Mick And Gags - Making It Pay

When I first started this blog a few weeks ago it was all about me and my pursuit of 100 points profit throughout 2009 via selective betting on horses. My results for the first three months of the year are posted on the right hand side for anyone to see. I was then asked to post up my thoughts, when I could, pre-race for others to view, consider and follow if they wished. In the last few weeks things have changed a little to say the least. Gags is now as much a part of this blog as I am and this venture is now all about our attempt to achieve in excess of 150 points profit for the year. Therefore, we agreed that since this is now a joint venture, the results should be shown as such. So now you will see the results on the right shown as MIP Selections rather than Micks or Gags Selections. We think this makes a lot of sense as we do discuss every selection between us before any final decision is made with regards to betting and staking (no reminders needed about yesterday thank you). Yes we have our own areas of expertise but we still work together, so we are jointly responsible and we both back all of the selections in the end in any case. If anybody really wants to know which of us puts up which selections then all they need to do is look at the relevant post.

Whilst I am not the nh expert I will give my view of todays race in which our selection finished 5th, a nostril behind the short-priced favourite. I haven't checked the time of the race but it looked to me as though it was a fairly slowly run race, particularly for the grade and I don't think that suited our selection. Weapon's Amnesty must have lost at least a few lengths as well as momentum when On Raglan Road fell in front of him and if you look at the finish he was only beaten that far by the winner, wasn't he? Without losing all that ground and momentum he wouldn't have had to use up as much energy getting back in to contention and would surely have fought out the finish. That's my opinion and no doubt many will claim I would say that wouldn't I, but I am convinced he would have beaten the favourite and in any case he finished in front of Pride Of Dulcote as Gags said he would. So the reasoning behind the bet is vindicated as far as I am concerned. In any case all we lost today was 2 points as this was just a minimum stake each way selection, so by my reckoning we're still well over 50 points in front for the year to date. I think we were a bit unlucky today but in any case we're going to back more losers than winners in the game we play.

I thought I'd make that clear because we have had one comment suggesting that we don't know what we're doing. I haven't posted and won't post the comment in full or any other abusive comments if they come along in future. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and the individual concerned may be proved right in the long-term about whether or not we know what we're doing, but I don't think anyone can argue with our results short-term, can they? A few days ago someone suggested that my selections hadn't been posted in advance of racing so how did they know I wasn't making them up. Fair point, although I know I've backed every selection and put them up in a private forum for a number of people to see and back if they wish. When I started this blog it wasn't about "proofing" my selections pre-racing anyway, it was simply about me seeing if I could achieve my own targets for the year and provide a bit of amusement for others at the same time. Moving on from that, Gags put up a post the other day which showed that since the start of the year we'd had an average of about 4.4 bets each week between us and made about 4.4 points profit from those bets. One thing I'd like to point out is that since we started posting our selections and stakes on here pre-race our results have produced the following:-

15 BETS
3 WINNERS (11/2, 13/2 and 9/1)
7 PLACED
PROFIT +23.60 POINTS

AVERAGE SELECTIONS PER WEEK 5
AVERAGE PROFIT PER WEEK +7.8 POINTS

66% OF SELECTIONS AT LEAST PLACED AND NO LONG LOSING RUN

Maybe I am missing something here, but our results are far better since we started posting pre-race than they were before, so I think that puts paid to the manipulation myth, doesn't it? If we wanted to make things look better than they really are, surely we'd have made the pre-posting results better wouldn't we? Something else I'd like to point out. We post up our selections, our bets and the reasoning behind what we're doing in advance of racing because we've been asked to do just that by some people who wish to follow us. We then post all results up in the results section, regardless of whether they win or lose, for anyone to view.

As I said before I started off with this blog just to see if I could achieve some personal goals and to provide entertainment along the way for anyone who wanted to read it. Now Gags is on board and we have quite a few people following our selections and making a few quid for themselves. They have asked us to post pre-race, to send them our selections via email and text when we can and that is what we will do until this venture reaches its conclusion at the end of the year. Hopefully we'll all be wealthier then than we are now. From now on the only summaries I will be posting will be the weekly and year to date figures each Sunday.

Tomorrow sees the return of some decent aw action and of course there is a small matter of the Grand National and some other cracking races at Aintree. I'm off out now for a few beers but one of us will be back by luchtime tomorrow with our thoughts and selections for the day if we are getting involved.