the bottom grade of handicaps having copped a 12lbs rise from 63 to 75 for his sole win.
He was facing a seismic jump in class, going from racing against horses rated in the 50s and low-60s to taking on a handicap where the top weight was rated 87, essentially skipping a couple of grades, something few horses can do and much less, ones with dodgy temperaments. Not only that he had a really interesting betting profile and by this I mean how he tends to move in the market. He had landed a colossal on December 7th, backed from 8/1 in the morning to 9/4 on course, and I suspect the layers were still nursing their wounds from this and priced him up far too cautiously which meant other horses were value.
Shukhov was another I wanted to be against as he simply won in his turn last time in a weak race having been a long-standing maiden beforehand and was going to find this tougher upped in the weights; disappointingly however, he was not put in short in the morning even though he was a last time out winner which may have been to do with his trainer Ger Lyons. Despite being the preeminent handler at the track, his horses are not often punted.
The trio to note were Shake The Bucket, Prince Of Fashion and Salam Alaykhum. Shake The Bucket was just a fair price in the morning as his chance was there for all to see, an in-form course specialist. He often drifts in the market pre-race so may have been of interest at that point but I felt a slow pace would be against him as this trip was his minimum and he is often dropped in. Prince Of Fashion was a touch overpriced at 11/2 though not hugely but Salam Alaykhum was the rick and the reason was simple: out of sight, out of mind.
He hadn’t run since October 5th but looked a well-treated horse, his form with Placere from the summer having worked out particularly well and he had been a well-backed favourite in the Ladies Derby at the Curragh on ground he wouldn’t have liked. That wouldn’t always be the best guide as such market moves can be false but I felt it was true in his case and he was certainly overpriced, indeed the opposite of the recency-biased thinking that had Alghanem in favourite.
In the end I backed Salam Alaykhum at an average of 8/1 and Prince Of Fashion at an average of just over 5/1 to split stakes. The former was a great bet as the market told, supporting him into 9/2 at the off. I hoped he would go on at the trip as he had done in the past with no real pace pressure likely. The latter was a poor bet as I got suckered into backing him in the morning when there appeared to be some support from him and I punted at just over my tissue price which isn’t a good move; you really need more of an edge.
I saw the market shift for him and panicked which was a mistake and I also should have remembered that he’s not really the horse to back at a short price; he wins a low percentage of his starts and is inconsistent and is mainly one to take a chance on at bigger prices.
In the end, the pace scuppered the race for as neither King’s Trail nor Salam Alaykhum went on and it was run at a crawl with Shake The Bucket making all and winning with a bit in hand; he got a soft lead. It was a surprise to see him do such as he’d never raced on the pace before. I made one good bet in the race with Salam Alaykhum and he shaped like one ahead of his mark, held up in rear and the only one to make any ground up in the closing stages, ultimately finishing fourth of eight in the manner of one that can win soon. Prince Of Fashion was a poor bet and ran like one.
In this race, I got it wrong in terms of the result but not with Salam Alaykhum at the prices; he was definitely a bet. Not every race will throw up overpriced horses like him but tissue prices are certainly a big help in finding his like.
Opportunities & Threats
Tony Keenan has taken us all the way through race analysis to bet formation, followed by an explanation on how to review your year as a whole. Last week, Tony gave us a review of his own personal performance in 2012 and he closes this chapter by taking a look back at the opportunities and threats that he was presented with last year in...
...The Punting Confessional – January 9th 2013
Let’s conclude this short series on analysing a punting year by looking at the opportunities and threats that arose in the last twelve months for me.
Opportunities: Chances for development take many forms in betting; for someone who struggles to get on, something as small as the arrival of a new betting shop in the locality with fresh staff who don’t know you could be an opportunity.
On a larger scale, the arrival of the all-weather track at Dundalk in 2007 was a boon to me though it took a few years for me to grasp it; the course offers just the grade of racing I like betting on, wild market fluctuations (particularly on the exchanges), consistent ground conditions, draw biases and pedigree angles. Best of all, some seem prejudiced against it – perhaps due to the perception from the UK that all-weather is muck or at least monotonous – which has led to it being largely under-analysed and resulting in overpriced horses.
Opportunity also refers to planning for the next year and I could write a full article on this itself. The backbone of my form study in the past two years has been doing video reviews of almost every flat meeting run in Ireland during that period and some of the results have been published on a sister site to this one.
