Tix Picks: Prototype

Tomorrow's meetings, pools and minimum guarantees are as follows:

Tix Picks meeting / pool: Bath, placepot

With short fields everywhere except Kilbeggan, today I'm going to have a look at the Bath placepot. It's not a perfect shape, with a four-runner opener (win only) and two eight-runner fields to close the sequence, we have just one place to get through leg 1 and non-runners could affect the number of places available in legs 5 and 6. Ideally you'll place your bets late to account for this, but in any case it's something to be aware of.

The going is good to soft currently, with the chance of a light shower. There is no watering at Bath so it should ride genuinely as per the going description.

I'll be taking a banker in leg 3 and will build around that.

Leg 1: Four runners, three-year-olds only handicap over the minimum. Win only. The current betting has Smooth Silesie and Wrestling Revenue as vying for favouritism, but there are grounds for believing that both the exposed Soldiers Design and the unexposed Port Hedland can get competitive. I'm minded to go four deep on A and hope for one of the outsiders, but I'm going to reluctantly put Port Hedland on C, along with unnamed favourite.

Leg 2: Miss Gitana was out of the placepot places for the first time in six races last time, and even then only just. Prior to that she was a course, distance and going winner in slightly lower grade and is the most likely leader in the field for all that there are other possible forward goers. She's 422113 since taking on handicaps, a typical Sir Mark Prescott project, and is an obvious A player.

Percy Jones was a winner two back on the all-weather and he did too much early in a better race over shorter last time. That's a chuck out and, now returned to optimal distance and five pounds below his last winning mark he could go well. B. I'm not sold on A Gift Of Love for all that the longer trip could see her go close, or Maritime Lady who may be compromised if she tries to lock handbags with Miss Gitana early; but I do want another option on B. So I'll take For Pleasure, who is on a very feasible weight and has won three of his last six across all codes.

Leg 3: A banker as mentioned - you've got to take chances somewhere - and I'm taking a risk with Distant Rumble. He's drawn wide but that's not necessarily a problem over the 5 1/2f trip at Bath. This looks a pretty weak contest so fingers crossed he can at least hit the board.

Leg 4: The extended five furlongs again, this time in a 10-runner handicap. There's a little bit of speed on paper - via Fishermans Cottage and Johnny Johnson - and I want finishers to chase them down. Apache Star loves it here, especially when there's some give in the turf, and he's weighted to go close at a decent price. But Mick Appleby's Snow Berry was doing all his good work late on over five last time and the longer trip looks spot on. He's A material, as is Media Guest whose track record is very solid.

Vaunted rattled home over course and distance three back but she's very tricky at the start, as evidenced by an unseated rider from the stalls last time.

Leg 5: The Mick Appleby trainer change angle has been one of the most bankable in racing over the years, and he bids to work his magic with Honour Your Dreams here. Only 2 from 35 for Adrian Keatley, he did make the frame 11 times. Both wins were on turf and his mark has dropped to an attractive level if Mick can eke out some of the old animal here. He'll likely be chasing So Smart early - I'm betting they all will - and Grace Harris's speedster has generally been on the premises; but he's a weak finisher and might again get passed late on.

Glamorous Express is one of those closers but might just need more speed to aim at. He looks short enough in the betting and I'm taking him on. Obviously, he'll win now! Symbol Of Hope is a seven-time winner at Bath, his form in the last years here reading 1133229657041641. He's on B. So, too, is Sovereign Slipper, four from 17 lifetime and whose sole turf win came over five furlongs on similar ground at Chepstow the time before last.

Delagate This Lord is ten years old now and probably won't win, but he's an eight-time Bath scorer so hats off for that.

Leg 6: A 1m4f handicap to close out the placepot and the 'dead eight' again, meaning a non-runner will reduce us to only two places... Divine Presence represent Team Gosden, and they're two winners and two further places from five Bath starters in the past year. She's straight on A. So, too, is Ciara Pearl, the Kublers' filly a consistent sort that handles any ground.

