HORSE RACING

Horse Racing

From the perspective of owners Horse Racing may well be the King of Sports but from the view of most of us mere mortals it is an exciting spectacle that can either make you money or lose you money. It is really this aspect that we are most interested in. Most of us are not in a position to own horses as the upkeep can come to a considerable sum on the off chance that the horse you bought has some ability and can make a return on the investment. Only a small percentage of horses make it to the track and of those only about 5% win a race and only a small percentage of those will end up winning two or more races. Its a lottery and quality breeding using “black type” horses (Group Race winners) is not a guarantee of obtaining a good race horse. Some unfashionable bred horses can suddenly emerge as champions. We have one at the moment in Australia “Black Caviar” now a 4 year old mare who was a relatively cheap purchase and as of today has won 13 races from 13 starts. I had some shares in horses over a period of time and had two which showed promise. One broke a leg at the top of the straight when it started favourite and the other bled internally after winning a couple of races. So our best and cheapest investment is via the tote or a bookmaker and rent the horse for a couple of minutes while it is running in a race.

Television Coverage

The spectacle now days seem to be reserved for the Carnival Days. On other days the racecourse is patronised by the owners, trainers, jockeys , officials and a hand full of die hards or to be kinder horse racing aficionados. There are places such as Hong Kong where the crowds still flock to the races but in Australia where I live its a good day if you get over 3000 people at a metropolitan race meeting outside of the Carnival dates. We now have wall to wall television coverage through Sky Racing in the UK and Australia or ESPN in the USA. There is no need to leave the comfort of your home and bets can be readily placed via the Internet.

Purpose of This Site

I know that there are countless horse racing sites and here is another one. Will it offer more? I am not really sure but what I do want to do is educate the punter in various forms of betting and hopefully point them in the right direction by adopting some sort of system or rating method. It will definitely beat any system which relies on hastily picking up the form 5 minutes before the jump and try to select the winner. Occasionally you will get lucky but you do not want occasionally. Punting to win means consistency. Unfortunately 97% of punters lose over a period of time. That does not put the odds in your favour. The other  aspect is money management. I have given tips to some people in the past who believed that every selection provided would win and when the winners did come later in the day they had run out of money. I had a winning day – they lost.

Punting Methodologies

By using some sort of methodology (system if you like)  you will still get days where you wish you were doing something else but by and large a mechanical system or rating methodology will come up with some winners either reducing the losses or putting you on the right side of the ledger. For example one of the earliest systems I put together was one dubbed “Statform”. It used several statistics such as number of days between starts, recent form and its place in the betting market to derive its selections. Simple but effective. It went well for a long time (2 years), hit a dry patch and then bounced back again. That was in the early eighties and I have a close friend who still uses it and comes up with some good priced winners. He uses it in conjunction with some other systems so if one keels over for the day some of the others pick up the slack.

Experience

You may be asking yourself who is Arnold Vee. Well for a start its a nom- deplume. But having said that I started on the racecourse as a penciller for bookmakers. Back in the old days before it was all computerised. Fortunately I was good at it and was able to provide the bookmaker at any point in time the total hold, and the hold on various horses and the take out if it won. In those days we tried to make a round book if possible i.e. try to win regardless of which horse won the race. Later I pencilled for a bookmaker who with his information was happy to stand the favourite in certain races “over the gap”. He was seldom wrong and belonged to a family dynasty of bookmakers. I was able to witness first hand those who were in the know or had some knowledge of the game and those that frankly did not have a clue. It was a good education and from that experience I developed my own rating system which I still use today.

Results

Last Saturday 18Jun2011 I backed 5 winners in a row before I was nutted in a photo finish. Out of the next five races I obtained 2 winner and three losers – 11 races for 7 winners. This is backing 2 selections per race, not every-body’s cup of tea but it works for me. The only problem this last Saturday was the prices as most only paid $3 to $4 although one paid $6.7o and another $9.20. It was still a profitable weekend. The weekend of the 11th June was better in that I obtained the Randwick Quadrella (4 winners in a row) which paid over $10000 for an outlay of $16 (2×2x2×2). This included “Chameleon” which paid $26.80 for the win and “Girls Go Racing” at $11.20 so not all my selections are at small odds. So basically I walk the talk. Code Word in Race 5 paid $8.70 and the last leg was won by Title at $4.00.  This did not come about overnight. The results are obtained from a judicious mix of time ratings, class, lengths from the winner, weight, WFA improvement etc and much of it is attributed to studying people like Don Scott and Rem Plante who both published a number of books about race horse ratings. Mine just has a slightly different twist. It certainly beats haphazard selections hoping to win a fortune. You may as well spend your money trying to win Lotto.

Summary

At the moment I put this site together as a general site to pull together various articles of interest related to Horse Racing and Punting or Turf Investment if you want to couch in a nicer term. I am writing this from an Australian background. The racing scene nowadays is truly international and recently in South Africa I was still able to back my selections in Australia. The Internet is a wonderful tool and the races were broadcast live on the local pay television channel. Here in Australia we now have races beamed in from Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, Dubai, UK and America. Lots of places with little or no form available to lose one’s money.

Some articles will be of interest while others can be dismissed. As we go along we will refine this site to be more pro-active in the investment side. I hope you enjoy the articles. You can also sign up for our Newsletter.

Arnold Vee