Race review

Well if I was frustrated yesterday evening, it was nothing to how I felt around 4:00 this afternoon…!

Moments earlier, I had watched Richards Sundance battle his way to victory at Exeter.

All credit it to him – he put up a thoroughly game performance. Like I said in my write up this morning, he had ground and trip to suit – and was well handicapped.

However, I’m still not convinced he warranted being a 4/1 shot…

Anyway, the whole episode – and that of Loch Ba yesterday, has set me thinking…

I can’t call myself ‘thevaluebettor’ and then advise taking 2/1 on a horse that was 4/1 the night before – or indeed 4/1 on one that was 10/1.

However, if I’m not prepared to do that, we will miss these winners – unless, I swerve these kind of races from a betting perspective (which is in effect, what I did today).

It was always my intention to focus on the better class racing for this service – and these recent examples seem to suggest that I need to do just that, if I am to avoid this kind of frustration.

So what I plan to do, is effectively split the service in half.

I will continue to tip in the bigger races (with their stronger markets) – on occasions this will happen the night before. More than half of these bets will be for races on a Saturday – because that is when the higher quality racing takes place.
This will be the 'mainline ' TVB service.

However, I will also effectively resurrect the ‘early-bird’ service, where anything goes ! This will be for the smaller midweek races, where only 2 or 3 bookmakers price up a race. I appreciate that not every one can/will want to get on these selections, which is why I feel the need to separate them out.

Obviously, I could opt to not send them out at all (as with Richards Sundance) but then non of us will benefit from the price ricks.

I will allow the TVB service to be judged purely on the ‘mainline’ bets (as these are the ones that everyone should be able to get on) – but I’ll also keep a P&L for the earlybird selections.

Early-bird tips will generally arrive early evening (sometime very early evening !) – and I will clearly mark them as early bird tips.

In addition, I will still provide my thoughts on daily basis, on other races where I have a view (but don’t recommend an official bet).

Hopefully this will work for all, as I can’t really see a downside. However, if you have any concerns – or don’t fully understand any aspect of the above, please feel free to get in touch…

With regard to todays tip Renard…

He – like the rest of the field – was comprehensively put in his place, by a majestic performance from Cue Card. Not everyone will approve of his head carriage – but there can be no doubting that he has an engine.

Single figure quotes for the King George don’t look like an over-reaction…

In the final race on the Exeter card, Pyleigh Lass ran a very creditable race but couldn’t quite reel in the favourite, Farmer Matt.

Over at Punchestown, all 4 of the horses I mentioned, ran with some credit.

However Leblon and Chasing Shadows couldn’t quite get to grips with the market leaders in the novice chase; whilst it was a very similar story for Rubert and Heavenly Brook.

Of the 4, Rubert who was the real eye-catcher – and I couldn’t help feeling that he would have taken some catching over 2 miles.

Maybe connections will choose to drop him back in trip next time –and maybe we’ll still get some sort of a price, as he eventually finished unplaced today.

I guess we’ll see in the fullness of time…

TVB.

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