My "Dark Horses" to watch.

walsworth said:
This really is a new way of thinking for me.

I subscribe to Horseracebase and I have been looking at races over the last couple of years where horses have been drastically shortened to see if I can identify betting yards.

Incidentally for those of you that use Excel, Horseracebase is the only place that I have found where the race cards can be easily copied into a spreadsheet.
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I very much doubt you will find the sort of information you are looking for on "Horseracebase" (Whatever that is. I assume it is some sort of stat site).
I have a list of trainers who i watch very closely, some more closely than others, and can gauge with some success when the "time", the day, the race, has come for the horse to put its best foot forward. I do not get it right every time, far from it, but when i do its usually at a big price. And it makes money ! And has done for many years.
But it is down to watching the trainers. Watching how they campaign their horses. Watching the patterns developing in getting the handicap mark down and targeting where they will strike. And its getting to know the trainer from afar. Some trainers are fairly easy to work out. Others are bloody difficult. And some are downright impossible and i gave up on them years ago. One of my favourite trainers when i was betting on the flat was "Spittin Mick". But i could never work him out. A few times i thought i had him and i would find out to my cost that i was wrong yet again. He plays by his rules and nobody gets a look in. Same with Tim Easterby. I cannot for the life of me work him out and also gave up a long time ago.
No stat site is gonna tell you anything worthwhile gamble wise about trainers like those two. Neither will it tell you about trainers who you maybe think do not punt or wouldnt bet very big but in reality, bet far bigger than probably everybody on here and four figure sums are the norm. That knowledge can only be gained by either knowing them personally, or, in my case, having experience of talking to them back in the day when they had the private number to come thru to us on the trading desk and taking their bets.

This could drag on for quite a while mate and i am stuck for time at the moment. But i will get back and try and expand on a few things and give you some examples and some pointers into what i focus on.

Have a good day.
 
walsworth said:
This really is a new way of thinking for me.

I subscribe to Horseracebase and I have been looking at races over the last couple of years where horses have been drastically shortened to see if I can identify betting yards.

Incidentally for those of you that use Excel, Horseracebase is the only place that I have found where the race cards can be easily copied into a spreadsheet.
Click to expand...
If its the "gamble" side of things you are looking at, the ones as you put it that have drastically shortened, then its the smaller trainers you need to be focusing on. The ones who NEED to do it to survive. And there are plenty out there. One trainer up north who knows the time of day is Grant Tuer and he has been doing well for a few years now. Do you remember the interview of his in the Racing Post a year or two back ? In it he said that if a trainer isnt setting his horse up for a touch, he isnt doing the job right.
And Grant has had a few nice touches over the past couple of years and will no doubt have plenty more. But i think because he came out with it publicly, a lot of people cottoned onto him and watch him. So i moved away from him and then from the flat but there are plenty of jump trainers who NEED to bet to survive. And they are my focus.
 
One tip i would give you, and other lads and lasses on here might add some of their own, is when you are watching "your" trainers and/or the specific horses, ALWAYS keep an eye on the entries and check every day. You'd be amazed what it can tell you. There are so many examples from the past that i could recall but i'll go with this one. One of the most famous, or should that be infamous, gambles in recent times. And the one that has had the most dire (and totally wrong) consequences.
I just love going thru the Irish point form and going back to them when a horse has come over here and won to check what finished in front or close up behind in those points. And you see these horses that do ok in the points but show zero over hurdles and most times it is because they are just no good but other times you just get a "feel" for a horse and keep it in mind. And then when you see that horse finished tailed in race after race after race and then all of a sudden be smashed up in the betting one morning, you sit up and take note. This particular horse collapsed to some silly price mid morning before drifting back out to 16/1 and was well beaten.
But that told a story, and then when i was checking its entries i would see it entered for two races one day, three the day after that, two the day after that, without taking up any of them. If memory serves, it once had nine entries for the coming few days and never ran in any of them. And there was a day when it was entered in two races, one a two and a half mile hurdle and the the a 7f handicap., It just didnt look right and something was definitely in the offing.
In the meantime, i was keeping the lads on the old forum up to date and we were all waiting for the touch. And for once, we hit it just right.
On Friday September 18th 2020, quite a few of us were backing this horse at 20's with the firms and what we could on the machine at slightly bigger.
And the following day, we watched DREAL DEAL absolutely scoot home doing cartwheels at 6/4. He could have carried four stone more and still won. And that was after nearly coming down at the first after overjumping.
As we know, he ended up winning six in a row including the grade 2 Moscow Flyer hurdle at Punchestown but was disqualified from his first two wins.
And we all know what has happened since and many of you will have your own take on things but from where i am sitting, i think Ronan's punishment was completely out of order and it was just total victimisation. Things arent straight over this side of the water but i look at some of the things some of the Irish trainers have got up to in the past and i'm amazed that a few of them havent been banned for life long before now.

