What's going on?

Daily Loss £50.00

Going to keep this post really short as there seems plenty of races tomorrow for me to try to unpick and my time is better spent looking at them.

Today was a really strange day and at the moment, I’m scratching my head a fair amount as I’m not understanding some of the results. I’ve mentioned this to a few of you but I always check the results every day for the previous day’s handicaps to check that I could have selected the winner and to find any potential form lines worth watching. History has shown me that I’ll be able to read 3 in 4 races right but at the moment, I’m struggling.

I said this to Andrew twice today which is amazing but the first horse I ruled out in two of my races won today. Not only did I rule them out, I gave them absolutely no chance!

My first selection was Corridor Creeper and for about the 5th or 6th time this month, one of mines has run very poor. If I was training these tips, I’d be closing my stable down for a few weeks on suspicion of something being wrong as some are running so far below form, it’s unreal.

This finished a well beaten second last and for a horse who likes to lead, it didn’t show any sparkle from what I heard on the commentary. I had this down as a great bet as all it had to do was repeat the last run but clearly, it’s not run within a stone of this run which is frustrating.

The winner was Blessed Place at 33/1 and by my calculation, this has produced a lifetime best at the age of 8 by quite a fair way as it was out of the handicap! Seriously, if you gave me 12 picks in that race, I wouldn’t have gone for this one. 33/1 wasn’t even a good price pre-race!

My second selection was Midnight Muse and it was a huge drifter on Betfair and pre-race. It started at 16/1 which was a huge price and it ran OK to finish 4th. It tried to make all I think and it got swallowed up close home. Again, this is disappointing and the horse continues to frustrate me somewhat. It’s now scratched from the list until it shows more.

The winner had been 12th of 13, 14th of 14 and 14th of 16 and beaten more than 14 lengths every time on its last 3 starts. My pre-race comment last night against the winner was “you’re having a laugh”. Well, the joke was on me I’m afraid and it won at 28/1…..

The third selection was Hawaana and unlike the other two, this proved fairly strong pre-race and I wasn’t the only person who thought it would run well. It ran an OK race to be 4th at 8/1 but it disapointed me to be honest. The winner was easier to select than the other two winners and it wasn’t ruled out at the first stage but it just didn’t look well handicapped today. I heard it won very cosily and it has produced a lifetime best also to win at 15/2.

Overall, a bit of a nightmare day and it’s proving a difficult month. I can’t believe I read Corridor Creeper wrong today to be honest and the fact that Cape Royal ran really well suggests to me that the trainer will be scratching his head also at the run.

Today is probably a good example of why I don’t bet each way as it was another two 4ths to add to the results and I’ve had more 4ths than anything else this month! (excluding horses who run below par and finish second last!)

One thing I made clear at the start of the month is that I’d like to compare myself to other tipsters and how they do to judge how I’m doing this month. Obviously, some of the readers will know far better than me but if I do find that people are finding these winners and I’m not, I’ll need to go back to the drawing board and understand what I’m doing wrong!

On a similar point, I got a nice email today from someone saying that Spotlight from the Racing Post (who I think is a really great form analyst) has only selected the winner of one of my 14 races this month before today and is -11 points for the month. This made me smile again and maybe I need to start selecting the right races to unpick as at the moment, no one is unpicking these races very well including me!

(I see Bollin Felix was second in a big handicap today. I can see why I read the form line wrong with Sphinx on Sunday now and therefore, Sphinx must rate a near certainty over 1m 6f when it runs next time if it runs to the same form again!)