Quiet start to the week after my Planned Bet has been Kidnapped and it has left us empty handed on the day.

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Personal Bets

No Bet

WHISTFULL (P4.45) was my planned Bet in the 4.45 but the price has been mugged and is now ridiculously short and I am not betting him at that price especially when the trainer of the horse feels that he needs a lot further.

In fact I very nearly confused you today. I Like setting standards and doing things that no other Tipster has done before or aspired to but the stroke I was thinking of pulling today has even me confused and I,m sure would liven up my Postbag with a mixture of both praise and condemnation. I spent hours last night researching WHISTFUL
and I felt I had come up with a startling god value option. However Now that I see it gambled down to 9/4, it becomes a "Lay" at that price. Thats a huge difference from the 7/1 in the post and the 9/2 I was expecting. I can not say I fancy being the First Tipster in the game to give you strong analysis and give you a strong bet but rather than stake the bet suggest that You lay it !!!!

The Irony here is choking. I Feel a bit like an Inventor who discovered something one night crying Eureka only to wake up and find that someone has burgled me in the night and nicked it .

I Think we are unlucky. I think we have unwitingly and accidently fallen upon a combination of a serious stable gamble and a couple of unfancied horses and it has resulted in My Selection being Mugged and Kidnapped. It is almost
a Lay at that price now. I wont be betting her.

No Bet


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Lay of the Day

Nayef Got beaten on Saturday and the record is now a Loss of 2 Level Points. I was not after a 5/1 lay on Saturday but it just so happened that the horse was not fancied and I thought it was sensible to take advantage of that fact. I think today that the Very best lays have already drifted to a point that it is not value to lay them unless you have done so early and cheaply. Thats Why I am going to Plumpton for Today's Lay.

Plumpton 4.35 Time to Reflect

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Today's Racing

The First 2 races at Ponefract are almost both 7/1 the field with maximum Fields. You might notice Friday's planned bet Donna's Double runs here and all I can say about that is that I would not want him on this course as Hold up horses can have a hard time here and this is not the place to bet them especially with Jamie Spencer in the saddle who can often over-exaggerate waiting tactics. Besides this is a Far harder race than Friday's was. NAKWA was a horse I have watched recently and this is a "job" horse and he had a race here recently after a long absence and one of these days he will buzz in with a lot of money behind him. He is considered a soft ground horse though.

I
Pontefract 4.45 Annual Members Maiden Auction Stakes (Class F) (Div I) (2yo) Winner £3,523.00 6f GD-FM

Betting Forecast: 6/4 Attacca, 2/1 Megabond, 7/1 Whistful, 12/1 Amber Fox, 14/1 Game Flora, Roman The Park, 16/1 Quintillion, 33/1 Aggi Mac, 66/1 Fayr Firenze, Scorchio.


Selection = WHISTFUL


I thought the best option at Pontefract was WHISTLER. There are a number of reasons but it is interesting that her trainer Chris Wall disagrees with my interpretation of her form. I Belive that this drop to 6f will suit her having faded over 7f last time. Her Trainer believes that she actually need a Mile
and that this will be too sharp according to comments he made recently when discussing his stable string in an interview. I respect his opinion and I think it would be foolish to hammer the horse but at the price I am prepared to back my own opinion.

I don't think the market leaders are anything special at all. ATTACCA appeared to run well last time when runner up at Newcastle but there was a big advantage in racing on the rails that day and He started 100/1 , was beaten by a 66/1 chance which does not suggest the form is up to much and he has to give WHISTFUL 6lbs in weight. You also have to wonder whether betting horses at short price from Ernie Weymes stable is a great idea with only 1 winner from 163 runners this year. The other market leader MEGABOND Looks average and has not been out for almost 7 weeks due to a "growth spurt".

I like WHISTFUL quite a lot. I have just watched her on Video where she showed a really smart cruising speed over 7f and then Dies inside the last furlong like a non stayer. This drop in trip to 6f may just be perfect for her and with her Cruising style she could dominate this from start to finish.

You might ask why I want to be on a Filly against colts .This may be an advantage rather than a disadvantage. This is a 2 year old race where Colts and Fillies are awarded weight to carry. They have all been bought at the Sales called "The Breeze up" and there are allowances for the cheaper horses. Horses that cost less get to carry less weight. For Every £1500 that each horse costs less than £12,000 they get a 1lbs allowance. Therefore a horse that costs only £10,500 gets 1 lb less weight than horses that cost £12,000 and so forth. Fillies tend to be sold far cheaper than colts and this results in them getting better allowances than the Colts. Thats all by the by , but what it means (after the allowances are taken into consideration) is that WHISTFUL Gets 1lb more from Attacca and Megabond, than she would normally be entitled to in an ordinary maiden. That's not a great amount but it certainly helps and turns a photo finish our way. Now people say that you should never bet Fillies against Colts but that's not true. There is a place for them and some races are tailor made for them. Look at the past winners of this race for a good starting point.

