Motor Man was pretty much on the button (no pun intended!) last week with Vettel proving to be dominant throughout and the double (qualifying and winning) coming in.

It seems like McLaren were playing with a poker face, holding back their true potential in pre race testing. That is now out in the open and I look forward to sharing the Motor Man’s thoughts with you in time for the next Grand Prix.

And to be honest we need a little something to occupy ourselves as we enter the flat season proper which is a head scratcher to say the least. Imagine trying to fathom out form, when there isn’t any (in early 2 year old maidens) or trying to determine how horses will perform coming from long layoffs.

Those in possession of March’s What Really Wins Money could be profiting from the first 35 days of the flat season thanks to the Statman’s analysis of top performers during this traditionally tough part of the season.

Add to this Martin Blakey’s analysis of handicap only runners who are entering the turf flat after running on the all weather, and we have, at least, 2 weapons in our armoury in this early part of the turf flat season.

There is also another way that you can try to unearth potential winners when there is little recent form or no form at all. And that is the betting market.

This example from yesterday will give you an idea of what I would look out for.

18:45 WOLVES

BETTING FORECAST: 4/9 Take Your Partner, 5/1 Local Diktator, 7/1 Da Ponte, 8/1 Consistant.

SPOTLIGHT VERDICT: It’s hard to look beyond TAKE YOUR PARTNER, who had little difficulty landing a similar contest at Southwell last week and is set for a big hike in the weights. Not easy to split the other three but Local Diktator has proven fitness on his side and is the suggestion for Exacta purposes. [Stuart Redding]

The above is a copy of what you would see in the betting forecast in the Racing Post for this race. I draw your attention to Da Ponte. Note his betting forecast odds are 7/1 (remember that the betting forecast is nothing more than a Racing Post journalist’s idea of the likely odds).

Your next step is to look at the live bookmaker odds (available at Sporting Life or Racing Post)

If you did this yesterday with this particular race, you would have noticed that the bookmaker’s had Da Ponte at odds of 2/1.

This is a huge discrepancy in odds between what the Racing Post betting forecaster thought and what is in the actual betting market.

This could hint at the fact that Da Ponte is fancied today. (We are assuming that the independent Racing Post Betting Forecaster is generally accurate).

Add to the fact that Da Ponte is returning from a 226 day absence and, call me Miss Marple, I can sniff out a potential gamble.

Da Ponte was a close 2 ^nd in this race. But the example above is one way that you could tackle this early part of the flat season. It is probably the only way that you can tackle 2 year old maiden races where all horses are newcomers.

So, look at the betting forecast, look at the live betting, and note horses like Da Ponte who are much shorter in the live betting (2/1 in this case) than they are in the betting forecast (7/1) It could signal a gamble.

Fear not, jumps aficionados; the Grand National is on next Saturday the 9 ^th April. I am hoping that the aforementioned StatMan will be available to offer a statistical look at the race in next week’s eletter. In the meantime, Grand-National is as good a starting point as anywhere for us to start our delving into this unique race.

I’ll pass you on some free resources next weekend in time for the big race, fear not!

And here’s an April Fools for you!

At least that’s what I thought when I went to this website: Betting Scalper

£109,000 per month and £396,418.14 in 3 months, but yours for, erm, £27! We see, again, what looks like the insidious mis use of Betfair profit and loss screenshots.

A quick visit to Juice Storm will show you how some con artists are able to fabricate a profit and loss sheet!

In fact, I nailed a cool £10,465,000 in the 1 ^st Round of Quidditch over night. What a result. Look, here’s the screenshot! I layed Harry Potter after I received some insider info that he lost his glasses and had no replacements for the tournament.
 
I will spill the beans on how you can win nearly £11,000,000 betting on quidditch. So look out for my new guide to “Bookies Going Pott(er)y”.

I hope you get the message. So many system/tipping websites are cons, the Betfair screenshots are not real. Insist on looking at All Transactions from the Account Statement: Main Wallet. This shows settled date, Ref Id, Placed, Description, Average Odds, Stake, Status, Dr, Cr, and Balance.

These will be much harder to fake.

I’ve got to go now, Harry Potter’s on the line with another belter! Have a great weekend.

Clive