CHELTENHAM VALUE AND FREE SERVICE: Get a result on Day 1 at Cheltenham with a guaranteed 1-2-3 of amazing BETDAQ value. Here’s what you get, all absolutely free in BETDAQ Tips and in BETDAQ Exchange and Sportsbook betting:
1️⃣ CHELTENHAM: 50% OFF COMMISSION ON BETDAQ
2️⃣ A near-level playing-field for the opening race this morning of 101%, and the Champion Hurdle (3.30) field totalled 102% whereas the bookies’ Total % SP in the last two years has been 117% and 128%.
3️⃣ Free value bets (Daqman 33, Pricewise 21) plus form, ratings, hot horses in Fortune Cookies (15-21), Lays Logic (7-10), big-odds ante-post and bull’s-eye bets on the day. Daily reprise of the stats one week ago.
First-day headlines
MULLINS IN DYNAMO TIP
KING A STONE IN HAND
BETDAQ IS FANTASTIKAS
TIME FOR TEA AT 12.0
SPLASHING OUT ON RAIN
BRAZIL PRIMED FOR THIS
STATTLER’S THE BATTLER
MULLINS IN DYNAMO TIP
⭕ 1.30 Cheltenham (Supreme Novices Hurdle)
REPRISE: See Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 8)
RATINGS (official): Dysart Dynamo 152, Constitution Hill 148, Mighty Potter 146, Jonbon 145.
FORTUNE COOKIES: Dysart Dynamo (BETDAQ 3.25 this morning) and Jonbon (6.5).
FORM: This has cut up badly and made a laughing stock of the demand for a fifth day, but hasn’t made the punters task any easier, with Nicky Henderson (Constitution Hill and Jonbon) against a Willie Mullins trio (Dysart Dynamo, Bring On The Night and Kilcruit).
In the Future Champions at Leopardstown over Christmas, the winner, Mighty Potter, beat Three Stripe Life (short of room) only a length and a half, whereas Sir Gerhard (Mullins) afterwards beat the same horse six lengths in the former Deloitte hurdle.
That race had been won by last year’s Supreme winner, Appreciate It, and previously by Supreme winners Champagne Fever (2013), Vautour (2014), and Klassical Dream (2019).
Are we to assume that, when Mullins left EIGHT in this Supreme last week, it frightened away a whole wagon train of opposition?
And are we to assume that, by taking out one of the main form horses, Sir Gerhard, he is clearly tipping Dysart Dynamo, who won the same Punchestown race the trainer had taken with Vautour, Douvan and Min?
Constitution Hill’s Tolworth form has been let down by the placed horses but he had slammed Might I by 14 lengths at Sandown before that one ran third by a lesser margin to Douvan’s brother, Jonbon, (soon clear) at Haydock.
LAYS LOGIC: Only two outright favourites have won the Supreme in 12 years, and I would normally advise laying the favourite at 3-1 or shorter but it’s a different ball game in this small field.
Sir Gerhard switches to tomorrow’s Ballymore, for which he will be odds on. I hope we can ‘get him’ then.. unless, of course, we lose half the race again!
KING A STONE IN HAND
⭕ 2.10 Cheltenham (Arkle Challenge Trophy)
REPRISE: Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 8)
RATINGS: Edwardstone 159, Blue Lord 158, Saint Sam 153, Gabynako 152, Coeur Sublime 151, Riviere d’Etele 150.
FORTUNE COOKIES: Edwardstone
BETDAQ ANTE-POST VALUE: Edwardstone 13.0
FORM: Alan King’s Edwardstone beat War Lord 16 lengths in the Henry V111 at Sandown, completing a treble in the Wayward Lad and the Kingmaker. Blue Lord beat Riviere d’Etel (rec 9lb) and Saint Sam in the Dublin Festival’s own Arkle Novices’ Chase.
LAYS LOGIC: Seven odds-on favourites have won in the last 11 seasons, so hard to oppose the market leader.
BETDAQ IS FANTASTIKAS
⭕ 2.50 Cheltenham (Ultima Handicap Chase)
REPRISE: Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 8)
BETDAQ ANTE-POST VALUE: Fantastikas 17.0
FORM: Vintage Clouds won the Ultima last year (Discordantly 6th). Floueur kept on, third, in the Martin Pipe. Oscar Elite was third in the Albert Bartlett.
Fitting the combined trends – running at the festival before, and having won over 3m or more – are: Doctor Duffy, Does He Know, Death Duty, Frodon, Lostintranslation and Rapper.
LAYS LOGIC: Favourites only 1-11 but unlikely be a viable price today.
TIME FOR TEA: AT 12.0
⭕ 3.30 Cheltenham (Champion Hurdle)
REPRISE: Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 8)
RATINGS: Honeysuckle 165 (and gets 7lb allowance as a mare), Teahupoo 162, Appreciate It and Zanahiyr 160, Not So Sleepy 159, with Epatante on 153 (also gets 7lb allowance as a mare).