Rant over.
 
A "dark" horse that was in my list is entered at Hexham on Tuesday but is not so dark now. The horse is called Batman For Ever and he is trained by Stuart Coltherd. He had shown very little in his two races for him although there was some improvement on his latest run and he was nibbled at in the market. Prior to joining Coltherd, he had run six times for Rebecca Menzies and shown next to nothing in all six runs. But prior to that he had been trained in France by Guillame Macaire and had won four races in a row for him before finishing second in a half decent chase at Compiegne.
He started life for Menzies on a mark of 122 but courtesy of those dismal efforts so far, he is now down to 89 and the day was looming. His latest form figures read 8P6P9696 or at least they did. They now read 8P6P96961 with the horse having won a point at Overton a couple of weeks ago.
That "1" at the end of that line makes a bloody big difference to the look of the form and it will make a difference to the price.

Pass.
 
Quixall Crossett said:
keep an eye on the entries and check every day.
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I've been doing this for the last can't remember how long - using the RP tracker. It sends email alerts when a tracked horse is entered and/or declared. Can't do it with trainers, though (well not to my knowledge), only named horses.

The flaws....

  • A little time overhead
  • £50 a month for the subscription (though a few days ago I called them to canx, said that £50 was stretching me, and they gave me a 6-month half-priced deal somewhat akin to the BT Broadband 'trick'). I do like some other RP features so it's not just about working out potential running plans.
  • You get a blast of emails once or twice a day. But it's just a few mins to scan through, make a mental note, and delete delete delete.
  • You're 'tied in'. Can't see any way to extract a list/sheet of tracked horses and notes, so if you switch to an alternative it's essentially a manual exercise to do them one by one.

I looked at (free) alternatives, but that may have been a 'lazy' look. Could only think of At The Races. Their cards are good (I have to see breeding), but I couldn't see any way to get declarations and advance entries.

I'm sure Timeform would be a workable alternative but couldn't find the subscription fee on the site and gave up.

If anyone knows any alternatives to these, or any way of tracking advance trainer entries other than by using RP, it would be useful to know what they are.


PS Apologies for hijacking, QC. But I though it was relevant and hope you'll agree. Let me know if you prefer I post this on a dedicated thread. I can prob delete.
 
Just following on the the conversation above by way of demonstration re’ changes of trainer and “are they running it at different distances/ground because they are trying to find the right combination or are is it to deliberately get the rating down or get a better price to back it at, there was a prime example on Wednesday and the shortening in price on the day shows it wasn’t missed.

Land Lover had been trained by Craig Lister and moved to Ireland to D Hogan. The nearest it had got to winning was over 5 furlongs at a rating of 78. It had never ran on heavy ground and only once ran on the all weather where only three horses finished behind it. So what does Hogan do? Gives it a run on heavy ground and a run on the all weather, both at 6 furlongs, reducing its rating by 4 lbs (16 lbs lower than its initial British rating) then lets it loose at five furlongs on ground that he likes. Result, its only win out of 12 starts.

Obviously horses that start at 5 furlongs so go on to longer distances so that wasn’t unusual but in this instance, the trainer had a race that he knew was made for the horse and slotted it in.

