Thermosphere Lad 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...

When a Practical Punting reader asked which form factors matter most, he listed twelve — and The Optimist turned the answer into a two-part masterclass. In Part 1, Gordon covers the first three: da...

How time flies. Remember this time last year we were debating the staying chances of Weekend Hussler? There were no chances, as we now know: he didn’t stay. I understand that he’s gearing up for a...

How time flies. Remember this time last year we were debating the staying chances of Weekend Hussler? There were no chances, as we now know: he didn’t stay. I understand that he’s gearing up for a...

Many punters rely to a great extent on the 'vital statistics' of racing to guide them into their choice of horse for any particular race. In other words, they are swayed by history into trying to ...

As this is the third part of our series on Vital Signs, you might have to go back and have a glance through the first 18 of our 25 vital signs. Anyway, let’s get on with it because we’ve only got ...

This is the third and final part in our series on the world's greatest staking plans. The approach featured is aimed at those bettors who want to back three horses per race on a race-by-race basis...