2002 Division 1 went to a Filly
2002 Division 2 went to a Filly
2001 Division 1 went to a Filly
2001 Division 2 went to a Colt but there was only 1 Filly that year under 33/1 and there were 3 colts under 10/1 so they had a numerical advantage.
2000 Division 1 went to a Colt but the only filly with a chance was described as "unlucky in running"
2000 Division 2 went to a Colt but there were 8 colts and only 1 Filly at 20/1 so you could not expect her to win.
1999 Division 1 went to a Filly
1999 Division 2 went to a Colt but a Filly was beaten in a photo finish
1998 Division 1 went to a Filly (There was no Division 2)
1997 Division 1went to a Filly
1997 Division 2 went to a Colt but although outnumbered by 9 to 3 a Filly was beaten in a photo finish
1996 Division 1 went to a Filly
1996 Division 2 went to a Colt who beat a Filly in another Photo Finish

That's 13 times this race has been run. That's 7-5 to the Fillies, and 3 more have been beaten less than a Neck and in almost every year they were outnumbered by the Colts. This tells me that the conditions of this race, based on Sales Purchases, are strongly in the favour of Fillies.

Another Reason I like WHISTFUL is the fact that Chris Wall her trainer is on fire and banging in winners. Stables in form are very important at this time of year. Look at Chris Wall's recent 14 day record. His last 9 runners have finished 12th Won 6th 7th Won Won 3rd 2nd and Won and when you consider that the 12th was a 100/1 chance and the 7th was a 33/1 chance and that the 4 winners were in Class A B B and D and came at prices of 6/1 13/2 7/2 and 7/2 you can see that the stable are absolutely red hot at the moment. The quote of 7/1 is ridiculous even allowing for the fact it won't be that price and we will probably be offered about 4/1 by race time.

The Racing Post price of 7/1 has been done through a very tenuous Form link involving a horse called Silverhay, who was behind MEGABOND in his last start, yet on Silverhay's last start beat WHISTFUL easily. That's a very strange way of looking at the race. Its totally irrelevant in my opinion as WHISTFUL may not have stayed and met a "Silverhay" suited to 7 furlongs, yet when MEGABOND beat Silverhay earlier in the year it was over only 5f and Silverhay swerved and lost ground at the start . Different times of year, Different trips, Different levels of maturity and the weakest argument I have seen since "my dad's bigger than your dad". I would have WHISTFUL in at no bigger than 7/2 here. She might just have her perfect trip. She can race prominently. She receives weight. She is statistically favoured as a Filly and her stable are sending out winners like they are going out of fashion. Love the bet and suggest we hammer it.

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Postscripts

1) Personal Form

Not a great day yesterday and I have not pulled any trees up in October. I can only hope that some of you backed Els in the Golf but in my experience you get about 1 person in 3 betting sports bets and not everybody welcomes them. A Few Days ago I gave you the Profit from the personal bets this year , there were one or two errors which have now been corrected so thanks for pointing that out to those that did. I now have a Full and Concise Detail of every bet I have advised in the "Personal bets" column this season. If anyone wants the bets then feel free to mail me and I'll send them along. I did some Monthly summaries on Saturday night as an overview of how things have gone. Overall I'm quite pleased with the results but I will talk through a few issues.

March - 660.00
April +2007.96
May -529.10
June +£4064.27
July -570.21
August +703.75
Sept +£1873.68
Oct -146.72

Yearly Summary to Date + £6806.63

Doing this forced me to re-read every mail I have sent this year and some of them feel so long ago now. I cringed at some of the Amateurish things I was writing earlier in the year and it's clear to me how much we have improved throughout the season. It also made me realise how much more improvement there is to be made. I am not judging this service against my competitors as I do not feel it's the same type of service that most tipsters offer, but I try to judge it against perfection and I see flaws throughout this service. There are losing weeks and losing months. After all we lost in March, May, and July and are £146 behind this month but at the prices we are betting at that's always going to happen. The strongest bets are usually between 5/2 and 7/1 so you are bound to hit a few tricky spells and when we do win we tend to win a lot more than we lose in the Barren times. Find many faults though with the service that needs tinkering with. I think E Mails are a little too long at times. Some days there are too many bets. On Certain Friday's and Saturdays we have had 7, 8 and 9 bets and that's far too many. If you are reading things wrong then you could end up with a Whitewash of losing bets. I am still betting too much and too strongly at the wrong times of the year and October 2003 may be a perfect example. We may only be losing a tiny amount but much of the profit has come from a Sports bet and I am not firing on the Personal Horse racing bets at the moment. Next year will be the change that is needed. At the end of this year the Fee's are suspended and we will move into a "free" period for members. This will then be whittled down into a smaller select group and the whole ethos is about taking back control of the game, betting harder at the right times, easing off when it is impossible and streamlining the service to make it a lot better.
The Profit will be guaranteed as well and we can finally manage to rule out some of the silly mistakes and bad days and make them as rare as possible.

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2) Mr Steel

Talking of Poor Form it is not just me that seems to be struggling. Last Sunday I reported that Mr Steel had won £ 21,582.71 that week and things were going very well. The Wheels have certainly come off this week. Monday started with a £2000 profit of which he gave back £400 on Tuesday. Wednesday was a small profit but Thursday and Friday were disasters especially on the laying front. He had a disaster on Thursday losing £13 grand and followed up on Friday with another Heavy loss this time of £11,000. Saturday pulled £4000 but a very bad week where overall he lost £18,927.02. Next week I'll tell you whether he has been able to recover. It shows you that Nature and the Hidden elements of this vile game can strike and hit any of us, at any time.

Monday 2,127.91
Tuesday (442.44)
Wednesday +764.00
Thursday (13,571.88)
Friday (11,947.46)
Saturday 4,142.85

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