A Different Way To Play

A hell of a lot of racing on offer today, particularly for a Monday. We've concentrated on three races but still not come up with anything we consider worthy of a bet. As we've said many times before, we feel happiest when playing the waiting game. There are loads of punters who get involved daily but I just don't see how they can do it and make it pay. With the amount of racing on now, how can anyone keep up to speed with the different codes, (flat turf, all weather and jumps), as well as the different types of races within each code? To work through all the contrasting types of form and carry out the necessary analysis is tough enough when looking at one or two races from the same code over similar distances. To do that successfully for different codes, distances and on different surfaces would be impossible. I know I wouldn't fancy it even if I was punting full-time.

I have a number of books written by punters who claim to be and I guess are recognised as having been very successful at making money from this game we play. Every now and then I refer back to some of the passages within them and the one message which seems to eminate from all of them is "specialise". I guess anyone can pick winners short-term, I guess pretty much anyone can identify well handicapped horses, but is that what making a consistent, long term profit is all about? I don't think so. I know a few people who trade on the exchanges and they could never be successful backers because they have a completely different mindset. One or two of them have never had accounts with bookmakers, so they don't understand the psychology of betting in that way. They spot horses which are going to be backed and they trade them for free bets or a profit. That's great and I hope and trust they enjoy what they do, but try and have a conversation with them about getting proper bets on or the importance of confidence and the negative influence that losing runs can have on many backers and they just don't understand.

In my opinion punters wishing to be successful need to specialise in order to become experts at what they do. If you are an expert you have an edge. Whether that be via trading, laying or backing. We believe we can identify enough opportunities each year to make this game really profitable for us. We hope we don't have too many long losing runs. The way we play should ensure that something like 50% of our selections are at least placed, so we are regularly generating a return of some kind.

Many punters (and tipsters for that matter) talk and sometimes shout about the average price of their selections. What a load of bollocks that is! It doesn't matter what price your selections are if they lose, does it? The stats that really matter are the average price of winners, the strike rate of winning bets against the number of selections overall and the return on investment. Looking at our very, very, very small sample to date I think we've had just under 70 bets and invested something like 140 points. From that we've generated our 52 points profit with just over 20% winners at an average price of around 7/1. I don't know if I'm being too optimistic but I'd settle for more of the same for the remainder of the year.

So nothing from us today. The race at Wolverhampton offered little in the way of value, the Pontefract race looked tough and whilst we were keen to take on those at the front of the market in the Windsor 8.5 furlong Class 4 Handicap we couldn't find anything strong enough for a bet.

One of our expert specialist advisors has produced our only bet of today. I'm pleased to report another winner and another 5 points added to the overall profit. This particular source has advised around 30 bets only so far this year and is over 50 points in front from average stakes of just 2 points per bet. Specialising? No, it'll never catch on, will it?

Another busy day tomorrow with five meetings, although there's only a couple of races which interest us. Gags will post on here by mid-day if we are betting on Tuesday.