bwin Sportsblog - Betting Tips - Using newspaper data

I recall some years ago how my uncle used to gamble on horse racing. His overall method of operation entailed him buying his morning newspaper, scanning it and then selecting his horses to bet on. Strangely enough the newspaper in question still has exactly the same layout today twenty years later as what it did then. It is only now looking back that I can see how trivial this information is in the formulation of assessing the potential winner of a race. For a start the form guide was woefully thin and didn't take into account many things. The list of past results only stretched back something like six races as I recall. There was absolutely no indication of what types of fields each horse had run against to get their past results. So this meant that a horse which had a list of results that went 2-3-1-1-5-2 may have been racing against inferior horses than a horse which had a recent form guide of 4-4-F-0-3-6. Taken on the surface, the previous horse looks a stronger mount than the latter but often past results in horse racing can be extremely misleading. Trying to analyse a race by using insufficient data can only lead to poor analysis, in fact I really should rephrase that because the analysis could be pretty good given the data that is available. It is the available data that is sadly found wanting but this is purely because the newspaper in question simply does not have the scope to be able to print in depth statistics and form guides. The most comprehensive newspaper out there for this purpose is The Racing Post and I have been a keen and avid reader for years. All their pundits are first rate and their form guides are some of the most in depth around. The Racing Post is a serious and often essential daily expense for the serious horse race bettor. The lesson is......do not trust tabloid racing guides. Carl "The Dean" Sampson