Gambler's Quest Horse

Australian horse racing form study usually stops at picking the horse: you do the form, then walk up and take whatever price is showing on the board. In Practical Punting in October 2000, Richard H...

Australian horse racing form study often ends the same way: an hour on the form guide, and a bet on the one whose name you liked. Writing in Practical Punting in September 2000, Richard Hartley Jnr...

Track conditions and weight are the two Australian horse racing form factors most punters skim over — "the in-a-hurry punters of modern day racing", as Richard Hartley Jnr put it in Practical Punti...

Australian horse racing form study often ends the same way: an hour on the form guide, half the field circled, and still no idea which one to back. Writing in Practical Punting Magazine, Richard Ha...

Most of a Saturday card is not worth studying — which is why Australian horse racing form study starts with picking the race, not the horse. Writing in Practical Punting in June 2000, Richard Ha...

Before you rate a single horse, Australian horse racing form study starts with a question about the race itself: is it even worth analysing? Writing in Practical Punting in May 2000, Richard Hartle...

I went back to July 1990 for this month's "back to beyond" source material. The Optimist was still writing the same patter then as he is now. Fifteen years ago, give or take a few months, he was...

This is the final month of our trip back through the history of the past 20 or so years in this series. I left you last month with the promise that we'd pick up where we left off. So where exactl...

I have been lucky over the years to make many good friends in racing. Some of them are involved professionally. One of my closest friends is a top Sydney racing journalist, whilst others bet often...

This is the final article in the series. It seems to me timely that it should occur during our 20th birthday celebrations. What I've done for this month's article is to plough back through a who...

This is my first article in a new series. You, the readers, will hopefully write to Equestrian, and indicate some of your favourite "Optimist" articles from the past 20 years. You will determine...

This is the final article in our three-part series in which PPM. experts Statsman, Jon Hudson and The Optimist discuss their approaches to selecting and staking. Statsman: I'd like us to talk no...