GOLD FOR ALL DAQMAN VALUE: Daqman will adopt his Pot-Of-Gold strategy for all value bets from this weekend. In making the announcement today, he reveals the source of the expression and spells out again – at readers’ requests – the mechanics of it.
SPOTLIGHT ON THE NAP: Tonight’s nap is a first runner for trainer Richard Hughes for The Lads, the Coolmore syndicate, famous for success with Aidan O’Brien. The horse is In The Spotlight (nap).
HUNTING MORE OUTSIDERS: Daqman’s continual hunt for outsiders yesterday produced a big run from Notalot (2nd 22-1 from 30.0 on BETDAQ). He has one at a similar price in the 8.50 Epsom.
ENGLISH FALLACY IS BEHIND POT OF GOLD
The punter is the consumer of the racing game. All bar the horse among the other participants are just trying to put their hands into his pocket.
If it is an industry, then the horse is no more the end product than is the football in soccer. But you would be forgiven for thinking that it is in France.
Racing there is run in the interests of the owner-breeders, who line their own pockets at the expense of punter-consumers so naïve and ill informed that they are willing to bet on such terms that preclude all but the luckiest of having any chance of winning.
Fortunately punters in Australia are not so stupid. In England, they prefer the Pot Of Gold approach of outsiders and accumulative bets.
Not my words but those of Don Scott of the original Legal Eagles, the guy I introduced you to this week. So now you know where I got my Pot Of Gold bet from!
But, in truth, Don was damning the English punter for assuming that bigger prices mean bigger winnings, day-dreaming of a big return from an ill-considered punt on a long shot or a mad multiple, without analysing what is involved.
Don himself was a master of the multiple but, as with his individual bets, he was concerned with value. If only Don were here now, we could show him we’ve found the big prices that pay; that they are almost inevitable since the BETDAQ revolution of trading in low overrounds.
Punters now have better odds to aim at, and betting tools are available to make almost any price a winning one. You even get rewarded for using them on BETDAQ.
I talk about making ‘any price’ a winning one, because that’s where you must begin, whether trading throughout the day or picking early value as I do. You begin with the odds. Let’s have another look:
ONE: In the example I gave – typical of a big-race orange on BETDAQ – the exchange was overround to 108%. That’s punter friendly: way, way ahead of the 131% SP on the race returned by the bookmakers.
If it’s 131% SP, you can be sure that the odds they fixed during the day approached that region of take-out, while the percentage total of BETDAQ offers seldom varies.
TWO: We resolved that a horse on offer at 19.0 had as good a chance as those in the 10-1 area of the market, simply because collateral form suggested that it was equal to them at the weights.
The more reasons you find for such a horse winning, the shorter should be your estimated price. Conversely, the more negatives about the favourites the longer their price should be.
Eventually, you arrive at your pricing up of the race. It is your personal price that matters set alongside the list of the offers available, before you go to stage three.
THREE: Having arrived at the price you want, and knowing that you are working to a fixed-profit of 50 points, you expect to bet 5 points at 11.0 (the 10-1 area you arrived at) but you only need around half that stake (2.75) at the 19.0 to win 50.
What do you do? Answer: You stick to your original stake so that, in the example, you have 5 x 18 = 90 (which is an 80% profit bonus above what you would have got if you’d bet at the 2.75 stake to win only 50).
It was the Don Scott Legal Eagles syndicate which priced up a race as a mirror image of what the bookie’s clerk does on a racecourse, assessing the winners and losers in the market as trading goes on. At the basic level, for the purposes of our Pot-Of-Gold bets, it goes like this:
They would decide on each horse’s price and mark it WW (we want).
Next to it, they logged the best price on offer (OA = odds available); then the bet to the original stake if the odds were bigger than the WW. Finally, the PO (potential outcome).
If betting on more than one horse, the total PO less the other stakes would be the PY (profit yield) on the race. Keep a file running on your desktop, filling in this chart as you go along.
Scott said you can win any race that way, and I’m sure you can, as long as you adjust your stake to the odds for a fixed yield. The way to the poor house is betting at the bookmakers’ odds at level stakes.
