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How was your Ascot??

20/6/2015

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I've had a good Ascot. I think I can safely say I will have had six winning months in a row in the first half of this year. I'm not even sure I managed that during the 8 years I was effectively full-time. But back then my reality TV edge was seasonal and my racing edge was based on much longer-priced horses and hence was a huge nerve-shredding roller-coaster of long losing streaks punctuated with bonkers winning days.

My new edge, such as it is – he said crossing himself and touching wood and appeasing the gambling gods, for they are always listening for the sound of hubris – is more even, playing around the front of the market on specific races, where losing runs are few (so far, gods, so far) and the graph moves relentlessly upwards on a shallow curve. To be honest it takes some getting used to but, after the death of my dreams several years ago and the four or five years of purdah, of aimless, pointless, broken and defeated mug-punting, this is something. This is really something.

But then there's the festivals, and my new approach does not apply there. My approach applies to places like Carlisle, Catterick,, Fontwell, Market Rasen, Mussleburgh, Newton Abbot, Sedgefield and Worcester, none of them courses I've ever been to, nor ever really bet at before this year.

The big festivals – where I used to live or die each year, and which I was later reduced to toying with like an old toothless cat failing to kill a piece of dangling string – have been new challenges within this new edge. To play or not to play? How to play? As sport, as pastime, as part of the new approach, or what?

Well, I tiptoed into Cheltenham, Aintree and Ascot, wanting some of the buzz of my previous life but desperate not to drop the ball that was working in lesser races at lesser places under a lesser pressure. No tilt - no way Jose - what I have I hold but, please, a glimpse of the thrill of the joy of the life of the whole fucking point of the glorious game. And I escaped from each of them with a handsome profit. What to make of that? Of course, I could be fooled by randomness but maybe an even keel, a steadily rising bank balance, a state of grace, a simplicity of view, is a huge advantage coming into these meetings? 



Whatever, Hexham tomorrow...   

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The Derby - Let's Party Like it's 1976

6/6/2015

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Sometimes you have to come at betting sideways, and so it is with the Derby today.

When I was 14 my mum took me to Camber Sands Pontins for the week. And on the Wednesday we joined a coach trip to the Derby, my first day at the races, and where it all began for me.

Today, we are going back to Camber Sands. Not Pontins thankfully, but to stay in a friend's holiday home by the sea. This is a freebie in thanks for giving her the 1st, 3rd and 4th in the National a few weeks a go. And we set off on Derby day itself - full circle indeed. I can't wait. I've even downloaded onto Kindle Hammond Innes's The Lonely Skier, which I remember reading in our chalet, as the rain and boredom and loneliness and misery swirled around me, and which I immediately deemed the best book ever written.

In 1976 Wollow was a beaten odds-on favourite. The French horse, Empery, won. It beat my own fancy – Relkino – which carried my £1ew at 33/1 and I have never looked back since. I still have a huge weakness for 33/1 shots. So, today's easy. The French horse Epicuris to win, Moheet ew at 33/1 and an exacta the two. Et voilà...     




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Taming the Freight Train...

4/6/2015

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I've had five winning months in a row. Cheltenham and Aintree helped, but essentially I've been mining modest novice hurdles at tracks I've never even visited, nor previously watched on TV, let alone thrown money at. I've also tip-toed into the flat season, following the same theoretical edge, and early days suggest my methodology will work with 3 year old maidens. But not with 2 year old races. I thought it would be the other way around. My stakes aren't going to make me rich, but I'm so excited about being back in the game. I'm pretty sure I've a 10% edge that is lasting and plunderable.   

But this week I'm wobbling. Badly. Okay, so let's rationalise. Be thankful to get damned near halfway through the year before that happened. Even so, worrying. Is it seasonal? Is it poor choice? Is it just the law of averages? A poor run? Regression to the mean? Fooled by randomness? I've no idea. Some or all.

Whatever, it's not a good way to be ahead of Epsom this weekend and Royal Ascot rumbling from afar like an unstoppable freight train. Stick or twist...?  That, right there, is the gambler's curse.


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Any Women for Tennis??

4/6/2015

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In an era when men's tennis is so great, with poor old Andy Murray mixing it against arguably the best three male tennis players ever, you have to shake your head in despair at the women's game. Serena is great, but she may actually be the only good current female tennis player.

She's spent the last fortnight waddling around court like a crippled duck, giving a set start to each and every opponent and still swatted them away like a minor irritation thereafter. Not because she's warmed up, got her creaking part-time muscles going, ditched the zimmer frame and morphed back to her old self, but because her opponents have sniffed the finishing line and gone as soggy as an over-dunked biscuit.


Most of them are one-dimensional baseline thwackers, off Bollettieri production lines, led by Queen “I smack the ball well hard me” Sharapova who has only managed to do as well as she has because at least she has courage. The rest not so much. Start losing and it's all tears and fake injuries.

Worse, get within sight of victory and, lord, if I hadn't earned so much money from laying them on Betfair when they're serving for the match, I'd give up watching altogether. Safarova, in that situation just now, conjured up four double faults. For fuck's sake, she might as well have served underhand. Actually that would have worked because when she did get some serves in at all of 25 miles an hour Ivanovic - possibly the dumbest tactical sportsperson the world has ever seen, bar a couple of jockeys I still haven't forgiven – who only needed to keep the ball in play to win pat-a-cake off a frazzled wee girl with daddy issues, instead belted her returns straight into the net.

They'd be better off televising me and Pete Davis down Park Hill, Croydon...

         

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