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My thoughts on the petition to oppose affordability checks

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  My first reaction was a heavy sigh, followed by: You know what? F- off. Get Foster, Dugher and every other awful individual bleeding this sport dry to sign the eff-ing petition”. But before racing’s great and good accuse me and others of being idle or lazy , I relented. I signed it. The wording is fine, and it is nice to see the various parts of racing work together rather than apart. I hope it gets some traction in parliament, although those saying that this somehow guarantees some parliamentary action should better understand the petitions process. It might get considered for debate. It might get a few minutes of a government Minister not saying very much. Either way, it highlights what a pretty desperate position our sport is in right now that we're putting all of our energy into hoping the likes of Davies, Hancock et al. tell us all over again how important betting is for their constituencies and themselves. So what’s this all about? The Jockey Club and British Horseracing...
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My "Substack" ratings page

I've long liked using ratings. I like a benchmark from which to judge performance. I find some ratings builders unnecessarily confusing. Endless numbers, endless formula, all designed to create a confusing final number without any sense of how it's been built. What I've tried to produce here  are ratings which are easier to read, more user-friendly and which still reflect the nuance of a race rather than just a simple ranking.  Below is what each column does.  The Rating column provides a basic assessment of a horse's recent best performance(s). This is the performance I estimate a horse could run to if  everything goes well. Not everything will go well. So the next columns try to give a sense of whether everything might go well today . The Going/Distance/Course columns then tell you whether the horse has performed up to that level of performance in today's conditions. If it has, a Positive is put in the column. If it hasn't, a Negative is put in the column. If ...
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System bets

If you just want a link to the channel, click here .  INTRODUCTION System bets are where you create a number of rules which generate qualifiers which you then back blindly (i.e. back independent of any race reading or individual opinion about the horse in that race).  The joy of system betting is that if it works, you get a regular profit without having to spend hours scouring the form book. The tricky bit is making it work... System betting is as old as the hills, either as a serious pursuit or as a bit of fun. I remember as a child that my Gran used to back any horse where the second and penultimate letter were the same. My Uncle backed any horse with King in the title.  AN IDEA Thankfully, my Gran and Uncle weren't betting more than pennies on those selections. Away from silly systems like that, systems can be ground in any logic or idea. The idea could be that an excellent conditional jockey seems to be going unnoticed and you'll back them until everyone else realises...
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Ratings - Cheltenham Festival

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If you follow me on Twitter , you'll know that I produce ratings for National Hunt handicaps. Ratings are essentially a tool to bring a series of data points together to give a sense of a horse's ability. Some people use a range of factors and try and produce one overall figure for a horse. I adopt a slightly broader approach, which shows the key factors I think that it's possible to highlight to my understanding a race. The ratings begin with a baseline figure: this is my estimated rating of the horse's best performance in the last few months. If a horse hasn't run in the last few months, it doesn't get a rating and therefore doesn't feature. This figure is adjusted for the weight the horse carries in today's race (excluding any claim a jockey might have). You can see an example below from the recent Betfair Hurdle at Newbury. After the baseline figure, I assess the extent to which today's conditions might suit the horse based on past performance. A...
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