Directory of Past issues

26th September - The bets bookmakers WANT you to place

19th September - Recognising the moment to strike

12th September - How to spot horses that can't win

5th September - Make the handicap system work in your favour

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26th September

Good afternoon, friends,

In today's Horse Racing Focus...

• How to steer clear of the bets the bookies WANT you to place...
• A brand spanking new archive of material for you...

Beware being thought of as a 'valued client'...

I don't know if you read about lucky winner Peter Finnigan in this month's Betting Monthly (the revamped, resized Antepost magazine). Peter nailed Betfred for a staggering £132,319.97p from a £12.60 Lucky 63 in July - from the following inspired list of picks:

• Is It Me - 12/1 at Stratford

• Very Well Red - 20/1 at Nottingham

• Winter Star - 2/9 at Stratford

• The Hoofer - 6/1 at Sandown

• The Which Doctor - 11/4 at Sandown

• Mr Lu - 20/1 at Musselburgh

He is pictured collecting his winnings alongside the Betfred representative - who is smiling through gritted teeth, probably trotting out the traditional spiel about being 'delighted to hand out such a big cheque' to such a 'valued customer'.

But friends, before you rush out to fill in your Lucky 63 coupons... Before you throw your hard-earned at a Goliath, Heinz, Yankee or Trixie - expecting to be next month's Antepost cover star, a word of warning...

'Valued customer' is bookie-speak for 'mug punter'.

For every six-figure payout the bookies are 'delighted' to hand out, their cup runneth over with losing stakes from the thousands upon thousands who play racing multiple week after week - without ever getting a sniff of a winner.

I know from my many years behind enemy lines working in the bookies trading rooms, that the specially printed slips and coupons of multiple bets are the industry's bread and butter. Just take a look at how many are screwed up in a ball on the bookies floor come the end of everyday.

The occasional winner only serves to promote these bets and comes cheap at the price.

The bookies love multiple bets...

I'm not a big fan of multiple bets where racing is concerned. While I can understand the occasional 'fun' bet - playing for small stakes with the potential of a huge win. Multiple bets are purposely designed by bookies to separate punters from their money - and that's not fun.

Walk into any betting shop and you'll see the bookmaker has gone to the trouble of printing special slips making it as easy as possible for you to place multiple racing bets - Lucky 63s, 15s, 31s... Sometimes offering bonus payouts on these 'products'.

Ask yourself why a bookmaker would do this?

The fact is, no bookmaker promotes a bet that doesn't make him money. If a bookmaker is pushing a certain course of action, it is in your interests to ignore it. It stands to reason the only bets they spend time and money persuading you to make are bets the vast majority of punters generally lose on. Racing multiples are a case
in point.

Let's say you have a £1 yankee - consisting of 11 bets involving 4 selections in 6 doubles, 4 trebles and a four-fold and costing you £11 in stakes...

If your first runner goes down you've already done your money on 3 of your 6 doubles, 3 of your 4 trebles and your fourfold. That's almost 64% of your total stakes gone west before your second runner has been saddled!

Two winning selections will guarantee a return - you'll get a double up. And at half-decent prices you'll come out a winner. But most punters simply don't have the kind of strike rates to sustain multiple bets. Picking a single winner can be difficult enough without nailing two, three or four out of four or more.

Multiples force you into bets you wouldn't dream of placing!

Look at it another way...

Let's say you have a £10 treble on a 10/1 shot, an 8/1 shot and a 4/1 shot - three horses you've done your homework on and feel confident about.

The first horse does romps home. So, now you have £110 riding on the second horse - eleven times bigger than your original stake. Do you consider the second horse an eleven times better bet...? I doubt it.

Let's say the second horse wins - returning £990. So now your third horse will be carrying £990 in stakes - almost 100 times your original stake.

But does the third horse constitute a 100 times better bet? I double doubt it.

