It’s still a lot of fun – even when you lose…

… with Disco Stu running into 3rd place in the Irish Laurels.

I had a good go at it but it wasn’t to be… that is Disco Stu winning at 25/1.

I was aware that it would be an uphill struggle because my last graph told me that Droopys Electric or Ardkill Jamie would likely win and Ardkill Jamie won by a neck in a 5 dog race with the withdrawal of that great little dog Tyrur Ted who has been retired.

Although I picked up 6.25 points with Disco Stu my total losses throughout this exercise, that is Final, Semi and quarter Finals and early heats was: 1 and 1/4 points.
But I got a lot of entertainment and fun from doing it.

Now to look at the Wimbledon Greyhound St Leger… Here we go:

The two favourites have been knocked out in the early round and I was amazed to see that 16 dogs out of the 24 that got through to the next round had no ‘best time’ for the 668 metres race. That’s what makes this great game challenging: attempting to weigh up whether dogs running over different distances will last out over the St Leger course.

I’ve done some work to see what dogs have run at a ‘good pace’ over some of those distances and here’s what I’ve found (with current odds):-

Chobham Star 59/28; odds 66/1.Westmead Olivia 59/75 odds 8/1.Teds Anchor 60/19 odds 12/1.Ninja Blue 60/30 odds 5/1. Magna Mike 60/56 odds 33/1. Fabulous Sophie 60/92 odds 12/1.

Keep an eye on them to see what happens. Ninja Blue is vying for favouritism with Westmead Swift at present. I’ve got Westmead Swift over 640m as a 61/43 dog…but I know the Westmeads are always open to improvement.

My usual method with these races is to make a list ranking the dogs in order. I then work out the percentage the bookies are betting at. I then allot my prices to the list and compare what value is on offer from the layers.

These are the ‘value’ bets I’m going to run with:

Fabulous Sophie, my price 6/1; Ladbrokes 12/1; 2 points win at 12/1 (not worth betting ew 1/4 odds place 1234; better to double the stake).

Droopys Lea, my price10/1; Coral’s 33/1; 1 point ew 1/4 odds place.

Dark Hondo my price 12/1; Coral’s 33/1; 1 point ew.

Chobham Star is well down my list and is not a value bet but I’m going to back it with 1 point ew at 66/1 purely on the ‘pace figure’ of 59/28 I gave you at the beginning. I like to run with a big outsider to see how far I can go with it. Should be interesting…

Come racing!!