We know it’s happening. Spotting the difference between a plan and desperately grasping for the right track/distance/going/headgear/jockey is the difficult bit😂
 
chaumi said:
I've been doing this for the last can't remember how long - using the RP tracker. It sends email alerts when a tracked horse is entered and/or declared. Can't do it with trainers, though (well not to my knowledge), only named horses.

The flaws....

  • A little time overhead
  • £50 a month for the subscription (though a few days ago I called them to canx, said that £50 was stretching me, and they gave me a 6-month half-priced deal somewhat akin to the BT Broadband 'trick'). I do like some other RP features so it's not just about working out potential running plans.
  • You get a blast of emails once or twice a day. But it's just a few mins to scan through, make a mental note, and delete delete delete.
  • You're 'tied in'. Can't see any way to extract a list/sheet of tracked horses and notes, so if you switch to an alternative it's essentially a manual exercise to do them one by one.

I looked at (free) alternatives, but that may have been a 'lazy' look. Could only think of At The Races. Their cards are good (I have to see breeding), but I couldn't see any way to get declarations and advance entries.

I'm sure Timeform would be a workable alternative but couldn't find the subscription fee on the site and gave up.

If anyone knows any alternatives to these, or any way of tracking advance trainer entries other than by using RP, it would be useful to know what they are.


PS Apologies for hijacking, QC. But I though it was relevant and hope you'll agree. Let me know if you prefer I post this on a dedicated thread. I can prob delete.
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If you have a Racing Tv subscription, their tracker has alerts for next day runners far earlier than ATR. You can also get alerts in advance for declarations.

If you have t got a subscription, getting one would still be cheaper than the £50 per month. As for changing over, as you say, it would be a ballache but it depends how many you’ve got to transfer . I’m guilty of keeping horses in my tracker far after they have really outlived their use
 
That's an interesting example from another perspective, too, Onedunme (great username, pure gold :)

LL was a Nick Bradley 2YO, he generally knows what he's doing with buying youngsters. And if you look at the types of (earlier) races he was getting run in, you can deduce there was an amount of highish (essentially unsubstantiated/unconfirmed) regard in play.

I won't spell it out, but there's another aspect to the angle at play there!
 
chaumi said:
I've been doing this for the last can't remember how long - using the RP tracker. It sends email alerts when a tracked horse is entered and/or declared. Can't do it with trainers, though (well not to my knowledge), only named horses.

The flaws....

  • A little time overhead
  • £50 a month for the subscription (though a few days ago I called them to canx, said that £50 was stretching me, and they gave me a 6-month half-priced deal somewhat akin to the BT Broadband 'trick'). I do like some other RP features so it's not just about working out potential running plans.
  • You get a blast of emails once or twice a day. But it's just a few mins to scan through, make a mental note, and delete delete delete.
  • You're 'tied in'. Can't see any way to extract a list/sheet of tracked horses and notes, so if you switch to an alternative it's essentially a manual exercise to do them one by one.

I looked at (free) alternatives, but that may have been a 'lazy' look. Could only think of At The Races. Their cards are good (I have to see breeding), but I couldn't see any way to get declarations and advance entries.

I'm sure Timeform would be a workable alternative but couldn't find the subscription fee on the site and gave up.

If anyone knows any alternatives to these, or any way of tracking advance trainer entries other than by using RP, it would be useful to know what they are.


PS Apologies for hijacking, QC. But I though it was relevant and hope you'll agree. Let me know if you prefer I post this on a dedicated thread. I can prob delete.
Click to expand...

Try NagMe - free (can volunteer a payment to Press Association) and got Horse Jockey Trainer Owner
 
chaumi said:
I've been doing this for the last can't remember how long - using the RP tracker. It sends email alerts when a tracked horse is entered and/or declared. Can't do it with trainers, though (well not to my knowledge), only named horses.

The flaws....

  • A little time overhead
  • £50 a month for the subscription (though a few days ago I called them to canx, said that £50 was stretching me, and they gave me a 6-month half-priced deal somewhat akin to the BT Broadband 'trick'). I do like some other RP features so it's not just about working out potential running plans.
  • You get a blast of emails once or twice a day. But it's just a few mins to scan through, make a mental note, and delete delete delete.
  • You're 'tied in'. Can't see any way to extract a list/sheet of tracked horses and notes, so if you switch to an alternative it's essentially a manual exercise to do them one by one.

