Horse Racing - Strategy

Essential Criteria 

I'm sure that, occasionally, you'll break the following rules ...and wish you hadn't. They must be adhered to! 

Never back a horse unproven on the going. 
Never back a horse from a stable out of form. 
Never back a horse unsuited to a track. 
Never back a horse ridden by a jockey with a poor record at the track. 
Never back a horse whose trainer has a poor record at the track. 

Bookmakers look for horses with at least one of the above credentials as they make wonderful false favourites. Punters who can see no further than the favourite, find themselves backing these horses. 

Having eliminated the above horses from a race you will have narrowed the field and saved yourself looking at the form of horses that can be immediately discounted. Statistically horses with the above negatives rarely win races. In effect, the only horses you are interested in backing must satisfy these ESSENTIAL CRITERIA first. 

Any favourite that doesn't fulfil any of these Essential Criteria will be opposable with the Reverse Book, which is explained later. 

Accentuate the Positive 

We are looking to back trainers in form; they're easy enough to find! 
Turn to Today's Trainers in your Racing Post and you will quickly be able to assess if a stable is in form.

We are looking to back trainers with a good record at a track!

Turn to Top Trainers, at the track in question, in your Racing Post and you'll see at a glance which trainers are likely to be in contention. 
We are looking to back jockeys, who have a good record at the track!

Turn to Top Jockeys, at the track in question, in your Racing Post and you'll see at a glance which jockeys regularly do the business at this track.

This narrowing down process has to be undertaken before looking at a horses form. It's unwise to look at the form of a horse first, as it might prematurely make a case for itself and ruin our objectivity. 

When a horse has multiple future entries, it's a useful positive factor. This information is easy to ascertain. In Monday's Racing Post there's an Entries Index and another one in Wednesday's Weekender. A trainer looking for the right race will enter a horse in various races. These horses with multiple entries need added scrutiny. Look at the races they might have run in, as invariably, if the races they have been pulled out of rate of a higher grade they then become more interesting. 

A Race is a Race is a Race 

So far, I've made no distinction between flat and jumps racing, or the type of race we're looking to be involved in, realistically, a 4/1 Ascot group winner pays the same as a 4/1 winner in a lowly selling race at Newton Abbot. Making hard and fast rules about not backing in Ladies Races or Amateur Claiming Races etc. need not apply!  Assuming you follow the rules about Essential Criteria, you're not going to find yourself involved in any race that needs avoiding. 

The big distinction over the jumps is that the bookies have the added advantage of a horse falling in their favour. (Over 10% National Hunt horses are brought down, fall or are pulled up) the only way this can be compensated for is by making sure you avoid horses that have too many falls In their history and ensure you never contemplate taking a short price in hurdles or chases.

Fear of big field handicaps is absolutely unnecessary. Using the Essential Criteria, we've already established, you'll narrow the field considerably even before you start studying form in depth. The races I'm most likely to avoid are of six runners or less, where jockey tactics and a false pace usually lead to a fiasco as opposed to a true race. 

Distance and Going 

The two things that distance and going have in common are breeding. 

With the exception of sprinters the majority of horses step up in distance as they age - horses develop stamina as they mature. 

Some horses can tackle a variety of distances but in the main, each animal has an optimum distance - dependent on breeding not training. Few horses will go on any going, just as a horse has an optimum trip, it also has an optimum kind or going. The going is so important that some horses, who need it soft, will not get a chance to run while the ground is good to firm. Extremes of weather mean that some horses can virtually miss a complete season because of unsuitable ground. 

A quick glance at your Profile (racehorses and sires) will enlighten you to a horses potential ability to tackle going and distance and equally important, if the going or distance haven't been tackled before, it will give you a valuable insight of what the horse might achieve on breeding. 

There is no excuse for not looking at every angle, before placing a bet. 

A local punter — famous for post-mortems on races that he shouldn't been involved in, would always blame the going when his horse lost. Never find yourself in that position – if you have to guess about the going then it is definitely a No Bet situation. The same applies to distance. 

Inspiration 

Having congratulated a jockey on the ride he'd given a horse at Chester, he gave me a wry smile, but was too modest to go into any detail of the manoeuvre he'd undertaken to win the race. Drawn from, impossible, stall sixteen in a sprint, he pegged his horse back, crossed behind the complete field and proceeded to weave his way through alongside the rails, winning the race by a length. No student of form would have backed the horse with this impossible draw at Chester; the horse won at long odds. The jockey in question was one of the very best in the country. 

The top few jockeys are capable of magic. Inspired rides like the one mentioned, make it imperative that you stay with top jockeys, they consistently win and so will you. It takes a combination of genius and hard work for a jockey to get to the top. Once you begin to understand finer points of race riding and the tenacity needed to stay at the top - you will find it impossible to oppose the best with the mediocre. .

The Draw and Other Things 

You will often be tempted to back a horse that has a bad draw. Absolutely everything will be in its favour with the exception of the draw. In your Racing Post Weekender which covers racing for Thursday, Friday and Saturday; you'll find a small statistical box for each meeting entitled: Ten-year Tell-Tale. This breaks down the percentage of winners from high, middle and low draws for each race covering the previous ten years. You will now be able to calculate - if it is worth going against the draw. You might ask what you do about working out the draw on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday? Hopefully the Racing Post will make this feature available in its daily paper. This Ten-year Tell-Tale also gives information on profit and loss of first and second favourites, average winning odds, percentage of winners placed in their last three runs, ages of winners in the last ten years, average winning weight and top trainers in each race. I would say this is the best information in racing. 

A useful thing to note regarding the draw is this, a horse putting up a good performance,winning or getting placed from a bad draw is at a decided advantage on its next run, if the draw is favourable. 

Won the Race Last Year

It's interesting when a horse revisits a track on the anniversary of a win. Some punters will follow such an occurrence blindly and back the horse. Sometimes they repeat their win; more often they don't. The way to look into the horse in question is to look at the runs it had leading up to its win the previous year. If the pattern is much the same and the horse is apparently well-in, you will be able to think seriously about backing the horse. Remembering that it would have already satisfied the Essential Criteria. It's also interesting to look into a trainer running a different horse in the race he won last year, to see if this years horse is following the same pattern as last year's winner, and if it is the same age and approximate weight - is last years jockey on board? 

While in this area of retrospection; I always look into the form book relating to the equivalent 14 day period last year. It's simple to do, and alerts you to horses and trainers who come into form at this particular time of the year.