Cheltenham Ante Post Competition

Grey

Grey

Senior Jockey
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The time has arrived to launch the Cheltenham ante post competition, the prizes for which are being put up by Roddy Owen and Grasshopper.

It will start on Monday, but before then we need to sort out the format and rules. The general idea is as follows.

Competitors start with a tank of £5,000, split into five tranches, one for each of the five calendar months (October, November, December, January and February) between now and March. The October and November tranches would be £500 each, the December and January ones would be £1,000 each, and the February one would be £2,000.

Each tranche is to be invested, within the related calendar month, in any of the ante post markets for the Cheltenham Festival. Betting will close at the end of February, and the winner will be the person getting the best return on their bets, as settled under normal ante post rules.

Latecomers can join in at any stage, but they will only have access to the tranches for the current and remaining months of the competition.
Also, in order to prevent latecomers having an unfair advantage, only winnings would be taken into account for scoring purposes.

Questions and suggestions are welcome. One which I would have is whether the generous prize fund of £200 should go to the overall winner or should we have more than one prize?
 
I would say 150 for 1st and 50 for 2nd OR 150 for 1st and 50 for biggest priced winner found?
 
Either way well done Grey for organising and Roddy and Grasshopper for their generosity.
 
As requested, Grey - items for consideration as follows. Most are offered with the amount of Admin you will need to manage in mind.

Are we talking Win and E/W singles only, or are multiples allowed? Do you want to restrict it to prices available at one bookie/exchange, or give people free rein. The more bookies people can choose from, the more time it takes to validate bets are legit at the time of posting.

The starting tanks are also sizeable, so you might want to consider wether you want to set a maximum number of bets per calendar month. This would help avoid someone selecting 50 different Yankees in a given month. Again, it's an exercise in managing how much effort it is on your part.
 
Euronymous said:
I did have to ask Wikipedia what a tranche £11was but that aside awesome compo.
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Sorry, I've been living too long in Brussels, getting contaminated by Eurospeak.

Regarding Grasshopper's points, I think we should try to be flexible. Any market or price available via Oddschecker should be ok, I reckon. I agree we should have a minimum amount per bet, say £100 or £50 ew, perhaps a bit more.

Maybe we should also have a maximum bet size. People should have to diversify a bit. Last year certain forumites would, if given the opportunity, have had their entire stash on Hurricane Fly or Peddlers Cross respectively. :D

By the way, the original suggestion for this competition came from Roddy Owen. He and Grassy are putting up the prizes, and thanks are also due to New Approach, who has offered to set up a spreadsheet for recording and calculating the bets.
 
I think the way to cap max wins is that every member will be required to have a £500 position on the four Champiomship races and a £250 position on six other races e.g (Arkle, Supreme, Rynair et). That will make it a real test of skill in building a book and not a crapshoot.
 
That's too restrictive SC - what if you have one outstanding fancy that you want to put 50 - 60% of your tank on? There will be at least one possibly three championship races with less than 2/1 favs - having to bet 40% of your tank on these races it a waste.
 
Could not disagree more. If you really fancy one than off you go to the relevant 'road to' thread and tell us how much hard cash you are having on. If the winner of this just lobs £5k on Spirit Son to win the Champion Hurdle than please reason to me what the fuck is the point?
 
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Octobers selections

Arkle - Peddlers Cross £100 win 7/1

Champion Hurdle - Zarkandar £100 win 12/1 - Grandouet £100 win 36.0 betfair

R.S.A Chase - Silvianarco Conti £100 win 20/1

Queen Mother - Captain Chris £100 win 12/1
 
swedish chef said:
Octobers selections

Arkle - Peddlers Cross £100 win 7/1

Champion Hurdle - Zarkandar £100 win 12/1 - Grandouet £100 win 36.0 betfair

R.S.A Chase - Silvianarco Conti £100 win 20/1

Queen Mother - Captain Chris £100 win 12/1
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You might let the lads decide on the rules first!
 
SlimChance said:
Could not disagree more. If you really fancy one than off you go to the relevant 'road to' thread and tell us how much hard cash you are having on. If the winner of this just lobs £5k on Spirit Son to win the Champion Hurdle than please reason to me what the fuck is the point?
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Could not disagree with your disagreement more....

To me building up an ante-post position is not about a scattergun approach with 12 horses backed in twelve different races. Your point is valid about having all your dough on one selection - minimum of 4 different horses max stake on any one €2,000.??? I prefer to see some of the gurus's on here come down on one very very strongly rather than firing darts at 15 different horses.
 
We should have a comp to decide what rules a comp should have.
I'm with On The Bridle - let people bet how they would in real life ... with a comp. limit, as it's still a comp. & not real life ...
 
SlimChance said:
If the winner of this just lobs £5k on Spirit Son to win the Champion Hurdle than please reason to me what the fuck is the point?
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I agree with this. Would be annoying to have three or four winners and still be beaten by one bit of jam.

Like Grey I'm with the maximum bet size idea - maybe 2 Large on the one animal.
 
Thanks for all the feedback.

I think the minimum bet could be 10% of the monthly bank, and would therefore rise as the competition wears on. This would mean it would start at £50/£25ew for October and November, rising to £100/50ew in December and January, and to £200/£100ew in February.

A max liability of £2,000 on any one horse, together with a requirement to have a minimum of £500 on at least four horses, looks about right to me. For the sake of score-keeping sanity we might also have to place a limit on the number of horses in each portfolio, perhaps a maximum of twelve at the cut-off point (though we might allow dud selections to be removed from portfolios so they are not counted).

Regarding the prizes, how about a first prize of £150 for the person generating the highest winnings, as per usual, and a secondary £50 prize for the most promising portfolio at the end of February, the cut-off date for the competition?

The secondary prize would be scored as follows.

Suppose you have a bet of £100 on Dark Horse at 20/1, and by the end of February, after doing well in its trial races, it has come in to 5/1. The £100 bet, which has potential winnings of £2000, now has a paper value of £400, because that is the size of bet on Dark Horse that would now be needed to generate the same winnings.

Suppose, on the other hand, that you have £1000 on Greatest Ever at evens, but after a setback it has drifted out to 4/1 on the cut-off date. The paper value of the bet is down to only £250, because that it is now the size of bet required to win £1000 on this horse.

The portfolio with the highest paper value at the end of February would win the secondary prize.

The outcome of the main prize cannot be known until the Festival is over, but the secondary prize would be awarded before it starts, and could be the subject of interim scores during the winter.
 
There's some clever and original thinking on this forum. An interesting competition in prospect.
 
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