Andy Holding: Betting Tips

What is the key to becoming a successful full-time punter? The simple answer is there isn’t a single secret formula guaranteed to produce riches on a daily basis. However, a good deal of hard work, involving plenty of research and race-watching can at least provide you with a fighting chance of beating the bookmakers, so let’s take a look into some of the techniques I use to help make it pay.

The famous saying by Benjamin Franklin, “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see” could never be more relevant when it comes to horse racing, as most punters’ love for listening to other folk for tips and whispers passed on through various sources has seemingly hit an all-time high thanks to the advent of social media. Yes, occasionally we have all backed a few winners by trusting the news on the grapevine, but in the bigger scheme of things, nothing beats good old fashioned form studying when it comes to making a profit on a long-term basis and that should always be the focal point of any punter above all else. In short, using your eyes and watching as many replays as possible is still seen as the primary tool when it comes to the selection process. All other methods you may undertake to coincide with this action, such as speed ratings, sectional timing, stride pattern data, statistics, paddock watching, and breeding, are all key components to add the finishing touches to your research.

The first part of any discernible form study is to try and understand how a race developed in order to come to any concrete conclusion on its reliability at a later date. Personally, I prefer to use speed figures in order to establish how good a race was, as this method is one way of obtaining an objectionable view. Although a race may seem to be run at a sound pace to the naked eye, until the post-race analysis tells the full story, it’s impossible to know the true merit of any given contest. Once establishing whether a race was strongly run (calculated by using a formula), the form should turn out to be fairly reliable going forward and these contests are usually worth following over the slowly-run, tactical affairs, where track position rather than pure ability often proves the key factor. In simple terms, if a horse has proven they can run a fast time once, then there is every chance they will run to a similar level further down the line. The difficult bit is predicting when that moment is likely to happen again in the future.

By compiling speed figures over a length of time, you build up a dossier of horses who are capable of running to a higher level than the rest and these are the ones that should provide you with an edge against the crowd. The tricky part is collating the figures in the first place, but with the help of so many publications on the internet nowadays, there is enough information to get you started. I personally found Nick Mordin’s ‘Mordin On Time’ a great help in starting the process and even though it’s original price of £9.95 when first published in 2003 has shot up to £179.99, currently, the fact that the 120-page essay of how to measure a horse’s capabilities by using numbers has shot up by 180% in that time is testimony to how well his ‘system’ works.

The essence of the publication – along with the one produced by American horse bettor Andy Beyer -  is to award a horse a rating (between 0-100) based on how fast they ran compared to the standard time. Each racetrack has a standard time for every distance, then once you have a list of the actual times of the winners that day, you can work out whether the track surface was speeding them up or slowing them down and collate a ‘going allowance’. He then goes on to explain how you can turn this information into (speed) ratings and use them as a valuable tool against the bookmakers.

The main reason speed figures can give punter’s an advantage is basically because bookmakers don’t price up races based on such data, so that has to be a massive angle to exploit for anyone looking to gain an edge. To give you just one example of how the ratings can work in your favour is to look back at last year’s Royal Ascot meeting and highlight some of the two-year-old winners. Because there is a very limited sample of a horse’s true capabilities come mid-June, anything that had already proven it can run to a useful level on the clock prior to the big meeting had to have some sort of advantage over its rivals. Raffle Prize was a classic case in point in the Queen Mary Stakes, having run a smart speed figure in defeat on debut at Newmarket and an even quicker one when scoring at Chester next time and yet was available to back at 25-1 in the morning of day two. Although she hadn’t posted the fastest time figure in the build-up to the race, she was towards the head of the pile, and allied into the fact she was well drawn up the favoured stands’ side rail and had Frankie Dettori aboard meant she was seriously underestimated in the market. That also leads me on to another valid point for those endeavouring to make it pay backing horses. There are occasions when you should try and back a horse simply because you think it is the wrong price, and not necessarily the one who you think will win. This policy will seem a little a double-dutch to most punters I’m sure, but it is a tactic used by many pros and this strategy can pay handsome dividends on a long-term basis. In short, if you fancy two in a race and they are chalked up 7-4 and 8-1 respectively, always try and play the outsider of the pair – especially as most of the time you can probably back it each-way.

Going back to the Royal meeting and there were also several other juveniles that ended up winning despite their position in the betting suggesting otherwise. A’Ali, who was available to back at 12-1 ante-post (ended up going off 5-1) for the Norfolk Stakes, yet his time figure on his only other previous start at Ripon indicated he was a good deal better than his early quotes. Despite being beaten on debut, his numbers at the Yorkshire venue very much pointed towards a youngster of the highest class and he duly justified that belief in some style on the third of the five-day fixture. Daahyeh was another who backed up the speed figures with a victory in the Albany Stakes on the fourth day - a success which was highlighted by Raffle Prize earlier in the week - and Pinatubo closed out the meeting by being the fastest juvenile pre-Ascot in the Chesham. These are just some examples where keeping a record of speed figures can seriously improve your chances of beating the layers and it is an area I would recommend any fledgling punter concentrates on above anything else.

