Step 1 – Before the match starts, back Australia to beat the West Indies in the World Cup Super Eights at 1.42. A £200 bet will yield a nice £84 return.
Step 2 – Wait until Australia have completed their first innings and set WI a challenging 323 for victory. Australia now trade at around 1.25 and WI around 4.8. However, the WI reply can’t get underway due to rain and rumours abound that they might have a Duckworth Lewis response of something like 180 in 20 overs. 180 is not too bad a target in a 20/20 game, so the 4.8 on Windies looks huge. Put your potential £84 profit from Australia down and your book now shows a WI win at +£119.20 and an Aus win at £0.00, not bad for an afternoons work. When the first days play is finally abandoned, remember to come back next day at 2.30 for the Windies innings.
Step 3 – Forget the 2.30 start time and check in just after 3.00 to discover that a) WI will be batting the full 50 overs and that b) they are currently 16 for 2 off about 8 overs. Take your £119.20 and stick it on Australia at 1.07 and voila, you make £8.34, or £7.97 after commission. Easy!
The fun continued in the SA-Sri Lanka match. Lanka only managed 209 and by the time I checked the odds, SA were around 40 odd for 1 in response. I prevaricated a bit and watched the SA odds go from 1.26ish to about 1.18. I tried chasing the price but was always behind the boat. At one point I transferred another £300 into my account and decided I’d put £507.97 down and try to get 1.21, for a £100 profit. This looked like easy money.
I never actually got the bet down though as SA’s odds kept shortening, so I eventually gave up and took my funds out of the market. In the interim, I looked at the tennis prices, but more on that later.
Later in the evening I came back and saw that SA were 1.01 in the betting. I didn’t check the score but rued my missed bet, especially after my Australia-WI fiasco. However, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up and watched the end of the highlights on the TV and saw the SA response go from 206 for 5 to 207 for 9 in under 2 overs! I don’t know what the odds did on Betfair and I dread to think what I’d have done if I’d been following the match live. I might have decided to take my chances and stand the bet, but it’s just as likely that I’d have engineered a position where I would have lost £150 whoever won the match, just to limit any potential losses. A lucky escape methinks.
The tennis was more misery though. In the current Masters Series event, Andy Murray traded around 6-4 against Andy Roddick before their quarter-final started. Murray has dismantled Roddick quite comprehensively a few times recently, but he’s looked a bit out of sorts in his last few matches. However, at odds against I should have risked a ton on him. My attention is a bit Aintree bound at the moment and I think my betting boots fell off whilst I was making a fool of myself at the cricket, so I ended up passing. Roddick retired injured in the first set, so that one really would have been easy money.
A worse sin came in the Novak Djokovic-Rafael Nadal match which started in the wee hours. I’ve been following Djokovic this year as he really looks like he’s about to enter the big time and I’ve lumped on a few times at comparatively long odds on. Nadal has beaten him recently, but the pre-match 7-2 did look huge. I am reluctant to get involved in night games as unless you can actively manage your position, you do have to trust to the gods somewhat. Novak has been good to me though and I really should have stuck £50 or £100 down just for the hell of it. As you can guess, when I checked the results this morning, he had done the business and is now the tournament favourite with only 6 players remaining.
By rights I should be about £500 to the good in the last 48 hours, instead of which I’m a poxy £7.97 up. It’s hard not to view that as money lost, especially when you realise that not all your betting actions are potential winners and that you have to take the rough with the smooth in this game.
In a funny way, my lack of full attention is exacerbated by my good position in this years Grand National and I think I’m reluctant to lose money now knowing that if I hold fire, I’ll definitely be earning in a couple of weeks time. Lack of confidence and timidity are deadly sins in any sport or game and that goes double in the gambling world. If you lack confidence then you can’t trust your own judgement and if you can’t trust your own judgement, then you’re almost guaranteed to lose money. Given that, I’m unlikely to be betting too much before Aintree commences on Thursday 12th April.
