We’ve the Grand National meeting at Aintree this week concluding with the National itself on Saturday. I’ll be attending along with 70,000 other people. I of course love the racing but the amount of people can be a little intimidating at times and the length of time to takes to fill ones beer glass doesn’t bare thinking about. All in all it is the last weekend for me were we see the conclusion of the jumps and go immediately into the flat. This week then is extremely busy as I study for the jumps finale and prepare myself for the flat.
Preparation is of course the key to success and I have as always spent the last three months going through the stats and trends and odds lines making sure I continue to profit. So to the main part of this article then and I thought I’d share a technique that I use to look for those winners as we start the new season.
One of the difficult parts of any new code starting up is that the form lines haven’t developed yet. This is actually a major advantage to us punters if we approach it correctly. If we can’t use the form then we’ll need to use the stats and trends. These methods alone can reap the rewards should we get it right.
One of the angles I use is to look at the strike rates of trainers as they start the new season. What I’m looking for is a trainer that has shown consistently over the last 5 seasons a steady stream of winners. This of course tells us that they are good at getting their string ready and running well fresh.
Let’s look at an example from Sunday’s racing and the trainer Richard Fahey has proven he can send out winners at the start of the flat. Heading over to the Racing Post website we simply click on the trainers name and a panel will come up like the one you can see below:
I’ve circled the Last 5 Seasons as by clicking on this we can go through all his strike rates for the last 5 seasons. With the exception of 2012 the trainer has seen strike rates around the 20% mark which is what we’re looking for. Once we have found out if the trainer fares well at the start of the flat we simply need to look at one other thing. The horse.
He ran Manchestar in a handicap on Sunday. The horse had run a good race as a 3 year-old having been laid off over the winter the year before. His last race as a three-year-old was decent enough in a class 3 coming 2 lengths behind the winner. Knowing that he’d gone well off a break before and that his trainer Richard Fahey does particularly well at the start of the season he looked a cracking bet at 7/1.
The above example shows that by honing in on stats like that and looking for horses that go well when fresh we can usually get over-priced horses offering us value. Of course that last sentence is why I run the service Value At The Races and the above is just one of many examples of how I go about making a long term profit. In fact as I write this members have just been rewarded with a 7/1 winner!
That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week with more ideas on how to make our betting more profitable and will be reminding those that are following the series of becoming a professional punter where they should be at.
Until then have great week, good luck with the Grand National and get yourselves ready for the flat!
Eddie
VATR
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