BANKERS DOUBLE ACROSS THE CARDS: Daqman was stung by a half-length defeat yesterday for Sametegal (from the French ‘it’s all the same to me; I don’t really mind’). Daqman does mind, and he tries to restore his 83% bankers strike-rate with a double at maximum stakes across the cards today.
WHO’S YOUR MONEY RIDING ON? Daqman makes a plea for more published information for punters about a jockey’s riding ability and form, along the lines of the trade-paper’s Trainerspot. He says that exchange betting gives many more punters the chance to make money.
PLEASE POST ASSESSMENT OF RIDING ABILITY
You certainly miss it when it’s gone. Like a certain breakfast cereal that actually used to taste of malt; radishes that tingled the tongue; bacon that came from a pig that hadn’t been fed on fish.
Tony McCoy seems like a dish from the past now. That smiling celeb fellow, Sir Anthony McCoy, has taken the place of our grim and determined knight in his racing armour of grit and talent, and we can never get back those days of magic.
Let me qualify that: I don’t mean the glitz and glamour of a champion jockey; no, I’m speaking as a punter, and I mean his ability to improve the animal under him, whether in a seller or a gold cup, his sheer will to win, and his galvanizing a horse, ‘lifting’ it when tired over the last, reeling in the finish line.
And looking at the weary scene of jumps jockeys, battling through the mud, I’m tempted to make this prediction: Ruby Walsh is coming up to his final Cheltenham.
Maybe he’s missing his old mucker McCoy, who will be telling him no doubt: there’s plenty to do in racing without falling off a horse every day.
It’s not every day Ruby falls off a horse, but it’s getting to be far too often. I don’t mean those novice ‘races’ where he rides a Mullins’ lion stones ahead of the field; I mean the big occasions.
Maybe Ruby as well as Djakadam misjudged the fence at Cheltenham that cost them the Smad Place race 10 days ago and then, on Saturday, with the Irish Gold Cup at his mercy, Ruby and a cantering Valseur Lido failed to lift off, ‘blundered at the last.’
I wrote last week about trainers who, for me now, are yesterday’s men. And I’m a total convert to the Racing Post’s best published information: Trainerspot.
It tells on a daily basis whether a stable is getting the best out of its horses, revealing alongside its strike rate the actual percentage of known ability being produced by members of its team which ran in the last 14 days (the RTF, a running-to-form comparison of rating against results).
The one failing of the Racing Post here is that we only get this snapshot, whereas we need an overall view of the stables on this basis season by season.
And we need it for jockeys, too. We need a Jockeyspot. Yes, we can use the Racing Post’s electronic form and do our own assessments.
But most punters don’t have the time or inclination for this, and – like Phil Bull’s Timeform and Peter Jones’s Trainerform in the past – the Racing Post needs to tackle the role of educating the betting public.
There is no reason why – with the advent of the betting exchange – many more punters should not be making a profit, based on sensible application of stats and knowhow.
Instead, the trade paper, inevitably, kowtows to the bookmaker for advertising, tossing tips around, encouraging the public to gamble, when they should be investing.
Gambling is when you bet with no real idea, or a confused view or misguided view, of the outcome. Investing is taking a position that has an edge in your favour, or potentially so.
I ask the Post today to extend its RTF assessment to jockeys. How much is a jockey getting out of the horse: the full rating or less than that? The cross reference of trainer and jockey abilities in two tables instead of one would be a massive boon to punters.
It would be a talking point where punters are not just preaching about riding performances from the stands without statistics or understanding.
It’s a hard job and a daring one to ride horses over fences but, generally speaking, the jockey is trained to the minute, and he hopes the horse is, too.
Let’s see more transparency in that. Because there is one man in this amazing game who is rarely trained for the job, not up to the minute, and usually left only with ego-driven tellybabble to help him make up his mind. He is known as the punter.
BANKERS DOUBLE BID ACROSS THE CARDS
It’s easy to criticise from the stands or the desktop. And punters inevitably talk through their wallet, as I will now. But yet another Paul Nicholls hot-shot fell apart at the finish yesterday, Sametegal beaten half a length at odds on.
Earlier at Musselburgh punters were mugged when Nicky Henderson’s Brain Power failed to jump a twig at times. Ok, novices need racecourse experience.
And at least I was on the experience, by backing Charbel, the 11-lengths winner. For me, as it represented Yanworth form, it was the best value of 2016 thus far, and my headline writer said so.
Otherwise yesterday was the same old position between a rock and a hard place: do I back the short-priced favourite; if not, what can beat him, apart from bad judgement or error in the race?
MUSSELBURGH Today the Scottish champions track of yesterday drops to class-4 level, and there are no English raiders from south of Yorkshire.
And only Gordon Elliott and Brian Ellison of the trainers in hot form have left horses at the Edinburgh track for the second day.
Elliott’s Jetstream Jack (2.00) was 1.75 this morning, after showing form with Thomas Hobson, a Graded performer, and seemingly had ‘nothing’ to beat unless stablemate Fagan turns out again.
They were backing Asuncion (2.30) in first-time blinkers for trainer Rebecca Menzies, whose current form figures, still standing, are: 1412023. I took 5.0 on BETDAQ
FAKENHAM Second maximum-stakes bet of the day is the progressive Halo Moon, who is threatened here only by a good-ground horse, Celtic Intrigue, and a 13-year-old, Fine Parchment. I took 1.7 on BETDAQ.
Halo Moon’s trainer, Neil Mulholland, now one of England’s top 12 trainers with 43 winners this season, can follow up with Lee Side Lady, who goes well fresh: 4.0 this morning.
DAQMAN’S BETS (staked 1 to 9 for strength; 10 is a banker)
BANKER: BET 10pts win JETSTREAM JACK (2.00 Musselburgh)
BET 5pts win ASUNCION (2.30 Musselburgh)
BANKER: BET 10pts win (nap) HALO MOON (2.50 Fakenham)
BET 6pts win LEE SIDE LADY (3.20 Fakenham)
DAQ MULTIPLES: 4 x 1pt win trebles and 1pt win acca the four above.
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