Hopefully, a few of you will add or subtract from my musings below. Its an attempt to identify the best sites on line for Irish racing with a view to punting.
I'm not a Facebook follower and don't contribute regularly to Twitter but I do find the latter will occasionally point towards an article or topic that is worth catching. Very interested in opinions on these.
In no particular order here are my regular checkouts:
Irish Field - traditional Saturday columns that largely depend on tipsters (in Ireland and UK) that also operate private tipping services so one is aware of a large degree of compromise. Kevin Blake still occasionally runs through a weekend card and whereas he will say the analysis is conducted too far out, there are occasional nuggets of wisdom that can be banked.
Racing Post: most paper articles now available on full subscription and my favourite punting tools are trainers' comments (for future use) and the good daily stats for trainers, jocks and horses.
Best database: Horserace Base
Cards Analysis: GeeGeez - very well developed suite of analysis tools for both UK and Irish racing. They also run a tipster preview/review service that is very transparent and can surprise with results. Their own stat-of-the-day has been very consistent and profitable (at advised prices!).
Commentary: Kevin Blake (ATR), Brian O'Connor (IrishRacing.com - admire his stamina for taking on the status quo)
Racecaller: has its moments for finding winners (Zipporah today!) and has a remarkable bunch of guys (and the occasional gal) who post on every Irish fixture. Shanto a bit of a legend.
Irish P2P: videos, comments and decent stats on all things pointing
If you prefer your commentary without the occasional salt and vinegar of this den, then The Racing Forum and Boards.ie (horseracing) are good outlets.
Irish racing generally badly served by trainer websites whereas there are some committed examples in the UK. These provide more material for future reference rather than any insights on a given day.
Thoughts? Good or bad, acerbic or even caustic (although that would never happen here).
What a long way we have come from the days of de paper(various).
As mainstream as it is the atr site for past races is probably the singular most important site,suppose everyone has their own sites/methods but think a lot goes into how to read them(proof enough Logical Song had a lack of "fighting qualities" in past races).
The greater the success of a site makes it only last a matter of time,it goes like "pricewise" and either reluctance to lay or "bad value" at the bottom of the pyramid is the nett result
What a long way we have come from the days of de paper(various).As mainstream as it is the atr site for past races is probably the singular most important site,suppose everyone has their own sites/methods but think a lot goes into how to read them(pr
ATR site has lot of good blogs and gary o brien picks a few winners at the irish tracks, looking at the form the racing post has been my fav, sometimes i have a look at DRAWBIAS.COM for the draws mainly, does have sire stats and some other things.
ATR site has lot of good blogs and gary o brien picks a few winners at the irish tracks, looking at the form the racing post has been my fav,sometimes i have a look at DRAWBIAS.COM for the draws mainly, does have sire stats and some other things.
I like Pat Keane in the Examiner myself. Not afraid to express an opinion and he clearly bets. Think I read from him once that he doesn't bet in handicaps which I found interesting. Ruby's column in the same paper is useful as well in that while you might not want to outright follow the tips, you definitely get a strong sense of whether he rates a horse or not. Think you could see he thought Sizing John was okay from his newspaper article, and the way he added to that on TV would nearly have made him a bet. (I didn't bet him). On the other hand, if you were a long term reader of his column, you'd get the sense something like Haymount was always going to struggle beyond a certain point.
Think the Indo coverage has improved since Johnny Ward went there, he portrays well the narrative of the season unfolding and his enthusiasm comes accross.
Gary O'Brien and Kevin Blake are excellent broadcasters, I don't have RUK but have streamed online the odd Wednesday night Kempton meeting and think the lads do everything the RUK guys do a little better; their advice/opinions are far more practical and grounded in reality. You'd here RUK pundits making out after the event that they had made a case for a Beckett 12/1 shot maiden winner that was 26.0 on this that nobody would ever, ever bet.
ATR stable tours are a good read as well, as are Hugh Taylor's columns but I don't bother much with them. I like the way Tom Segal uses his intuition rather than what is just there in the form book, I don't really read it any more, but if I did, those are the times I would bet him.
With a strong editor, I think Chapman can be a huge success on terrestrial, if he brings the kind of game he brought when doing those longform interviews with Cecil, he is excellent. He has the highest ceiling of anyone on that broadcast. he lets himself down a bit at times, he was trying to put his arm around Colin Tizzard yesterday post-race with predictable results, he needs to cut that **** out.
Used to like Nick Mordin, for all he was a bit of a crackpot and used to extend his theories to extremes. I wonder what he is doing now?
I like Pat Keane in the Examiner myself. Not afraid to express an opinion and he clearly bets. Think I read from him once that he doesn't bet in handicaps which I found interesting. Ruby's column in the same paper is useful as well in that while you