While profitable in terms of throwing up future winners, the time cost of doing these is huge and I am not quite sure I can afford it in 2013. There is no replacement for doing one’s own video analysis as it is exclusive by nature and I still intend to do as many as I can but already I am going to raise the white flag in terms of doing every meeting.
To compensate for this I am seriously considering using Timeform is some shape or form to plug the gap and it may not be the perfect solution there are only so many hours in the day.
Pace is another area that I want to develop my knowledge. While it wouldn’t be the determining factor it is in dirt racing in the US, pace is an important component of racing in these islands and crucially it is underrated by the market.
The absence of sectional times is central to this as it becomes a subjective issue with no data to analyse; in this regard, backwardness is a plus for punters. Pace is perhaps a better tool for post-race analysis rather than pre-race prediction as tactics often change but it is noticeable how often Hugh Taylor puts up eye-catchers based solely on pace and there is an edge to be had here.
In terms of improving in this area, I want to do some reading on the subject, particularly the somewhat arcane ‘Modern Pace Handicapping’ by Tom Brohamer, a literary Everest I have stalled on the foothills in the past. In other areas, I’m interested in reading ‘Fooled by Randomness’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and ‘Risk Intelligence’ by Dylan Evans.
Part of me wants to get into the area of speed figures but with the exception of Dundalk where there are no rail movements, I am very dubious about the accuracy or otherwise of race distances in Ireland which would render such calculations difficult. I recall a letter from Naas racecourse manager Tom Ryan to the Irish Field last June in which he talked about rail movements at the track and I suspect that is the norm at Irish venues.
This is by no means to get a dig into Ryan as he is one of the better track managers (though the competition is hardly stiff), merely support for the belief that compiling speed figures on Irish racing would be difficult. Instead, I’d like to work on pedigrees and find those sires whose progeny have strong predilections for particular surfaces or distances.
Some of these are well-known – such as Captain Rios on soft ground – but there are certainly less obvious ones that are underestimated by the market.
Threats: The main threat for any even moderately successful punter is no more than the obvious, getting on. These days the clampers at the big bookmakers are out in force at even the whiff of a winning punter and while actual account closures may not be all that common, restrictions to buttons and phone-calls to the trading department are constant.
There are ways and means of getting around this (and if anyone wants to reveal more, don’t be afraid to comment on the bottom of this post!) but one also has to deal with it psychologically; there are times when you see a price that you just cannot take and it’s important not to get frustrated by this and go on tilt.
Restrictions are the job of the modern bookmaker and it’s best to look for solutions not problems as you would drive yourself mad at the unfairness of it; some sort of equanimity, difficult though it may be, seems the best approach.
Coping with the boredom and grind of day-to-day punting is another challenge. Sometimes the slog of the summer is difficult with meetings almost every day and you can be threading water in terms of making a profit for a long period; as I’ve said before, touches tend to come sporadically not regularly.
You have to tell yourself that every piece of form study, though not always valuable, has the potential to be so, one just doesn’t know it beforehand, akin to a prospector looking for gold. There are times when I struggle with the boredom angle but it can be good to think that I’ll deal with it when it becomes unbearable which it probably never will, it’s more the thought of it than anything.
My ideal punting scenario would probably be somewhere between the meetings mania of the summer and fallow lands of the winter with about three meetings per week. The reality of course is that you can’t have your cake and eat and you have to go with the calendar. You may tell yourself that you can’t miss out a meeting but you must do that sometimes in order to have a break.
Punting Confessional: Video Analysis
Tony Keenan has been guiding us through his whole process of race watching and note taking, followed by showing us how he analyses and uses the information gleaned. He concludes this process today by adding his final thoughts on video analysis in...
...The Punting Confessional – Wednesday 12th December, 2012
To conclude this short series on video analysis, let’s look at two final aspects of the process: ascertaining ease of victory and the role of attitude. The former is an intangible factor and that’s not necessarily a bad thing as it means the market can be slow to cotton on to it. Basically you’re looking for a result where the margin of victory doesn’t reflect the ease of victory and this can be for many reasons.
Has the horse only got racing room near the finish and quickened up well?
Has there been shuffling at a key earlier part in the race?
Has the pace scenario in one way or another masked the winner’s superiority?
Has the horse simply idled in the finish, taking the mickey out of its opposition?
With regard to the last type, I particularly like strong travellers who cruise through the race, pick up well and then are happy that they have done enough.
