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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, ...
In Australian horse racing, backing three horses in a race dramatically shortens the odds you are really betting — the board price is not your price. Philip Roy answered a reader who wanted to d...
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...
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...
The fitness of a racehorse, as we all know, is of paramount importance when it comes to determining how it might run in a given race. Fit horses win races, goes the old saying. When I lived in Am...
0ne thing that is constant in the world of punting is that we need to explore new angles to either enhance our selection process or improve our ability to eliminate losers. An angle that has been ...
Fitness plays such an important role in horse racing, and so few punters really know much about how to assess it, that we assigned Statsman to set out in detail his own expert views on this import...
Fitness - as far as off-course punters are concerned is very much a mystery. TAB punters haven't a clue as to whether a horse is fit or otherwise as it lopes off to the starting gates. We may see...
Few horses manage to win immediately after returning from a spell-a rest from racing of two months or more. Some manage to win after a let-up, but the odds are pretty much against any horse coming...
There are, I believe, six 'basics' in horse-racing form assessment. After experimenting with real money for the past three years I have formulated the following list: A fit horse One of the ...
There were a number of horses racing second-up from spells at Eagle Farm on December 5. All lost. At Sandown that day, there were 11 horses in that category. All lost. At Rosehill, there were six....
We hear a lot about the 'second-up syndrome'. Those who believe in it make the sweeping generalisation that horses racing second-up from a spell never win. They avoid them like the plague. But wh...
In his fine book The Key Factor Is Fitness, Queensland racing analyst Barry Blakemore provides some classic examples of how the power of the form book can guide you to winners. The Chester Manifo...