In the past two issues I have written about my findings relevant to horseracing websites in, firstly, Western Australia (perthturftalk.com,  kozform.com, puntperth.com and westozracing.com)  in the November edition  and, secondly,  in the Eastern States (racenet.com.au, racingandsports.com.au, thetote.com.au, racingvictoria.net.au and expertform.com.au) in the December edition.

This all started when I had a desire to go back to my punting roots way back in 1967 to see what the formguides looked like back then. Well, to say I was surprised at the lack of punting information available to “Punter Average” would be an understatement. The biggest shock was that horses who finished 4th or worse had no beaten margins in their form line!


In the final of this series I have had a good look around a few overseas sites. It’s necessarily been something of a quick look because if I had spent too much time on each of the sites I visited I’d be 93-years-old by the time I finished the research! Instead let me get you started and you can follow any of the sites that grab your attention.

One of the better known USA sites is at letitride.com where I noticed they had a horseracing forum called USA Racing Forum. Forums, no matter the topic, are always an area where like-minded souls meet and this forum is no exception.

Scrolling down the section called General Handicapping Discussion I noticed the mouth watering heading, Become a winning player started by a keen punter and public tipster, or handicapper as they call them in the US, called Dave Schwartz, which had 26 pages and 380 replies!  There was some excellent advice offered by several contributors who obviously knew their horseracing and after well over half an hour I dragged myself away promising myself to return in the future as this forum looked really good. (In fact, I have read several pages since I penned the first draft for this article and I intend reading more.)

You might also like to visit equineinfo.com/horseracing/handicap.htm and look at the Handicapping Sites’ area and turfpedia.com just to finish yourself off. The forums at paceadvantage.com and barntowire.com are worth a look as well. Once you have a peek at the sites I’ve mentioned you’ll understand why I said earlier that I only had a quick look.

The most acknowledged and respected site in the US for information is at brisnet.com. This site analyses just about everything there is to imagine worth researching, bar horse droppings. However, to reap the full benefit you need to subscribe. Just the same if you drop into the Handicappers’ Library you’ll discover a dazzling  array of articles. Some are intended to have you subscribe to some of their services but many are just a plain, good old fashioned read.

One of the best US horseracing magazines has a website at horseplayerdaily.com  and within the site there’s an area called The Horseplayer Magazine Big Blog Page, which has over 250 active registered bloggers.

For the uninformed a blog is the equivalent of an online diary made available to the public where bloggers detail their daily movements and feelings. The blog site I liked was at  blog.bobikepicks.com, not so much for his comments but more for the links he has listed. Bob even has a listing for the American Mule Racing Association at muleracing.org. Yes, they have mule racing. If ever an Australian equivalent were to exist I have several names I could enter at the appropriate named www.donkeysihavebacked.com.

After discovering mule racing I thought I had better leave the States and  head over to the UK. A site I have visited before is at flatstats.co.uk  and once you start digging you will see an extraordinary set of statistics covering everything you could possibly imagine for UK racing.

There are Free Systems and Free Stats (a mind boggling duo) as well as Free Articles (there are currently 92 articles for you to read) and there’s a Message Board available to visitors that is just amazing. One of the messages has “Pittsburgh Phil” asking people to list their library of racing books with a small summary (interesting list of books) while another has a poster asking “Should I join?” the site. He was answered with, “You may want to look at the support q&a feature here.”

Basically, at Flatstats you can access Unique Ratings, Unlimited stats for horses, sires, trainers, jockeys, owners, races and view existing systems or create your own.

The person who asked about the site listed two sites he frequented for “free system builders” so I thought why not? The first was at horseracebase.com which is advertised as the “100 per cent FREE website for UK and Irish horse racing”.

It has “Today’s Tools” for the current day’s racing, a “System Builder/Stats” with 77 completely interchangeable categories, “Results/FormFollower” where you can view all results in UK/Ireland since 1997 plus several other features including a newly started forum. To access many of the features you will need to join but it is free.
The other site is at adrianmassey.com which I have also visited in the past. Well, if you thought some of the other sites I have mentioned had some data available, go and have a look at the “Fate of the favourites” area and follow what has been listed there! 

The data base covers 106,693 favourites of which 35 per cent won incurring a loss on turnover of 8 per cent; that is, for every $100 outlaid you received $92 in returns.

If you really, really want to blow your top go to “Generate Custom Report” and by the time you get to the bottom of the page/s involved you will know you have been thinking because this is basically a systems area where you can slot in any of a range of factors and develop your own system. There are other areas covering jockey and trainer performances, barrier draws, weight analysis, ratings analysis and there is a forum where you can ask all you want to obtain full value from the site.

After I staggered from the UK sites I wondered what it was like in the former UK colony of Hong Kong for punting information. After a bit of googling I came across hkracingform.com which initially looked quite tame when compared to the UK sites; however, a little bit of delving found the site to be excellent. Start by looking at the main headings of Pre Race  (Stewards Reports and The Package), Post Race, Horses (Lifetime Past Performances, Ratings), Jockey and Trainers (stats when favourites) and Tips (pricelines, comments).

The Package under Pre Race provides the punter the opportunity to generate 25 reports on the various facets of information they need (a free subscription is available for the items listed plus other features), which seems linked in several areas. An area I found to be excellent was the Sheets where extremely detailed running comments on all recent runs were available.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club website (www.hkjc.com) is also absolutely brilliant.

I  had a look, too, towards Singapore because our own Noel Callow is ripping the locals apart, having just ridden over 100 winners in a season thus creating a record number for a season. The site I latched onto was turfonline.com but most of the areas that seemed interesting were unavailable due to a “high volume of traffic to our website”. A better coverage is provided by the Singapore Turf Club at turfclub.com.This provides video replays of all races.

Well, I am exhausted. What started out as one of those visits to our past many older folk like myself enjoy has finished as journey where yours truly has been truly amazed at just how much information is out there on the Internet.

How the heck did we beginners way back in 1967 ever learn anything? Today’s punters have such a dazzling array of Internet online options available it is almost impossible to believe that breaking square is not the minimum result available.

Of all the sites I traversed in this journey the one that really fascinated me was the UK Adrian Massey site, mainly because I love the statistics part of horseracing the most and the information there is staggering. A close second was the UK horseracebase site and I will most certainly be having a look at the systems builder part of the site and whenever I just want a good old plain punting read the articles at the USA site handicapping.com and the UK Flatstats site will do me nicely.

Here’s hoping you will find a site that will please you as well.

Click here to read Part 2.
Click here to read Part 1.

By Roman Kozlovski

PRACTICAL PUNTING – JANUARY 2008