Category: Horse Racing
Black Caviar triumphs again
Black Caviar clocked up win number 25 out of 25 this morning at Randwick racecourse in Sydney.
She strode to an easy victory in the Group One TJ Smith Stakes. Her appearance completely overshadowed the running of the $1.5 million Australian Derby. Priced at 1.18 she accounted for £1.74m of £1.76m in matched bets on the race.
More speculation around her possible appearance again at Ascot still hangs in the air, as does the prospect of her meeting up with …
Betfair charts from the Grand National
For your interest, here is the front of the field from the Grand National today. Hopefully this will give some insight into where you went wrong / right today. I flagged up on one of the most likely main moves during an interview I did on Radio early this morning. I’ll post up the interview early next week. Off for a well deserved rest now!
Aintree grand national meeting
This is a curious meeting for me each year. It’s not on the scale of some of the really large meetings, but is still a decent meeting in it’s own right. The problem I have here, is that I never seem to pull off anything spectacular from it. On a race by race basis I do now and again, just not consistantly.
That feels odd to me because it’s a decent enough meeting to shoot for some big totals. But …
Betdaq go commission free on the Grand National
Betdaq continued their act of throwing down the Gauntlet today, by making the bold move of offering the highest profile betting race of the year completely free of commission. That’s right you heard it here first, the Grand National will be offered at 0%!
I’ve always been an advocate for a competitive market and this sort of thing is a direct result of a more competitive market. This can only be benefical for exchange end users. Whatever your objection for …
Easter Bank holiday moanday
The easter bank holiday is a funny day. I forgive racing for wanting to put on a show for punters, but it’s a mare for us on the other side. Just too much racing!
In total there are 66 races today of which 20 have the same starting time. Of those not clashing they generally start five minutes apart and will clash from that perspective. That means very few races will reach ‘critical mass’ at any point and be suitable …
Flat racing falls at the first hurdle, but…
Hopefully the start of the flat season isn’t a portent to the rest of the season!
I always enjoy the Lincoln handicap this Saturday as it can be a pretty useful day and a kick start to the season proper. But not this year, yet. Hopefully things can return to normal and by next weekend we can really get moving.
While we are missing what would be a normal card, opportunity is always in the market if you look at …
Caviar, served on a plate
Tomorrow sees the return of Black Caviar to the racing track.
She will be running in the Group 1 William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley tonight / tomorrow morning depending on your location on the planet.
Nice little quote from the Adelaide now: –
“”If anybody has backed Black Caviar every start they are obviously a long, long way in front,” TAB’s Matt Jenkins said. “If they had the foresight to put $100 on Black Caviar at her first …
Too much ‘not enough’ racing
It wasn’t really a surprise this morning to hear Newcastle had been abandoned. It seems over the last year they have only had a handful of meetings there. Winter hasn’t been great this year for sure, but it hasn’t been terrible and it’s amazing to see how many meetings have been lost.
But worse than that the number of runners at a lot of these meetings is miserable. Today we have only two races on the afternoon card that have …
From feast to famine
That was a really nice finish to the Festival, I can therefore declare Cheltenham 2013 as a success. Now its back to the grindstone trying to sort the wheat from the chaff; I am findingb lost of chaff.
Cheltenham went well and it was really nice to do that because you tend to measure yourself on prior years and hope you are still moving in the right direction. So it’s reassuring to know you can still do it and in …
The massive gamble that wasn’t
Credit to BETDAQ tips that highlighted the rather unusual situation that developed at Wolverhampton this evening.
Irish trainer, William Murphy, sent four horses to Wolverhampton that hadn’t run for many ages, the least was 832 days ago. All four were backed very heavily causing the bookmakers to run for cover and offer SP only in the races.
Come the races however all four horses performed badly and all finished stone dead last, some by quite a margin. Anybody following the …
Cheltenham – Finishing post is almost in sight!
Gold Cup day is upon us and that means all this weeks fun and games at Cheltenham are almost over.
Yesterday continued the trend of a decline in turnover that we have seen this year. Yesterday was 12% lower than previous years. We also got to add back in the XC chase to the mix and rebasing that back to Tuesday indicated that day declined 7%.
I’m not expecting to break any records this year, to do that needs everything …
Improving conditions at Cheltenham
After a bumpy start on the first day at Cheltenham, day two proved more predictable and productive.
Overall turnover on Betfair was down 10% year on year, which was a surprise. Especially given the incredibly, and completely justified, short price on Sprinter Sacre. It was one hell of a performance and fully justified the price. I wasn’t sure what to the make of the market at first other than it would be almost impossible to trade. But I went for …
Conclusions from Cheltenham day one
And they are off. Sort off, after a delay then a cancelled race.
Hmm, that was a bit of a messy start to Cheltenham but that’s never stopped me in the past and it didn’t yesterday. When I heard that race times were to be put back I wasn’t sure what I would see. Would we get a double surge in volume? No was the in-direct answer to that question, but it obviously did lead to an increase but also …
Ready for the roar?
So here we are, after deleting countless emails in your inbox about the bloody thing, the Cheltenahm festival is right on our doorstep.
The first day looks like it could be a little tricky. Only two cards on today and Cheltenham is being put back one race after a very cold spell overnight. Sometimes this can work quite well as the volumes will be higher come the actual start of the race. But each year has always been slightly different …
Calm before the storm
Just had a glance at the racing card today and it’s a predictably poor one for Cheltenham week. On this day for my entire exchange career I’ve only had one really good result, back in 2009. All the rest have been very ‘missable’.
