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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...
Can you actually win at punting? Yes — but not the way most punters go about it. In this one, Gordon works through a classic Practical Punting piece on what it really takes: the professional's mind...
The trifecta is one of racing's toughest bets to crack — but the professionals do it again and again, and it's not luck. In this episode of Practical Punting, Gordon walks you through the killer st...
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...
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...
Every punter has torn up a ticket blaming a wide barrier. But does the draw really decide races the way we think it does? Statsman digs into the numbers — and the answer might just change how you r...