There are also many other tools to give punters a head start over the layers and sectional times are another way of acquiring extra knowledge. Being able to identify horses that have raced too fast or slowly at various points is another key factor in establishing how a race developed and, if used correctly, they can also provide a valuable insight into a horse’s capabilities. There are plenty of websites that supply this sort of information for free nowadays, but as most of the data is designed for Flat racing, a decent angle can be obtained by translating the same process over to the National Hunt field.

Using the fence-to-fence technique, or final circuit time approach, you can quickly identify the best performances on a card. You can also apply the same technique by using the ’split-screen’ method designed to help you watch two races simultaneously and see how they unfold. I like to do my own circuit sectional times as this course of action provides me with an extra layer of information to coincide with the overall speed figure of a race. For instance, if a certain race posts the fastest circuit time on a card that also produced the best overall furlong-per-furlong rating, these are the ones I tend to go to town on when doing my post-race reviews. As a result, I’m more inclined to revisit these races the most and I’ve personally found them to be the most reliable when it comes to making a profit out of the beaten horses over the years.

A good example of this practice came from analysing the novices’ handicap won by Simply The Betts at Cheltenham on trials day back in January. Not only did Harry Whittington’s gelding run a smart time figure, his final circuit sectionals were 4.7 seconds (roughly equates to around 20 lengths) quicker than those achieved by Cepage in the older-horse handicap over the same C&D half an hour later. Based on this evidence, it was pretty apparent to me that the son of Arcadio was an above-average novice chaser, so it came as no surprise to see him go on and land the Brown Advisory Handicap Chase at the festival two months later. To add an extra sheen on top, the runner-up to him that day, Imperial Aura, also triumphed at the same meeting and the third-placed On The Slopes completed a clean sweep when he landed a competitive handicap at Kempton next time. There was also a similar occurrence at Leopardstown back in December when the Pertemps Qualifier won by Traceysenniscorthy’s worked out incredibly favourably compared to the Grade 1 won by Apple’s Jade. The former race was so good, even those beaten upwards of 50 lengths in the handicap managed to finish ahead of Gordon Elliott’s mare using the split-screen method, so once the research was done, it was a race I was extremely keen to take full advantage of. Unsurprisingly, the winner went on to land a carbon-copy version on his return at the same venue next time out and although he didn’t make the final itself, the likes of Ronald Pump, Sire Du Berlais and Tout Est Permis all ended up flying the flag three months later. Amazingly, the trio managed to fill out the 1-2-3 in the final and that result just re-emphasized the benefit of putting in the hard yards and having the patience to sit through hour upon hour of replays.

Now there are times when all the best planning in the world fails to reap rewards and one of the chief entrants in this particular category was Visinari in the Group 2 July Stakes at Newmarket last season. Despite being a relatively unfancied 10-1 chance on debut over the same C&D a month earlier, Mark Johnston’s colt had all us time figure merchants salivating over the numbers he posted in beating a useful field with any amount in hand and, as a result, it led many of us to believe he was a juvenile of the very highest class. Unfortunately, this assessment ended up being a false dawn as the son of Dark Angel failed to reproduce the sort of magic he achieved first time off the shelf and for those that punted him from an opening show of 7-2 down to 4-6 at the off (myself included), were left to lick their wounds. Some might say he fell foul of the dreaded ‘bounce’ theory which seems to be a popular term in modern-day racing parlance, but the mere fact that he ran even worse on his next two starts suggests he simply wasn’t quite as good as what many of us thought.

The ‘bounce’ theory suggests some horses run poorly immediately after an exceptionally fast effort, the reason being the extreme performance can leave its mark on an individual for a period of time afterwards. Now clearly this can be the case with quite a few horses, but there is also a counter argument to suggest they are in the form of their lives and can run up a sequence when in peak condition. The only conclusion to be drawn is that racehorses are creatures of flesh and blood and shouldn’t all be treated as just numbers on a page. In simple terms, some thrive and others will recoil, and it probably just boils down to their constitution and that can only be known after analysing each horse for a long period of time. Kinross was another classic case in point when he nose-dived after a scintillating effort on the clock at Newmarket last season. Backed into favouritism to land the Group 1 Futurity Stakes at Newcastle next time, Ralph Beckett’s colt could only manage fifth of the 11 runners, leaving the impression that something was amiss. Whether he leaves that below-par effort behind and bounces back to the performance levels at HQ only time will tell, but for now, he has to be filed into the ‘unsure’ tray.

As you can see, there are pluses and minuses attached to compiling speed figures, but I thoroughly believe they are a massive and integral part of judging a horse’s ability. After all, we all know who the fastest and best athletes are in track and field based on the clock, so why, in a sport where the same principles apply, isn’t it the first thing most punters are asking themselves? Of course, there are other huge factors involved in the process of finding winners, such as the going, draw, pace, trainer form, and jockeyship, but unless your selection can not run fast in the first place, all the other fundamentals are rendered insignificant.