I know I have mentioned it before but I must return to the subject of each-way betting and horse racing. The reason? Well my each-way bets this week have recorded winners at odds of 23, 14.5, and 8.78. None too shabby considering I am doing absolutely no form research whatsoever!
Yesterday saw two second-placers at odds of 14.5 and 19.5. Knocking on the door!
With the Jumps season upon us, and plentiful Irish racing (those two big winners came at Punchestown and Cork), there is no better time for you to take a stab at a bit of an each-way play.
Simply follow these steps…
1) Target 8- or 9-runner races only from the race card at www.racingpost.com.
2) These races should have a short-priced favourite and a cluster of outsiders. Your focus is on the Betting Forecast. Here is a good example:
BETTING FORECAST 6/4 Al Dancer, 5/1 Shapiro, 6/1 Ocean Cove, 7/1 Luckofthedraw, 15/2 I’m Always Trying, 8/1 Marble Moon, 16/1 Moonlight Haze, 25/1 May’s Milan.
We have a short-priced favourite. We have a couple of ‘outsiders’. The presumption is that the outsiders should not be fighting out the finish.
This being horse racing, the favourite is not a guaranteed winner despite the Betting Forecast suggesting so.
3) Choose two horses from the remaining five and back them each way (Shapiro, Ocean Cove, Luckofthedraw, I’m Always Trying, Marble moon). I would back one near the head of the market, and one near the outsiders.
If these horses finish second or third, you get some money returned for them placing. It is an added bonus, of course, if the horses win.
Do try this out yourself. You might be able to refine your selections. You might want to dispense with one of the two selections. Quite simply, if the favourite does not win (and remember, favourites do not always win, particularly when faced with obstacles and in competitive Irish racing), you have a great chance of collecting.
I love my each-way betting and I use only these three steps to some success. Practice yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised how this strategy performs. And use Betfair SP! That is my other secret. It outperforms Industry SP by some way over time. A recent winner, Forge Meadow, was 12/1 Industry SP and a whopping 23 on Betfair SP (22/1). I’ll have some of that!
I mention the Racing Post website there, but I have hinted in the past that there are other racecards you should be aware of. I like www.attheraces.com and www.racinguk.com.
Quite apart from the race cards at http://www.attheraces.com/, they have a gem of a free tipster in the guise of Hugh Taylor. Stick him in your notebook for the start of 2018. He consistently returns 200+ points profit each year and, as I say, he’s free!
It is not necessarily the tipsters at http://www.racinguk.com/ which capture my attention; rather it’s their free TF Pace Map as part of their racing cards. This is unique to this website . Pace is something I will be looking into in 2018. I’ve already written a piece on how to us the TF Pace Map at www.whatreallywinsmoney.co.uk. Do experiment with this pace map. My personal focus tends to be with front runners.
One final set of free-to-view racecards appears at http://www.irishracing.com/. There are two unique aspects of this racecard you might want to factor in. One is the ‘won when rated’ feature, which is particularly useful for handicap racing. The other is the head-to-head via other horses in the field.
I have begun recording some results based on these aspects of this website’s racecards in the hope that I can find a pattern which can become a backing or laying strategy. There is nothing better than creating a strategy from freely available info! I’ll keep you posted how on get on.
www.irishracing.com also has great stats for ‘first time gear’. First timers are vulnerable, aren’t they? I’m recording selections in various categories and will let you know!
Do make yourself aware of the joys of each-way betting. It is something a novice can do. My strategy is purely probability based, rather than a focus on form-lines.
Also, remember that there are alternatives to the racing cards at www.racingpost.com, and these race cards have unique features which can help you get what could be the key angle to your backing or laying profits.