28.8.10 Bets

I ended up identifying 3 runners that I would back at Rosehill last Saturday.

SR4 #2 Reward for Effort

SR5 #3 Scouting Wide

SR6 #5 Toorak Toff

Rosehill Race 4

My selection method, which consists of several filters, whittled this field of nine down to just the one selection, Reward for Effort. I thought it was a bit of a stand out selection in the race really, and was suprised it was only just the race favourite. Male horses often outperform their female counterparts when they race side by side. Reward for Effort is a 4yo Horse (complete male) while Patronyme, which was the 2nd favourite, is a 6yo Mare. My selection method didn't let me down, and Reward for Effort outclassed his rivals to bolt away and won comfortably by 2 lengths. The second favourite, Patronyme finished 5 lengths back in 8th position. I bet $180 on Reward for Effort. It can be quite difficult sometimes to judge when a horse's price is at its' peak, or about to rise. In the end, I got on at roughly $3.67 with Betfair after commission, though I could have gotten $4 if I had taken Top Fluc, $3.80 with the Best Tote or roughly $4.10 on Betfair after commission if I had judged the peak price perfectly. Getting the best price available is definitely something I need to work on, but I'm certainly not complaining about the win.

Rosehill Race 5

Next up was the 1,800m Premier's Cup, and once again, my selection method pointed my attention to just the one runner, Scouting Wide. It too ended up being the favourite in the race. I wasn't quite as confident in this race as the last and I ended up betting $156 on Scouting Wide for the win at $3.70 Fixed Price, which was $0.20 better than Top Fluc, and $0.10 better than the Best Tote. Scouting Wide led for much of the race, but Snow Alert got a great ride one out and one back, and proved too strong down the straight and beat Scouting Wide by a length.

Rosehill Race 6

My last race for the day, and indeed the week, was the 1,400m Golden Rose, which had 15 runners. This time my filters brought back 2 selections, Masquerador which was the favourite and Toorak Toff which was the 3rd favourite. Under closer scrutiny, I went with Toorak Toff, though I was constantly second guessing myself as Toorak Toff opened at $6 and immediately drifted out to $7.50. Once again, my confidence in my selection wasn't as strong as it was in Race 4, and so I bet $126 on Toorak Toff at an average odds price of roughly $7.60. Had I been better at judging prices, I could have gotten on for roughly $8.20 on Betfair after commsissions, or $8.00 Top Fluc, but at least I beat the Best Tote price of $7.50. Toorak Toff prefers to race from behind, and Damien Oliver rode him perfectly, letting him start slow from his widish barrier and eased him into the race. Oliver let him drift forward from the rear of the field about halfway through the race. By the final turn he had him positioned out wide away from any interference from within the big field, and he charged home down the straight to beat Squamosa by a head. Masquerador ended up finishing 2 lengths back in 7th place.

I used to back multiple selections in a race, but after spending countless hours of analysis, I found a very easy way of narrowing multiple selection races down to just the one selection, and it seems to be extremely successful, and thankfully it didn't fail this time.  I'll share just how I reduce my selections down to one per race if my system returns multiple selections in a later post.

All up it proved to be a very successful day, with 2 firsts and 1 second from my 3 selections, and I won roughly $1,300. To put this into perspective, this was probably one of my top 5 days thus far, so I'm quite pleased with myself, and am hopeful that my countless hours of statistical analysis over the years will pay off.

I just started this blog today, and so this was a recap of last weekend. In future I will post my selections before the race. The vast majority of my bets are on Saturday races in Melbourne and Sydney, and I will typically have between 3 and 10 bets per week.