The staking involved in multiples simply makes no sense. And bookies love dealing with punters who up stakes haphazardly after a win because they don't tend to hang on to their winnings for very long. Playing with multiples forces you to do the same.

Personally, I'm much happier sticking to singles - in our example treble, you'd have still walked away with a £170 profit on the day even if your third horse had lost. Surely preferable to the heartbreak of seeing your bet fall at the last fence - and going home potless. A bird in the hand and all that.

However, I'd hate you to think I'm a total bet fascist! If you strongly fancy two horses, with a win single on each - there is nothing wrong placing on a sensible double worth 10 or 20% of your main bet - just as a nice little bonus.

Word to the wise: Beware bets that bookmakers actively encourage you to make - regardless how big the potential payout is. If you can't make betting on singles pay, betting on multiples will serve you no better.

Until next time,

Be lucky.

19th September 2008

Good afternoon, friends,

In today's Horse Racing Focus...

• Know when the competitive edge is blunted...
  
• Know what is ideal and what is not...
  
• Wait for your moment and then go in hard...

When weight blunts the competitive edge...

Remember Inchnadamph? Tom Fitzgerald's 8-year-old won the final race of last year's flat season at Doncaster. Ridden by Jamie Spencer, Inchnadamph's win ensured that Spencer and Seb Sanders were crowned joint champion jockeys.

That day Inchnadamph won off an official rating or 'mark' of 83 - having been dropped down the weights from 85. The horse had run five times off a mark of 85 and failed to win any of those races. In fact, 83 represents Inchnadamph's highest-ever winning mark.

So what happened next? The handicapper revised his assessment of the horse - raising it 8lbs in the ratings to an all-time career high mark of 91.

Heard much about Inchnadamph's exploits this season? No? Me neither. It's raced 4 times and finished down the field every time. That's 9 career runs off a mark of 85 or more and not a single win to show for it. It's reasonable to conclude that off a mark of 85 or higher Inchnadamph is either carrying too much weight or facing too many more-talented or lightly-weighted opponents to be first past the post.

That's not to say Inchnadamph can never win off a mark of 85 or more. Only that his career record stands against the hypothesis. In a sub-par race, given the right conditions and a fair wind, Inchnadamph might just confound his existing profile and produce an aberration. But I will not be betting on it happening.

Wrong trip, wrong ground - the only way is down...

Right now Inchnadamph is of no interest to us as a betting proposition. But he does represent an interesting horse to monitor as he fails to justify the handicapper's current assessment of his ability and begins to drop back down the weights to a mark he's proven he can win off.

However, if a horse returning to winning form were just a question of the weight on its back then I'd be writing this to you from an island in the sun. A horse also needs conditions and circumstances which suit and help it.

As far as Inchnadamph is concerned this means racing over 2 miles (3 wins from 6 runs) on ground with some bounce in it (7 wins from 21 races on good or good to firm). I certainly do not want to be betting on Inchnadamph on ground worse than good where his record is 14 runs and no wins. Nor do I want to be on his side if the race is run over any distance beyond 2m 110y. He's had seven goes at marathon flat trips and failed to win every time.

With this assessment and these numbers in mind it's very interesting to look at Inchnadamph's racing record for this season:

In April he ran at Nottingham over 1m6f on good to soft ground. Neither trip nor going can be described as ideal. The market didn't fancy the horse and Inchnadamph justified its lack of faith by finishing 9th of 14 and earning a race reader comment of 'never dangerous'.

In May he reappeared at Chester off the same mark of 91. The performance at Nottingham had not been enough in itself to encourage the handicapper to relieve him of weight. Inchnadamph got his ground at Chester but was tackling 2m3f - some way further than his ideal 2 miles. Once again the horse finished down the field, weakening over a furlong from home and fully justifying his 40/1 SP.