As to the National itself, I’ve backed two horses so far. The first was the ill-fated Nil Desperandum. I had £100 on him at 18.5 in mid-February and after his win in the Eider Chase a week or so later, his price dropped to 12.5. Despite backing him to win, I actually considered ND to be a serious place candidate at best and had only put my money down in order to trade out at a later date for a free bet. This may seem strange, but in a major ante-post market like the Grand National, the potential for creating decent free bets is huge. I was tempted to leave my stake on, but after the Eider, ND’s trainer stated that she was going to run him in the Gold Cup in mid-March.
Now, the Eider is a little over 4 miles and was run on heavy ground this year. Although some might consider this a decent pipe opener, it’s debatable whether the horse would actually be fully recovered to run his best in the National only 7 weeks later. If you factor 3 miles 2 furlongs round Cheltenham in the middle of that 7 weeks into the equation, then there was no way on earth that the horse would be fit and I had visions that ND’s price would likely drift when the news was fully digested. Consequently, I laid off the entirety of the bet at 12.5, including the win portion. This left my book at £0.00 on Nil Desperandum and +£60.87 on any other horse in the race.
In the event, ND’s price stayed remarkably stable and the Gold Cup was passed over in favour of an attempt at the Midlands National on 17th March. Nil Desperandum was pulled up lame quite quickly in that race and after it was discovered that he had broken a bone in his leg, he was unfortunately put down later that day. This is a great tragedy, but it is sadly part and parcel of jump racing and every year a number of horses are lost in this manner. Anyone who follows jump racing is upset by this and the only justification I can give for following the sport is that if it didn’t exist, neither would most of the horses currently racing in it. Thoroughbred racehorses are not working animals and are intrinsically unsound. They exist purely to race and if that arena was denied them, they wouldn’t be bred. Sad but true.
My other bet in the race has been on Ossmoses. I have backed him at various prices around the 47-1 mark, putting down my £60.87 profit from Nil Desperandum (immediately after his Eider win) and around another £90 on top. This leaves my current National book at Ossmoses +£7271.02 and The Field -£93.04. His price has dropped dramatically in the last few weeks though and he now trades at around 20-1 on Betfair. This means that I can trade out for at least £250 profit on whichever horse wins the race, but I’m hoping that will be more like £400-£500 by the time of the race. Despite the attraction of leaving the bet on and trying for £7K (or even laying off enough to cover my stake and having a £5K free bet), I’m 99% certain that I will trade out as it has to be the most sensible action in the long term. I backed last years winner for a £525 profit, but that was the first winner I had picked in the race since I was a lad and my path over the years is littered with a number of decent runs and placed horses, which have amounted to practically nothing in financial returns. If I stand Ossmoses and he runs a gallant second, I would end up with nothing from the race apart from minor bragging rights, which would be pretty stupid.
If anybody has got this far and wants a tip for the big race, then I volunteer the following:
The race looks pretty open this year and Point Barrow is likely to start as favourite. He is a very good horse and a worthy favourite, but personally, I have a slight doubt as to whether he will stay the trip. I guess he’ll be something like 8-1 on the day and you could do a lot worse. If he does stay, he should be close.
My horse, Ossmoses, is regarded as a soft ground performer. I think he’ll be a general price of about 16-1 come the day. The horse jumps well, stays forever and has outstanding form on soft and heavy ground. In fact, in the unlikely event of testing ground for this year’s race, he could even dispute favouritism. There is nothing in the formbook though to say that he won’t act on good ground and I think he is set to run a big race. At a quarter the odds the first four, he should be a good each way bet, especially if you shop around the bookmakers for the biggest price on the day.
Finally, for a bigger priced animal, McKelvey is well fancied in some quarters. He will probably be 20-1 or 25-1 on the day. There may even be some 33’s available at some bookmakers on the morning of the race. Now, on the book, he isn’t good enough to win, but he jumps and stays which is half the battle. He could run on through beaten horses in the end for a place, although I suspect he will actually finish a little outside of the money, maybe around 6th-8th place. If you’re a once a year punter though, a small each way bet should give you something to cheer throughout the race.
