How do you get information re 2020 flat form now no Form Book printed?

D

Dawnrunfan

At the Start
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
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I cannot believe I am the only person to mourn the passing of the annual printed Raceform Flat Annual.

So I shall buy Horses in Training 2021. It has thousands of horses in it.

How do you get information re their 2020 flat form now there will be no 2021 Flat Annual Form Book printed? Also the Form Book had an essay on each race. It said who was stopped etc, who was coming up at the end. From what I can see, apart from the almost impossibility of looking up every horse in every race separately on what? Is it even possible now? At the Races website? But that only shows that the horse ran eg in the 2.30 at Haydock in Sept and came 3rd of 9. None of the above detail that I can see. And for every horse in every race? The season will be over before I can work out my 10 to follow!

How are you dealing with this please?
 
PS Or am I supposed to get the Racing Post every day (at around £4 a day) and keep 200 of them in a pile, ready to check next year!??
 
I use the Weekender form pullouts. They give more info and cover more than the printed form book.

As I said elsewhere when the topic was first raised (a month or two back), the Form Book in subscription form became very unwieldy and Royal Mail couldn't be trusted to deliver it ahead of the upcoming weekend racing, on top of which they started to price it prohibitively. If memory serves, I actually wrote to them to point out that, rather than cover rising costs, raising the price would merely serve to drive away loyal customers and would lead to the demise of the product altogether.

Basically, they want to force people into buying the very pricey Raceform Interactive. I imagine only racing professionals can afford that (as they'll probably be able to set it against business expenses).

The Weekender pullouts - you can usually buy back-issues - are obviously tabloid size so might not be ideal but they cover all the Irish racing and race analyses. My wife has learned to tolerate the paper mountains but I tend to be quite tidy with them in order to maintain harmony in the domicile.

But no, I don't imagine you're the only one mourning the passing of the annual. I think Timeform have gone down the same pan.
 
I find the RP full service covers most avenues, though replays are less clunky on ATR on SL sites;and are f.o.c.
 
Ultimate membership of the RP costs £35 a month and for that you get digital versions of the newspaper delivered to your PC/tablet each night (you can also read online) at 9:00 for the following day and full access to the results archive, breeding stats, racing replays and so on.

I've stopped reading too much of the paper but really like the results section, complete with tracker and notes etc.

Is it perfect, no ? but as far as I'm concerned it's still the best there is.

P.S. I'm not interested in the "flat form" :whistle:
 
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Thank you. So if I get this only in March - October. Then again the following March etc I would be able to see last year's race replays in full from this 1st March? Is there a problem with only wanting 9 months a year?
 
Dawnrunfan said:
Thank you. So if I get this only in March - October. Then again the following March etc I would be able to see last year's race replays in full from this 1st March? Is there a problem with only wanting 9 months a year?
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Watch the Upping The Ante videos on Youtube. They give out a promo code that gets you 50% off.
 
Anyone use ‘Rating The Races’

Seen it on Twitter, i remember asking last year. If its better/similar than the RP then i might switch. Seems more of a tipping thing though, with them giving you their top rated horse. Not looked into it too much though tbh
 
Double J said:
Anyone use ‘Rating The Races’

Seen it on Twitter, i remember asking last year. If its better/similar than the RP then i might switch. Seems more of a tipping thing though, with them giving you their top rated horse. Not looked into it too much though tbh
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I use it. Useless for form study.
 
OK! So I looked at the sample Racing Post on their website encouraging you to go onto online membership. I have to turn the page on screen, then make it big enough for me to read a few paragraphs at a time (my reading glasses only work for reading close to me), then I turn the page again, and have to do it all over again.... It takes all the joy out of reading the paper. Would also take ages every day.

But more importantly - how on earth do you make selections if you don't have a physical paper to write on? I like to sit and read the paper over breakfast, mark selections in key races, then when I watch those races (recorded on Racing TV or Sky Racing on my television) I have the paper by me, and can see which one I had selected, then see if it won. Sometimes I have made a bet, mostly I have not. If I don't do that - even if I bought a tablet (never used one - what else could it do for me please?) and then had the card next to me on the tablet as I watch the race, how would I remember which horse I had chosen? Especially because I normally get caught up in other things, then watch a couple of days racing in one go, often a week or so later. It just doesn't make sense as a way to go?
 
Dawnrunfan said:
But more importantly - how on earth do you make selections if you don't have a physical paper to write on? I like to sit and read the paper over breakfast, mark selections in key races, then when I watch those races (recorded on Racing TV or Sky Racing on my television) I have the paper by me, and can see which one I had selected, then see if it won. Sometimes I have made a bet, mostly I have not. If I don't do that - even if I bought a tablet (never used one - what else could it do for me please?) and then had the card next to me on the tablet as I watch the race, how would I remember which horse I had chosen? Especially because I normally get caught up in other things, then watch a couple of days racing in one go, often a week or so later. It just doesn't make sense as a way to go?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoRl9uL1J0w
 
Thank you very much for the interesting video. So I now have to save as a PDF, naming it for the date and racecourse so it is in order, onto a tablet for every race card page from the online Racing Post - still not sure how I save those. Then in a notebook App which I would need to buy on the tablet (which I would also need to buy), I can make a noted selection. Then presumably I keep those PDFs until after I have watched the races (as I now keep the actual paper only until after I have watched the races).

Or I just pick up the paper and make a mark by a horse!

I know that once you learn how to do things it becomes easier, but just buying a £30 last-year's form book would have done it for me!
 
I accept that the tech is progress but the experience p1sses the sh1t out of me!

I tried RI for a season.

I've tried subscribing to RP Online.

Both have plus points but they don't suit my way of studying. I enjoyed having them as support tools for my methods but they could never stand alone as a method for me.

And working at a computer screen for the hours on end that I spend with the paper form could not possibly be good for me. (Or anybody, I would argue.)
 
Desert Orchid said:
I accept that the tech is progress but the experience p1sses the sh1t out of me!

I tried RI for a season.

I've tried subscribing to RP Online.

Both have plus points but they don't suit my way of studying. I enjoyed having them as support tools for my methods but they could never stand alone as a method for me.

And working at a computer screen for the hours on end that I spend with the paper form could not possibly be good for me. (Or anybody, I would argue.)
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Nor mine - I still hanker after the old Raceform Notebook!! I wouldn’t go back though, the ability to watch the races beats all.
 
Likewise, Barjohn;RFNB used to be a fount of decent bets for me, and I can honestly say my punting has gone south since its demise.
 
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