Tuesday's free offering from the GOLD service is the The Shortlist feature, a simple – and usually brief – report highlighting those horses with a largely ‘green’ profile in the Instant Expert Report each day. It covers win or place stats, and can be viewed for both today’s and tomorrow’s racing.
GREENis good (33% or better win rate) – worth 3 points
AMBERis quite good (16-32% win rate) – worth 1 point
REDis not so good (0-15% win rate) – worth -1 points
GREY means there is no available data for that factor - worth 0 points
The final column, ‘Score’, is the sum of the previous five ‘colour’ columns, with 15 being an all green profile, and 9 being the lowest score appearing on this report.
HINT: The best bets are not necessarily the highest scores. Rather, they are often the biggest difference between a Shortlist horse and the ‘best of the rest’ in that race.
N.B. Shortlist selections are unlikely to make a profit, at SP at least, to blind backing. Our recommendation is – and has always been – that The Shortlist should be a starting point rather than an end in itself. That said, it continues to highlight horses whose chance is better than recent form - and its odds - imply. As ever, please refer to our User Guide for further information!
And this how The Shortlist looks for this Tuesday...
And we do still also have our daily list of 'free' racecards, which are as follows...
- 2.35 Beverley
- 7.30 Nottingham
- 8.20 Killarney
- 9.00 Nottingham
The contest between the two Southwell runners from TS should be the one to focus on from a Class perspective, but it's only a 5-runner that looks like being a three horse race, so we'll tackle the last race of the night, the 9.00 Nottingham, a moderate-looking, 8-runner, Class 5, 3yo+ flat handicap over a left-handed 1m½f on soft ground...
Not much recent winning form on display here, but both Star Zinc and Jack Daniel won their penultimate outings, whilst Calypso has been knocking on the door with a recent run of form reading 2332. He, along with Classic Speed and Cariad will benefit from an 8lb allowance as the trio of three year olds in this race, with the latter receiving between 10 and 22lbs from her rivals.
She is the only runner stepping up in class here and is one of two females in the race, the other being the top weight Zarabanda. Lion's Dream, Dandy Maestro, Star Zinc and Classic Speed all drop down a class and the latter makes just a secoing handicap appearance almost 10 weeks after his last run.
None of his rivals have been off as long, as they've all raced in the last seven weeks with Cariad having been seen as recently as last Wednesday at Yarmouth; she'll find today's soft ground far different than the seaside good to firm from last time out!
Lion's Dream, Calypso and Classic Speed have yet to win over a similar trip to this one and our sole course winner, Dandy Maestro, has a win and a runner-up finish (2 starts ago) from two efforts over course and distance.
Instant Expert has a limited amount of data, but it does highlight that Jack Daniel is the sole soft ground winner and also one of just three Class 5 flat victors in this field...
...and he looks the pick of the bunch on those albeit small numbers. Such is the lack of relevant data, we should consider the place stats to hopefully suggest who else might like the conditions...
...and I'd probably say Dandy Maestro's hat was now firmly in the ring too. he's drawn centrally in stall 5 just outside Jack Daniel, so it'll now be useful to see if that's a positive or a negative, based on previous past contests under similar conditions here at Nottingham.
The initial indications are that a low draw should be avoided if possible...
...but the PRB3, stall-by-stall and place data seem to suggest that there'll not be a great deal in it from a draw perspective...
Stall 2 doesn't look great, but there's no reason why just one stall should perform so badly, so I'm going to treat that as an anomaly here and move on to see what if any pace is likely to be in the race and if we look at the field's last four outings, we see that the likes of Jack Daniel and Lion's Dream are the most likely front-runners, whilst Star Zinc will probably be the back marker in the early stages...
...and if we look back at those 60-plus races from the draw data, we find that those setting the pace have done best here...
...which is great news for Jack Daniel and Lion's Dream and with a central draw, leading will certainly be the best policy for Jack Daniel...
Dandy Maestro would be best advised to follow Jack Daniel and run like he did here two starts ago, when a runner-up in a higher grade.
Summary
Jack Daniel ticks the most boxes for me, he won two starts ago and has won over this trip. Soft ground won't be an issue and he has the ideal pace/draw setup to score here. The tissue forecast of 11/2 would be very nice indeed, but I suspect we'll have to take a point of more off that price. Dandy Maestro is interesting as a possible E/W pick and the tissue prices of 10/1 do materialise, then it's a yes from me, I wouldn't go lower than 8's on this one.
The biggest danger to either/both of them is the 3yr old Calypso who comes here in fine form (2332) and has that useful weight allowance. Much will depend on how he handles soft ground for the first time, but he should be in the mix here.
Good luck, however you play this one and a quick heads-up that I'm away all day Tuesday, so my next column will appear on Wednesday for Thursday's racing, where Instant Expert will be our free feature.