CHELTENHAM VALUE: YOUR STARTER FOR 10: Daqman has 10 bets today, plus a banker and two ante-post, on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival. He’s in top form with the following current records:
BANKERS Seven up out of eight.
CHALLENGE Daqman 17, Pricewise 9 (+ 11 profit to -18 loss)
YESTERDAY Ckalco Des Loges (nap, WON 1-1), Clondaw Castle (WON 7-2)
MYTHBUSTERS: BETDAQ BEATS BOOKIES 20%
ODDS: MYTH ‘Outsiders always win’ say some. ‘Too many odds-on favourites,’ moan others.
FACT: 58% of winners are from the first three in the betting, 66% in non-handicaps.
BETTING: MYTH ‘It’s value to bet with the bookies at this meeting’.
FACT: In the last two years, bookmakers have bet an average of 122% overround at SP on the first two days against BETDAQ morning offers averaging 101%. The gap can be worse on the last two days if the bookies are losing.
STARTING PRICE: MYTH ‘Yes, but you can only bet SP with bookies.’
BETDAQ FACT: The exchange has its own SP, called XSP. Your choice! Check it out.
MIXED BETS: MYTH ‘Yes, but doubles and trebles are a bookie’s preserve.’
FACT: You can bet those with BETDAQ on Daq Multiples.
OFFERS: MYTH: ‘Well, bookies give you offers ..’
FACT: You mean they take with one hand and give with the other. And they won’t allow you to lay horses to lose.
But on BETDAQ, you have offers every horse every race: you can bet win, place or lay to lose any horse, any time, knowing the value is already built into the prices at that 101% average.
STABLES: MYTH ‘Anyway, the Irish always win and they back theirs off the boards’.
FACT: Britain beat Ireland 28-27 first past the post over the last two years but lost 28-27 after a disqualification. And you don’t need the boards: you need only the BETDAQ orange.
PROFIT: MYTH ‘But those Willie Mullins hot-pots spoil it for betting. Not enough of them win.’
FACT: Mullins has a 50% strike rate with his favourites (17-34) in the last four festivals, showing nine points profit overall.
BALLYANDY SHOULD PING SUPREME
1.30 Cheltenham (Supreme Novice Hurdle)
STATS Ireland has won 10 out of 16 but Wiliie Mullins’ run of big gambles, all down to 5-1 or less, was cut short at the hat-trick stage last year.
Only one winner in 16 years had been absent longer than 45 days (black marks for Magna Cartor, Pingshou, Glaring, Crack Mome). You want an animal that stays another half-mile.
FORM Crack Mome was beaten at Punchestown by a winner who then flopped at Naas, and Ruby Walsh – also rejecting Bunk Off Early – prefers stablemate Melon, a Flat-bred who does not have stamina in the pedigree and has won just the one hurdles start, with second and third out of the frame since.
Ballyandy was second in a Neptune trial (2m 4f) before powering home in the Newbury Hurdle, and ‘the world is his oyster,’ according to a bullish Nigel Twiston-Davies.
River Wylde has bags of stamina in his pedigree and comes out as around the same horse as Elgin who has since been nine lengths off Neon Wolf (runs in the Neptune).
HIDDEN HORSE Pingshou (54.0 on BETDAQ this morning) ran second to William Henry before that one was runner-up to Wholestone in a Neptune trial at Cheltenham, with Topofthegame, a neck off Beyond Conceit at Ascot, well behind.
VERDICT: River Wylde and Pingshou will give us more clues to Neon Wolf and Wholestone for later in the week and I shall try to ping a big forecast with my bet today.
That bet is Ballyandy. This column has already had an ante-post punt to win 100 points at 12.0 on BETDAQ. Now offered 4.7 One-two: Ballyandy, Pingshou.
ALTIOR MILES CLEAR IN THE ARKLE
2.10 Cheltenham (Arkle Challenge Trophy)
STATS Sprinter Sacre, Simonsig and Douvan have been great champions in this, all six or seven years old like Altior today.
FORM After nine wins in a row, Altior has frightened off the opposition and comes to this rated 19lb in front of Royal Caviar and has 20lb on Some Plan.
VERDICT: So you have it officially that his nearest rivals are two veteran nine-year-olds! That age group has won this race only once (in 1988) since Sir Ken in 1956.
Charbel has already gone down to Altior but is clear second best, after beating the subsequent Arkle Trial winner, Le Prezien, with the third horse home, Top Notch, four times a winner since. One-two: Altior, Charbel.
25.0 JOHNSON CAN SKIN THE LAYERS
2.50 Cheltenham (Ultima Handicap Chase)
STATS: Nine out of 11 winners have carried 11st 3lb or less; 12 out of the last 16 less than 11st. No 150-plus rated horse has won since 1983.
That takes out the top seven, including last year’s winner, Un Temps Pour Tout, and the third home that day, The Young Master. Jonjo O’Neill has won this three times since 2009, including with Holywell (2014).
FORM: Holywell, who divided Un Temps Pour Tout and The Young Master at the finish a year ago, is 12lb better off with the winner and 6lb with the third.
However, he is quirky and that was his only decent race in the three years since he won it. His sole success from 14 starts has been a four-runner race at Kelso at 4-1 on, back in the Spring of 2015, and he’s 10 years old now.
The Young Master went from the Ultima to win the Sandown Gold Cup Handicap and is the one among these who will love the drying ground.
The Druids Nephew, fifth that day, is a former winner of this Ultima and is down in the weights but 10-years-old now. They do win but horses aged seven and eight win more..
For three years running, the winner has been rated 145-148 but Label Des Obeaux (148) was soundly thrashed by Singlefarmpayment over this trip on the new course.
