Category: Horse Racing
An ill wind….
Tis an Ill win that blows no good, so they say. With an ill wind blowing down from the artic it looks like racing is going to suffer badly over the next week. Saturday is pretty much a wipe out by the look of it.
So….. Hopefully you can now see the context of this blog entry back in the summer.
I know it seemed odd to some that you would put trading first in these situations. But that week …
Cross matching goes live on inplay racing
See Betfair announcement. Looks like they are planning to go live tomorrow on all racing: –
“Following a previous trial earlier this year, we are now running another trial of in-play cross-selection matching (‘cross-matching’) on the win markets at Lingfield Park on Tuesday 23rd November. Cross-matching will only be activated after the markets are turned in-play.
Cross-matching was introduced
Cheltenham
Nice to see Chelt’s back on the card and some decent jump racing. I am hoping to get something out of the open meeting and it has worked well in previous years. Looks like we have finally arrived in the jumps season proper.
With it’s arrival we also have some bad weather on the doorstep but also Christmas decorations in the shop. It’s put me in a festive mood and looking forward to the upcoming holidays.
I tend to be …
Jockey title opportunties
Another close Jockey championship draws to a close this weekend and it’s going to the wire by the look of it.
https://www.thepja.co.uk/champ_flat.aspx
The battle is throwing up some interesting trading opporunties as people start to discount the prospect of a jockey change bringing a change of fortune for individual horses. Certainly there is a big incentive to win races that may have been over looked earlier in the season. Keep your eyes open for racing with either of the …
So you think?
Bart Cummings trained ‘So you think’ steps up in the early hours of the morning UK time to see if the legendary trainer can bag his 13th winner of the Melbourne Cup. There is $6m up for grabs in this year’s race spread across the field. Given the form that the favourite is in, this should be a very interesting race and betting heat. The price ‘So you think’ has come in a fair bit already and ‘Shocking’, last years …
Trick or treat?
Last night the clocks went back and today we have racing that starts at midday(ish) and finishes at four. This signals the slide into a quieter period for racing.
There is still plenty of other sport to do and some decent feature races coming up, but some of the other stuff is less appealing. We also have the weather potentially posing a threat. So it’s time to hunker down and reset expectations and styles, to adapt to the winter.
If …
Winner at odds of 1000 at Wetherby
Big shock in the 16:00 at Wetherby where the complete and utter rank outsider, Maoi Chinn Tire, won the race. I didn’t get this one but have bagged some before. £912 matched at 1000 before the off!!!
Derby day
Isn’t the Derby in June? Yes and no, if you are in Australia, early tomorrow morning (UK Time) is Derby Day in Victoria. This kicks off the Melbourne Cup carnival and a week of top class Australian action. On Tuesday we have the race that stops a nation, the Melbourne Cup.
As I have leant more and more about this carnival of racing, the more I realise it’s significance and I’m actually quite excited about it this year. I don’t …
How bizarre was that?
17:10 at Haydock and Drill Sergeant gets off to a flyer. Gee thanks, I got stuffed by the start. But he is well in the lead as he goes around the first corner. The suddenly he stops and starts to have a casual stroll around the course. Price rockets out from heavy odds to to 120 and confusion reigns as the field catch him up and somehow pass him without an accident. Mc Coy somehow gets the horse moving again …
Fat fingers crucify punter
I see lots of strange things in the markets but few stranger than what happened just a moment ago at Newbury. While I realise we all, in some way, take money of each other now and again. I feel a great deal of sympathy for what they did, we all screw up from time to time. I can’t imagine how they felt after this error.
The long and short of it is that they backed a 400/1 shot down to …
Shocking
Good volume on the Caulfield cup in Melbourne this morning, £1.25m was traded on this high profile race and it produced some nice moves. The favourite, shocking, was defeated on heavy ground by Descarado trained by the colourful Gai Waterhouse. I had no idea she was Scottish!!
Shocking is also in key contention for the Melbourne cup, maybe the ground will be more suitable there. It’s been a good session this morning and ideal practice for the Melbourne Cup.…
The aching transition
It’s that time of year in horse racing where the flat gives way to the jumps.
Some good flat races left, but a lot of lower quality and end of season stuff too. On the other side, the jumps now also have a number of novice races. So you end up with some really thin betting markets around at this time of year and things get tougher. However, it’s not new it’s been the same for years, it just a …
Early bird
With the Melbourne cup just around the corner and a breakfast meeting in London this morning, I thought I would take the opportunity to get up a bit earlier and trade the 1000 Guineas at Caulfield racecourse, Melbourne, Australia. I posted the result on the forum. The more I dabble in Australian sports the more I get the urge to visit this antipodean land.
It was good practice for some of the bigger races coming around the corner. I …
Cockchafer!
A year to the day that Epsom had to abandoned some races because of the larvae of the cockchafer, it’s happened again. My lawn suffers from these and they eat the roots of growing plants, including grass. I guess Epsom need to do some pest control if it’s happened two years in a row.
2011 UK Racing fixtures released
And to be honest, after all the rhetoric, it looks better than I expected.