That Chester performance did the trick. The handicapper reassessed the horse and dropped the rating 2lbs to 89. In June Inchnadamph pitched up at Newcastle to contest a 2 mile race - his ideal trip. Just one problem - the going. Connections had decided to run the horse on soft ground - a surface on which he had run 13 times previously without success. The market didn't like it and nor did the horse as it finished 10th of 18.

The handicapper reassessed the horse and dropped it another 1lb down the ratings to 88. At York in July the horse got his ground - good to firm. But the trip wasn't right - 2m2f. With only 7 runners in the race, Inchnadamph was sent off the 4/1 3rd favourite and duly ran up to its market valuation. The performance encouraged the handicapper to tinker with the rating once again and he raised it to 89.

Not once this season has the horse encountered ideal trip and going on the same race day. Given that our rough and ready assessment of the horse suggests it is unlikely to win off 85 or more, we can be forgiven for believing that things are afoot to convince the handicapper to drop down the weights (as we discussed last week).

So where do we go from here?...

We watch and we wait. We watch as the horse continues to drop down the handicap to a mark he can win from - 83, maybe 84, or lower. And, when he hits that mark, we wait for the ideal conditions - 2 miles on ground with bounce. At that point the horse becomes a 'live' proposition for betting purposes.

Patience is a big part of the game - not only for punters but also for connections of horses. Inchnadamph may not get down the weights sufficiently until next season. The handicapper could take that long to downgrade the horse to a suitable rating. But when that point is reached I almost guarantee that's when connections will suddenly rediscover the animal's optimum conditions and find a race where he encounters them.

The next time we'll see the horse is at Newmarket in October for the Cesarewitch. The race is run over 2m2f, a little beyond the trip I would consider ideal. However, Inchnadamph does have a fine record in the race:

Given that Inchnadamph has been beaten 3 times in the race off marks some way below his current mark of 89, it's hard to see him improving on those past performances this year. However, off a mark somewhere in the early 80s he'd be a very interesting runner - particularly if the ground turned up good this year.

What price connections put a good 5lb or 7lb claimer onboard - meaning the horse would effectively be running of 82 or 84? How good an each-way bet would Inchnadamph represent then - with a current best price of 25/1 up for grabs and the likelihood of enhanced place terms available on the day?

I'll leave you to pick the bones out of that one, friends. But I do hope that in observing my own thoughts in action on the handicap system, you can see how the way the system works can point us in the direction of future winners and profits.

Word to the wise: Inchnadamph is just one horse currently rendered uncompetitive by the handicap system. There are many many more. Identify horses who have hit a natural 'ceiling' in the ratings. Identify the conditions they need to compete at their best. Then watch, wait for the horse to return to a winning mark and when it next encounters its ideal condtions, strike and strike hard.

Until next time, be lucky.

12th September 2008

Good afternoon, friends,

In today's Horse Racing Focus...

• When horses get hard to win with..
• The incentives within the system...
  
• How to drop one down the weights...

When handicappers hit the wall...

Watch enough racing and you'll hear the commentary teams and pundits refer time and again to horses that are 'hard to win with'. More often than not the horses referred to are handicappers allotted weights that effectively prevent them from winning the races they are contesting.

The handicapper is said to 'have the measure' of such horses. He's figured out the level of the animal's ability and rated it accordingly on the scale of official ratings. You may recall from last week that it's this official rating or 'mark' which determines the class of handicap race a horse must contest and the weight it will carry as a runner.

In assessing the level of a horse's ability the handicapper hopes to ensure no horse in any handicap race enjoys an advantage over any other. Superior ability is theoretically negated with weight on a sliding scale. As a result, handicap races should finish in a heap with each horse crossing the line simultaneously.

Horses running 'up to' their ratings

Obviously the handicap system isn't perfect. In practice we don't see the spectacular dead heats that the handicap theory promises. One reason for this is that horses are not machines. They have off days. There are times when they aren't fit or are carrying injuries. Other times the conditions or race circumstances prevent a horse running its best race. For one reason or another, horses don't always run 'up to' their rating.

