Race reivew

If only my timing was always so sublime…

I spend the previous 2 days, talking about how we can minimise the impact of luck – and what happens? Rajdhani Express comes along and illustrates my point to perfection, by falling at the third last fence when trading at 1.48 on Betfair L

I kind of hoped that by creating a couple of posts on the subject, I might tempt fate into sending my on a winning run – but fate is clearly not that naive !

Fortunately, I did at least create the posts in time to give one or two of you a chance to rescue a few quid – and I know that is what at least a few of you did…

Ofcourse it did nothing for the official TVB P&L – but there is only so much I can do…

Just before I leave the subject of minimising luck completely, I should just mention that I was contacted by some of you, saying that you would like to put low lays in but that you aren’t around when the races take place…

If it is something you want to do (and I am not recommending it as a course of action – I’ve explained the pros and cons, you should each now be able to make up your own mind on the matter) – then the execution should be pretty simple…

After placing your bet with your bookmaker, you should go into Betfair and submit a lay bet, around 2, for half of the amount you stand to win.

So, if you stood to win £50 today, had Rajdhani Express not fallen, you would have layed him on Betfair to lose £25.

Once you have submitted the bet, you need to change the ‘At in-play’ option to ‘Keep’ – and that is it ! Job done.

If you come home from work and there has been another ‘Rajdhani Express’ moment, you Betfair account should be £25 better off (even if your bookmaker account is £10 worse off).

Anyway, enough of that…

I honestly don’t know if Rajdhani Express would have won if he had stood up.

He was still travelling very easily when he fell – but Changing Times wasn’t stopping either. It could have gone either way…

In the opener on the Taunton card, Guess Again, ran a creditable race to finish third, despite not being overly strong in the market (he was 7/2 early – and 9/2 at the off).

With today’s run under his belt, he could be interesting next time out.

In the handicap chase at 3:20, Ciceron was quite weak in the market – and only just managed to get up to snatch second place behind the comfortable winner, Marshal Zhukov (who had been backed into clear favouritism)…

Over at Gowran, it was a little disappointing to see South South West victorious in the opening juvenile hurdle.

He was the most experienced member of the field – but didn’t seem to set too high a  standard for the newcomers to aim at. It just shows the importance of race experience for these novices…

In the handicap hurdle, Hair Oil Jimmy should have repaid any one who backed him pre-race, with a view to laying back in-running.

He was 16/1 early – and 10/1 at the off (13 on Betfair).

However he was quickly down to 6 in-running – and actually reached a low of 4.6 on Betfair, before fading up the home straight.

Hopefully, by that point, anyone who had backed him, had safely bagged a profit (or at least exited their bet with no loss).

Finally, Kashline plugged on to take third place in the 3 mile novice hurdle.

It was a bit of a disappointing run really, as he didn’t seem to show any significant improvement from his debut run under rules…

Onto Cheltenham tomorrow then…

TVB.