Frankie - the punters darling!

In today’s blog:
Review of yesterday’s blog
Today’s Racing Selections
Oddslines
World Cup Specials - heads?

Review of yesterday’s blog
As reported on the blog, Frankie Dettori went into Monday with 6 rides including 3 at the Windsor evening meeting. I expected multiple winners, but you can never really tell which ones are going to go in, and from those 6 he rode 3 winners. At Wolverhampton he won on John Gosden’s POINT OUT at odds of 1/2; and at Windsor he won on DANCE EAST at odds of 15/8 (winning distance a head) and on RULE MAKER at 5/2 (opened at 7/2). He very nearly had 4 winners on the day as HOKOUMAH at odds of 5/6 was beaten only a neck into 2nd. All 6 of his rides in 15 x £10 doubles would have recouped over £195 (including returned stake money on winning doubles) resulting in a profit of over £45. Had HOKOUMAH won then Frankie really would have been the punters darling!

Today’s Racing Selections
Another very ordinary day’s racing for Tuesday. Beverley looks a meeting to avoid. The only race that may offer some hope is the 3:25 but this class 4 handicap could go to the horse that wants to run on the day and they are an in-and-out bunch.
With all races being either class 5 or 6, give Brighton a wide berth.
Newbury in the evening has by far the best racing of the day, the pick of the meeting being the class 4 fillies handicap at 8:30. For me, SEA OF HEARTBREAK looks to hold a tremendous chance. She can take this race at a decent price as there are a few Newmarket raiders in Namaskar (Gosden), Heavenly Dawn (Stoute), and Akinoshirabe (Cumani) who will ensure a good betting market. Odds of 9/2 were available last night, but right now the best is 100/30. For me, SEA OF HEARTBREAK looks an 11/4 chance and I would not want to take less than that.

Selection: SEA OF HEARTBREAK Newbury 8:30 2pts win

Oddslines
One of the things that I regularly do to keep in touch with racing form is buy the Weekender every Wednesday. This paper is probably the best value on the market for the racing fan who likes to have a wager. There are a couple of good writers in the Weekender and the two I read are (in order of preference) Nick Mordin and Dick Hunter. Each has their own speciality; with Hunter its race-form analysis, and with Mordin its selection systems. It is Mordin who usually generates some “in-depth” thought and his subject matter last Wednesday had me thinking, mainly on why he’s ignored it before! It was oddslines and why any punter who wants to take his wagers seriously should form an opinion of each race they intend to wager in before they place a bet in the form of an oddsline.
Most people know how to assess which horse in a race has the best chance of winning, but applying odds to its chances is more difficult. Converting opinion to a percentage of opportunity is not a process taken deliberately by 99.9% of people who bet on racing. What surprised me was Nick Mordin saying that he had only taken up preparing his own oddslines about a year ago. Before that he would do what most people do and that is form an opinion about the relative chance of his own selection. The mistake that everyone makes (and I include myself) when doing that is that you naturally form your opinion based on the odds of the favourite. If the fav is 5/2 and your selection is 4th in the market at 7/1, then you automatically think that it’s good value and strike a bet. Only by preparing an oddsline can you assess the relative chances of each horse in relation to its actual odds. Mordin says he handicaps himself in his preparation of oddslines by considering the chances of runners in a particular race over a period of days. Unless you are prepared to be very selective in the races you bet on, and bet in large amounts to make the whole effort worthwhile (I think that you should value form-study at an hourly rate, 4 hours study @ £20 an hour = £80 stake on the selection), then the process needs to be streamlined. Forming oddslines for races you intend to bet on will improve the way you assess whether or not to bet. What I will do over the next few days is show how oddslines can be prepared and (hopefully) a quicker way to do it and obtain results than spending days reading the formbook for a particular race.

World Cup Specials – heads?
The World Cup is turning into a complete nightmare for the England players as well as punters now, with John Terry being put firmly in his place by Fabio Capello. The English cannot be beaten when it comes to playground mentality. It’s all to play for still, and yet could come down to the toss of a coin as to whether England or the USA go through to the play-off section and the last-16.

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