áFinding Winners (1)I once asked an old timer (I was a young timer then) about winner-finding. He'd been in the game for fifty years and we were chatting.Well, he was chatting and I was listening, actually. He sure knew his stuff and I just soaked it up.He said that there were only three or four factors that the average punter could use to make the whole task easier. Remember there were no personal computers back then, and you did a lot of your own form by longhand.The first one he identified (a

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Finding Winners (1)

I once asked an old timer (I was a young timer then) about winner-finding. He'd been in the game for fifty years and we were chatting.

Well, he was chatting and I was listening, actually. He sure knew his stuff and I just soaked it up.

He said that there were only three or four factors that the average punter could use to make the whole task easier. Remember there were no personal computers back then, and you did a lot of your own form by longhand.

The first one he identified (and it isn't rocket science) was the last start winner. However, he took it a stage further.

"It's a start", I recall him saying, "But you need two wins in the last three, and they all need to be this side of any break".

He thought for a while then added:

"And that other start? It needs to be a second."

Another thought or two, then:

"And never go outside the top two or three riders - they're there because they keep on riding winners!"

So it came down to 111, or 121, or 211.

And a top rider.

Easy form.

I was looking at a hopeless meeting on June 30 at Randwick and I found one, just one. Enough for the systems fan. Her name was CheapThrills and she was drawn wide in a very mediocre three-year-old affair. Form 121.

And she did have top rider on board.

She was listed as prepost favourite, but she went off at 4/1 ($5) and she came home first.

A dead easy plan, that. Not a world beater,perhaps, but a lot to like about it.