COPING WITH A LACK OF RACING

You might have noticed there has been a lack of racing recently – at least racing to warrant betting interest. No wonder Sprinter Sacre’s heartbeat is normal. Apart from his welfare – of course we all wish him well – there hasn’t been much to occupy the mind on the racing front lately. That is unless you include weather forecasts and Blissful Park, where the going is always good, all the races are handicaps (I heard a Ladbroke commentator refer to the top weight in one such event the other day), and there is never a non-runner or a slow-starter. Sound blissful? Not exactly…

I happened to be in a betting shop this week, just to catch up on the Racing Post and see if anything was happening behind my back so to speak. The place seemed full of the same old faces looking for inspiration and clues. For all I know they are still pacing the floor looking.

It’s not that the results (those that I can recall) have been that bad since horses have turned into aqua-planers, it’s just that – in a game already renowned for chucking up excuses left, right and centre – it is difficult to bet with any confidence just now.

In desperation, last Saturday I had a small pop on the all-weather. With the majority of the handicaps looking only marginally easier than events at Blissful Park, I thought a couple of admittedly uninspired selections in Anglo Irish and Joyous looked the best on the day. That is I and just about everyone else! Anglo Irish got himself beaten at 1/3; whilst Joyous was backed down to the near suicidal price of 6/4 in her handicap and, despite not getting the best of runs and possibly looking unlucky, failed to win. At those sorts of prices, excuses are superfluous. To be brutal, the only excuse you need is the one that you should provide to yourself for being sucked in to betting on such a day in the first place.

But, here’s the thing: a gambler/player can’t afford to waste time sitting on his hands. A gambler plays the percentages game, keeping them on his side by playing as often as possible. If he is good at what he does – if his judgement is sound – then the more he can exercise that judgement, the more likely the odds are to tilt in his favour. That sounds simple and logical. The flaw in that argument is that, because we are dealing with dumb animals (and in some cases equally dumb people), horse racing is neither simple nor logical. There are times when I feel it ought to be less random and make more sense than it does, but early in January in the middle of a monsoon is not one of them.

This is the time of year when I used to book a holiday and fly out to the sun for anything approaching a month depending on the sort of year it had been. But, look, we are in the middle of a recession; just like everyone else I am feeling the pinch, so this year the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean is right out. They are so far out; as far as I am concerned I wouldn’t see them with a telescope. Oh, they are out there somewhere but, even if I could be sure of a plane taking off to time from one of the London airports and not having to spend part of my holiday squinting at a departures board, or on a bench in a terminal – doing a Tom Hanks impression – the next time I shall see the sun this year is when it rises over my lawn. I am calculating that will be sometime in April, just before or just after I have had my first reversal at Newmarket during the Craven meeting.

Right now I have no appetite for betting; but to get back to my earlier point, I have had a change of heart about how to approach this business in the long term. I used to think it was advisable to wait until I thought I had uncovered a good thing at an inflated price and then unload. Lately, I am having an alarming change of mind. Because, to use the argument I have documented, that way you can wait forever and still not get paid. Bad luck is the ever-present gate-crasher in this business.

This is the only business I know where you can be right and it can still cost you money. The only result that matters is whether your bet wins or loses, not whether you were technically correct to pull up your money. Jockey foul-ups, last-minute ground changes and sheer bad luck in running is all very well for a topic over a pint of Fuller’s in the pub, but it won’t alter the result or your bank balance at the end of the month.

By restricting bets to those occasions when you think you have the edge of all edges, you will only bet rarely and, in a business where the profit margin is low before you start, you are arguably making it lower by only betting when the wind is in the right direction.

Like it or not, if you are a player in this game, then that’s what you have to do – play. And you need to play on a regular basis. Because if you don’t you get a dose of the freezes. You start to find reasons not to bet and, frankly there are enough of them to sink a battleship as it is. You become stale, out of practice and, to an extent, chicken with your money.

Anyone that makes a living has to constantly practise their art. I mean, footballers don’t just put on their boots on Saturdays. And how would you feel if the surgeon conducting an operation on you only handled a scalpel when the Moon was in Capricorn, or the pilot in the 747 on which you were a passenger only climbed into the cockpit when flying down to Rio?

One way or another, as a player, you have to keep your hand in. The possible answer is to bet with small change rather than not bet at all. You can bet on the exchanges with as little as £2 a shot. It’s okay to do that – no-one need know – at least it is another way of keeping track of the form you are in. And when you think about it, betting in small money is a win-win situation. If you win, you can reassure yourself you are still the big man; that you haven’t lost it. If you lose a few quid, then you can claim you were so right to throttle back and that again, it is only further proof of your latent genius.

Of course, betting in peanuts might be all very well to tide you over, but you still have to face facts – if you are to make any money betting, you will have to press-up at some stage. You simply have to bet to proper stakes and do it regularly. Maybe that is a problem for another time. Say the Cheltenham run-up for those of you with a hatful of opinions about the jump game – or the Dubai carnival for those of us of the other persuasion.

Failing that you could always apply for a job at your local supermarket. Trouble is, I hear even they aren’t’ hiring right now.