Tag: racing
Punchestown Festival
The Punchestown Festival this week is a good opportunity to get tucked into some good quality Irish racing.
The jumps finale offers a decent prize fund and total prize money today is £283,000, versus one tenth of that on the UK meetings.
Irish racing is much weaker than UK racing typically, doing about half of what you expect on a UK race, but the good quality stuff can produce decent volume. So it always worth a look. The Punchestown festival …
Could the General election change racing forever?
A fair few years ago I started visiting the houses of parliament.
I wasn’t looking to be an MP I just wanted to follow the passage of the new Gambling Bill through parliament and the committee stage. I learnt a lot about politics, lobbying, MP’s, party whips and the legislative process. The biggest thing I learnt was it was largely a pointless exercise. All the discussion, cross checking and diligence went out the window when the bill was guillotined thanks …
Trading Cheltenham
This year I’ve decided to upload a video to narrate some of the stats and detail behind how Cheltenham trades. It seems much easier to express and emphasise points and show a number of things on a video that you can’t do in text. So I’ve created the longest video yet and uploaded it for you!
For those of you that want the text I’ve prepared a long document for you here. It should be of interest one way or …
The new kid on the block
It’s not often you get a new kid on the block but this week we have.
Well sort of new. In April 2008 a new racecourse opened, the first completely new racecourse sine Taunton in 1927! It didn’t last long however and the following January it went into administration. It is now being re-incarnated as Chelmsford City and it’s first races are today.
Having another all weather course will probably help the industry, especially as this is in the south, …
The day somebody with £1k caused a £600m error
Three years ago today we were treated to a day of spectacular proportions. It seems to have slipped into the history books a bit so I thought I would reprise it for your enjoyment and delight.
On this this day at the Christmas hurdle at Leopardstown something went very, very wrong. Voler La Vedette ran home to take that race, but for most of the race £21m was available to back at good odds. Nobody it seemed was able to …
Boxing day
So we are at Christmas and the sports schedule in the UK thinned out into the run up to Christmas day. Everything, apart from your wallet probably, took a break. Now it’s back with a bang on Boxing day.
Last year, even with two meetings abandoned there were still a total of 11 race meetings in the UK and Ireland and a total of 720 runners over 72 races! This year we face a total of 79 races, 24 of …
Melbourne Cup meeting – Day three
I was going to post up a breakdown of the big day, but the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the post race period put paid to that. Couldn’t bring myself to post enthusiastically about proceedings given that. In case you don’t know what happened the BBC has detailed the unfortunate set of circumstances.
From a trading perspective things went pretty well. I don’t expect to set records on every major race meeting now, due to the time I’ve been in the …
Fingers at the ready
After some below par racing recently, we explode into a smorgasbord of quality today. Though in typical racing fashion we have five cards on this afternoon!
Top of the list is Newmarket where prize money totals £668k over 7 races. The return of Cheltenham sees a more modest £67k for their seven races. But the presence of both should make for a decent afternoon of action.
Haydock and Redcar chip in with some lower grade action but some of that …
Salisbury
Whenever I see Salisbury on the card it reminds me of a document that Betfair published many moons ago.
I saw Salisbury on the card today and the same bell rang in my head, but also a bit of alarm at the two and three runner races on the card! How poor is that? But back to the main topic.
Back in 2004 Betfair issued a document that actually clearly laid out what a market looked like. In the document …
Part timer
I’m back onto Betfair markets properly today. I’m currently taking the opportunity to enjoy the late summer sun. I had my first round of golf for a few years this morning! Having worked hard during the busier periods of the year, I can skip the quieter days at the moment without remotely denting my yearly performance much. Though I did take a look at the champions league last night.
I also nipped in on Sunday to have a pop at …
Laying on the beach
Laytown – Sounds like a small town where people favour only one side of the book. But its actually a racecourse in Ireland. Since 1876 Laytown has hosted a single annual horse racing meeting on its beach – one of only a couple on sand (held on the beach) race meetings run under official rules of racing in Europe.
The BBC have made it the subject of a documentary, titled Racing the Tide, and have included passages in their …
Marmite Monday
It’s that day of the year that you either love or hate. The August bank holiday in the UK brings a whole bunch of racing, all on the same day.
There will be lots of meetings on today and about a billion races. This may seem like heaven for some, but it’s a nightmare for others. Quite a few races will attract little liquidity, a lot isn’t of quality and many races will clash meaning that you can’t do much …
When to use form and when not
Each day I flick through the available sports on offer and have a quick look for anything interesting.
On the racing today something jumped out immediately, Battle group in the 16:00 at Kempton.
Battle group famously refused to race at the Grand National and caused a false start. They restarted, but it didn’t make it past the first fence. Today it is running over 1m4f at Kempton. One look at it’s form and it’s a miserable recent record, three refused …
Little and often
This is a phrase I’ll often quote when advising people on how to trade. I posted up a full list of results from yesterday and it got a fair amount of commentary because it illustrated exactly that point. More information further down this post.
It’s really nice to bang in some massive results now and again, but generally, that’s not what trading is about. Well. not 80% of the time on racing.
Most of the time I’m in a market …
Goodway
So Goodwood is underway and it’s performing more or less as I expected and, hopefully, set your expectations at.
