Slack Jawed Babbling

I took a while to warm up to the Jumps season this Coronavirus-hit year. No crowds, few foreign raiders and poor prize money had combined to dull the enthusiasm. Small fields and uncompetitive races didn’t help. And the weather… With six weeks to go, finally, the sap is rising. Look, even a blog post for the first time in months. I’ve made a start on the ante-post schedule too. Here’s the progress. This is everything, including the bets already binned. Not that much activity yet, but I’m starting to get busy. This weekend’s Dublin Racing festival will be the catalyst for more action, either before the tapes go up or just after. The 2021 Festival will be a shadow of previous years. Without being there on the Tuesday; without the lads down the Barley Mow for Festival Friday, it’s gonna be a tough one. Bt when push comes to shove, what the Friar Tuck else is there to do? We’ve even got a Zoom Preview evening lined up. If you can’t beat ‘em… RACE     ...

For a while over the Summer I thought I was falling out of love with the game. Back in August at Sandown, Mrs A and I met up with a few pals to see Nile Rodgers and Chic after racing. The evening was spectacular. Mainly because of a cataclysmic thunderstorm that broke the heatwave; and the unearthly light that followed it. For the first time I can remember, the racing was overshadowed by extraneous stuff. In the last race on that card, I backed a winner that prevailed by a neck. Data Protection won at 7/2 and I had backed it at 6/1 earlier in the day. William Muir’s charge had been unearthed through a system I’d been working on with varying levels of application for a couple of years. I’ve written about it elsewhere . The system seems to work. But for effective results, the beast needed feeding with attention most days. Big priced winners are found inconsistently and to maximise the return, there is a compelling need to shortlist the horses from each handicap each day. That sho...

Me and my mouth. For some while I had been bragging to a work colleague that he should give me a straight grand to gamble with over the course of the Jumps season. In return, come April, I’d hand him back a guaranteed £1,100. A six-month 10% profit margin that he would never secure in the High Street banks or would struggle to match on the stock markets. The incentive for me in the deal would be that any profit I made over £1,100 was mine to squirrel away. The grand would act as an investment, a pump-priming scenario. My staking is typically a lilly-livered affair because I never allow any bank of profits to build up. They are usually creamed off into the beer and kebab account, instead of fuelling a more structured punting strategy. I was supremely confident, based on my stats, that I’d land a few hundred quid’s profit. I’d mentioned this offer to any number of people, but only Pete from the office took me seriously. Even then, the transaction took ages to set up. He neve...

Three weeks before the Cheltenham Festival and the ante-post strategy remains light touch. Unprotected exposure has been largely resisted. That’s not to say I haven’t unfurled the greenbacks in support of those kindly bookies who have put up refreshingly early festival insurance offers. Some risk-free, if reckless, positions have certainly been taken. But the only bets dancing on the cliff edge without a safety net are those struck with Betfair back in January. Petit Mouchoir is now the most attractive of those early shouts. The 9/1 looks a good price in the turmoil of the Champion Hurdle market. New favourite Buveur D’Air rates the chief threat, having beaten my lad twice, including a thumping in the Supreme last year when both were well behind Altior and Min. Buveur looks classy and travels supremely well. A line through Irving would make him the form pick. Mouchoir has improved shed loads in his last three runs and that gives me some comfort. It should be a good clash, come 14 ...

The prospect of such a good weekend of racing coming up has finally pierced my cloak of ante-post self-denial. Granted, I’ve hardly unleashed a torrent yet. Bets have trickled rather than gushed into the reservoir. The stats tell me that my ante-post book rarely pays dividends. The plan this season was always to rein back from the scatter gun approach of previous years, engage in the game little later, and lop out much of the each-way element.   This week has seen entries for the novice chases made on the back of earlier championship entries, together with some decent trials earlier in the month. I’ve been spurred into action. So this is the first tranche. Arkle Novice Chase Some Plan - 1pt @ 33/1 win, Betfair I had been impressed with his engine when tanking along in the Arkle Trial at Cheltenham in November. He fell at the last before he had been asked a question. Next time at Naas, the jumping was generally more assured and he showed a willing attitude. Wort...