It was all fun and games last weekend for Champions League and Europa League candidates. As I suggested last week in the eletter, these teams are vulnerable.
Man Utd drew with Liverpool 0-0, Chelsea lost, Arsenal lost (Europa League), Paris St Germain required a 91st minute winner, Dortmund lost, Juventus lost, Sevilla lost, Real Madrid were 0-1 up, slipped to 1-1 and needed an 85th-minute winner, and Atl Madrid and Barca drew.
As you can see, a weekend for the layers and some great profits if you layed teams leading in play, as both PSG and Real Madrid slipped up when leading.
Do watch out for these unique times in the league: post-International and Pre-Champions League moments turn managers of big teams into Stressed Erics!!
Do you like my new tattoo?
Nice to get back on the scoresheet last week with a winner and a third in the Dewhurst. And it was my old showbiz pal US Navy Flag who obliged yet again. So much so, that I now have a US Navy flag tattooed onto my back in admiration.
I did notice the Fahey horses in the Rockingham were quite high up in the betting, and my tactic so nearly paid off, as It Don’t Come Easy finished second (for each way money) at 12/1. On another day…
Can you profit from pace?
In October’s edition of What Really Wins Money, our resident writer The Patriarch introduced the concept of pace in UK racing.
Pace is effectively how a race will be run. Your job is to find which horse meets one of four labels: the leader; then the prominent horses who follow the leader (called the ‘pressers’); we then have the mid-division horses; and then those who are held up.
Some races and some race courses favour the leader. Yet others will favour a horse ‘coming off the pace’. Jockeys such as Jamie Spencer are famous for their hold-up tactics and when they get it right, it can look spectacular.
You will even see now, in race cards such as those provided by www.attheraces.com, that they have a ‘pace’ feature.
Even in the race cards at www.racinguk.com there is something called a ‘TF pace map’. Racing UK have what they call ‘early position figures’.
I thank our resident writer The Patriarch for his introduction to pace. It is a challenge I am willing to take. Use the freely available information and see if we can construct a ‘pace’ betting strategy. The focus may be, for instance, on races where leaders are likely to dominate. Or it could be looking at race distances where hold-up horses may have an advantage (Towcester’s up-hill finish, for example).
I will let you know how I get on.
In the meantime, take a look at the race cards at Racing UK and attheraces.com and see if you can find some useful pace angles.
Your job, remember, is to try and suss out how a race will be run. Then find the horse most suited to the race.
Have a great weekend!