Parish Notices, May 2026

It's Dante day, and I'm on the iron horse headed north to the Knavesmire. While I've a moment I wanted to share a few notices about various things, some of them even related to horse racing...

HBF Survey

As longer suffering readers will know, I used to be Chair of the Horseracing Bettors Forum, a group of racing punters trying to lobby for the interests of all punters. It's a pretty thankless task, I can tell you, often because we - they - don't really know exactly what's vexing other bettors.

Well, with that in mind, HBF has released its one question survey, which asks respondents to order some items from most to least important. On the basis of the replies they get, that will inform their agenda for the coming year.

It will take you literally a minute or so to respond, please do if you want to contribute to the direction of travel for HBF.

Here's the link to the one minute HBF survey (and thanks) >>

Footy bet hedge

Again, those who have been around a while know that each July/August I offer my thoughts on the upcoming footy season with a little multiple bet. They're the proverbial curate's egg - good in places - and are shared as a footy/betting fan rather than any kind of expert.

Anyway, this season's play has done OK - here's the original post - and last night PSG sealed the French title while Stockport County booked their place at Wembley. To the stakes I played, that's £168.92 of £240 returned, with three tickets still live on County.

The current cash out offer is £391 or so, which will go up or down a little depending on whether Bolton finish the job away at Bradford.

If Stockport win the play off final, those three tickets return around £930 - or of you played for £2 stakes, £93. So it's worth thinking about hedging a little. I'm going to take one team out of the equation by waiting for the result of tonight's match, and will then lock in a bit of profit - most likely by backing Stockport's final opponent (though I haven't fully decided yet).

Of course, you may have already elected to cash your tickets for a profit of £320 after stakes are accounted for (or £32 for £2's)... entirely up to you. I'm just wanting to highlight that if you followed me in, we're in a strong position and should be pondering getting a bit of jam...

Geegeez

A couple of things on geegeez development. We've moved our development server this past fortnight, and it's not been straightforward. It doesn't affect live operations, but it has slowed down a couple of things I was hoping to have released this week. They're just about ready so with a following wind the first - new sectional results - will land next week.

I'm also conscious that for some users the report suite is slower than you'd like. It's also slower than I'd like. We're looking at a candidate solution for that and will be working up a 'proof of concept' in the coming weeks. If it flies, we'll be making some fairly major changes - all invisible to you, except for the speed uplift - in the background in coming months.

QT 2.0 is almost ready, featuring a raft of new variables across current run, last run and second last run... but I want to freshen the interface as well as upgrade the query options. That pushes the timeline out, too, I'm afraid... but it is happening!

So, there's a lot going on even though it may not appear to be the case. Bear with us for just a little longer.

Mindset

Apropos of nothing... actually, it popped up on my x feed because it got auto-posted on our geegeez account on that platform (give us a follow)... I re-watched for the umpteenth time a webinar I recorded a few years ago about 'setting up to succeed'.

I appreciate how narcissistic that probably sounds, but it's actually - and quite surprisingly, to my ear/eye at least - full of good sense that I value being reminded of twice every three years or so. If you've not seen it, or even if you have, it's one of the best things I've done and you can (re-)view it below if you'd like.

French Open tennis

And finally, or enfin if you prefer (you probably don't), the French Open tennis - the second Grand Slam of the season - gets underway on Monday at Roland Garros in Paris. There will be no Carlos Alcaraz, injured, so it's a reasonable opportunity for Novak to chase that elusive record-breaking Slam title. Alas, Sinner is currently in imperious form... Meanwhile, the women's draw looks more open, but the slower surface makes all matches more watchable - and more bettable!

One of my other projects is a website called tennisprofits.com, and for the next couple of days there's a special discounted Triple Slam ticket available. It covers the hottest four months of the calendar, taking in the clay in Paris, the grass is London and the hard blue courts in New York - and everything alongside and in between.

Four months' access for the price of three... and we're close to releasing a system builder there, too, which I think is just about the first of its kind. I made a little video which you can watch here if that sort of thing interests you, or might do.

TennisProfits.com is a very cool site where I get to look after the tech side and leave Paul Shires, our resident full-time pro trader, to be the subject matter expert. Dave Renham also chips in with some typically thought-provoking articles on his other wagering love. Oh, the link for the Triple Slam ticket is here.

That's all, we're done...

Right, back to trying to find a winner at York. Low was strongly favoured in the sprints yesterday, but my guess is they'll over-water to compensate. I'll be having a close look at how Persian Spring goes, drawn 10 and likely getting a late late show steer from Jamie Spencer, before deciding whether to play low in the two ensuing five furlong dashes. On the front is normally the way over the minimum here... but high or low remains to be seen.

Good luck,

Matt

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