Noble Endeavour looked special at Leopardstown but the handicapper saw it, too, and hit him for another 11lb rise.
HIDDEN HORSES Un Temps Pour Tout has been running over hurdles and could have improved the extra 7lb. He has the ground in his favour. A Good Skin, runner-up in the Kim Muir a year ago, has been saved up for this. Caid Du Berlais has slid down the handicap and has a further 5lb claimed for Stan Sheppard.
VERDICT: A Good Skin (25.0 on BETDAQ) this morning has Richard Johnson booked; if you back him, you must have a saver on stablemate Singlefarmpayment, who is short at 8.0. Also too big are Caid Du Berlais (25.0) and The Young Master (24.0).
POWER TO MY 150-POINT GAMBLE!
3.30 Cheltenham (Champion Hurdle)
STATS Five top-flight championships were won consecutively by horses rated between 165 and 172; then along came a stayer last year, a mare on only 162.
And, if the Irish are today going to make it 15 out of 19, it will surely have to be Petit Mouchoir (164) against only three others to rate over 160: Yanworth 164, The New One 163, and Brain Power 162
FORM As the field diminished, I went in again on Brain Power after first backing him to win the title when he was 12.0 on BETDAQ. He would now scoop this column 150 points.
It was a case of his beating nothing well in the autumn but trainer Nicky Henderson, who has been rewarded by his patience for top of the ground for this one, has always insisted that he would match anything done in the meantime by Buveur d’Air.
Judged on his Aintree success at the Grand National meeting last Spring, Buveur’s credentials look dynamite (and Brain Power basks in the same afterglow). That day he beat Petit Mouchoir and Limini.
The New One is back to form but Yanworth put him in his place in the Christmas Hurdle.
VERDICT: He may be the equal at home of Buveur d’Air, but has Brain Power also made as much improvement in his box as Petit Mouchoir and Yanworth on the t ack?
He and Petit Mouchoir have a year in hand of the other two, and Brain Power’s trainer, Nicky Henderson gets them right for this at six: both his recent winners, Punjabi and Binocular, were that age when they won it (See You Then started winning when he was five!)
The snag with Petit Mouchoir is that he likes to front-run. Will he last out against the two-horse Henderson surge and the stamina of Yanworth? I doubt it. I’ll go for a Henderson one-two to give him a record sixth Champion Hurdle. One-two: Brain Power, Buveur d’Air
IT LOOKS LIKE MULLINS AND LIMINI
4.10 Cheltenham (Mares’ Hurdle)
STATS Vroum Vroum Mag goes for a repeat but seemingly as second string to the same stable’s Limini.
That doesn’t suggest that Vroum Vroum can do a Quevega, who won this for Willie Mullins six years in succession.
FORM Limini and Vroum Vroum Mag are both reckoned 154 by the handicapper and Apple’s Jade rated 153; the rest nowhere.
Vroum Vroum Mag was short-headed by Apple’s Jade in the Hattons Grace when not match fit and Apple’s Jade has since been comfortably held by Limini in the Punchestown race in February named after Quevega.
VERDICT: All seems to point to Limini, with Vroum Vroum Mag scrambling to score at Doncaster on the last day.
JAMIE CODD, GENIE IN THE BOTTLE
4.50 Cheltenham (NH Chase)
STATS: Steer clear of champion trainer, Paul Nicholls (Arpege d’Alene): despite 16 starters, 12 at the forefront of the market, he’s managed only a couple of places in this.
FORM But there are huge question-marks, too, about Edwulf (fell or unseated three out of seven chase starts), Beware The Bear (two novice chases only) and Conygree’s half-brother Flintham ( est form on soft-heavy).
The only one who has provided his stamina is Dancing Shadow, my Edinburgh National winner, but his is a big step up over very different fences.
HIDDEN HORSE Willie Mullins once described Arbre De Vie has ‘all he does is stay and jump.’ That sounds good for this. Ignore What A Moment’s ‘parking ticket’ (pulled up on heavy); he’s better than a 150.0 BETDAQ outsider
VERDICT: I want to be with the star amateur riders: Derek O’Connor (2), Jamie Codd, Sam Waley-Cohen, Katie Walsh and Patrick Mullins have all won this, shutting out the lesser lights.
I’m taking Codd (A Genie In A Bottle at 6.4) and Walsh (Arbre De Vie at 21.0) with What A Moment for third.
5.30 Cheltenham (Novices’ Handicap Chase)
You want horses aged six and seven (8 out of 11), with three to five runs over fences (9 out of 11). Two Taffs catches the eye with Davy Russell booked (11.0 on BETDAQ this morning).
DAQMAN’S HORSES TO FOLLOW:
1.30 BALLYANDY
2.10 ALTIOR
3.30 BRAIN POWER
4.10 VROUM VROUM MAG
DAQMAN’S ANTE-POST BETS:
1.30 BALLYANDY 9pts to win 100 at 12.0
3.30 BRAIN POWER 12pts to win 100 at 8.8 and 6pts to win 50 at 9.4.
DAQMAN’S BETS ON THE DAY:
BANKER: BET 20pts win (nap) LIMINI (4.10)
Ton-up bets 4pts (to win 100) and 4pts place on each
2.50 A GOOD SKIN and CAID DU BERLAIS
Bull’s-eye bets to win 50 each
1.30 PINGSHOU (1pt win and place)
4.50 A GENIE IN A BOTTLE (9pts win) and ARBRE DE VIE (2.5pts win and place)
5.30 TWO TAFFS (5pts win)
DAQ MULTIPLES
3 x 4pt win doubles and 1 x 3pt win treble
1.30 BALLYANDY with 2.10 ALTIOR and 4.10 LIMINI
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