I looked at (free) alternatives, but that may have been a 'lazy' look. Could only think of At The Races. Their cards are good (I have to see breeding), but I couldn't see any way to get declarations and advance entries.

I'm sure Timeform would be a workable alternative but couldn't find the subscription fee on the site and gave up.

If anyone knows any alternatives to these, or any way of tracking advance trainer entries other than by using RP, it would be useful to know what they are.


PS Apologies for hijacking, QC. But I though it was relevant and hope you'll agree. Let me know if you prefer I post this on a dedicated thread. I can prob delete.
Click to expand...
Good stuff chaumi and keep it coming. You are in no way hijacking. It is all relevant and as they used to say on the BT advert many years ago, "Its good to talk".

To be honest, i would never pay for a subscription to anything horse racing related. Never have done, never will do. Everything we need is available free on the internet and if you have the time, and i appreciate that not everybody has, you can obtain all the information you need.
I know some people use spreadsheets and files and such and good luck to them i say. But i have always just sat down with my A4 pad, the racecard and my black and red pens and done it the old fashioned way. Back in the day when i was trading and odds compiling everything was done manually and all the other firms did it that way too. From studying all day long, compiling and publishing the prices to then trading the meeting and moving the odds according to the liabilities, it was all done manually. None of this click the button to turn the bot on and watch it change odds twenty times a minute without a bet being struck.
And when i was punting for a living it was my A4 pad etc and it is still the same way now.
Going thru the entries was a necessity while studying. There were many reasons for me doing it and i will give you a couple. It was handy if you were doing a race with one of Mark Prescotts three year olds that he had hidden away the previous year and he was now letting loose massively up in trip. I would want to know if the horse had another entry in the next few days and Prescott was going for a quick turn around.
And it was always necessary to check on the entries when doing conditional jockeys races because obviously the winner would not get a penalty and i wanted to know beforehand which horses had entries in the next few days.
Those two factors, plus a few more, would be taken into consideration when i was pricing the race up.

For the future entries myself, i just use the RP. At some stage during the afternoon i will go thru the race entries that have just been published, usually around 1.00, and also click on the names of "my" trainers just to double check in case i missed something. It can be time consuming but i'm an old twat now and i have a bit of that to spare.

Have a good day.
 
Quixall Crossett said:
At some stage during the afternoon i will go thru the race entries that have just been published, usually around 1.00, and also click on the names of "my" trainers just to double check in case i missed something
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If you get 5 mins spare at some point, can you bullet point how to get to the entries? I'm assuming you mean on the website, and it's basically a list of horse names + trainer, and then the entered/declared race/race date. Had a quickish look and can't see anything like that.

Ha, all these years and I never knew I didn't know how to use the RP to best effect!!
 
chaumi said:
If you get 5 mins spare at some point, can you bullet point how to get to the entries? I'm assuming you mean on the website, and it's basically a list of horse names + trainer, and then the entered/declared race/race date. Had a quickish look and can't see anything like that.

Ha, all these years and I never knew I didn't know how to use the RP to best effect!!
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Nothing could be simpler mate.
Just go to a race, any race, click on the trainers name, and then scroll down and click on "entries" and hey presto. :)
 
The SL has a 'your stable' feature where you can 'follow' a horse and it will tell you if it's running the next day. Also, mind in the 'Your Stable' tab it gas a feature that will list the entries of any of your horses over the next few days.
 
Ah OK yeah. That's what I do. I was thinking maybe there's some section somewhere that actually lists all upcoming entries in one big list of horse names, with clickable trainer and race next to it. That would make it scannable and potentially do away with the reliance on alerts.

