The Shortlist is Tuesday's free Geegeez GOLD feature and it's a simple (usually brief) report highlighting those horses with a largely ‘green’ profile in the Instant Expert Report each day and it covers win or place stats for both the current and the next day's racing.
GREEN is good (33% or better win rate) – worth 3 points
AMBER is quite good (16-32% win rate) – worth 1 point
RED is 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 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 might imply.
[Please refer to our User Guide for further information] and here is Tuesday's Shortlist...
...where the first three would all be worth a second look.
As ever, the daily feature is complemented by a selection of fully functional racecards opened up to all readers and for Tuesday they cover...
- 3.15 Punchestown
- 3.23 Brighton
- 4.10 Wolverhampton
- 4.30 Huntingdon
- 7.50 Hexham
- 8.20 Hexham
It's not often that we get a horse scoring 15 on TS featuring in one of our 'free' races, but they've aligned here and whilst it's not the best race we'll ever look at, we really should look at Major Gatsby and the 3.23 Brighton, an 11-runner, Class 6, 4yo+ flat handicap over a left-handed 7f on good firm ground...
It's not unusual for a Class 6 field to contain no LTO winners and that's sadly the case here, but Fieldsman was a runner-up just 11 days ago, whilst both Mount Mogan and Amathus both finished third most recently inside the last three weeks. As for 'recent' wins, only joint top weight King of War, Shalfa and Diamond Cottage have scored in their last five outings.
Only River Wharfe, Fieldsman, Diamond Cottage and Sir Sedric raced (and were beaten, of course) at this lowly grade last time out, as the other seven all drop down from Class 5 and for bottom weight Dazzerling, this is is his first run for Phil McEntee, having left Laura Mongan's yard in the last three weeks. He also wears a hood for the first time, whilst Spirit Warning is in first-time blinkers and Sir Sedric will wear cheekpieces for the first time. In fact only Fieldsman runs with no headgear/equipment at all!
Whilst Major Gatsby was our featured runner from The Shortlist, he's not the only former course and distance winner on display here. As it happens, only Mount Mogan, Spirit Warning, Sir Sedric and Dazzerling have yet to win over this track and trip, but all bar Dazzerling have at least scored over 7f elsewhere.
We've a big spread of age/weight here today as the 11yr old Fieldsman takes on four 4 yr olds (top three in the weights and the bottom weight) in a field where King of War and Major Gatsby are rated some 18lbs better than Dazzerling.
Major Gatsby, however, might well need a run after a break of almost 20 weeks as he now tackles a group of horses where most of them have raced in the last four weeks, apart from Sir Sedric and Spirit Warning who return from absences of 101 and 354 days respectively and the latter could certainly be excused for a bit of rustiness.
More stats are available to us when we click the Instant Expert tab, such as seven past good to firm winners and one tackling the going for the first time as well as seven (not the same seven!) Class 6 winners. We also have one Class 2 winner, three at Class 3, three at Class 4 and six Class 5 winners...
...and in a pretty open but fairly mediocre contest, it is indeed Major Gatsby who catches the eye on the win stats, but without any real standout star above, we might need the place stats to help us whittle the field down...
and fragmented by column...
If we hen applied the green = 3pts and amber = 1pt rule from the Shortlist criteria, then we'd have Dazzling and Shalfa on a maximum of 12pts, followed by King of War on 10pts. next best on the list would then be Fieldsman, Major Gatsby and River Wharfe each with 8pts and having featured on all four columns. I think that these are the ones to focus on now. This half dozen are drawn no higher than stall 9 (2, 4, 6, 7, 8 & 9) with most of them in the higher half of the draw over a course and distance where the draw stats wouldn't necessarily be enough to rule any of them out...
...although stall 6 (Fieldsman) seems an anomaly with such a poor return. The key to winning at Brighton has often been about getting your nose in front and staying there...
...with leaders almost twice as likely as prominent/hold-up types to win. Again, I'd be wary of suggesting mid-division horses can't win, but their record is pretty poor from both a win and place perspective and I'd want my runner to be in the forward half of the field, which is where you're likely to find Shalfa and Fieldsman...
and my shortlisted six from pace/draw combined...
Summary
I narrowed the field down to six and then based initially on pace and then by the pace/draw combination, I think that I'd want Shalfa, Fieldsman and King of War as my three for the frame in a very open-looking race. I could easily have the first three home, but I could also have none in the frame and as such, it's case of keeping stakes very low.
My three are relatively generously priced at 8/1, 5/1 and 16/1 respectively and on that basis, I'd take E/W options about Shalfa at 8's and King of War at 16's and if you've still got an active SkyBet account, they're paying four places.
Good luck!