UK Horse Racing Tips

Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

With much doom and gloom around and a world on pause, it’s such a relief to have horse racing back on our screens. This Saturday brings us one of the highlights of the racing calendar, the Investec Derby. The highly competitive and prestigious contest has serious prize money on offer and attracts the cream of the crop of three year olds.

Trainer Andrew Balding will be hoping that he comes out on top of the day with current second favourite Kameko, who received a boost after his recent convincing 2000 Guineas win in June. The trainer definitely has his eyes on the Derby prize.

“He talks about it more than anything else. Ever since I’ve known Andrew that’s been what he’s wanted more than anything. We’re all dreaming really. Imagine if.” said his wife Anna to Betway.

The race also features the likes of current favourite English King, as well as Russian Emperor and the Aidan O’Brien trained Mogul. In the Youtube Feature Balding talks about the possibility of winning the Derby and what it would mean to him to follow in his Father’s footsteps. Ian Balding, now 81, memorably won the 1971 Derby with Mill Reef. Can history repeat itself? Tune into ITV1 at 4.55pm on Saturday 4th July to find out.

Born in Enfield, Greater London in 1952, Terry Ramsden rose to prominence in the early Eighties. He amassed a multi-million pound fortune by speculating on the Japanese stock market and gambling heavily, particularly on horse racing. With his trademark shoulder-length hair and shiny suits, Ramsden was every inch the archetypal self-made Essex man of the Thatcherite era and made no secret of his wealth.

In 1985, Ramsden reportedly won £2 million on the filly Katies, whom he had bought for £500,000 immediately before her victory, at 20/1, in the Irish 1,000 Guineas at the Curragh. By 1987, the annual turnover of Glen International, an Edinburgh-based company that Ramsden had purchased three years earlier, had increased to a satggering £3.5 billion. While he wasn’t a casino goer, there’s no doubting that he had the equivalent of a high roller mentality of the likes you might find on OnlineCasinoSnoop.com . He had a go hard or go home outlook.

Events did later take a turn for the worse for this larger than life character. With eventual  reported gambling losses of £58 million between 1985 and 1988, Ramsden suffered a further setback when so-called ‘Black Monday, on October 19, 1987, rocked global financial markets and wiped hundreds of millions of pounds of the value of his securities. Glen International collapsed, with debts of £98 million, and Ramsden fled to the United States to escape his creditors, only to be arrested, and jailed, in Los Angeles in 1991 at the request of the Serious Fraud Office. Within a month of his return to Britain, in February, 1992, Ramsden was declared bankrupt, with total debts of nearly £100 million, including over £21 million owed to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

The following year, he admitted ‘recklessly inducing fresh investment’ in Glen International and received a two-year suspended sentence and, in 1998, was convicted of attempting to conceal £300,000 from his creditors and sentenced to twenty-one months’ imprisonment, of which he served ten. Ramsden was released from prison, to very little fanfare, in 1999 and, although cleared by the Jockey Club to attend racecourses and own racehorses again in 2003, he will be remembered as the man who won, and lost, £150 million in his heyday. Better to have such a wild tale to tell than live life in the slow lane though!

Getting involved in horse racing is quite intense, and it’s even harder to bet on at a first glance. One of the main issues that newcomers find is the terminology – something that can be hard to grasp with approaching any new sport – which is admittedly difficult to understand in the first attempt but can be worth getting to grips with when realising how exciting and entertaining betting on your own horse racing tips can be.

These given terms for different types of horse racing bet and market can be met with blurred lines over what it all means but Oddschanger are a website that take the time out to help novices in gathering a greater understanding of the entire sport in every possible aspect. They offer additional help with their array of previews, recommended bets and horse racing tips researched and provided by them in a specially designed section of their site.

What are NAPs?

It sometimes gets confused with other markets and far more complicated means of betting, but NAPs are actually the most easily understandable concept in horse racing. A NAP is the term given to a tipster’s most favoured horse racing in a given day, with them presumably seeing it as being the most likely one to win ahead of all others.

Most main horse racing tips websites provide their own NAP on a daily basis, even sometimes referring to them as a ‘NAP of the day page’, where you can expect to see which horse they favour on a given racing day. The odds are almost always extremely slim, with them often going lower than 1/2, but it’s a rite of passage, especially if the tipped horse wins as predicted.

