Good Friday?

Earlier this week while I carried on working my other half flew off to Ireland with our daughter to spend a week with her family. It's a nice break for both of them and of course it means I have a long weekend packed with racing, football, golf (come on Mike Weir) and possibly a couple of drinks and a game of poker. But what about today? There's not a lot going on in is there? No racing, no top quality footie and the golf isn't on the box until this evening. It's chucking it down outside so hardly encouraging me to go out and get some fresh air is it? I've already had a first look at tomorrows cards and there are a few races which could be of interest at Kempton. The remainder of my analysis will be done in the morning.

With nothing else going on this morning I started thinking a little about what we've achieved so far this year with our own betting and how we're going to achieve our targets throughout the rest of the year. Nothing too much will change because we believe in what we're doing, we believe in specialising and we believe in being selective. Incidentally, the services we subscribe to use similar approaches and all have proven track records of being profitable in the long term. No surprise then that we're something like 160 points in front after little over a quarter of the year gone and arguably the toughest time for punters. We've provided 40+ points during that time from our own selections, even allowing for our recent blip. If as expected we have the best part of the year still to look forward to then this should be a cracking year.

Looking back with hindsight I think both Gags and I agree that we've had too many bets recently. Despite both of us preferring the selective approach I think we've possibly been guilty of looking for bets rather than waiting for them to come to us. My "favourite" bets are always those I feel I just have to make because everything looks and feels right. Perhaps we have had a few bets recently where everything was not quite right but we went with them anyway. I can only speak for myself but I think it's okay to have doubts when you're backing at big prices but when you're playing on those at the other end of the market I think they need to be rock solid, bomb proof if you like. As anyone can see from the list of our bets we're not against backing at big prices. I think we've backed horses at 40/1, 33/1, 20/1 and a number of others at double figure odds. I know we've had a couple recently which haven't run to form and that will always happen. There is nothing anyone can do about that, but we've also (arguably) backed one or two which we could easily have let run.

Looking forward I expect we'll get back to being a little more selective. It's impossible to be really specific in terms of numbers because we have to bet when we think it's right to do so, but as a very rough guide I would expect the following over the long term between us:

4 - 6 BETS PER WEEK
25% WINNERS
25% PLACED
4 POINTS PROFIT

As punters we all know the game we play is never that simple. We all have purple patches (check out Anthony over at the Nose Ahead blog right now for an example of someone who is on a roll) and we all encounter losing spells (April so far for MIP). By waiting for the right opportunities rather than forcing the situation we will get back to winning ways, we will add to our profits and move closer to achieving our target for the year.

So, a good Friday? Maybe it will be after all.