Murphy's Corner Horse

Favourites win around 30 per cent of races and lose the other 70 — which is why betting every favourite in Australian horse racing grinds you down. A writer going by Mr Money took that apart for Pr...

You can back winners all year in Australian horse racing and still finish the year behind — that is a staking problem, not a selection problem. Philip Roy wrote about it for Practical Punting in Ma...

Framing your own betting market in Australian horse racing means putting a price on a horse yourself — estimating its percentage chance, just as a bookmaker does. Denton Jardine wrote this one for ...

A bookmaker's price is only an opinion — which is where framing your own betting market in Australian horse racing starts. Denton Jardine wrote this one for Practical Punting in August 1995, and he...

Ten per cent profit on turnover would make most professional punters in Australian horse racing ecstatic — and most, in fact, profit closer to five. Rick, who fits out hotels and offices for a livi...

Picking winners is one thing; backing them correctly is another — and in Australian horse racing, staking is where a good selector hands the year back. In April 1987, writing as Statsman, one Pract...

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...

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...

June 1986. And my goodness, what a long time ago it seems now. I suppose that a fair percentage of my readers were still in school! I pulled this copy of PPM out of my archival vault and I flicked...

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...