CONSIDER THE COMPETITION

Useful Resources:

Geegeez Racecards - The most comprehensive racecards I've found to date (free and premium versions available).

TRANSCRIPT

Hello once again, and welcome to module 5 of master your betting.

So far, we’ve used betting angles & systems, and value hacking techniques to generate a shortlist of horses.

Now, we’re going to use this shortlist as our way “in” to specific races, and compare our horses to the other runners in these races.

This crucial step is often skipped by the majority of punters, and let’s be honest- practically all of us have placed bets from angles, systems, horse-to-follow lists, and so on, with little or no consideration to the actual race in question, and the other horses running.

As it turns out, this is NOT a good idea.

I’ve made the same mistake in the past, simply betting all horses that qualified under a set of rules that had shown good results in the past.

But at best, these qualifiers produced a small profit, but a lot less than expected compared to past performance. And more often than you might think, they actually resulted in money down the drain!

So, it soon became apparent that taking the time to scrutinise each of our shortlisted horses is key, and I’ve been doing this on a daily basis, ever since.

This step can without a doubt turn a losing strategy into a winning one, simply by weeding out your weakest bets.

Another benefit of this process, is that you’ll sometimes spot things that the majority have overlooked.

Often, the strongest runner in the race is hiding in plain sight, but we have to dig a little deeper and look past the obvious to find it.

So let’s head over to the racecards to get started. As is probably obvious by now, I’m going to use Geegeez, as they have the most comprehensive racecards I've came across, and several unique tools that can give us a real edge.

 

PLEASE REFER VIDEO ABOVE FOR THE WALKTHROUGH

(1 minute 42 seconds)

 

I know that’s quite a bit to take in, so just to summarise some of the most important factors I like to consider are:

1. Instant Expert - A good starting point that lays out the form, and highlights the horses with previous form that is relevant to the current race. So, you can check your shortlisted horses form in comparison to the other horses in the race. When it comes to the going, a cursory check of the forecast can come in very useful too.

2. Pace & Draw - These tools allow you to visualise how a race is likely to be run, and identify runners with a pace or draw advantage.

3. Proximity Form - Provides a simple “traffic light” view of how each runner has performed in their previous races. I generally use this to focus on recent form, which isn’t covered in the Instant Expert tool.

4. Racecard tab - The main factors I look at include Trainer Stats, Jockey Stats, Head to Head, Class Move (particularly 2 classes or more), Report & Query Tool angles, and finally the Comments & Summary.

 

In our next module we're going to take the final step, which is to rate each of our shortlisted horses, and potentially other runners that identify themselves to us as strong contenders. Then, we can use those ratings to arrive at our final list of bets for the day.

I definitely recommend getting to grips with the racecards, and the factors I’ve highlighted, in the meantime.

I’ll see you in the next module.