FRANCE NAMES MAY 11 DATE FOR RETURN OF RACING: Racing returns to Europe with a strong commitment to May 11 in France. There would be strict regulations and a travel ban on raiders from England and Ireland. The races would be run behind closed doors, with only essential staff allowed.
SECRETS OF WINNER FINDING: LOOKING FOR LOSERS: Daqman researches his own record in France and Germany as his Secrets of Winner Finding move on to the question of lays. He will define his rules in the search for losing favourites, starting with a famous day at the German Derby when the English raider failed to cope with conditions. Who else knew?
PENALTY KICK LOST IN DERBY MUD
Germany and France running a dead-heat. That’s the forecast for the return of horse racing. England and Ireland are only place bets after decisions to extend the lockdowns this side of the Channel.
France Galop has announced that racing will resume on May 11, while Germany is expecting a decision on a similar date.
Bring it on! Yours truly, Daqman, has a good record in France and one of my biggest coups was in the German Derby in Hamburg. I had a decent bet on a loser.
Yes, I’m talking about lays. You win when you lose with a lay. And yes, I told you all about this one in my Daqman column for July 3rd, 2011.
The horse I opposed was 7-4 favourite Brown Panther, one of the darlings of English punters at a time when owner Michael Owen and trainer Tom Dascombe were realising their racing dream, based largely on Owen scoring goals and landing big pay packets from Man U.
Though Brown Panther had completed a hat-trick by winning the King Geoge V at Royal Ascot, he was only a handicapper at the time. He wouldn’t win a Group race until the Goodwood Cup of 2013.
My lays were scoring at a strike rate of 72% and Brown Panther was moving up from handicaps to Group 1 in one fell swoop. He might have done it but the ground was heavy. I wrote:
‘Back of the net? The twin strikers of Michael Owen and Tom Dascombe are hoping for their biggest success today if they can follow up last year’s breakthrough when Buzzword won our first German Derby.
But it’s no penalty kick, since their attacker, Brown Panther, is only a handicapper, though his sire, Shirocco, scored in the 2004 German Derby.
But the ‘Panther’ had only class-4 handicappers in second, third and fourth at Ascot and, in his previous win at Haydock, the runner-up, Reflect, was the ‘moral’ since he gave away weight.
I tipped Reflect, back at Haydock yesterday, on the strength of that second to Brown Panther but he could finish only third in a class-3, which again seems to nail the Brown Panther form down to a lowish handicap level.
Waldpark remains unbeaten and won his Derby trial, while time may tell that Lindenthaler – also unbeaten at home – was not disgraced in the Prix Hocquart, one of France’s most prestigious tests of a three-year-old.‘
I also nailed Global Flyer on the same day at Market Rasen. I said: ‘Global Flyer’s trainer Caroline Bailey hasn’t had a winner at Rasen for more than 10 years in 33 attempts.’
Results: Global Flyer fifth of eight at 4-1 SP. Brown Panther fifth of 18 at 7-4 favourite behind the winner, Waldpark. I laid Brown Panther but not Global Flyer.
I was happy to oppose him – find something to beat him – in the race. He was taking out 20% and the BETDAQ offers added up to 113% for the race.
The race was mine to play in but he didn’t obey my lay rules, which basically say that there must be two or more reasons for the lay and that the odds must be likely to show me a profit over a sequence of lays at a similar price.
Brown Panther fulfilled two criteria: he was raised dramatically in class and was racing on bad ground. He was 7-4 in a field of 18, whereas Global Flyer was 4-1 in a field of eight.
In my Questions and Answers at the start of the week, I warned novice punters against having lays in their arsenal (I marked it ‘0’) at too early a stage; they could backfire and make a big hole in things at a time when you are building your bank from small-stakes bets.
This series of articles is about your writing yourself some rules – I promised to help – so we’ll look more closely at lays and try to draw up a list of negatives that we should be looking for.
Did you know that as well as checking the realtime prices on BETDAQ below – you can also log into your account and place your bets directly into BETDAQ from BETDAQ TIPS.
