Discerning Horse

Don Scott's first book turned the racing world upside down, and it did it with ratings: for the first time an Australian horse racing punter could put a figure on the race, then a figure on every r...

The 6-Point Divisor Plan is an Australian horse racing staking plan from 1989, and the thing that keeps it survivable is not the arithmetic — it is the safety brake. You run into four losers in a r...

Weight ratings or speed ratings? Philip Roy tested both on Australian horse racing form, three months at the Sydney tracks, and one of them finished a long way in front. Writing in Practical Puntin...

In Australian horse racing, 99 per cent of punters fail to make money over a 12-month period — and exotic betting is where they lose fastest. Don Scott, a professional punter who spent the sixties ...

There is no short cut in Australian horse racing, and Don Scott is the proof: he worked 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, at form study. Practical Punting's Brian Blackwell interviewed him i...

In Australian horse racing, most punters bet with bookmakers all their lives without ever learning how a bookie makes his book, and it is hard to beat a man at a job you cannot describe. Statsman, ...

Every meeting has both “easy" and "hard" races on the program - those with exposed form and those with too many variables such as first starters to warrant a bet - but there's one type of race tha...

Since the par (standard) racetime charts for Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney were published in Practical Punting Monthly in September 2004, I’ve had numerous requests in regard to the publication o...

Psychologists call it 'patterns of behaviour' and, of course, they're talking about human beings and the way that 99 per cent of us adopt a rational lifestyle with predictable behaviour. But what...

Enough of my theories about the philosophies of betting for the time being. It's time to get down to the nitty-gritty of what to bet on. I ended last month's instalment with the advice that I be...

In last month’s PPM we examined the possibility of adopting a different approach to punting, with the view of racing providing a long term sustainable income. Punters were asked to entertain the...

In last month’s PPM we examined the possibility of adopting a different approach to punting, with the view of racing providing a long term sustainable income. Punters were asked to entertain the...