The more a horse races, the more chances the handicapper gets to nail down his assessment of where the horse is at in terms of ability. Each time the horse reveals more or improves, the handicapper will move the horse up the official ratings - how far each time depending on the quality of what he sees.

Sooner or later he pinpoints the horse's true level and the horse receives a rating high enough to ensure it is carrying sufficient weight to make it difficult to compete or racing against a class of horse it cannot beat or will only beat occasionally - when all the planets are aligned, for example. These horses have hit the wall. It is at this point they are said to be 'hard to win with'.

The incentive to lose weight...

Now imagine you're the gnarled old trainer who has this horse stabled in his yard. You had a good run with the horse in low class handicaps. The handicapper took his time to get to grips with its level of ability and you ran up a string of wins. But after the horse's last victory nearly 10 months ago, the handicapper raised the horse 5lbs more in the ratings.

The horse's new rating made it ineligible for the Class C handicap races it had been running in and winning. Now it would be contesting Class B races against more talented and competitive animals. The jump in class has proved a step too far. The horse has stopped winning.

As the trainer you assess the situation. You doubt the horse has any further improvement to come. You conclude that the horse has hit the ceiling of its capabilities - that it can't extend beyond or (maybe) even run up to the level of form represented by its current 'mark'. If your assessment is correct then the horse could continue racing in its current class in perpetuity and perhaps never win again.

A very handy handicap

How long would the horse retain any enthusiasm for the game? How long would you? As a racing trainer the objective is to train horses to win races? Surely? Where's the payoff - financial, commercial, emotional or statistical - in training perennial also-rans? On a purely economic level horses that don't win races are just a drain on resources to owner and trainer. Training fees, vet bills and other costs of ownership have to be paid when the horse is not winning. An uncompetitive horse still consumes its share of the yard's time and resources.

You can see the clear incentive that exists to get a horse's rating reassessed by the handicapper? There's no improvement to come from the horse so we need the rating reassessed and downgraded so that our lad can once again race in lower class events against opponents of lesser ability. That's the only way we're going to pick up a half-decent prize and perhaps pull off a little 'touch'.

Now, we could be patient and wait for the handicapper to downgrade the horse on his own observations. But that can take some considerable time. During which the horse would be a four-legged cash, time and attention pit. Far better then to move the handicapper's thinking in the right direction by employing some time-honoured kidology.

Getting one dropped down the weights...

Unfit horses run every day at British racecourses. Horses that need a 'pipe-opener'. Horses carrying excess condition and which the trainer needs to get a 'blow' into. Horses which will 'improve for the run'. Not every horse contesting a race will be at the peak of its fitness. The rules say a horse must be doing its utmost. However, horses don't have to be and cannot physically be in peak condition every time they race.

With the intention of giving the handicapper some opportunities to see our horse run down the field in his current Class band, we might run the horse without putting too much work into him at home. We don't mind if he's packing a bit of excess weight. We don't mind that he's not fully wound up. We don't expect to win. We haven't prepared to win. If we can, we will. But lack of fitness doesn't help that cause.

In the interests of experimentation we might also choose to run our lad over a shorter trip than he's been racing over - an inadequate trip. Over an inadequate trip we might expect him to be outpaced by speedier rivals and well-beaten without getting competitive. But there's nothing to stop us believing our lad might just benefit for a run or two over a shorter trip. After all, we can never know for sure until we put the theory to the test.

A game of 'chance'

It's the same with the going. Some horses don't perform on soft ground. But this doesn't stop many of them running on it. How often do trainers express there's a big concern about the ground for a horse but run it anyway because 'it deserves to take its chance'. Our lad deserves to take his chance along with the rest? If we can win, we will. But we're not going to be too hard on him if and when he has shown he can not.

