The three rules of punting are…..

Update 5.00 p.m. The early preview of Tuesday is posted here with two Quality bets and the Melbourne Cup selection

1.Value

2.Value

3. You guessed correctly… Value

Every now and then you strike an outstanding value bet, and Exceedance was that horse on Saturday. I had a  subscriber query how I got a rating of $1.70 for Exceedance. It was a good question, so I’ll explain. After going through the main chances, it just came down to two horses, Bivouac and Exceedance. I just could not see anything else with the sectionals or strength to beat either of them. So to my eye it was a two horse race. Exceedance had beaten Bivouac fair and square in Sydney on a wet track getting 2kgs off him,  and if ever a horse needed blinkers it was Exceedance. He was only 2kgs worse off in the weights which is only worth half a length in a sprint, so everything told me Exceedance was going to be too strong for Bivouac over that last 100 metres. I rated him a $1.70 chance as it was only a two horse race to me. So the $4 or more you could get on Friday and even on raceday, meant he was outstanding value.  Subscribers were advised to have around 8 units on him, depending on what price you could get, which is the biggest bet for a while using the Value Staking Plan on the Quality bets.

The race worked out more or less to plan with Exceedance dropping to the back and tracking Bivouac wherever he went. Once he was asked to go he put his head down and with those blinkers on, knew he only had one job to do and that was to power into his work, and power into it he did to draw away late- a 10/10 ride. He was the only runner to break 34 seconds and 12 seconds for their last 600/200m times. He is going to have some great clashes with Bivouac next campaign.

Then Kolding was the next Quality bet at Sydney. I rated him a $3 chance and we could get $5 to $6 on Friday and even before the race he got out to $7 in some markets. Bossy hunted him out of the gates as he had to do, then I was surprised he gave away the trail, but maybe working hard early made him ease to three back on the fence.Then after entering the straight everywhere he looked for a gap, he just struck horse rump, until about 100m out he got the split he was so desperately looking for and with that will to win both horse and rider have, they just drove past Sunlight for an awesome win. I had given up with about 200m to go thinking even if he got out, he wouldn’t have the sprint to catch Sunlight, but I’m glad Bossy didn’t chuck in the towel!

Earlier in the day, the two other Quality bets, Blood Warrior, who became the lay of the day, instead of the bet of the day when taken to the front, let us down, and Zoutori could only run third and probably needs a spell. But it was an outstanding day of racing, especially with Melody Belle dealing to them. There were 20 units outlaid on the Quality bets for 52.1 units returned. That gave the bank a decent boost so hopefully you stuck with those two and didn’t waste your money on poor value bets. Some horses I’ll rate say $1.90 and if we can only get around $2, I won’t make it a Quality bet as I know long term they just eat away at the profits you make from the value bets getting up.

I’ll post an early preview of Tuesday at 5 p.m. tonight where I have found one nice value Quality bet.

And don’t forget, you can access the free ratings for the greyhounds to day and David will be posting his selections around noon.

Enjoy the ride,

Neil