What could have been......

Daily Profit £42.89

At first glance, today's profit may not look too much. However, at the moment, I'm not too concerned with how much I win. I have the rest of my life to worry about trying to make lots of money. At the moment, I'm trying to find a strategy that will enable me to win much more in the future. I believe I'm getting there.....

So, what happened today?

Today was all about 2 races at Beverley. These are the races where I feel I hold a massive advantage over normal punters and more importantly, a massive advantage over Betfair layers which I hope to ultimately exploit. I think I can read 4 year old plus handicaps better than anyone! Obviously, time will tell if this is true but so far, I'm doing OK.

Last night, I analysed the 2 races and posted my analysis on the blog. I then placed in numerous back bets on Betfair last night as I knew I was working this morning.

My attempted bets last night were:

£20 on Luscivious @ 11
£20 on Hows She Cuttin @ 12

£100 win on Blue Spinnaker at 2.06
£10 win on Harry The Hawk at 11

Anyone who was trying to bet on the top 2 last night would have spotted my bets as I was asking for about 4 points lower than the lowest lay price for £20! It sort of stood out.

If I had got these bets matched, I would have been posting up a 3 figure profit today and I would have been over the moon. Unfortunately, things didn't go to plan.

When I got home from work and logged on, I noticed that my Blue Spinnaker and Harry The Hawk bets had been matched. Nice!

Hows She Cuttin was a non-runner, so no problem there. However, Luscivious was now favourite! I had not got any of my £20 matched but some people had got stuck into it in the morning and then just before the off to send it off favourite on Betfair.

By the time the off came, I was in 2 minds about what to do so I only stuck £10 on it. I have said this quote before on here and I'll say it again "If you miss the wedding, don't attend the funeral." Basically, Luscivious would have been an amazing bet at 11, a great bet at 10, it was a good bet at 9 and so on. At 4/1, it was only an OK bet. Good luck to everyone who read the blog and snapped up the nice prices this morning. Sorry to say, it wasn't me!

In summary, I won £40 on the first race and I was happily pleased. Now I had my banker bet next.....

Firstly, the reason I backed Harry The Hawk in addition to Blue Spinnaker is that I read back over the blog again last night and apart from the fav, it was the only horse that could be improving past it's current rating. I decided at the prices, the best thing to do was to have an insurance bet on 'Harry' in case something happened to Blue Spinnaker. As it turned out, the punters at the track got stuck into 'Harry' before the off and it went off a clear second favourite. It was about 5 I think at the off.

Anyway, the way the race unfolded didn't suit Blue Spinnaker as it came there cruising but it struggles to quicken off a slow pace and it was beaten for pace by 'Harry'. There was a Stewards enquiry but there was no way Blue Spinnaker was getting the race in the Stewards room. As it turned out, I was able to back 'Harry' at 1.03 after it won, so I put £100 on that to green up for a couple of pound profit, so I managed to turn a profit in 2 races after all!

Overall, I'm happy with the way I read the races and especially the second race. The 4 horses I said could win were the only 4 backed to the exclusion of every other horse in the race. I was also pleased with the fact I called Fire Up The Band correct in the first race as well as a few others in both races who didn't run well.

I'm not sure the best way to analyse these races on the blog. So far, that's 3 races with 3 winners and an £80 profit which seems OK. Obviously, I could have made much more by laying all the horses that I knew couldn't win and by Dutching the ones I thought could win but I'm not concerned with profit amounts at the moment. So far, I have narrowed each race down to 3 and 4 possible winners and so far, I've been spot on. Hence, I could have laid 20 losers in 3 races combined.

Obviously, there are 'many ways to skin a cat' on Betfair and I'll make more use of laying horses as time goes on. A great example today was Fire Up The Band which went off at 6 and was trading at 38 after 5 seconds of the race but that's life I suppose!

I hope people can maybe see that I do know a little about horse-racing and form. I know that The Experiment has changed direction from where I first wanted to take it but I definitely feel I should be using my form knowledge instead of trying to trdae.

I enjoy the pressure of posting a form analysis on the blog as it sometimes takes me over an hour for a race which at times can seem too long. However, I know from past experience that I'll get it right more times than not, and it's a nice sense of satisfaction to be proved right.

As time progresses and my confidence increases, I'll be looking to increase my stakes and then we'll see how good I really am! I've had this horse-racing knowledge for 15+ years inside of me and absolutely nowhere to share it with anyone. Incidentally, I must give a mention to Andrew, who proofs my analysis, as he also spotted Luscivious was a 'good thing' today and that was after studying the race for 5 minutes! It took me an hour but who cares about time..... Well done mate!

I'm working a full day tomorrow at work, so I'll try to have a look tomorrow night for a race on Friday.