All this needs to be married to more traditional form study; again the point needs to be made that video analysis is just another type of form study. You need to compare how the horse won to the rise it has taken in the weights; I’m talking handicaps here where I do most of my punting. Ratings are the key for handicap punters and I’m not so much interested in the weight a horse carries as its mark and what that mark says about class and where it can compete next time.
Keeping an eye on the grade of race a horse competes in is important; for instance, a horse getting a hike from 65 to 76 can be a killer as it is has to jump from the bottom level to a 0-85, missing out the 0-75 in between. This is where wide-margin, last time out winners who are invariably sent off a short price may be worth opposing and in the main I prefer those that win narrowly so they can rise through the grades gradually.
If I have one rule in punting, it is this: never back a dog.
Rules are meant to be broken and there are times when I break this one but over time it has proven to work for me. I don’t find maidens all that interesting for betting purposes but they can be informative for the future as you can spot horses that aren’t giving their all. When reviewing any race, our eyes are naturally drawn to the first few horses, but we should also try to register what is going on down the field because the horse that was sent off 33/1 in the maiden could be an 8/1 shot in its first handicap despite being an utter rogue and can thus be rule out.
The signs of a dodge are well-known: awkward head carriage (whether high or to the side), hanging when asked for an effort or given the whip, finding little, swishing the tail.
I’m not at all forgiving when it comes to horses that have shown temperament and probably miss out on the odd winner as a result but I suspect I back more winners because of it as I am always against fancied horses that have an attitude. There can be many causes for a horse showing attitude but I’m less interested in that than the effect, i.e. that dogs don’t win as often as they should, are invariably involved in the finish without getting their head in front and as such take up a disproportionate chunk of the market.
It’s fair to say that every dog has its day – and that’s become more common in Ireland in recent years as the competitiveness of our racing has dropped somewhat – but it’s best to think long-term with them. One final point on dogs; just because a horse doesn’t show temperament every day it runs does not mean it is a reformed character. It may just be a case that it hasn’t had a chance to given the way the race has unfolded. There are some leopards that change their spots but they are the exception rather than the rule.
To conclude, I want to say that I am no expert in the area of video analysis; indeed, I am a learner but what I do know is what the market tends to underestimate. If you want to learn more, much more, about this approach then I suggest buying a copy of Andrew Beyer’s ‘The Winning Horseplayer’ and focusing on the section about trip handicapping, his term for video analysis. The book may take all its examples from America but offers huge insight into racing over here too.
If you prefer a more visual approach to this, I advise watching Hugh Taylor’s weekly attheraces slot ‘The Form Factor’ aired on Wednesday on Sky channel 415 around midday. It is filled with object lessons on how to spot eyecatchers and clear examples are given on clips, all explained in a cogent manner.
All this said one doesn’t want to become a slave to video analysis. Certainly these eyecatchers have market value and are an underrated angle but sometimes even they are overbet. Don’t forget value is the all-important concept and always be price-sensitive. Sometimes a simple formbook case will present better value than an eyecatcher and try to remain flexible in your thinking.
Punting Confessional: In-play Action
Having guided us through the importance of note taking and showing us how he analyses his notes to help him pick his bets, Tony Keenan now offers his advice in how to make the most of your work by placing some bets in-running in this latest edition of...
...The Punting Confessional – December 5th, 2012
Having done your work on pace and such like, it would be foolish not to apply what you have learned to in-running punting; I don’t do an awful lot of this myself but it can be a useful tool in your repertoire. Of course, one is fighting against those with fast pictures and you only need to go to a meeting live and see how far the attheraces channel is behind the on-course feed; there can be as much at seven or eight seconds in the difference.
That said, I still believe there is a an edge for reading the race right as some of the fast picture boys aren’t the most diligent race readers and are merely playing their time edge.
It is inevitable that one will get sickeners playing in-running, marginally missing a price because your fingers were too slow but the rewards are out there and last year’s James Nicholson Chase at Down Royal is a good if extreme example. In the race, the strong-travelling Sizing Europe was always likely to come into the race going well with the strong possibility his stamina would fail as the slow Quito De La Roque came off the bridle early and found plenty in the closing stages; so it transpired as the former hit a low of 1.32 while the latter traded at 280 before winning.
A lot of how a horse’s price moves in-running has to do with race position; as a general rule, hold-up horses will drift (out of sight, out of mind perhaps?) while the price of a pacesetter will contract. How a horse travels also plays a big part; if it is one that tends to come off the bridle early then you can invariably hit it at a bigger price in-play though the trip and pace play a big part in this as the horse that can travel smoothly over a longer distance may find things happening too quickly over shorter.
