The Patriarch introduces us to horse racing sports trading via betting exchanges such as www.betfair.com and this is something I will add to in the coming weeks. Trading has its fans and its haters. Oftentimes, the haters see the profit v the time invested as not enough. The fans love the risk(ish)-free element to sports trading. Which side do you belong to?
The Statman takes a wholly unique look at horses dropping in class – he has come up with some great stats.
I take a look at the Irish Flat racing scene. There are a number of high-profile jockey/trainer combinations, and one jockey in particular who seems to be the go-to guy when Irish trainers like Aidan O’Brien visit England. This jockey’s name is Seamie Heffernan. He has produced some excellent profits over the last 5 years for Aidan O’Brien and certain other Irish trainers.
If you want to investigate further, wait for an Irish flat meeting: some of the major Irish trainers are at Dundalk this evening. At www.racingpost.com, I would recommend you get used to checking these guys out.
Simply bring up the race card, click on the trainer’s name, click on statistics and have a look around. There are stats for the trainers in Ireland with regards to performance at the various race courses, over race distances, months of the year, race type and jockey. It’s fascinating stuff. I focused only on the jockeys for April’s newsletter article.
I also bring up the hoary old monster, loss retrieval, in light of a free system which has been doing the rounds. It takes a unique look at loss retrieval and backing favourites. I am paper trading daily and will report back if there are any breakthroughs or profit potential. The key, I think, if you want to undertake this high-risk staking plan is to use a stop loss.
With my football banker bets showing a strong profit as this season enters its final matches, I turn my attention to how to pick tennis banker bets. I hope readers will find it of use. I’ll be trying to replicate the success of the football banker bets with the tennis ones this summer, only at www.whatreallywinsmoney.co.uk.
We also look at the key aspects you must look at when contemplating betting systems or tipsters. These include (this is a list of ideals in a less-than-ideal betting world)…
- Insist on seeing an archive of results, particularly with tipsters. This ensures that you are comfortable with strike rate, odds offered, and any long losing runs. It also gives some confidence that past performance can be replicated in the future.
- If you see no results, don’t buy the system or join the service.
- No testimonials? No good. Ideally we want to see verifiable testimonials from fellow punters.
- Systems which change the goal posts must be treated with caution. For example, www.drawdaydemolition.com is one such service. Fresh from blowing punters’ betting banks, they decided to change their rules in a desperate attempt to salvage something. Not for me I’m afraid.
- Beware of umbrella tipsters’ negative sides. By ‘umbrella tipster’, I refer to companies such as WIN, www.bettinggods.com, www.tipsterstreet.com, www.betsfortoday.com, www.betfan.com and www.probettingclub.com.
On a positive note, these guys show results, warts and all, for all of their services. What are the negatives? Tipsters are launched sometimes after only nine months worth of results (or less), or in direct reaction to a winning run. This is too short a period to judge properly.
Also, there tends to be a short shelf life for some of these tipsters. Take Top Secret Tips, which I was happily monitoring. They have disappeared! Marketing headlines tend to dwell on past glories.
We have the usual system and tipsters update too and there are a handful of tipsters who are well worth monitoring and a lot of dross besides. For example, one tipster hasn’t moved the betting bank from its balance in September 2014. This seems endemic with a lot of these tipsters. Look for the ones with not just calendar year growth (January –December), but also recent growth (say November–April 2015, for instance).
I’m going Grand National crazy!
My four runners for the Grand National did well. The selections were Night in Milan, Saint Are, Wyck Hill and Alvarado each way.
Saint Are was the star: 1 ¾ lengths second at a tasty 25/1. Alvarado was next, fourth at 20/1 for another each way payout. Night in Milan was 18th at 20/1 and Wyck Hill pulled up.
Tantalisingly close!
The Scottish National takes place at Ayr tomorrow. I wonder if my Grand National strategy will pay off at Ayr. Well, as my close showbiz pal Harry Hill would say: ‘There’s only one way to find out…’
It’s another, erm, easy as pie 32-runner Handicap chase. Yikes!
Well, the favourite has not won in the last 10 runnings. Last year’s winner was 40/1, but prior to that the winners were between 15/2–12/1, bar one 18/1 winner.
Andrew Parker is the most recent multiple winner in 2010 and 2012 and Timmy Murphy won for him on both occasions.
There has been only one winner carrying over 11 stone in the last 10 years. There have been only two 11 year olds winning in the last 10 years.
There hasn’t been a consecutive winning trainer and jockey, so any Peter Bowen trained horse or horse ridden by Jamie Moore can be ignored.
So let’s put this together…
Ignore horses carrying 11 stone or over – Sam Winner and Houblon Des Obeaux.
Ignore Peter Bowen trained horses – Al Co.
Ignore Jamie Moore’s mount – n/a.
As with the Grand National, taking Andrew Parker out of the equation, as he has no runner this year, can we ignore each winning trainer and jockey’s mount? Bar Andrew Parker, there has been no other multiple winners. Ignore Sego Success, Royal Player, Benbos, Cogry.
That’s only five horses reducing the field to 28. I will divide this group by four and select one horse from each of the groups of seven. So for me, Goonyella, Raz De Maree, Global Power and Carli King.
I will be backing these each way again. I am still cursing Leighton Aspell for winning the Grand National, I think for the second consecutive year!
Have a great weekend and do watch out for my Twitter @whatreallywins, as I’ll be putting forward my selections for Newbury (it has an excellent card), as well as Ayr tomorrow.