GET OFF YOUR KNEES, DAQMAN! With a favourites whitewash at Ludlow, Daqman was left on his knees holding a win and place BETDAQ exchange ticket for rank outsider, Prayer Time (2nd 20-1), his ‘hidden horse’ at Southwell, but it was a case of so near and yet so far. Daqman is on another outsider at 15.5 today.
TODAY: PRICEWISE: THE TRUTH: What’s the real story of Pricewise, the ‘value’ seeker in the Racing Post. Read ‘The 10 Failings of the Pricewise Column.’
TOMORROW: Daqman resumes his challenge to Pricewise, with the scores this season: Daqman 25, Pricewise 10. Overall (since November 2013): Daqman 271, Pricewise 106.
NEXT WEEK: The Final Fallacy. More of why you can’t win with Pricewise. How to get real value, then double it with the staking plan the professionals use.
THE 10 FAILINGS OF THE PRICEWISE COLUMN
Beating Pricewise is too easy. When the Daqman critics meet in their phone-box and challenge that statement, let me ask them to go back to the beginning and tell me what he’s actually doing.
That’s where the Pricewise problem begins: the answer is a curiosity when you consider he’s playing solo on a monopoly board.
FALLACY: I’m not quite sure why his trade paper has to support its bookmaker advertisers with so much pith of tipping editorial. Surely, they would advertise anyway; there’s nowhere else to go!
FALLACY: ‘Pricewise is the value hunter’. No, generally speaking, he looks for an isolated ‘big price’ among a small cartel of bookmakers and offers that up as ‘value.’
FALLACY: This criterion itself is twice flawed; it may not be value at all just because it’s ‘big’ and, even if it is, not all of the ‘wonder price’ will be available.
Even the top firms admit that, when they are nominated as purveyors of Pricewise ‘value’ on any given Saturday, they eek out the liabilities to ‘regular’ punters by allowing each one to have only a thin slice of the cake before 10 o’clock. Then they cut the price.
Please note the word ‘regular’; by inference, infrequent and new customers can’t get the ‘value price’ at all.
FALLACY: In any case, the so-called ‘value price’ is subjective in the Pricewise column; in fact, written up as such. Just one man’s opinion.
FALLACY: That’s fine if that one man is a good judge of the bookmakers’ offers. Ironically, if he were, he would be castigating them most weeks for thieving money by betting hugely overround.
FALLACY: What’s the real value in a high-priced horse if the book is rotten in the first place; massively overround (165% on last year’s Grand National)? This is not tipping; it’s PR.
FALLACY: Bookmakers know that, to obtain value against them, you would have to have accounts with, and sift through the offers of, the 24 bookmakers (including the two exchanges) on Oddschecker, pick the outstanding price and be on before anyone else has spotted it.
FALLACY: Isn’t that what Pricewise says he’s doing? If it is, how come he picks only from the eight or 10 bookies who favour the paper most with their advertising. For example, how often does a bigger than ‘big price’ get away unmentioned because it’s on BETDAQ?
FALLACY: Pricewise would add some clout to his opinion of a value price if he compared the odds with the price the horse should be. It doesn’t happen.
FALLACY: In fact, the Racing Post Ratings are in a better position to do that, not Pricewise. Their ‘future ratings’ – the final rating for each horse in the race on the day, all things considered as an adjustment of the base ratings – would, if taken as the probable chance of each horse set against the chances of the others, produce odds from the relative percentages. A simplistic algorithm.
LET’S FOLLOW THE GALLOPING MAJEUR..
3.25 Newbury The number of times I write: ‘This is a veterans’ race, with so many aged 9, 10 and 11; surely the younger horses should beat them.’ Results this winter (particularly in the mud): the old stalwarts keep winning!
So I’ll say it here with some trepidation: there have been been only two winners of this race older than seven in the decade; none of a double-figure age.
And a change is taking place which favours younger, faster horses: the drying ground. It’s ‘good to soft; sunny’ at Newbury, if the morning prediction is correct.
A stone hike has seen Artifice Sivola become a bridesmaid in the higher grade he was forced into; placed without winning, though suited by the going today.
It’s more than two years since Festive Affair won a race – or was even placed – but he ran a cracker on today’s surface when splitting Artifice Sivola and Cloudy Joker, third, fourth and fifth at Sandown at this level.
Festive Affair is better off at the weights with both and it’s at this time of year that we expect Jonjo O’Neill’s string to strike form in time for Cheltenham. He’s a ‘hidden’ horse, better than the bare form, and a CD winner.
I took a bit of 7.8 on BETDAQ this morning, with Ut Majeur Aulmes the danger at 5.6 in a 109% overround.
The galloping Majeur, who has won twice on good to soft, was the ‘moral’ on Boxing Day when giving nearly a stone to the winner at Wincanton.
FIRST TIMES! THAT’S WHEN TO CATCH HIM
2.30 and 3.40 Lingfield (Ladbrokes Handicap) Shyron gets to be morning favourite for the Ladbrokes Handicap on the strength of two defeats! But they were in higher-class races and he did beat Grey Mirage and Dutiful Son.
However, Grey Mirage was denied a clear run that day; his stable is in form and he gets further, whereas Boomerang Bob, for example, is a 6f horse.
Clement was another who got blocked off on the last day or might have continued his winning sequence, though a hat-trick begun in January shot him up 18lb. Mutawathea is 13lb higher than when scoring at Kempton last summer.
Richard Hannon’s Lexington Times, 15.5 in the BETDAQ orange, won the Listed Spring Cup over today’s CD first time out last season, and later even ventured into Pattern company.
I could nominate three horses here as saver, but another Hannon runner, Performer (2.30 Lingfield), could pay for the Times bet and, indeed, for the day, if this morning’s rush to get on is any guide.
Only Strawberry Sorbet stood his ground in the market but she’s had a lot of chances, and the expected tissue alert for Amazing Moon is not happening (19.0 as I write).
DAQMAN’S BETS (staked 1 to 9 for strength)
BET 9pts win (nap) PERFORMER (2.30 Lingfield)
BET 4pts win UT MAJEUR AULMES and 3pts win FESTIVE AFFAIR (3.25 Newbury)
BET 1.5pts win and place LEXINGTON TIMES (3.40 Lingfield)
£25 IN FREE BETS
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