FORM: Epatante (2020) and Honeysuckle (last year) are previous winners, taking on the 2021 Supreme winner, Appreciate It, who hasn’t been seen since.
Epatante returned to form with a Fighting Fifth and Christmas Hurdle double, after being beaten by Honeysuckle both here and for the Punchestown title last Spring.
Teahupoo, a winner of six out of seven, tries to follow the last five-year-old winner, Espoir d’Allen (2019).
LAYS LOGIC: Seven winning favourites since 2010, though only Annie Power – a third mare to win it in six seasons – has been above the age of seven since 2013.
BETDAQ VALUE: It’s time to look for a new champ, an improver of the right age: only Teahupoo (pictured below) fits the bill against the eight-year-olds and is far too big on BETDAQ BETTING EXCHANGE at 12.0.
SPLASHING OUT ON RAIN
⭕ 4.10 Cheltenham (Mares’ Hurdle)
REPRISE: Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 8)
RATINGS: Echoes In Rain and Stormy Ireland 150, Heaven Help Us 147, Indefatigable 146, Burning Victory 145, Tellmesomethinggirl 145, Mrs Milner 144, Martello Sky 143.
FORM: Royal Kahala beat Heaven Help Us and Tellmesomethingirl (giving them weight) in the recent Mares Hurdle at the Dublin Festival but does not take them on again.
Tellemsomethinggirl had shown her dominance at Cheltenham when taking the Mares Novices last season.
Stormy Ireland won the Punchestown Mares Champion Hurdle and came back to form (receiving weight) when winning the Relkeel at Cheltenham in January.
Burning Victory saw off Queens Brook in the Quevega but Queens Brook didn’t bring much to the table that day and Burning Victory was winning for the first time since the 2020 Triumph.
Again a lot of Mullins runners to choose from until the day, but just three left in now, including Echoes In Rain, who landed a 2m hat-trick last Spring, and was third to Honeysuckle in the Irish Champion Hurdle in February. Her pedigree suggests she might do well stepped up half a mile today.
BETDAQ VALUE: 9.9 Echoes in Rain
BRAZIL PRIMED FOR THIS
⭕ 4.50 Cheltenham (Boodles Juvenile Hurdle)
REPRISE: Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 8
FORM: Another major Mullins non runner (Fil Dor). He now relies on Gaelic Warrior, who is unraced since leaving the Guillaume Macaire academy in France.
Petit Tonnerre, also ex-French (one win in small field in England) and Brazil represent J P McManus, who likes to win the handicaps. Brazil ran right away from his prep field at Naas, jumping the last as if the race had just started.
LAYS LOGIC: Only one winning favourite in 11 years with most winners at enormous prices: 80-1, 40-1, 33-1 (three times) and 25-1 (twice) and that’s only since 2012.
BETDAQ VALUE: You would be nuts to miss 11.5 Brazil and Gaelic Warrior looked short enough to lay this morning.
STATTLER’S THE BATTLER
⭕ 5.30 Cheltenham (NH Challenge Cup)
REPRISE: Festival stats (Daqman Archive: Tuesday, March 9)
RATINGS: Run Wild Fred 158, Stattler 153.
FORTUNE COOKIE: Stattler: BETDAQ 3.75 this morning.
FORM: The decimation of this field to just seven starters is as big a shock as the undoing of the Supreme we all knew and loved, no longer the cavalry-charge launch of the festival as this is no longer a Grand National test.
Stattler was well beaten by Vanillier over hurdles in their youth but is 2-2 over fences, marked down as a strong stayer by Willie Mullins but, as with so much of today, the deluge of entries, with their many alternative races, meant that taking early prices was difficult.
And we are left with the same old same old: Mullins against Gordon Elliott, who has the top-rating Run Wild Fred, the Thyestes and Irish Grand National runner-up and winner of the Troytown.
DAQMAN’S BETS
1.30 Cheltenham
FORTUNE COOKIES
BET 10pts win JONBON
BET 10pts win DYSART DYNAMO
2.10 Cheltenham (win 50 ante-post)
FORTUNE COOKIE and nap
BET 4pts win EDWARDSTONE
2.50 Cheltenham (win 50 ante-post)
BET 3pts win FANTASTIKAS
3.30 Cheltenham (win 20, place 10)
BET 2pts win, 6pts place TEAHUPOO
4.10 Cheltenham (win 20)
BET 2.25pts win ECHOES IN RAIN
4.50 Cheltenham (win 50)
BULL’S-EYE BET: 5pts win BRAZIL
5.30 Cheltenham
FORTUNE COOKIE
BET 10pts win STATTLER
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