There are many bettors who simply don’t have the time to bet. It’s a hobby, an enjoyable past time that can also generate some extra income. Sometimes the goal may be to become full time but in a lot of situations this isn’t the case. It’s the pleasure of horse racing and making profits from a pastime that keeps the interest rather than the desire to quit a job or start a new type of lifestyle.
If this is your situation then you may find that the only time you have to analyse races is the night before racing and even then you don’t have much time.
After all, you get home from work, have dinner, put the kids to bed, spend some time with your partner and then grab an hour to yourself before you also head to sleep.
In this situation how do you find the selections you’re going to place your bets on?
After all form reading takes a long time and the markets aren’t available to be able to use them to help in your analysis.
Answering this question is what todays post is all about.
It doesn’t matter if you aren’t in this situation, what I’m about to share is going to also help you with your betting.
You may be thinking that this is going to come down to selection strategy. That would be the most obvious.
But in fact selection strategy is the very last thing to consider.
Why?
Because it will always be roughly the same process.
When you only have an hour a day we need to adapt to the situation to give us every possible advantage. That means getting to the root of what we’re lacking… which is time.
A horse race becomes most time consuming to analyse when there are more variables such as large fields, handicaps, changing ground conditions, jumps etc…
That means that we start by reducing the types of races we’re going to look at to those with the least possible amount of variables. We’d be looking for:
- Small fields
- No jumps
- No handicaps
- Unchanging ground conditions
- Smallest chance of being bumped, knocked etc…
- Horses that are going to perform as expected
The smaller the field the better in this situation. After all, the less horses then the less analysis time. I would suggest that you go through the other conditions first and then focus on the race each day that meets them and has the smallest amount of runners in it.
No Jumps and No Handicaps are pretty self explanatory. By looking at jumps races we now have to consider the possibility of a horse being slowed down or falling at a jump as well as landing badly.
Unchanging ground conditions limits us primarily to All Weather. But, we can also look at Turf ground when the weather is good. As long as the weather has been unchanging and is likely to be then the ground is going to be consistent. In changeable weather then you should only focus on All Weather as the ground could change overnight and throughout the next morning rendering all your analysis from the previous night wasted.
The smallest chance of being bumped or knocked means both smaller fields and shorter distances. The shorter a race then the less chance of something happening. Keep to sprint races, ideally 5 furlongs if possible.
Finally we want races where the horses are going to perform as expected. This rules out any races where the majority of runners don’t have at least four or five races. In fact, I would rule out any race where any single runner didn’t have at least two races over similar conditions to the ones they’re racing on today.
Putting these rules into action means that you’re limiting the types of races that you are going to analyse only to those where things are most likely to go as expected.
You’ve now got a race to analyse with a small number of runners, that’s taking place over a short distance under conditions that are unlikely to change and all horses have run on at least twice.
It will only leave you with a handful of races, and some days possible no races, to analyse.
Now you can look at finding your selections. As always I would recommend using the approach of:
- Find the runners that are likely to perform worst and remove them as eliminations
- Find the runners from those left that are likely to be the strongest contenders and mark them
- Determine how to bet
Picking selections is only a small piece of the puzzle, concentrate on finding the races that are going to be easiest to find the winners in first!
Hi Michael ,ive just signed up to your racing dossier, good idea above ,i was only thinking somehow need to keep it really simple in the early days ,learning all the filters is like trying to learn greek lol, however i will try this method thanks bob
Hi Michael
Having subscribed previously to Mike Cruickshank’s “B onus Bagging” , am I right in thinking that this will be of no use to me ,having used my bookies bonuses?
Kind regards
Bernard
Hi Bernard, I assume you are talking about Betting Bounty? If so this has been designed around the special offers that bookmakers make available to current customers so you can still use it even if you’ve already opened accounts đ
Hi Michael,
great idea ,i have just joined RD again was thinking of a simple plan ,and youve got it ,i find RD very difficult to understand bit like learning greek lol, but must keep going .will try this and let you know once again thanks bob
Hi Bob, don’t forget you can post any questions in the members forum đ
Although I can see where you are coming from with the smaller field theory I am afraid I have to disagrea, it is my opinion that if you don’t have enough time to study then don’t have a bet unless it’s for fun. Small field betting sounds good but how many times does the outsider of three and indeed horses that you may never have considered come in leaving you scratching your head . Taking into account the shorter odds you will encounter this is a risk in my eyes . Regards Martin.
Thanks for the feedback Martin đ The outsider of three does definitely win, but as long as we’re getting value odds on the bet it won’t matter because we’ll still be making a profit long-term. What this approach does is focus on a very small amount of races each day so effective analysis can be still done. However you’re approach is also a very good one, if you don’t have the time then you shouldn’t rush it just to have a bet.
While I understand your less distance/less chance for calamity argument, Michael, I would just make the point that short races bring the dreaded draw factor into play, about which more contradictory opinions seem to have been expressed than on any other aspect of racing. Precisely why I would be inclined to focus on races of 10f and upwards around a bend and try and take it out of the equation. I’d rather take my chances with calamity than with the stalls being positioned 10ft to the right of where they were last time…
Aha, yes that dreaded draw argument, very good point it does come in. I would use AW to help reduce that, but then that’s my favourite race type đ
Lo Michael,
I have mentioned this before – but nothing has come of it.
I have a printout of EVERY R/Dosier to save me trying to learn the “Greek” mentioned above.
Surely you MUST agree that quoting 64 is far easier to find than Cst10 – or 3001 for Contender ?
I agree that they all are listed in R/Dosier – but MUCH easier to find if a number is quoted !
Regards,
Tom W.
Hi Tom,
I’m used to using the shortening so it also makes sense to non-Racing Dossier users. I will try and remember to add the ID’s in as well in future.