It’s the opposite with strong travellers who tend to shorten in the run and they can provide the opportunity to lay off in-running; the merits and otherwise of doing this have been debated by much smarter people than me and the argument can be made that by laying off you are taking a bad value price but it’s probably best to judge each horse on an individual basis.
It depends on your temperament too if you want to insure against narrow defeats but either way is something that is worth bearing in mind with horses that are suspect stayers, likely to race on the pace or may be ungenuine. If taking such an approach, it could be worth adding a little extra to your initial stake to allow for the loss you’ll be facing if your lay gets matched though this can be more costly should things not turn out as planned.
It’s taken me a while to get onto jockeys and one thing to bear in mind is that they are all fallible, most are competent when given the right horse but some more than others and you learn who over time. The most obvious thing punters cop with a jockey is when a horse is given too much to do and comes with a late rattle but as we have seen pace can play its part in this and it is way overdone as an angle anyway; the aim is avoiding rather than spotting the obvious.
With jockeys there are a few things I’m looking out for that may not be quite so well reflected in the market. Premature or midrace moves are one and by this I mean when a jockey moves his mount through the field at a time when his rivals are content to sit in position; such a decision is invariably costly as these moves are hard to sustain. Hitting the front too soon – a much better guide to future winners than looking for the fast finisher – is a variation on this.
Pace duels is another notable aspect of jockeyship, i.e. when two or more frontrunners get into a battle for the lead and go too hard, too early; in such cases, all involved are likely to be better than the bare form and keep a particular eye for horses that set a strong pace and still got involved in the finish. Some riders have a tendency to take a pull at the wrong time or not kick on early enough; this is not a contradiction of my earlier point about giving a horse too much to do but must be judged on an individual basis; if you’ve got a horse that needs a relative stamina test over an insufficient trip the jockey needs to be kicking early.
There may also be jockeys that lack aggression in terms of going for gaps and their timidity can be costly; this should not simply be confused with hold-up types that cannot get a run and don’t fall into the trap of blaming every troubled run of a patiently ridden sort on the jockey; the very nature of how such horses are ridden means some trouble is inevitable. Finally, I don’t deny that horses can get a soft ride now and then and it can be profitable to spot one but don’t hang your hat on this as it happens a lot less frequently than most think.
Trouble-in-running is another thing to look out for though I acknowledge that this can be overdone in the market; it is certainly one of the most obvious video angles and these are just the sort of horses that tend to be backed next time as not getting a clear run tends to be clear to jockeys and connections. Some horses are more vulnerable to trouble than others – hold-up types, obviously – and the same is true of jockeys, a number of whom seem magnets for bad luck in running though perhaps that’s my pocket talking.
With those meeting traffic, there are a few things to look for. I particularly like a horse that makes late progress after trouble, indicating that they still had running to give, it may only be running on from eighth into sixth but it’s enough to be significant. If the horse’s effort stalls totally after trouble, I am less inclined to mark it up. There are times when you simply don’t know what a horse had to give, especially if the jockey eases down on them, and in cases like this you really need to be let prices and their overall profile dictate having a bet.
The daddy of them all in terms of bad luck in running however is shuffling, the situation where a horse tracking the pace is caught behind one of the leaders falling back through the field. This is significant on a couple of levels; not only is the horse losing ground at a crucial stage and allowing others have first run on it, but it is also costing momentum just when it is needed. Horses like this don’t come along too often but when they get up to win you are almost certainly onto something, a horse well ahead of its mark as they are likely to be raised off the bare form.
Goldplated was a brilliant example of this when winning at Limerick early in 2011 and duly went on to climb the weights and it’s just the sort of angle missed by the market.
Bird's Nest
Punting Confessional: Pace & Position
Last week, Tony Keenan began to take us through the process of making our referral notes/videos, now he goes on to explain how he analyses those races in terms of pace and position in...
...The Punting Confessional – Wednesday, November 21st 2012
By now you’ve got your replays stored and have set up some way of storing your notes so let’s get down to the nuts-and-bolts of the process itself. Essentially you’re looking for eyecatchers, positive and negative, and both can work to providing bets in the future. I don’t believe in adopting the rose-tinted view of so many in the racing media and tend to view with a cynical eye, if anything being more negative than I have to be.