In the first two days the biggest race reached £2.2m but the lowest was waaaaaaaaaay off that. Mainly thanks to clashing with other races. Attention is very firmly focused on the feature races and that’s producing the majority of the matched bet turnover so far, helping all markets reach £16m so over the two days. But curiously it doesn’t feel like …
Trading Goodwood
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
As you may know these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some major meetings. Therefore …
It’s not just about the big stuff
OK, we are in the thick of some major sporting action at the moment. I’m soooo busy it’s difficult to know which way to look at times, but it’s great fun. I apologise if I’ve been a bit quieter recently, but I simply haven’t had the time to devote to updating the blog etc. I’ll be back soon, most likely after Wimbledon has completed.
But it’s important to reflect that it’s not all about the big stuff. Ascot is gone …
The trading dead zone
It doesn’t happen often, but now and again all things conspire to produce a dead zone in the markets. We are currently in that dead zone.
First off, this relates to the racing markets. Racing markets are seasonal and peak and trough around major meetings. The last was, obviously, Ascot. So you can get a trough before a major meeting, but you almost certainly get one after it.
Summer racing can be a bit weak as there are more meetings …
Gamble fail, trade win
A quiet end to Ascot week, but I’m relieved that I can now return to more ‘normal’ trading patterns.
I did OK on the day, but one trade stood out. The 17:00 at Ascot.
‘Absolutely So’ was gambled massively, more than any horses I think I’ve seen at Ascot. Widely tipped, It had a terrible race and finished 15th in the end. But it highlighted the beauty of trading. You could quite easily see it was being heavily backed, so …
Royal Ascot week
Thanks for the feedback on World Cup stats. Inspired, I’ve combined a general overview of Ascot with some data on previous years meetings.
Please see the embedded video further down this post.
It goes without saying that Ascot is big, but how big? What are the biggest days? That may surprise you if you are not into the detail of racing. The flow of the week is different at Ascot as well, so it’s worth being aware of that as …
Racing makes history… and annoys families
So Racing has broken that taboo and Racing goes ahead on a Good Friday. Hmm, just got used to having the day off and so had the kids and suddenly I’m looking at trading instead of spending time with the family. No in fact, I’m not going to. I’ll switch on some automation and let it work (it’s magic?).
I understand Racing’s desire to be more appealing but this was one day, of few, of the year where I could …
Cheltenham Day 3 & 4
We’ve teamed up with our friends at Proform to bring you one of their race cards at Cheltenham, for FREE! Download today’s racecard by clicking on this text.
Cheltenham day three
A decent day where I managed to pull out a number of good results across both exchanges. It was much more like Tuesday and completely different to Wednesday that threw a few curve balls! So looking forward to tomorrow and the Gold Cup!
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Another classic betting coup
Barney Curley may have retired but his presence was felt yet again as four heavily gambled horses romped home in style for a big accumulator today. This brought back memories of May 2010.
Eye of the Tiger came in at 13:30 at Lingfield, Seven Summits at the 13:40 at Catterick then Indus Valley and Low Key in the evening at Kempton.
The link? All the horses involved were previously associated with Barney Curley. Winning trainer John Butler, a former …
Mission not impossible
So, after a tough day yesterday we look forward to an easier task today. Some reasonable quality about and of course we have Sprinter Sacre on the card.There are also a sensible amount of races. Saturday looks promising on the racing front.
With hindsight, always a wonderful thing, yesterday didn’t go too badly for me. So as a matter of record I should blog that for a better reflection next year. But I think one thing that did trick for …
Mission impossible
One look at the racing card this morning and the music from mission impossible should have started running through your head.
Even with two meetings abandoned there are still a total of 11 meetings in the UK and Ireland today and a total of 720 runners over 72 races.
The problem you have on days like this is that the races fall all over each other and before one has finished another has already started. They are also generally lower …
St Leger meeting
For some background to this meeting have a read of this wiki link.
I must admit, from a trading perspective, I haven’t got a great deal out of this meeting in the past. So I tend to not set high expectations only be disappointed. I tend to treat it as a decent meeting, but not something I expect to get anything stunning from. I see some people are talking it up, but that just shows they haven’t traded it …
Ebor or Ebore?
Summer racing isn’t over quite yet and today kicks of the Ebor meeting at York. I’ve traditionally done OK at this festival each year so I am looking for something above average this week.
The Ebor meeting can yield some good results, but nothing is ever guaranteed and this meeting can be a bit random at times so it’s probably not going to be all plain sailing. It should be better than what we have been seeing recently though.
Traditionally …
Goodwood so far
I think it has played out similar to what I imagined. People always over-hype Goodwood and as a consequence the markets often fill up with money that nobody takes.
If you look at the detail you can see this showing up in the stats. The average queue size at Goodwood is twice its normal size, but the fill rate is about normal. This adds up to taking a little more than twice as normal to fill. The longer something takes …
Trading Goodwood
From a trading perspective I like multi day high quality meetings. They usually throw up some good opportunities and are a welcome addition to the month.
As you may know these higher quality meetings produce extra volume and that can change the characteristics significantly. But don’t let Goodwood or anybody else fool you into thinking it’s the same as a Royal Ascot or Cheltenham, it behaves very differently. Goodwood benefits from decent volume but it’s not as much as some …
The Oaks – Betfair’s first ever market
So today we reach the Oaks and tomorrow the Derby, when the summer racing really starts to step up a gear. The start of June means Royal Ascot is just around the corner.
If you are a Betfair newbie you may not know that the Oaks at Epsom was Betfair’s first market way back when they started in June 2000. But it was a little later that year, on June 11th. Mark Davis reminisced on his blog about it. I …
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