23rd November 2015

Hi ,

Today I want to share with you a quick way to find strong runners from fields using nothing but the Racing Post. But… we are going to be doing this in a way you have probably never seen before. Doing this highlights horses that are underbet in the market and can produce a positive profit. Of course, you should always combine all your analysis techniques together but this is a powerful method and I’m sure you’re going to love it.

We start by opening a race, and in this example I’m going to use an old race from Plumpton. I recommend that you use this approach on old races to get used to it and then move on to future races when you’re confident.

The things that we want to take note of are the race type, Handicap Chase, the going, Good To Soft, the distance, 3m2f, and the prize money, £3,249.

Then we click on a horses name and get a window that looks similar to...

The first thing we want to look at is the Race Conditions column. Scan down the list quickly and take a note of any races that are the same race type and similar distance, going and prize money. Doing this we can see there are no similar races, the closes we get is the Handicap Hurdle on the 7th February 2013 and the Chase on the 27th February 2013. Looking at the Race Outcome for both of these races we can see that our runner came a very long distance behind the winner in both. On the 27th Feb he came 35 lengths behind the winner and on the 7th Feb he came 8.25 lengths behind the winner. When we combine this with not a single win or second place we can remove this horse from contention.

And… that’s it!

This is form reading boiled down to just a few essential elements and which alone can make you profits. Master this and you will not only be profitable but in a very strong position to continue developing your techniques further.

You need to do this for every runner and compare them. I will choose another runner in the race now and do the comparison so you can see exactly what to do. When you do this comparison you need to imagine that it is just the two horses racing each other.

Who do you think will win between them?

By thinking like this you will prevent yourself being overloaded with all the possible comparisons for every runner in a race.

We can see that Alteranthela has far more races for us to base our assessment on. There are similar races on 11th March 2013, 18th December 2012, 10th March 2011, 5th December 2010, 20th November 2010 and 1st November 2010. Looking at these races we can see that this horse has never won any of them and has come a long way behind the winner in most. But, there is a very important difference, there have been a lot more places in them than our previous runner and more importantly these positions match race conditions that are much similar to todays race. This horse has also won a race before which means that it has proven it is capable of winning.

If you were alert whilst going through these conditions you would have noticed something else to do with the lengths behind winners that this horse has come. Take another look now and see if you can spot it. I’m going to tell you what it is but don’t cheat, see if you can find it first and then continue reading.

The best performances that this horse has put in have come within a month of the previous race. When there is a big break in racing there is a much larger distance to the winner!

The last race was less than a month ago, on the same course under almost exactly the same conditions as today. In this race this horse came second by 8 lengths. Do we think he will be our previous horse, very likely and here is why…

> He’s proven he can win
> He has a lot more experience over similar conditions
> Performs best when coming back to race within a month
> Has had more second and third places

If we compare that to what we know about our previous runner, Soutine…

> Has never won a race
> Hasn’t raced under very similar conditions before
> The closest he’s come to winning is 7.75 lengths

Not only do we not know as much, it doesn’t seem to fit the profile of the race as well as Alteranthela. We would be comfortable saying that we think Alteranthela is likely to beat Soutine.

What we are doing by using this process is building a film in our heads of how we think the race will be run between these two selections. Now that we have marked out Soutine as being likely to be beaten by Alteranthela we can continue this process by taking the next runner in the race and comparing it to Alteranthela.

Go ahead and try this right now.

Pick a race that has less than 10 runners, it’s best to start in small fields, and do this right now. Don’t do anything else, just this method, consider it a trial.

Either do this on past races or on current races, at least one race a day for the next two weeks, I can promise you that you will start to see you betting improve!

Back next Monday.

Michael Wilding