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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...
All involved in that never-ending war against 'the percentages' are constantly looking for the fresh angle. The angle that might turn the tide. This magazine, in fact, devotes much research time t...
Many of the letters I receive each month from PPM readers ask me for ideas on how best to approach the task of studying form. Most ask me what I do and which formguides I use. Because I am requir...
For as long as Mark Shean can remember, he has been going to the races. His grandfather was the great jockey Fred Shean while Mark's father Jim also rode with success. As an eight-year-old, Mark ...
It's easy these days to convince yourself that by looking at video replays and turn-and-finish photoform you can, suddenly, transform yourself into a winning punter. Oh that it were that easy! To...
This series will be devoted to midweek racing, mostly at the provincial and country centres, though city racing will be mentioned because it plays a key role in midweek racing. There are any numb...
As a racing enthusiast, they don't come any keener or more qualified than Mark Shean. After all, the 32-year-old is grandson of the former great jockey Fred Shean, who, rode the 1938 Caulfield Mel...
In the first three articles in this series I laid out my general thoughts on form analysis for midweek racing. I suppose the main thing I want to stress is this: ask questions, not only of the fo...
Fourteen years ago we revealed the details of an approach that used a "tick test" as a simple way of finding the likely best chances in a race. Despite all the changes in racing since then, that "...
When a horse with a 6 per cent strike rate bolts home at more than 44/1 it gets us punters scratching our heads. How the hell did that win, we ask ourselves (and anyone else close by)? The bona...
How long since you bothered to read a stewards' report? If you're like most punters you never read them, and that's a great pity. Stewards' reports can be terrific guides to future winners. In t...