There's something else our lad isn't so keen on. Left handed tracks. Our lad likes a right-handed bend. He's had 6 runs on right-handers and won 4 times. On left-handers he's 1 from 4 - and that single win was in his low-grade maiden. We could try and improve that strike rate by concentrating our efforts on left handed tracks.

Independent observers might conclude that we're being cynical and manipulating circumstances to show our horse to least effect. Maybe. Maybe not. The fact is we're totally justified in experimenting with the horse and trying it at different trips and on different going and at different tracks offering different challenges. Trial and error is part of the game.

It just so happens that the way the handicapping system works we might stand to benefit from any failed experiments we might conduct. On viewing a series of bad performances the handicapper might downgrade his view of our horse, drop his official rating and make our horse competitive again - able to race in lower grade races against inferior opposition. But, officially, that is not our intention - only our fervent hope.

Coming next... How to capitalise...

Like it or not these shenanigans are part and parcel of the handicap game. Last week I promised to show you how to spot this kind of 'experimentation' taking place - and how to profit from it.

I promised a little too much as it turns out. I want to go through that process 'in action' and 'show' you exactly what I mean, how it works, how to do it and how to use it. And... ahem... I've run out of space in this week's letter. I underestimated how much space I would need to detail the thoughts I've outlined above. Apologies.

But there's an upside. I'll now get to devote a whole issue to taking advantage of what we've learnt over the last fortnight. This will be with you next Friday.

Word to the wise: Horses drop back to winning marks - whether naturally or by some other design. This short series of letters on the handicap system concludes next week when I'll show you how to make sure you're on downgraded horses when they're ready to win again.

Until next time, be lucky

5th September 2008

Good afternoon, friends,

In today's Horse Racing Focus...

• How the handicap works...
  
• Theory and practice...
  
• The system is at the mercy of the kidders...

It pays to know the rules...

Approximately half of all races run on Great Britain's racecourses are handicaps. Designed by race organisers to be competitive, these races present a real conundrum for the punter to solve. That doesn't stop us trying. On any betting day thousands of punters wade into the handicap races. The majority of these do so without a single clue how the handicapping system actually works.

In sports-betting you soon learn that it pays to know the rules of the sport you are betting on - intimately. If you want to bet for profit on Twenty20 cricket or any other sport, the first step is to learn the rules of the game. You need to know what must happen, what can happen and what can't happen before you're in a position to identify profitable angles and strike bets.

However, most racing punters of my acquaintance don't have this intimate familiarity with the rules and intricacies of racing - definitely not with the handicapping system. Maybe it's because racing retains a sense of being complex and obscure. Maybe that puts punters off - to the degree that they choose to connect only with that which is most evident (the races themselves) whilst ignoring the governing framework which lies behind what they see.

But this framework is important. Understanding what it is and how it works can provide insight into finding what we seek - winners. The first step to profitable betting on handicaps is to understand how the handicapping system works, what it is designed to achieve and how that objective is pursued.

Handicap Racing 101...

Horses in handicap races are allotted weights they must carry. Better horses will carry more weight than less capable horses. The idea is to slow down faster, better horses with weight so that, theoretically, every runner in a handicap race has an equal chance of winning.

The weight a horse carries in a race based is based on the official handicapper's assessment of its ability. The official handicapper is a team of 12 individuals who assess the ability of every runner under rules. Their assessment of a horse is numerical and is referred to as the horse's official rating or OR. The number will also be referred to as a horse's 'mark'. Top horses on the flat will have a mark in the 120s. The best over fences will be rated in the
170s.

When the racing authorities receive entries for races, the ratings of the horses involved are converted into the weights they must carry in the race. The ratings are calculated in units of 1lb, and the appropriate top weight is assigned to the highest-rated horse entered in the race. The weights of all the other entries are allocated relative to that top-weighted horse.

Let's say Fast Chap is top-rated 115 and Slower Coach is rated 111. If these two horses were to meet in a handicap on these ratings, then Fast Chap would be considered to be 4lb better than Slower Coach.

