I get to talk to a lot of punters during my days at the races and most of them tell me they rarely back a horse for a place.

They say they often punt on an eachway basis, but claim there isn't much financial joy in sticking solely to place betting. Now this is true-but only to a certain extent.


I firmly believe that if you have a sound selection method--one that can provide you with 80 to 90 per cent placegetters-you will be able to make steady and quite acceptable profits via place punting.

Now the method I am now going to reveal does exactly what I have said is required. The rules of the system are simple. The horse to be considered for each race is the one at the top of the newspaper tipsters' poll provided it finished 2nd or 3rd at its last start.

Once you have a top poll horse that qualifies it has to pass at least three of four additional rules to become a final selection. These are:

  1. Its previous race was not less than four or more than 15 days back.
  2. It must have placed or winning form at the track on which it is now due to race.
  3. Its last race must have been at the distance of today's race or at a distance of up to 200m either side of the upcoming race. (i.e., today's race 1400m, horse can qualify at 1200m or 1600m last start).
  4. The horse must be racing on the same type of going as its previous start (good, fast, dead, slow or heavy) or it must have displayed winning or placed form on today's going.

You will find that you do not get a great many bets with this method, but you will get enough to provide you with a lot of interesting action.

Of course, obtaining the selections is not the end of the story. We now have to place our bets in such a manner that we can achieve our expected profits. Control is the name of the game.

The purpose of the staking plan is to give you a method by which you can quickly increase profits in following selections that show a substantial flat-stake profit on either straight-out win or place bets. The staking plan calls for a strong selection method and that's what we've got with this place plan.

For the purposes of an example, I have used a starting bank of 200 units. You begin by betting 1/20th of the capital, making the bet 10 units on all selections. Thus, you can have 20 consecutive losers before wiping out the bank. When the bank amount is increased by 20 to 220 your bets then rise to 11 units each.

You never increase the amount of a bet unless you have capital sufficient to cover 20 successive losers. In following this plan, you never regress or reduce the amount of your flat bets, regardless of occasional losing streaks.

The tabulation shown here illustrates exactly how the staking plan operates. All figures are based on a starting capital of 200 units, and a unit can be any amount from 50 cents upwards.

The following is the staking plan in detail:

200 units bank makes the bet 10 units until bank hits 220
220 units bank makes the bet 11 units until bank hits 240
240 units bank makes the bet 12 units until bank hits 260
260 units bank makes the bet 13 units until bank hits 280
280 units bank makes the bet 14 units until bank hits 300

When you get to the point where your bank has doubled, I advise you to withdraw 50 per cent as profits-in-the pocket. This means that if your bank reached 400, you would withdraw 100 units of the profit leaving you a bank of 300 units on which to proceed. You then follow a similar procedure as outlined above except that your first bet would be 1 / 20th of 300 units-15 units.

Put simply, you increase your bets only when you strike the required totals of 220, 240, etc. after starting with a 200 bank.

I am confident the combination of this selection method and staking plan will provide you with many hours of enjoyment and, best of all, a great deal of profit.

By Jon Hudson

PRACTICAL PUNTING - MAY 1987