How To Make A Profit During Changing Seasons

We’re coming into that time when we move from flat to national hunt racing. Twice a year this is considered the time by pretty much everyone in the business to be amongst the hardest to make a profit.

The reason?

Because the flat horses are finishing up their last runs at the end of the season and the national hunt runners are coming out for the first time in six months.

In the UK we don’t get official updates on how horses have been racing in training like there are in other countries.

Of course, there’s speculation and snippets of information released by trainers, jockeys and others who work in the stables.

But…

Like all information you have to determine whether it’s accurate or designed to mislead.

Which means we’re walking into a snow-storm with very little information.

If you’re anything like me though, you’re not going to want to stop betting for a couple of months while we wait to see how the national hunt runners are performing.

Even though that’s probably the most sensible thing to do. And something a lot of professionals will be doing.

There must be another way surely!

Well… there is. And it’s one I’ve been using for years…

Focus your attention on all weather racing 😉

Okay, I’ll admit that I follow all weather racing throughout the year. But there’s never a better time to follow it than the changing over of seasons.

And don’t worry if you’ve never really focused on it before. Because I’m about to give you a crash course in what you need to focus on in all weather betting.

This is designed to give you a quick overview of what you want to focus on when looking at all weather racing seriously for the first time. Take it, test it and then add in your own analysis and techniques.

What follows is a guide to getting started, it’s up to you to run with it…

All weather racing is a form of racing that is run on a variety of surfaces which can be used all year and very seldom have much change in speed.

The lack of change in speed helps us immeasurably. It means that we’re able to predict faster and with more accuracy.

You should start your journey into all weather racing by focusing on sprints. And I mean real sprints which are just 5 furlongs. You can go up to 6 furlongs but definitely no higher, and I strongly recommend when you begin you limit yourself to 5 furlong races only.

There won’t be a huge amount of them. You’ll have to bide your time. But they are a lot easier to analyse.

Why such short sprints?

Because there is only one primary factor involved in these races… speed!

Pace can also be taken into account and can significantly increase your profits, but you don’t have to use it to make a profit.

That makes this form of racing one of the easy to start generating profits from, and because it’s all weather you can do it all year.

Which is going to make it the perfect racing to focus on during the coming weeks of changeover between the flat and national hunt seasons.

So far you a focusing on:

5 furlong races and the speed that horses are likely to run

What next?

You want to start by narrowing the field down and we’re going to do this using a very simply proces:

1. Divide the number of runners by 2
2. Add 1 to that figure
3. Sort the runners by market odds and remove the number of horses from step 2 starting with those with the highest odds

Let me give you an example…

This race had 15 runners, but three of them are non-runners which leaves 12 actually racing. We divide the number of runners (12) by two and get 6. We then add one to this figure for 7.

Now we need to remove seven runners starting with those that have the highest odds. This means we remove:

Perfect Peak

Lady Poppy

Youcouldntmakeitup

Scoreline

Eland Ally

Prigsnov Dancer

Lazy Sioux

There are now five runners left in this field that you would focus your analysis on.

Using this approach you can very quickly shrink the number of runners in a field that you need to analyse. Yes, you will sometimes remove the winner. But then you’re going to do that whatever approach you take. You can still make good profits and do it in a fraction of the time. Which is our aim 😉

Now that you have a list of runners that you’re going to focus on, you now want to take a quick look through their form to see if they’ve ever raced competitively (within two lengths of the winner) over an all weather race of the same distance as the one they’re about to run in.

If they haven’t then remove them.

On occasion this may remove all the runners you have to analyse. If this happens then leave the next race because the quality is so poor you don’t want to be betting on it.

Most of the time you will find that this step removes a couple more horses.

Now you have to determine which of the horses you have left is likely to be the fastest and be at the front from the very beginning.

In these sprint races the distance is so short that it’s unusual for a horse who isn’t near the front from the beginning to be able to win.

How do you do that?

If you have access to speed figures then you should definitely be using them. However never forget when using ratings to take into account variance. If you’re not sure what I mean by that then you should have a quick read of this post.

As well as using rating open up each of these horses previous races over a similar distance and look at the in-running notes. These will tell you where abouts a horse was positioned during the race.

You are looking for the runner who has been near the front the most.

Following these steps you will have found your selections. Sometimes there will be just one runner left and other times there will be more. If you’re ever left with more than three runners I would recommend that you move on to another race as it’s likely to be too competitive.

All you have left to do is… decide on how you want to place your bet on this race.

This approach to finding selections in very short all weather sprints is very powerful and can make a good return with nothing else. It’s an approach I follow. But I always recommend you take it and adjust it to suit your style of betting.

And if you’d like any help with that or have any questions then please leave me a comment below.