The Alan King handicap debutant One Glance has managed to hit the frame the last twice in spite of being sent off at 40/1 and 100/1! King's record with HC1 is not great, however, and she's passed over tentatively. Bas Bleu has had plenty of goes compared with some of these and has nearly won on four of her eight attempts. But you can't put them all in, so I'll have to hope she again fails to pass the lollipop in front.

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That makes the Tix picks look thus. A quick explainer seeing as you may be new to all this. The first column, green, are my 'A' picks. I must have at least one 'A' in each race and these are my strongest fancies in each race. The yellow column in the middle is for 'B' picks, my warmish / value alternatives. And the tan right hand column is for 'C' picks - horses I can't let beat me but that I don't especially fancy; or huge prices that I secretly admire.

Once I've added my picks on the RACES tab (that's where the image above comes from), I move on to the TICKETS tab to enter my stake and choose my multipliers. I tend to set things up as per the image below, and I'll explain why underneath that snapshot:

Ticket 1 consists solely of my 'A' picks - my main fancies - and, as such, I've given it a 4x multiplier. That means the individual stake (£0.05, see the box underneath 'place ticket' in the ticket 1 area top left) is times'd by four, i.e. 20p units. The selections are therefore AAAAAA

Tickets 2 to 4 consist of five of my 'A' race picks and the 'B' picks in one each of the three races in which I've selected horses on 'B' (legs 2, 4, and 5 - see first image). The selections here are ABAAAA (B on leg 2), AAABAA (B on leg 4), and AAAABA (B on leg 5). These have a 3x multiplier today (3 x 5p = 15p lines), though sometimes I only make a 2x multiplier for these.

Tickets 5 to 7 consist of four of my 'A' race picks and 'B' picks two of the three races in which I've selected horses on 'B'. So ABABAA, ABAABA, and AAABBA. These have a 2x multiplier today (2 x 5p = 10p lines), though sometimes I only make a 1x multiplier for these.

Finally, ticket 8 has five 'A' race picks a 'C' race pick. This is CAAAAA (my only 'C' picks being in leg 1). These always have a 1x multiplier for me, so 5p lines.

IMPORTANT POINT

It is important to note that not all combinations are covered. We get a lot of coverage across the chosen horses for a much reduced stake compared to putting all the picks in a 'caveman' perm (e.g. in this example, we'd have 5 picks in leg 1, 3 in leg 2, 1 in leg 3, 3 in leg 4, 3 in leg 5 and 2 in leg 6 - so 5*3*1*3*3*2 = 270 bets).

In order to win on ABCX we need to get either at least one correct from all six 'A' race picks; or at least one correct on five 'A' race picks plus one 'B' and/or 'C' race pick in the other leg; or four correct 'A' races with correct 'B' picks in the other two races.

That's a very verbose way of saying, in this example, we have eight separate placepot tickets which are shown in the image above.

This will all make sense in a day or two, but do ask questions in the comments if anything is unclear - I may have over-explained things, or I may have under-explained them!

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Placing those bets at a cost of £18.10 (for 1p's it's £3.62) and moving to the BETS tab, I can see my tickets listed there (the P/L has some other bets in it, so ignore that for now) :

What I do is export the csv, and then track the bets during the day in that spreadsheet. I'll shown how I do this in a separate video. The Bath tickets look like this:

Leg 7 calculates the value of winning units for each row as I update the cells in Legs 1-6 columns once the results are known.

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There's a lot of information in this post, much of it redundant if you already understand the ABCX method. One other very important point is that, even if you only want to have a single placepot ticket, that is, all 'A' picks, you can do that and still get 5% bonus on your winnings through Tix - so it's better value regardless of how you play.

And a reminder: the purpose of this series is not so much to tip a bunch of winners, or to have everyone play the same picks on the placepot/quadpot/jackpot; but, rather, to demonstrate how the Tix tool works and why it's a far smarter - and better value - play than placing bets directly into the placepot pool at tote or with your bookmaker.

- Matt

Other Recent Posts by This Author:

• Tix Picks, 10th September 2024
• Tix Picks, 7th September 2024
• Tix Picks, 6th September 2024
• Tix Picks, 5th September 2024
• What is Tix?