Remember that the handicapper is looking to blunt Fast Chap's ability advantage over Slow Coach (4 lengths) - so that theoretically they will cross the line together. So if Fast Chap is set to carry 9st 7lb in the race, Slower Coach will carry 9st 3lb. A horse rated 96 would carry 10lb more than a horse rated 86. A horse rated 90 would carry 15lb more than a horse rated 75.

To get a 'mark' in the first place - required to contest handicap races - a horse must generally have run three times (in some circumstances a horse that has run once or twice and won will be awarded a handicap mark). The official handicapper reassesses his view of a horse's ability every time it runs. Its rating will go up or down or remain the same depending on the handicapper's revised view of its ability. As you'd expect, ratings generally go up after a win or a good run of performances, or they go down after a series of bad runs.

That's the theory. Here's what it means in practice...

The rating a horse receives is important because it determines the classes of race the horse is eligible to run in. The higher a horses rating the better quality opponent it will face in the races it is eligible for. A harsh ruling on a horse can reduce its chances of winning the races it must contest to nothing. If the handicapper gets a horse wrong and rates it too low then that horse is at an advantage - because it still qualifies to race against lower grade animals.

Jump racing, for example, has six classes and these are segmented with the following handicap ranges:

Class 1 - Pattern (Grade 1, 2 and 3) and Listed Races
Class 2 - Open Handicaps and Handicaps (0-140+)
Class 3 - Handicaps of 0-120 and 0-135
Class 4 - Handicaps of 0-100 and 0-115
Class 5 - Handicaps and Classified Stakes of 0-85 and 0-95
Class 6 - National Hunt Flat Races and Hunters' Steeple Chases

The higher a horse's rating - the better class races it is eligible to run in. The higher up the rating scale the horse is, the better its chance of actually getting a run in the better class races. Any horse can enter a Class 2 0-140+ handicap. But entering doesn't mean it will get a run. Races are limited to a maximum number of runners. The lowest rated entries are unlikely to make the cut - with plenty of higher rated horses ahead of them in the ratings.

A horse's rating pretty much dictates too the quality of competition a horse will meet in its races. The higher it's rating, the classier the races a horse can enter and the better quality opponents it meets. After a sequence of losing runs a horse might be down rated by the handicapper and may once again become eligible to race in lower quality contests against poorer rivals.

The system is not immune to kidology...

Even from this rudimentary introduction to the handicapping system it's easy to spot a couple of points where the system might fall down and on which we can capitalise as punters.

First, it's clear that there exists an advantage for connections in having horses dropping down the ratings. Let's say a horse has run up a string of wins. Its rating will be reassessed by the handicapper until he feels he's got he horse's measure. At such a point that horse might only qualify for high-class races where it meets opponents it simply can't beat. That horse stops winning. And it won't win a handicap race again until it drops down the weights. There's a real incentive for the trainer to find ways of convincing the handicapper to downgrade the horse to a lower mark it can win from.

Second, there's an advantage to be gained by a trainer who manages to hide an unexposed horse's true ability from the handicapper so that it is favourably weighted against its opponents when the trainer is ready to let the horse run to its true potential.

The opportunity to kid the handicapper clearly exists within the handicapping systems. And, though it might be against the spirit of racing, such shenanigans are nevertheless part and parcel of the game. I'm a realist and I work on the principle that where the opportunity to get an edge exists then there will be shrewd operators taking advantage of it.

The trick is - as far as the punter is concerned - in spotting this 'dropping and disguising' as its going on and then capitalising on it. That's quite a bit easier than you might think. Next week I'll show you exactly how trainers drop horses down the handicap, how to spot it as its happening and how to use that information to strike winning bets.

Word to the wise: Never bet on what you don't understand. The first step to making money on handicaps is to get to grips with the handicapping system and how it works. The next step is to capitalise on what we've found. That's our subject for next week.

Until next time, be lucky.