Racing Insights, Thursday 11/05/23
Thursday's free feature, the Instant Expert racecard tab is one of Geegeez readers' most popular tools because it has the unique ability to condense the entire form profile of every runner in the race into a single, easily digestible, view covering the form in terms of wins (or places), runs, and win (or place) percentage for each of going, class, course, distance, and field size.
It also compares today’s official rating with the horse’s last winning official rating. The display is colour coded: green for a higher percentage rate, amber for a middling percentage, and red for a low percentage. Horses with no form under a certain condition have grey figures.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Where a horse has no UK/Irish form – i.e. it is having its first run in Britain or Ireland under Rules – it will not show up on Instant Expert at all.
We make this feature freely available to ALL readers EVERY Thursday for ALL races, including, naturally, our selection of 'free' races as follows...
- 2.40 Chester
- 5.05 Huntingdon
- 5.48 Clonmel
- 6.00 Chelmsford
- 7.00 Chelmsford
- 7.18 Clonmel
I want to tie the feature of the day into the free races here, so I'm going to look at the 6.00 Chelmsford. On the face of it, it's a poor looking 13-runner, Class 6, 4yo+ A/W handicap for Amateur jockeys over a left-handed 6f on standard polytrack...
So, we've no LTO winners and only Billian is any kind of form with a win and four places from his last five starts. Hannah's Return did win two starts ago and Forever Dreaming, Millicent and Master Sully do have a win in their recent form line.
Top weight Red Alert drops down from Class 5, as does Forever Dreaming. San Juan runs for Damien Wingrove for the first time leaving Mark Loughnane's yard, Miss Connaisuer makes a second run post-wind surgery and both Fristel and Billian are noted as fast finishers.
Red Alert and Monsieur Fantaisie are both former course and distance winners, whilst Forever Dreaming, Billian and Hannah's Return have also scored over today's trip elsewhere.
At 114 days off, Monsieur Fantaisie might be a bit rusty, but his yard have a good record with horses coming back from a break. Aside from San Juan's 97 day lay-off, the rest of the field have all raced in the past eight weeks.
The bottom three on the card all run from 1lb outside the handicap.
Instant Expert usually helps us pick winners from such mediocre cards, but even feature of the day is struggling with this bunch...
...although some of them have clearly done better than others, but wait! Watch what happens if we look at A/W place form...
...now we suddenly have something to work with. Firstly I need to de-clutter, so let's get rid of Fristel, Millicent, Master Sully, Shining Crystal and Miss Connaisseur, because they're all holding a full line of red and if you can't make the frame, you can't win! Now this looks a bit better...
There are obvious concerns over Red Alert & San Juan on standard going with the latter also faring poorly at this trip, so I think we'll remove them at this point too before I start to fragment the Instant Expert graphic as follows...
In fairness, I probably didn't need to do that for you, but it means that I'm now only going to consider Hannah's Return, Forever Dreaming, Billian and Monsieur Fantaisie, who'll be spread across the track at the start from stalls 1, 4, 8 & 13 (non-runner came from #13). I put them in draw order, as the draw is the next thing to consider to see if those drawn at either end have a greater or worse chance of winning...
The initial thought here is that low draws do considerably better than high draws, based on the angle of that line, but the reality is that low draws only have 5 more winners from 415 runs, so I'm not too concerned about the horse out in stall 13 just yet, but he'll certainly have to make up ground if there's a level break. That said, Monsieur Fantaisie has been sharlply away on his last two outings...
...which, as most people know, is the correct way to approach 6f here at Chelmsford...
This isn't great news for either Billian or Forever Dreaming, because a look at the bigger picture says they could well have 10 runners to try and pass late on...
Summary
So, from the above I'm taking Monsieur Fantaisie, top scorer on Instant Expert to beat Hannah's Return, who also scored well on IE. They're the pace in this race too and I'm hoping they're the first two home.
The early market would seem to agree, sadly, as Monsieur Fantaisie is the 7/2 favourite with Hannah's Return at 6/1 alongside Billian with Forever Dreaming fourth in the odds at 8/1. The latter makes most sense as an E/W bet, but Billian is in the better form and should make the frame.
Hi Chris
First thing, i don’t know how much feed back you get about the racing insights, but i find them excellent and a very good read for new gold members, plus the times you find the winner or good priced placed horses.
My question of which i have enquired before and forgotten the answer (sorry!) is how long does it take you to go through a typical insight race or a average 8 to 12 runner handicap?
I’ve improved greatly but still take about 50mins a race using the cards and reports!
Thanks Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Glad you enjoy the column and it really is aimed at those without Gold access or those new to the service, so I’m happy that I’ve pitched it about right.
As for feedback, I get very little if truth be told but at least it means people aren’t complaining 😉
Re : time spent on a race, I’d generally like to be done in less than 10 minutes if truth be told, but the approach is pretty formulaic, so it then becomes a case of re-applying the same tactics.
It takes me much longer to cut & paste the graphics and to put my thoughts into words, though! Plus I spend much longer on the stats side of things for my main bets.
Chris