Public tipping is a road fraught with obstacles mostly relevant to price. So often horses you tip in the morning firm in price as the day progresses and what you thought was value loses its appeal and horses that were marginal become value. One of the areas I have always tried to get right for the public interested in my selections is to warn them of issues that may cause a short priced horse to be beaten. There are times when I look like the prize dill of Australian punting when my fears are un

Public tipping is a road fraught with obstacles mostly relevant to price. So often horses you tip in the morning firm in price as the day progresses and what you thought was value loses its appeal and horses that were marginal become value. One of the areas I have always tried to get right for the public interested in my selections is to warn them of issues that may cause a short priced horse to be beaten. There are times when I look like the prize dill of Australian punting when my fears are unfounded and the horse I am worried about wins, sometimes easily. However there are times, like yesterday, when all the planets are aligned and we get it right not only once in the race but twice.

This occurred with Hay List in Perth when I not only cast some doubts about the first three favourites but I was a fraction keen on my listeners to the podcast to have a small each way bet on the winner, Revolition, who paid a fantastic $28. I hope all listeners had something on it: if not never mind there are other days coming up, I hope. Where it all lined up for me when I laid Hay List for the place, on Betfair, at the miserly price of $1.13 and to say I pumped the air after the race would an understatement. I did have a very small go at the First Four with Revolition one out but did not go wide enough and a nice fraction of $17,000 went astray but I am not complaining.

I was very keen on Grand Nirvana in Perth yesterday and can I suggest you follow up any lost monies in the Group 1 Railway Stakes next Saturday. I thought he had a luckless run and with a clear, unimpeded run down the outside would have gone very close to winning. He will be cherry ripe next week and at 8/1 appeals immensely. It will still be a tough race to win just the same.

I had a chance to update the Plan 3 Pensioner Plan selections between races yesterday and the figures are heartening as there now have been 59 selections for 34 returns totalling 65.70 for a profit on turnover of 11.35%. What I have done to calculate these figures is to consider all horses that SP at 5/2 ($3.50) or less to be win bets on the best win odds of the three TAB's. This is fair because you can ultilize several of the off course agencies to receive that price. For those at 11/4 ($3.60) I calculated the dividends the same way for the place dividends as I did for the win bets. It goes without saying better dividends are available on Betfair: I know this for a fact but it is unfair to use their prices as each of us would be betting at different times thus different prices. Later this week I will calculate not only Plan 1 and Plan 2 results but will look at the statistics if all selections were win only bets.

It's early days, of course, with only 59 selections as the tide can turn quite savagely with the next 59 but let's plug on and see what happens. By the end of the Autumn carnival in Sydney we should have racked up close 200 selections and by then we will know whether Plan 3 is of use and we will also know if target betting can add to the bottom line. Right at the moment I am happy with it all.