Are you seriously going to have the same money on a 6-4 favourite and a 10-1 shot? Are you seriously going to bet 100-137 at a point a bet until you, inevitably, lose 37?
Daqman’s Pot Of Gold (now you see the irony) does not bet race by race because I am a man for quality horses in quality races. These horses are much more likely to run to form.
The second reason is that horses are so easy to back on BETDAQ – such good offers – that it’s often difficult to know whether a horse is a long shot because it’s been overlooked or because it is ‘not expected’ to do well that day; conditions are not right; something’s gone wrong.
VERDICT: Starting tomorrow, all win-50 Bull’s-Eye Bets and win-100 Ton-Up bets, based on value, will become Pot-Of-Gold bets, with the WW (price wanted) clearly shown, alongside the offer taken.
HUGHSIE’S IN THE SPOTLIGHT AT NEWBURY
2.00 Haydock Three-year-olds have won five out of six, and filled the first four places last season. I’ll take Shrubland at 6.2 BETDAQ offers over breakfast this morning.
Shrubland has had his three maidens to qualify for handicaps and takes in a low-life event, immediately blinkered, as if today’s the day Ed Walker will press the button.
3.30 Haydock Ruth Carr has had eight winners in the last fortnight, her strike rate stepping up from 12% overall to 28%. Her only runner today is the consistent Chaplin Bay (6.8 on BETDAQ early mouse).
It’s last-chance saloon today. Beaten favourite three races in a row but, just when punters are ready to give up and curse his late finishes over 6f, he steps up to 7f, for which he has clearly been crying out.
6.25 Newbury Wesley Ward has withdrawn Oh So Terrible from this race tonight, just when the Press were all keen to ask him whether his Royal Ascot lightning bolt, Lady Aurelia, will come over for the Nunthorpe a York in August or take in the Phoenix Stakes at The Curragh earlier that month.
In the absence of Oh So Terrible, I shall nap In The Spotlight on the grounds that Richrd Hughes will have had the race sorted in order to make a winning start with his first runner for Smith, Magnier, Tabor.
The reformed BETDAQ market thought so, too, with layers offering 3.1 In The Spotlight, with 9.0 bar two.
In the middle of that sandwich was Company, a Pivotal so should relish the ground but, with Richard Hannon 4-61 in the last fortnight, and with a low 11% strike rate with juveniles at Newbury, the old days of being sure of the yard’s first-timer seem to be over.
8.50 Epsom This is my race for outsiders today, my English pot-of-gold of Mr Scott’s derision, shying at coconuts (as they used to call the 000 form beside a horse’s name)
Pat Phelan, who trains at Epsom, usually takes something home off the Downs, at this meeting in particular, and right now the yard is in good form.
He’s tried to trap the 7.50 with two runners – Yensir and Celtic Ava – but I’m keen on his chances with a comparative newcomer to his care, Musical Taste, in this.
Musical Taste (33.0 offers) landed a gamble last year when trained by Philip McBride, and is one of two three-year-olds getting all the allowances.
The other one, Hidden Treasures (8.8), came good, encountering soft ground at Leicester last time, foiling Flying Fantasy’s hat-trick bid.
The worry (only one?) about Musical Taste is that Pat Phelan’s usual winner jockey, Egan, is on Fast Dancer, showing as I write at 9.8, despite the paper forecast of 12.0
DAQMAN’S BETS (staked 1 to 9 for strength)
BET 4pts win SHRUBLAND (2.00 Haydock)
BET 3.5pts win CHAPLIN BAY (3.30 Haydock)
BET 9pts win (nap) IN THE SPOTLIGHT (6.25 Newbury)
BET 2pts win and place on each FAST DANCER and HIDDEN TREASURES, and 1pt win and place MUSICAL TASTE (8.50 Epsom)
DAQ MULTIPLES: 2 x 3pt win doubles In The Spotlight (6.25 Newbury) with both Corinthian and Yangtze (7.30 Newbury)
£25 IN FREE BETS
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