Hunch Horse

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...

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...

How much of a role does intuition play in being a winner at the races? How far can we go in relying on hunches and guesswork? These are questions often asked when racing is discussed. I am a fir...

Every winning punter is really doing the same thing: reading a race for the signs that matter. In this episode of Practical Punting, Gordon breaks down the 10 key factors the professionals weigh in...

Why is it that sometimes the name of a horse triggers in us a sudden, almost explosive impulse to back it? Why is it that we sometimes feel that "hunch" that leads us to a knockout winner? These ...

Estimate extinguished a 15-month drought with her victory in the Doncaster Cup, but question marks still hover around her making a play on the Melbourne Cup. While Estimate, raced by Her Majes...

Get the formlines in order, and you're on the way to success, whether it's dog racing or horseracing. This is a credo I believe in. When editor Brian Blackwell asked me to compile a special form ...

We've all known the experience. You set out on a day's betting full of confidence and keen to land the money with your first bet. But what happens? It loses! How a punter reacts to that losing ...