There is a nice summary on the BBC website: –
https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/9029038.stm
Levy row heats up
Lots of rhetoric coming from the big bookmakers about the levy and trying to blame it’s decline on betting exchanges. Perhaps they are forgetting that most of them have moved a lot of their operations offshore to avoid paying the levy. This has obviously had a significant impact on levy funding and unless that is addressed immediately, it looks a little foolish of them to point the finger elsewhere, after all the first bookmaker to go offshore did so in …
My wife knows everything
One of the best joke commentaries I’ve seen in horse racing, apart from it’s actually a real race! You have to watch this race to believe it: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEF60avsloY
Don’t come back till St Leger day
Today we can all buy shares again thanks to the oldest classic horse race in the world. There is this ‘theory’ that during the summer stocks languish and only when everybody is back to their desk does the market perk up. Here is one link, from many, that discuss this: –
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing/article.html?in_article_id=484982&in_page_id=166
I’ve never managed to pull anything spectacular out of hte St Leger for some reason and the Doncaster meeting seems to have been particulary tough this week. Let’s …
Laying on the sand
Today sees the annual return of the races on the beach at Laytown. When my work on the markets is complete I will definately visit this race course along with many others that I have on the list. I keep saying that ‘next year’ I will do Laytown, so I look forward to saying the same next year! In the meantime I’ll be looking to do a bit of laying at laytown.
Goodbye Windsor
I’m not leaving, but Windsor is. That’s it for the summer evening racing at Windsor and it marks that week that we transition to all weather only evening racing. The downside is you now have no get out of jail cards for a poor afternoon, good news is your social diary suddenly widens!
I managed to finish the last Windsor evening race of the year with a healthy £155 profit, but the rest of the day was a bit torrid. …
Eboring
OK the racing has been entertaining, but the trading has been less fulfilling and lacked a bit of spark about it. This is probably due to a participant(s) in the market that is causing grief for quite a few traders.
On Tuesday I seriously underperformed in light of this activity, but on Wednesday I turned it around having monitored the activity. I think that’s the problem with this tactic, it is easily exposed. We put the autotrading spreadsheet on …
York Ebor meeting
I’m looking forward to this meeting, but I don’t know what to expect from it.
Last year I absolutely sailed through the week but this was against the same period in the previous year when the meeting didn’t even take place. It’s difficult to reliably compare the coming week with a week from three or four years ago. But it’s safe to say that I expect this week to be better than the last two weeks.
Traditionally the space filled …
Undercover boss C4 – 9pm tonight
This should be quite a revealing documentary this evening: –
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/unde … /episode-4
Paul Fisher is the boss of Jockey Club Racecourses, the largest and most successful organisation in the competitive world of British horseracing.
He’ll pose as Richard Setter, a new casual employee, who is trying out entry level jobs in the world of horse racing to find out how his company works from the bottom up.
Crianza
I’ve had a few beers on Crianza this evening after it romped home at Redcar today. Nothing remarkable about a horse winning a race, but Crianza came in at odds of 1000 and I had money on.
It’s the second time I have managed this, the last time was on Bermondsey Bob at Salisbury in August 2008. Therefore I assume the mean return time of this sort of thing happening is around once every two years. The funny thing …
Nobody will win as much in 100 years!
If you search this blog you will see the previous post on the Barney Curley gamble. This was a clear cut opportunity, well telegraphed by the market and confirmed by activity and comment in a number of areas. I recorded a trade on a Curley runner for an article that will appear in a month or so, that’s how predictable some of these trades are.
Now we have a full explanation of the detail and planning behind this gamble thanks …
New york racing in jeopardy
Classic joke for a recession, I’m moving to jeopardy, apparantly there are a lot of jobs in jeopardy.
On a more serious note however, the future of horse racing in New York is in jeopardy after the New York Racing Association (NYRA) warned Monday that it may be forced to shut down operations within three weeks, with the company now reliant on money from the state to help it through to the Belmont Stakes next month, the final leg of …
Gamble landed
Not often you will hear me saying that, but when a Barney Curley horse is out and being gambled, you just have to sit up and take notice. Rather than an outright gamble though, it always worth having a go on the trading front. It can be a bit volatile, but it’s often quite clear where the money is going on a Curley horse. Yesterday we saw several horses traded at decent volume from big to much smaller prices. “Agapanthus” …
Start of season, end of season
As you are probably aware from my posts, there is nothing more I like that a football match with a strong incentive behind it. At the start of a season, form is difficult to spot early on. Though promotion and relegation isnt’ so tricky. But it’s the end of the season when things really begin to happen. With many matches classed as ‘six pointers’ for one reason or another, this time of year has always been a fertile hunting ground. …
Getting burnt
This title could be a reflection on the weather in the UK at the moment, which is fantastic. Lots of us took advantage in the last couple of weeks to head out with the children during the Easter holidays. As a result, quite a few have a bit of burnt skin thanks to the less than common, warm and persistent sunshine. It’s not unheard of though, as I remember running the London marathon in 1996 when the temperature was 20c, …
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