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Don Scott's first book turned the racing world upside down, and it did it with ratings: for the first time an Australian horse racing punter could put a figure on the race, then a figure on every r...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
Can you tell a genuinely fast run from one that just looks fast? In this one, Gordon unpacks "par times" — the smoothed average time for each track, distance and going — so you can read the clock t...