One wants to ignore efforts the obvious in spotting these eyecatchers and by this I mean the sort of superficially positive run that any attheraces presenter can spot in the 30 seconds following the race when needing to fill up airtime. Three obvious examples of these that spring to mind are the supposed non-trier given an easy ride, the horse motoring at the finish or the impressive wide-margin winner.
All three can easily be turned on their heads and read entirely differently: the one that wasn’t off may be a dog that needs tender handling, the fast-finisher could have made cheap late gains and been suited by the pace scenario while the wide-margin winner may have had the race fall apart or be vulnerable to the bounce. Crucially however, because their efforts were so falsely positive and flagged up by all and sundry, they tend to be overbet next time.
Let’s start with pace which is a key factor as it’s underrated by the market; as far as I can see, the likely run of a race has little to no bearing on the pricing of Irish races. The reason for this is simple: in Ireland (and the UK for that matter), we have next to no access to sectionals so the exact pace of a race is hard to quantify. That’s unsatisfactory for the intelligent punter on one level but on another plane it’s a good thing as it provides an edge; one has to go with some educated guesswork in understanding the pace and while there will inevitably be many times when one calls it wrong, the lack of market awareness to this approach means the prices offered leave room for manoeuvre.
In terms of gauging the pace, it’s important to have some sense of what is likely to unfold pre-race, an idea of the number of front-runners and such like in the race. Yes, tactics can change but it is better to have some knowledge prior to the event than none. In the race itself, look at how many horses are battling for the lead and how hard does the eventual leader have to work to get there. Do the runners get spread out early – indicating a likely decent pace – or are they racing in a bunch? How many of the runners are keen or fighting for their head?
If this is so, the pace is likely to be slow. Be aware of how pace works in relation to certain tracks; I’m not completely sold on this and suspect that the key thing is not the track but how the horses run but there do seem to be some courses where front-runners are at least marginally favoured; Ballinrobe with its tight turns and the round track at Tipperary spring to mind. Pace can also impact a horse’s trip preference; if there is a strong pace over 7f, a miler may get away with the distance but not if it is slowly run. Should the latter circumstances unfold, be willing to forgive said horse a seemingly bad run.
Race position and draw location are factors that link in with pace. There has been a rising consensus among English pundits of late that the draw has been done to death and become all too mainstream and the value is now in going against perceived biases; Tom Segal as Pricewise has advocated backing ones that seem to be drawn badly and are overpriced as a result.
I’m not so sure this is the case in Ireland as we’re backward in almost every aspect of racing and thank god for that as it provides no end of punting angles. Certainly, Irish punters can continue to look for ones that are favoured or unfavoured by the draw though an awareness of how such biases can shift depending ground is important; at Naas and Tipperary for instance, soft ground can see the high numbers favoured.
Race position – i.e. where a horse sits in the race – is a product of the draw; where one starts has an impact on where it races. Being trapped wide is something to look out for. When a horse is wide races on the outside of the pack, it may get a clear run but this one positive is heavily outweighed by negatives. Firstly, the horse racing wide doesn’t get cover and this increases the chance of it racing keenly which in turn expends vital energy necessary for the finish.
Not only that but the horse on the outer tend to travel further which is simple maths; as a fellow columnist Kevin Blake once said if you go around a track four horse-widths off the rail with a trundle wheel and do the same tight to the rail, you soon see the significance of this. At some tracks, often those with sweeping bends, such a race position can be fatal; Dundalk is a good example.
How a horse travels in its races is another thing to note. This can be determined by the trip and/or the pace and looking at how it moves and whether or not it is keen can tell you if it needs to go up or down in distance which is always useful to know; one that is off it from a long way out when most of the field around it are going well within themselves but runs on in the finish is almost certainly looking for a step up in trip but I prefer to base this on how it went through the race rather than the gains it made late.
I tend to like habitual strong travellers – something like one of this year’s progressive sprint handicappers An Saighduir is a good example – as they make life easy on themselves and can h0ld race position at little cost. There are however horses that are keen over every trip and off every pace; such horses are to be avoided as lack the strength for a finish and with quite a few races in Ireland being slowly run tend not to get the breakneck gallop they need to show their best.
Obviously how horses are travelling will give an insight into the pace.
The Punting Confessional: More on Form
The Punting Confessional – November 7th, 2012
by Tony Keenan
Dundalk, Friday November 2nd
I’d been impressed with Paene Magnus on his October 5th run over the same course-and-distance and he looked a bet at 6/1 in the morning; on his previous start which came off a break, he set a strong pace and having beaten off those that raced up with him the 3yo retained enough in the finish to run out a comfortable winner from a couple of closers. The market agreed and sent the Bolger horse off an eventual 10/3 favourite and he ran out an easy victor.