So today I am tidying up loose ends and checking everything is in order before the ‘Roar’ meets us tomorrow. Again this year I have been offered hospitality, but I’ve had to decline as the opportunity to …
Black Caviar – 23 out of 23
Black Caviar returned to action today after a long break since her narrow victory at Royal Ascot.
Running in the self named, ‘Black Caviar’ Lightning Stakes at Flemington, she started well eased to the front and romped away from the field to win easily with a course record.
The underlying market was really interesting. From a very short price early on she drifted out gently before a bit of panic set in pushing the price right out. It settled back …
1.03, 1.02….1.01
I don’t profess to being a genius when it come to in-play stuff on the racing, but I am currently trying hard! Part of that is watching and gathering data on each race. I just watched a classic at Wincanton.
Leading horse comes up to the last fence, never sure why prices are so short in heavy ground, jumps it then pecks the ground and takes a tumble. There is 1.03 gone!
Second place horse only just about makes it …
What a joy!
How wonderful to actually get some decent racing on Saturday, even it we didn’t have a full card. The Cheltenham trials is always a good practice ground for the festival in March and I was desperate for the meeting to go ahead, so was delighted to hear the optimism of the clerk of the course on Friday which proved correct come Saturday morning. Leopardstown was quite fun to trade as well.
Now we dodged that hurdle, the rain has arrived …
Snow way!
With racing cancelled today, I took the opportunity to regress to childhood and went outside to play in the snow after the Australian Open Tennis had finished for the day. That’s the useful thing about having Children, you can act like one!
I didn’t anticipate doing any racing at all, but drifted back behind my desk to set up for the Tennis tomorrow morning. I saw Dundalk was on and thought I’d have a quick go. Profited on every race …
Dubai World Cup Carnival
Here is another sports event I will make the effort to attend some day. For the moment, I’m still sat behind my monitor taking an active interest in it from the other side.
The racecourse was designed to be spectacular and a draw to people all over the world, they have certainly achieved that. I’m aching to get there at some point and will do so when the time is right.
Over the years the amount of liquidity on the …
A strange sort of day…
Markets in the winter months are not known for their fluid liquidity, or solid nature. But yesterday was an odd day in the racing markets by any standard.
Probably the stand out moment was a massive divergence in price on the 16:30 race at Kempton, a very rare occurrence. While the on course market was pricing the favourite at odds on, Betfair’s market was showing it as a persistent drifter. It just shows you how incredibly thin the underlying …
Farewell 2012
Sat down today to have a go at the last day of 2012 with a view to signing off with a half decent result. I pretty much got that, nothing stunning but a decent result for a tricky day.
It was somewhat flattered by the last race where I pushed the boat out a bit in the hope of finishing 2012 on a high and that’s pretty much what happened. So now I can look forward to a decent evening …
Two very contrasting days
You couldn’t wish for two contrasting days in the racing markets this week.
Boxing day was pretty chaotic and messy, that wasn’t entirely unexpected; but it was much chaotic than I wished. Very few races dovetailed neatly into one another and overall volumes on average were down 20% year on year. I struggled to get any fluency into my activity and couldn’t really build any momentum. In fact I had quite a few losers in a row as I struggled …
Boxing day bonanza?
Hope you had a good Christmas, we are back with a bang today.
It’s a another boxing day holiday in the UK and the sports schedule will be stuffed full of fixtures, meetings and all manner of sporting events. On racing, even with one meeting abandoned there will be 80 race in the UK and Ireland today.
That’s sounds like heaven to sports traders, but it can be a bit of a nightmare. So many things happening at once often …
Not bad for a winter Tuesday
First snow of the winter arrived here this morning and I had to dodge in and out of various potential mishaps on school run this morning.
Trading winter racing markets
Winter in the racing markets can be a bit bleak. A chunk of the races can be fairly poor affairs and that’s if the racing goes ahead at all! My overall potential drops quite significantly at this time of year on the racing, I typically see a decline in the …
My highlight for November
Today brings a potentially good day for me, a highlight for November and a reminder of good times.
It’s the fighting fifth at Newcastle today. It’s often a small field and can be a bit tricky, but it usually contains some decent opportunities. Last year there was a big drift on Binocular before the start as the money came in for, correctly it turns out, Overturn. That led to a really good trading result. I will be happy with that …
Cheltenham Open
At last, some quality comes back into the jumps season!
With the Cheltenham open this weekend we can look forward to the fact that the festival is only four months away! Hey, you need something to look forward to during the, often bleak, winter season.
The Open is a useful meeting and volumes will be higher than normal so it’s an opportunity to get tucked into some decent markets. This isn’t like the Festival though so you shouldn’t get wildly …
Melbourne cup
I’ll be interested to see what the Melbourne cup does overnight this year.
This is the first time it has been run since the turnover tax was implemented in Australia which the objective of protecting the incumbent operators in the market. I think the outcome, so far, has shown that traders don’t dominate the market in the manner people previously assumed. Turnover, as far as I can see, on most big races is pretty much the same as before and …
Lots of good quality racing
It’s the time of year for marathon trading sessions. Lots of quality racing around, just none in the UK!
UK racing starts in the early afternoon, then morphs into evening racing. Today and tomorrow we also have the Breeders cup in California late into the night UK time. As that ends we immediately switch to Melbourne Cup meeting at Flemington.
In theory you could trade on just racing from just after midday right through to 7am tomorrow morning. It would …
Farewell Frankel
A horses racing career is pretty short isn’t it?
It’s not something I had appreciated until I learnt more about horse racing. But being so highly rated Frankel is now too valuable to continue racing. Instead he will spend the rest of his days trying to produce ‘Frankel junior’ at some point in the future. Though there is a possibility we may not see another similar horse for quite a few years.
Undefeated in all 13 of his races, Frankel …
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.