In an earlier article I promised you an idea for the Melbourne Cup. I probably frightened half my readers to death with a plan for the Cup which involved a massive outlay and a chance of losing the lot. But I did promise that this month there would be a smaller, more sedate plan for those who have high blood pressure or at least don’t want to get it.
I call this plan the Clever Punters’ Plan, because it is designed to take advantage of mug money wagered on Cup Day.
When you think of it, the money wagered throughout Australia on Melbourne Cup Day is usually enough to buy a couple of Battleships and an Aircraft Carrier for the R.A.N., and so we, as regular and careful punters, are entitled to just a little bit of it. After all, we are at the game all year, and there is no need to feel any responsibility towards the mug punters who have a fling once a year. Sure, they are entitled to their bets, but we are also entitled to take their money out of the pool if we possibly can.
What do we know that they don’t?
Now there is the key to our plan. If we don’t know any more than they do we are in the same boat (be it a battleship or a carrier). I believe that we do know more than they do, and that we are therefore at a tremendous advantage, if only we can ascertain exactly what that advantage is and then tap it.
We should know that there are probably ten to twelve of the twenty four starters that have absolutely no chance of winning. We could do worse than eliminate every horse over 20-1 in the Monday morning markets. That would leave us with perhaps ten to twelve possibles.
Then we could eliminate those which have started over 3200m and failed (i.e. run worse than fourth, or maybe fifth). We get rid of this lot on the basis hat horses that have failed at a distance rarely prove able to handle it in the future
Next, we throw out any horses that have not run a prizemoney place (first to fourth) in a Melbourne race of 2400m or more in October. Current form is always a big clue to winners of big races (or any races for that matter).
We also eliminate all three-year-olds and aged beasts, even though What A Nuisance won last year as a seven-yearold. There will always be an exception to the rule, but the reason it is seen as the exception is that the rule usually applies
Yet again there is a lot of noise being made about a certain three-year-old that was going to run in everything, but it probably won’t happen. They haven’t won the Cup for nearly fifty years and they can run against us.
We will probably be left with five or six selections at this stage, and so we go to our final point of elimination: we now delete any horse which has a winning percentage of less than twenty.
You may ask why not do this at the beginning and make life simpler? Well. The reason is that we only go to this rule if there are more than four selections still on the books. We want to come down to four final choices.
THE CLEVER PUNTER’S PLAN... RULES
- Eliminate every horse over 20-1 in Monday morning’s market.
- Eliminate all those horses which have always failed to run in the first five in their starts over 3200m. Of course we retain those who are trying the distance for the first time.
- Eliminate any horse which has not run first to fourth in a Melbourne race of 2400m or longer in October/ November.
- Eliminate all three-year-olds and aged horses.
- Eliminate all horses with a win percentage of less than 20 unless there are now only four qualifiers. If more than four, eliminate in order until you get down to four. (i.e. delete them in order of their percentage age figures).
THE STAKING
We should now be down to four selections. Let me stress again that if we are not, we should eliminate the percentage horses. Example:
A has 23% wins, B 24% wins, C 33% wins, D has 36% , E 54% and F 61%. We have these six horses on our books, so out go A and B, even though they have win percentages of over the required 20. We now make an assumption that all horses in the field will receive support. It is actually fact, not assumption, and the longshots will all probably be shorter than they should be.
We should have four pretty good horses running for us. Stop and think for a minute: form is OK, percentage good 3 they’re in the market, the right age and not proven failures over the distance.
I suggest that we quinella them for $5 (cost $30) and take two trifectas: the first will be with the two higher weighted horses to win from the other two to run the placings:
AB to win from ABCD placed (cost $12 for a dollar) and the second will be the two lower ones to win from the rest:
CD to win from ABCD placed (cost $6 for fifty cents).
In NSW and a couple of other states you will have to take dollar minimum trifectas, and so you simply box ABCD (cost $24).
Then, to select the single bet, you take the two horses which have the best form total for the last three runs (i.e. you add the form and the lowest is best). Back each selection for $20 win and back the other two for $5 each. The total cost of the plan is therefore around about $100 and gives a mighty chance of a pleasing result. It’s a logical way of approaching a very difficult race.