This was a video-based play and is one of my main ways of approaching a race these days; I like to review race meetings in the days afterwards and pick out horses of note, positives and negatives. It is form study of a sort but rather than viewing the race in words on a page through in-running lines, I look at the race in 3D which adds depth to my understanding of what really unfolded; oftentimes, the words of the formbook simply don’t tell the whole story.
Such an approach has become part of my edge on the market. Any successful punter needs a heads-up on the betting public, be it speed figures, inside information, trainer angles, statistics or any other. Video reviews are part of mine and my aim in doing such is to hold an exclusive view that is not widely available.
I suspect more people are taking such an approach now than in the past with its value having been established by the likes of Hugh Taylor on attheraces, his weekly eyecatchers tending to form a large part of his subsequent bets. Tom Segal is another devotee of watching as much racing as possible and the more widespread availability of video replays has made the logistics of such a project easier.
That said, I still suspect it is an edge for two reasons. Firstly, it is bloody hard work to analyse a meeting and even harder to sustain it over a punting season; most will give up at the thought of such labour. Secondly, by its very nature video analysis is interpretative rather than objective and what one viewer will see, another will miss.
It could be argued that taking the time to do such reviews is unnecessary when one can just read the post-race analysis in the Racing Post and allow the professional race-readers to sort it out for you. Au contraire. I wrote last week about some of the pros and cons of the trade paper and this section certainly falls into the latter category as their flaws here are many.
Firstly, and this is only as far as I know, the Racing Post journalists who analyse the races (and who tend to double up as news reporters at the same meetings) often complete their post-race analysis in the gaps between races; this is why the analysis are available on the website soon afterwards and in the paper the next day.
The timespan here is too tight; I assume that most racing journalists are also punters and having made a play in some of the races they are simply too close to the race – in every sense – to make an objective call about the result. Timeform do a much better job of this by waiting for a few days and allowing the dust to settle.
The Racing Post would be better advised to do a full results section with in-running lines and starting prices and such like the next day but leave the analysis until later at a time when ratings and relative times are available as well as a point of critical distance having been reached. Weekly papers like the Weekender and Irish Field really fall down in this regard; their print deadlines mean that they could really go into detail with post-race analysis (on at least a select number of races) but they ignore this avenue totally.
There is also the feeling that much of the analysis in the Post – and I am speaking mainly on Irish racing here as that is what I follow – is toothless; a journalist may be unwilling to call an ungenuine type a dog for fear of offending the owner who is almost certain to read the breakdown of his horse’s performance; the old line about how you can insult a man’s wife but not his horse rings true. Furthermore, some analysts are clearly better than others and it takes time to sort the wheat from the chaff.
A few just state the obvious, rehashing the in-running lines (which have improved notably in Ireland over the past months) into boring, uninformative copy. In terms of getting a better standard of analysis overall, Timeform is probably the place to go; I have used it in the past myself though not at present, preferring to compile my own analysis. Another problem with using the Racing Post reviews is that their views are in the public domain, accessible to the majority of the betting public which nullifies at least in part any points of value they have made.
So ideally, one wants to put together one's own reviews but what are the logistics of doing this? As I alluded to above, one really has to do it after the event, not the same day, and probably not the next day either. The aim should be to suppress one’s emotions in relation to the race which basically means winning and losing money and take a dispassionate view of the race.
In terms of getting the replays and storing them, I’d advocate putting a series link up on Sky Plus and recording the Racing Review programme (goes out every morning between roughly nine and eleven) on attheraces; I don’t have Racing UK as I don’t really play English racing but assume it’s the same over there. Any decent Sky Box can store a hell of a lot of racing though the Racing Review approach isn’t perfect; there are times on the days when there were lots of meetings that attheraces leave out the start of races and only show the finish which is a mess as you need to see the entire picture.
Alternatively, one can watch the replays on the various websites that provide such a service but the picture quality is not always great on the small screen and I prefer to watch them in comfort on a big TV though connecting a HDMI cable from your laptop to the TV is an option. Some of the websites have the irritating habit of including pre-race ads or plugs before each replay which can waste time; ATR have been running the Breeders’ Cup promo for weeks now and are sure to replace it with something else.
I’ll spend the next two weeks developing on this topic.