Why are NAPs such an important part of horserace betting?

As previously mentioned, the fact that some horse racing tips sites offer practically daily NAPs for their followers is surely enough to show just how highly regarded they are by such a large portion of the sport’s fans. It’s gradually become a staple in horse racing betting, where even if there’s very little action for the day, there’ll always tend to be a NAP.

The word NAP comes from a French card game called ‘Napoleon’, where the best hand is self-titled before being abbreviated down to ‘NAP’. It obviously gains its correlation of being the most desirable hand in the card game, as well as being the most desirable horse to back in terms of horse racing.

Technology continues to improve our lives each and every day. And sometimes, these improvements happen in the most unlikely of places. For sports betting fans, the introduction of big data has been a literal game changer; even slot games at bgo are getting the big data treatment. Bookmakers and punters can now benefit from ultra-accurate data driven predictions, creating odds and placing bets with far more precision than ever before. But what exactly is this big data? And why should any sports betting player care?

What is big data?

Big data is all about the collection, storage and analysis of huge data sets. Data storage and collection is by no means a new thing. In fact, it’s been around for years. The difference with big data however is the volume of data in question. And as the name would suggest – there’s a whole lot of data.

But big data doesn’t just pertain to the volume of the data – it also concerns itself with how a business analyses and uses the information. The information in question can reveal all sorts of behaviours and habits to significantly improve the online services you access. The technology has been applied to numerous industries from healthcare to online shopping. And now: you can see the benefits at your favourite sportsbook websites.

How big data is changing sports betting

What does all this technical mumbo jumbo have to do with placing a cheeky bet on a game of footie? With big data, you can empower your betting strategies and achieve even more accurate results, ultimately resulting in more profit.

Imagine an app that can access a database with thousands upon thousands of football matches stored. The results of the matches, how many goals were scored, injuries and match bans… all of this information can be used to provide an outcome with a high probability of success. Just look at Microsoft; their AI robot Cortana managed to predict 15 out of 16 outcomes during the 2014 world cup thanks to the help of big data.

Players and the slot games aren’t the only ones benefiting from the emergence of big data. The sports betting companies themselves are now able to offer a far more tailored service, creating odds and betting opportunities with never before seen accuracy. All in all, it’s a win win for the players; they not only benefit from using big data for profit – but also to get even better service!

Sports Betting + Big Data = The Future

The concept of big data and the subsequent technologies that power it are still their early stages. And judging by the success of big data as it currently stands, the future looks very bright for players indeed. Punters will have access to even more advanced data driven tools that produce far more accurate results. Accumulators in particular will benefit from more precise outcomes; matching Cortana’s 2014 World Cup prediction efforts may be trivial in the very near future. All in all, there’s numerous possibilities with the power of data – and you should be ready to embrace it.

For the bookmakers, data is everything – so improvements to the technology will benefit any budding sportsbook business. And those benefits will trickle down to the players once again. One area which could see drastic improvements with the power of big data is in match betting opportunities. With so much data readily available, bookies could create even more targeted bets for players to pounce on. Who knows, sportsbooks could even offer the predictive tools to help players place even more informed bets. And of course, that’s alongside better offers and an overall improved playing experience.

Other Games and Big Data

Sports betting seems like the obvious platform for big data – but the same could be said for other parts of the gambling industry as well. Poker for example could be another suitable area for big data improvements. Once again, it’s easy to visualise some kind of app that analyses thousands of hands and accurately predicts the result of a hand you plan to play.

What about bingo? There could be an application that aggregates each and every single bingo room, showing you the rooms that are most likely to win based on player numbers, history and win frequency.

And despite having a somewhat random nature compared to other games, applying big data to online casinos could also see player benefits. Imagine playing slot games at bgo and being able to predict the outcome of each and every spin. If that’s not a Neo from the Matrix moment, we don’t know what is…

No matter which way you look at, big data is the future. And gambling enthusiasts will surely benefit in more ways than one; not only will they have a richer well of information to draw from – but the gambling companies will have even better tools to make their stay even more comfortable. They say the house always win – but with big data, it looks like everyone will share in the spoils!