It would be a big list!
 
yorick said:
The SL has a 'your stable' feature where you can 'follow' a horse and it will tell you if it's running the next day. Also, mind in the 'Your Stable' tab it gas a feature that will list the entries of any of your horses over the next few days.
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Its a useful feature mate along with the various trackers that are around. But for people like myself and a few other that i know who do similar to me. the timing is wrong. I am currently doing a couple of races at Stratford for Sunday and i will know in a couple of hours time if there is a bet. And then i will be waiting and watching and refreshing the oddschecker site from early tomorrow afternoon in readiness for the prices being published. But most of the trackers i know of dont send the message out until around teatime which is obviously of no use to me.
 
irishracing.com has a similar service for horses, trainers, jockeys and sires. Click on any of the above in their race cards and you will see the tracker icon.
 
Quixall Crossett said:
Its a useful feature mate along with the various trackers that are around. But for people like myself and a few other that i know who do similar to me. the timing is wrong. I am currently doing a couple of races at Stratford for Sunday and i will know in a couple of hours time if there is a bet. And then i will be waiting and watching and refreshing the oddschecker site from early tomorrow afternoon in readiness for the prices being published. But most of the trackers i know of dont send the message out until around teatime which is obviously of no use to me.
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I use the atr tracker, but as you say they don't send reminders until 5 or 6 pm by which time most prices have gone.
Do you know of any sites which send reminders earlier.
Thanks in advance qc.
 
Desijo said:
I use the atr tracker, but as you say they don't send reminders until 5 or 6 pm by which time most prices have gone.
Do you know of any sites which send reminders earlier.
Thanks in advance qc.
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I dont mate. Like i said earlier, i dont use them but barjon says that Nag Me are the earliest so i would give them a bash.

I'm sat here watching for tomorrows prices coming out for a race at Bangor and hopefully someone will go up soon. So as you say, getting notification at 5 or 6pm is of no use really. Those races were done yesterday. Sundays were finished off ten minutes ago. Thank goodness for 48hr decs although i know everyone isnt in agreement.
 
Quixall Crossett said:
I dont mate. Like i said earlier, i dont use them but barjon says that Nag Me are the earliest so i would give them a bash.

I'm sat here watching for tomorrows prices coming out for a race at Bangor and hopefully someone will go up soon. So as you say, getting notification at 5 or 6pm is of no use really. Those races were done yesterday. Sundays were finished off ten minutes ago. Thank goodness for 48hr decs although i know everyone isnt in agreement.
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Thanks Qc much appreciated i'll give Nag Me a go👍
 
Quixall Crossett said:
I dont mate. Like i said earlier, i dont use them but barjon says that Nag Me are the earliest so i would give them a bash.

I'm sat here watching for tomorrows prices coming out for a race at Bangor and hopefully someone will go up soon. So as you say, getting notification at 5 or 6pm is of no use really. Those races were done yesterday. Sundays were finished off ten minutes ago. Thank goodness for 48hr decs although i know everyone isnt in agreement.
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Nothing much to glean from those two Stratford races on Sunday so weather permitting, it will be feet up in the garden all day.

If anyone is bothering there, i thought Bridget Mary was the one to beat in the 2.35 race.
And in the 4.05, the money will obviously come for Iorens and he has to go well but dont rule out last years winner, Admirals Sunset, who has won twice round the track as well as being placed a few times and does go well after a break.

Whatever and wherever you are backing, have a good day.
 
Quixall Crossett said:
Nothing much to glean from those two Stratford races on Sunday so weather permitting, it will be feet up in the garden all day.

If anyone is bothering there, i thought Bridget Mary was the one to beat in the 2.35 race.
And in the 4.05, the money will obviously come for Iorens and he has to go well but dont rule out last years winner, Admirals Sunset, who has won twice round the track as well as being placed a few times and does go well after a break.

Whatever and wherever you are backing, have a good day.
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Cheers Qc have a good weekend👍😎
 
Quixall Crossett said:
Forgot to add.
You can also click on the jockeys name and it will give you all his upcoming booked rides.
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yorick said:
The SL has a 'your stable' feature where you can 'follow' a horse and it will tell you if it's running the next day. Also, mind in the 'Your Stable' tab it gas a feature that will list the entries of any of your horses over the next few days.
Click to expand...
And trainer and jockey as well.
The only trouble with SL is you can't comment on the horse.
I use bet365 more now.they update coming races and also put a star by the side when they run.
 
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