Cheltenham Betting trends

And if so do you find its useful to making profits, I used to swear by it but last two festivals haven't been the most successful for me

I was the same Harry but I have not bought it for past 3 years

Hi Harry, I've bought the Festival betting guide since I started betting around 15 yrs ago.. I wouldn't ever give it a miss and lucky enough it has stood me in good stead throughout the years.. It's something I look forward to and reminds me the Festival is close :-)

its a method and book I have used for years and feel I need to buy it but good to know Im not the only person on here that uses it as a valuable tool.  I couldn't bring myself not to buy it that's for sure

Why is it such a good tool?

Because a GB bred can’t win? no 7 year old has won since 83? You can’t win if you are over 143OR..blah blah blah

These books and trends are just a stat tool? But flawed at the same time, especially when the said trend doesn’t back up the stat and you’ve followed the crowd on a whim

Quevega how many of the trends were busted last year? If you are an avid follower

I’ll give you one, the winner of the supreme...trends boys “can’t win because it ran round Huntingdon” bollox...so you’ve been put away because some trends mug tells you he can’t win because of a 24 losing streak probably containing a load of low grade horses who couldn’t win if they started now...

Do your homework and handicap your own horses is my only advice...and if you get a free book, it makes for a good fire lighter however if your paying for it buy yourself a nice steak fillet instead, you’ll enjoy it more, than doing your nuts on some trends stat, that is likely to be snapped in any given race

Harry was just a question if anyone uses trends, didn't say it guarantees 28 winners over the week  ;-) Value your input and opinion thank you

I put in a load of homework Harry and usually see decent rewards, doesn't take a genius to work out that if you follow every thing word for word then you will fail..  Yes trends come and go but a good punter will know what ones to stick with and avoid albeit obviously sometimes wrong..  It's also not always about winners, say a certain stat is against a horse but it's 50s or 66/1 it certainly wouldn't put me off. Each to there own ...

Yes it was a fair question Hornet...

however when people use the word valuable tool as a selling point I disagree and find you’ll get put off more winners, than finding winners

People use them as a tick list to finding winners, it’ll cause more confusion in your mind than pin pointing your own bets

Of course if your not a form reader and you need help to pin point winners because of horses age and any other things a trends person needs to hang his hat on, I’m sure the trends book can lead you to some winners but long term I’d advise a younger form reader to just do his own homework...no offence by the way. Good luck

Quevega my post is not a dig at you or others that use them...I disagree with them for reasons stated

Still wouldn’t mind you telling me all the snapped trends last year?

I really don't care Harry if you are having a dig or not, what works for me mifht not work for you or others.. I would recommend it yes but when using I would always advise to have an open mind and use common sense.. For the Huntington stat fot example I would check and see how many horses in a supreme have ran there that season

probably very few another would be a relevant stat..

Haven't got the time to go back on all races to see, but you can certainly if you wish to price a point

Prove

1 – SHISHKIN and the ‘ran at Huntingdon last time out’ Festival stat…

If SHISHKIN is to justify Supreme favouritism then he’ll need to become the first horse in the last 17 Festivals to win off the back of a warm-up outing at Huntingdon…

Now I’m sure you’ve heard this stat banded about a few times already in the past few weeks but bear with me, I’ll be intertwining it with another Shishkin negative to give it a bit more beef.

Sticking with the Huntingdon stat for now…

Since 2003 128 horses lined up at Cheltenham off the back of a warm-up/last time out effort at Huntingdon and ALL 128 were beaten



This was one stat company, sorry it was 128 runners

God knows what the stat would of been before Henderson’s horse won the triumph after running round fakenham

French breeds can’t win the national was another one of my favourites...cross that off the list lovely

Oh it’s won at 100/1 but the trends said it couldn’t

Anyway enjoy the book hope I haven’t put any off

Harry I get that but if you used all the trends as gospel in a particular race you would be left with zero horses... They are used as a guide hence the name

Harry, the shish kin trend was a trend that didn't work yes, but the supreme DOES throw up a lot of correct trends, yes it isn't always going to be right and shish kin was an example but that race in particular does work out more often than not,  The thread was purely to see if people use trends as another way of punting, an angle if you may, In terms of your advice of looking at a form book, I've been punting properly for 25 years, I've a fair idea what a form book looks like.  Was just a question.  Like why people think times are so important? Personally I don't see how they are that accurate over jumps but that's for another thread entirely.

The thread is misnamed its a horse performance trend thread not a betting trend
The overall betting trend is that 99% of the bettors do their nuts

yet still the 1% that know what they are doing don't if your statistics are correct

Harry, the shish kin trend was a trend that didn't work yes, but the supreme DOES throw up a lot of correct trends,



Hornet trends have to be correct to a certain point.

example 5/6 years old have won so many supremes and have dominated in the last 10 years?

My problem has always been to a trends follower...tell me what odds the other age groups were?...I never get the answer

Here lies the problem though, someone is using this then in his/her research and it adds to their pre race analyse of the race...form reader or not

Am getting this year for the first time since 2015 , purely for a good read .I still occasionally use the old one if its a race I cant be bothered analysing eg Foxhunters , then I take a few liberties with the concusions in search of a big price . They owe me nothing ,  Rule Supreme in 2004 ! Had to watch again , shame about the fallers but the horse ran twice as far as the rest .

