Bert’s Horseracing Blog

The big day approaches

Apr 4th, 2008 by Bert

The big day approaches, and unusually for me I don’t have an ante-post position in the National. In my younger days I was crazily obsessive about the race - it got to the point where I was so tense beforehand that I could barely watch it. A couple of times I can remember watching the race on TV peering through the door from another room - both times I backed the winner. In 1985 I had the (then) biggest bet of my life on Mr Snugfit, and embarrassingly I cried when he was run out of it on the run in. In between 1987 and 1992 I backed the winner 5 times, missing out only on Little Polveir. My bets got bigger as the years went on - when Party Politics won in 1992 I won enough to buy into a racehorse. When he won a couple of months later (alongside two others that the trainer ran at the same meeting) I made enough to give up work and go gambling full time. The National changed my life.

My best analytical performance was in 1998. I had quite a following by this time having picked and tipped the winner so many times before - I turned up at a dinner a week before the race and was asked for my take. I set the scene. There were two horses, I said, that would lead from the front and would cut out a pace that nothing else in the race could live with. Keeping each other company they would forge on from the rest of the field, and halfway through the final circuit they would be clear. Coming to the last the brown horse with the white face, Earth Summit, would go on from the grey, Suny Bay - you could forget the rest. I went on holiday a couple of days later and I didn’t watch the race - I did the forecast, but both horses were backed in and it didn’t pay what it might have done. When I got back I spoke to one of the girls from the dinner - my analysis had been good she told me, but they didn’t go clear nearly as early as I’d suggested they would. I said I’d try harder next time.

That all sounded a bit immodest, and actually I haven’t picked the winner since then. This year I’ve spent very little time on the race. My bet is Backbeat, who I’ve just backed at 130 on Betfair. He reminds me of Last Suspect who won in 1985 - a lightly raced 11 year old coming in on a low weight having had a fairly light season. He also looks like a National horse - plugs on at the one pace with a slightly laboured action. Has been a sketchy jumper in the past, but was fairly foot perfect last time he ran in a chase. Possibly on a very nice mark.

By the time the race comes around I’m hoping I’ll be well in the money, courtesy of Mon Michel in the first. There are more decent handicaps in him, and I’m hoping this will be one of them - he’s well and I think he’ll like the track. He was disappointing at Cheltenham - I was expecting him to go close - but perhaps the ground was a little too soft for him. The ground looks good today - maybe we’ll get lucky.

There isn’t much that I like on the rest of the card. In the hurdle Osana and Al Eile both look ripe for it - I prefer the latter who is virtually a course specialist. At Chepstow in the 3:25 I like Pontiff who returns after a two year absence - the time to get these injury return horses is often first time up when they are generally well but often unbacked as connections are a bit nervy and it’s kid gloves. Pontiff has won before first time of asking.

Posted in Berts Horses, Horse Racing, Mon Michel | 4 Comments

4 Responses to “The big day approaches”

on 05 Apr 2008 at 1:16 pm1Sandracer

Philsons Run.
Pay pay pay!
on 06 Apr 2008 at 10:44 am2Steve

I understood you were instrumental with regard to the Betfair SP, Bert. What are your thoughts on the manipulation and resulting mess created by changing the BSP’s for the National in order to return a 100% book.

I can quite understand the need for Betfair to return a higher BSP on such a high profile race although there were many ways they could have paid an enhanced BSP on the winner without amending every other price.

I’d previously seen the BSP as a useful addition to Betfairs product base and hoped the turnover would increase making the prices more robust. Trouble is it’s now been shown up as some PR scam in order to advertise ‘better prices’. If the BSP reconcilation process is going to be disregarded everytime inappropriate prices have been returned (inappropriate to who ?) then surely it needs a complete rethink as the same thing will happen with every high profile race due to the fact they’ll be large numbers of BSP backers rather than BSP layers.

Thanks
on 06 Apr 2008 at 11:16 am3Bert

Steve,

all fair comments. I’m away from the action now - I’ve been in the mix on this one though.

I think (hope) that this is a one-off. The BSP was, bizarrely, a victim of its own success - having moved along quietly doing relatively little turnover for a few months it suddenly burst into flame. The win market for the National yesterday was nine times bigger than any BSP market we have ever had before, and almost all the new business was business to back. It was always going to be big but the BF planner didn’t envisage or plan for this sort of scale (it would have been easy to have alerted more layers). The demand for Comply or Die bust a hole in the tissue and the price died.

This was a mistake - no question - but I have some sympathy as the numbers were way higher than my expectations too. Hopefully the guys can paper it over - BF will surely be the financial loser here and not the customer. I see it as a one-off mistake - BF must learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
on 06 Apr 2008 at 12:22 pm4Steve

Thanks for the quick and honest reply Bert, lets hope Betfair do learn from this and realise amending the returned prices is not the way forward. As a layer, I must admit I was surprised at the returned 166% as I was expecting the market to return around 120%. I guess snap decisions had to be made on the day in order to pay out asap and with hindsight whoever made those decisions will realise they were sadly misplaced.

As a long term product the integrity and confidence behind the BSP is surely more important than one race where Betfair could easily have paid an enhanced BSP much the same as other bookmakers do with their guaranteed odds. With any luck this will just pass as a blip in the BSP’s history and hopefully grow into a much more robust addition to the site.

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The big day approaches

4 Responses to “The big day approaches”

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