HOME OF BIG-RACE SUCCESS: Another week. Another target for Daqman. With the start of the Flat and the Lincoln Handicap to be followed by the Aintree Festival and the Grand National, we celebrate the amazing run of feature-race success.
EVERYONE’S A WINNER ON BETDAQ: But don’t miss a day of his sensational columns, which produced a series of ante-post bets for Cheltenham, good for a trade, one of them winning at 8-1 from 44.0. Watch this space, with special articles starting this week. Today: why everyone’s a winner on BETDAQ.
DAQMAN’S AMAZING BIG-RACE RUN
Celebrating the big-race King Of The Tipsters: If only every day was Saturday or Cheltenham. Here are some (we’ve ignored the short-odds ones) of the feature-race winners tipped by Daqman in the last three Saturdays plus the Cheltenham Festival (and below is his verdict on the amazing run):
WON 44.0 CAUSE OF CAUSES (8-1 SP)
WON 33-1 EBONY EXPRESS
WON 11-1 IRISH CAVALIER
WON 10-1 LEXINGTON TIMES
WON 9-1 CALL THE COPS
WON 8-1 AS DE MEE
WON 8-1 ROCKY CREEK
WON 7-1 THEINVAL
WON 6-1 GLENS MELODY
WON 5-1 GRENDISAR
WON 5-1 RIVELLINO (nap)
WON 9-2 DODGING BULLETS (banker nap)
WON 9-2 MOON RACER
WON 4-1 MINDUROWNBUSINESS
WON 7-2 SOUND INVESTMENT (nap)
WON 5-2 GLINGERBURN
VALUE ON BETDAQ IS THE WATCHWORD
What Goon said these things? Coneygree doesn’t do it for me. There’s been one freak this week (Faugheen); I doubt there’ll be another.’
And then ‘Goonyella is a nearly horse, promising much, delivering little.’ Mea culpa. And we all know – it’s history now, as they say – that Coneygree won the Gold Cup and Goonyella the Midlands National. There have been others. There will be more. There will be blood.
So, when you read about genius, remember the goon. But, most of all, remember that neither goon nor genius is a relevant epithet. Value is the only word in the betting dictionary.
So you and I may have a winning streak or we may be hit by losers and ‘bad luck’ (Coneygree was the harder to bear because I had second and third with my two bets in that Gold Cup).
But you make your own luck in this game by getting the value. If, and only if, you have the value, you can’t lose, particularly at meetings like Cheltenham, where the BETDAQ orange was 100-103% in most races, early mouse when I was trying to tip you winners.
In other words, the layers are giving back almost what you put in, virtually a level playing-field. The bookies started well, on 115% for the Faugheen and Un De Sceaux first-day wins.
But – and who can blame them – they quickly shored up their margins with two Total SPs of 130% that day. While the BETDAQ orange remained the value place to be, hovering around that 100% mark, the bookies continued to panic, trading with an overall advantage of 20% (Total SP 120%) even on such an open race as the Gold Cup for instance.
So, Golden Rule No 1: if you bet with BETDAQ, the value is already there in the race itself. And no need to tot up the percentages; BETDAQ does it for you at the top of the offers list.
Your next task, and that’s where I try to be helpful with my tips, is to spot the hyped or exposed contenders and concentrate your bets on the offers for solid form or for disguised horses and those statistically having the best chance. Combine those facets if you can.
Yes, you’ll miss some Coneygrees. but so you should! It’s more than 40 years since a similar type (Captain Christy) won the Gold Cup and I’ve counted 14 Coneygree types which were hyped for the race in that time. And lost.
So you could say that it was anything from 13-1 to 39-1 against Coneygree winning. Unless you had considerably better than the 7-1 (his SP), you were always betting against value.
But let’s not crab the horse. He was amazing on the day; the look on Ruby Walsh’s face told it all, after an impeccable round on Djakadam.
It happens to the best and it happens to the rest, Ruby. Don’t do a McCoy and hang up your boots just yet. Djakadam should get his revenge next year – he’s two years younger than both winner and third – unless, of course, the stats are clustered and we get a novice winning two seasons in a row!
NOW SOME VITAL AINTREE HOMEWORK
Coneygree was important for the game. Yes, it was great to see a small yard of 10 to a dozen horses win the Gold Cup, as it was when a horse called Red Rum was stabled behind a garage to win the Grand National.
But add to the story of Cheltenham (in a word ‘Mullins’), the usual suspects, like Henderson (a 1-2-3 on Saturday) and champion-trainer Nicholls, and ask: why do they keep on winning?
The answer is that they have a wealth of talent – like a Real Madrid – and can enter a dozen horses, choose from among them or run half of them as Mullins did, and dominate a race.
So it was that I immediately went for Richard Hannon when a top prize presented itself at this early stage of the Flat, the Lingfield Spring Cup which he won at 10-1.
That’s what I’ll be looking for on the Flat (turf) when the season starts next week: where is the depth this year, particularly among the three-year-olds for the Guineas and the Derby? Meanwhile, there are two facets to finding winners at the Aintree Festival.
Again, which of the top stables is in form (Cheltenham notably had Philip Hobbs and Venetia Williams below par) and has the pick of quality in depth from their yard?
But, equally, can Cheltenham-winning horses go on to Aintree success and in which races? Or is it better to be on those which have bypassed one festival for another?
I am also looking for an early start to the Flat? Horses that have trained on beyond their level of last year; stables expected to be the early birds.
Such is my homework in the next couple of weeks, so stay with the column every day.
DAQMAN’S TIPS (stakes 1 to 9 shows the strength of the bet)
BET 6pts win BALLYEGAN (3.20 Taunton)
BET 7pts win (nap) STORM OF SWORDS (4.10 Southwell)
BET 5pts win RELATED (4.30 Chelmsford)
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