I've been punting properly for 25 years, I've a fair idea what a form book looks like.  Was just a question.


If you’ve been punting 25 years properly Harry, surely you know whether they are useful or not useful?

You said earlier in the thread, you used to swear by it? So why don’t you tell us why it’s so good hornet?

And what is the thing that made it such a good tool?

Also if you swear by it, why haven’t you used it the last 2 years, after all you swear by it correct??

How much are these books these days Paulo? Used to be a fiver when that Welsh bloke wrote it was it not?

Haha , think it was mid teens Harry , should arrive soon .

sounds like a good read ,,,where can i get a copy ?

Interesting paulo...is that the most expensive racing book on the market?

off topic ,,first year in 20 odd not got a racing post diary ,well got the pocket version but not same

Haha I note the Druid's Lodge Confederacy was £14-95 in 1990 , as its next to me at mom .

Ah so you have previous convictions paulo

Supposed to be a cracking read that book druids lodge paulo...worth buying a copy quite reasonable?

Yep cracking read indeed , different era mind .

Yes a cracking read indeed , different era mind .

Shall have to read it paulo thanks

`you clearly didn't read Harry I said last two years I haven't found as many winners using the trends theory and I don't use it as riule of thumb I used it to have another angle.  You don't like it I get it, its why I posted for an opinion but put the bone down now :-D

There are trends, there are stats, and there are coincidences.

Horses who had a warm up race at Huntingdon not winning is no predictor that the next one who comes along won't, since running at Huntingdon doesn't make you not good enough.  It's just that most of the others who ran there weren't.  So it is a complete non starter and should be ignored.

On the other hand something along the lines of '90% of Cheltenham chae winners had previously won at one of the following tracks: (say) Newbury, Warwick, Punchestown blah blah' might be of some use because it might point you to some of the right form lines, or it might point you to the usefulness of proven jumping aptitude, for example.

Thirly, it might add something to your shortlisting process to known that, for example, the breeding profile of Supreme Novices hurdle winners seems to be changing.  Mill Reef lines used to do well, up to Champagne Fever and Vautour, but since then three of the six were by Sadlers Wells sires, two more were by Montjeu sires (and he was a Sadlers Wells) and the sixth was Summerville Boy who doesn't seem to fit any discernable pattern at all.

Now none of that makes Ballyadam a certainty for the Supreme, and no such information will be a license to print money, but it might be a jumping off point in considering the demands of the race, and the kind of pedigree that tends to do well.  One person might think Metier, being out of a dam from a Sadlers Wells line, might be suited to the job; another person might think the sire line looks more significant.  Another might think that none of the horses that fit the profile are good enough anyway so the information is useless; a fourth might think Appreciate It has a good enough jumping pedigree that the presence or not of Sadlers Wells in it is utterly irrelevant.  A fifth might think the whole thing is an irrelevant distraction from good old fashioned form study.


At their best, books like these might get you thinking about slightly different angles, maybe review the form of one you had underestimated, or raise a question about one you had overestimated.  You would need to be some kind of wally to think they are a golden goose, but I can't see why combined with some common sense they might not do some good.

Fair post that muse...does that mean you will be swayed in future to the breed in certain races when looking at the trends

So what went wrong the past 2 years with the trends analysis hornet?

To be totally honest harry I don't take that much notice of breeding over jumps.  There are certain things I give some weight to when trying to assess the chances of a horse faced with new conditions, though.

I had heard for a long time the old saw about not wanting flat breds in the Supreme.  But what does that mean to an ignoramus like me?  I wouldn't have known what was or wasn't "flat bred".  So I started to look for patterns... 'trends' if you want to call them that.  I thought that the apparent success of these Sadler's Wells sires in the period after the expansion of the festival was quite interesting, albeit field sizes for the Supreme have been relatively robust, unlike the Triumph.

As I said in the above post, this kind of thing could be useful or significant or thought provoking.  And maybe it isn't.  I can't say I have noticed anything similar for any other race.  But for me the key is that this is a race where too many runners have not faced similar conditions before, which is less likely in the case of, say, the Champion Chase.  So in this case I am more likely to be trying to work out why one might improve more than another, because a typical winner of this tends to run to a higher level than it has ever done before, so the form book only gets you so far.

To be honest I find the discussions on here fascinating.  I have never bought one of these trends book or anything like that - I only have what I have noticed myself.  But it is quite clear that there are plenty of people doing pretty well using all sorts of different methodologies.  I might have been at this a bit long now to radically change the weight I give to different factors - and I am primarily a fairly orthodox form man - but I do love to see how other people consider things, and see whether I can usefully incorporate them into what I am doing.


Just on a side note, regarding hornet's lean couple of years: I have heard Brian Gault lamenting for a few years now that "Willie is no respecter of trends."  The way these Irish horses are being sourced (often from France) and the Willie MO with them (keep them in the barn for ages before they see a racecourse) is bound to throw up horses that don't fit the profile of past winners.  The way horses are trained is improving all the time, and you have to be considering the impact of those changes.  Results make statistics; statistics don't make results.

Wasn't as successful as other years with the trends, they worked out in some races but not as much as previous years that's all really

Wasn't as successful as other years with the trends, they worked out in some races but not as much as previous years that's all really