Student Day at Musselburgh and the top questions were;
1) (Pre bet) - Do you take cards
2) (Post bet) - here's my card
3) What's going to win?
4) I've never done this before, what do I do?
5) What's your minimum bet?
Top answers were
1) I'm afraid not
2) I'm afraid we're cash only, I think next door do cards if their machine is working. Steve can you void this bet please?
3) If I knew that I'd be on a beach but we quite like the 3 horse
4) Neither have we so we're in it together
5) 50 quid but we'll take a quid if you have the right change (followed by a knowing wink and a winning smile)
Full disclosure folks. We took coppers today so the blog is boring. Actually "coppers" is overstating it. I can't remember when we took so few bets from so many people.
A lot of bookies hate student days but, honestly, they're a nice bunch. They don't carry cash, they don't wear socks, they do wear tweed hats which is the only day of the year we see them at Musselburgh but I genuinely enjoy student days. Today our particular favourite students were Katy who was unfairly maligned before the first, the guy who tipped me 15p but I left it by the printer and told him to collect it the next time he won (he picked up in the last with a place) and the young lady who won 140 quid in the 3rd and who I wouldn't let leave the joint until she promised me she'd put a hundred quid in her purse and wouldn't get it out again for the rest of the day. I don't know if she heeded my advice but I hope she did.
We stood on the lawn. We might as well have stood in the bogs for all the bets we took. Or in Portobello. However, if you're desperate to read about our 200 quid per race take then feel free to crack on.
1) I have to say even I was impressed with us here. We had one loser for more than we took. It won of course. We lost of course. I don't usually post figures but for the comic factor we took 160 quid and lost 225 quid. Well done us.
2) Whoop, whoop. We cracked the 200 quid total take barrier here. We kept 3/4 of it as Pay The Piper was barely laid. We were still losing and also had 220 quid's worth of expenses to cover. It seemed unlikely.
3) One winner. 3 losers. As expected. The winner was the odds on shot. It was beaten miles out. We got the worst result. It was noisy. I haven't ever seen such joy at a winning 2 quid each way bet. All relative I guess. We were calculating our likelihood of profitability on the day and decided we needed 4 skinners. Which isn't totally unrealistic when you're only taking 20 bets a race.
4) We gave Katy the winner (Brandy McQueen) here and it was a small winner for us too. She probably thought we were Oracles. Sadly we then gave her the next 2 losers but not on purpose. Katy was concerned that we weren't tipping her our genuine thoughts. We were and we wouldn't stiff her (or anyone) for £2.50 each way. Frankly we wouldn't stiff her (or anyone) for a grand but, if we fancied it, we'd then probably have it back. For completeness we had 6 small losers and 6 small winners. Our brethren could not hide their disappointment. I understand why but we trust the system.
5) The take continued to be barely detectable. We had 2 losers (Nabraska and Thunder in Milan) which was strange given that we thought Thunder had a squeak. Cortonne gave us a tediously small win and, despite 2 winning races, we were still short of covering expenses.
6) I messaged Allan (one of our regulars) on Twitter yesterday to say we'd probably want the jollies to win today. We did. We had the top 2 in the market running for us here and the other 3 against us. Duke of Deception was cruising when it crashed out. Creative Control eased clear and looked to finally give us expenses coverage when it ploughed through the last and Methodtothemadness took full advantage to turn our best winner into our worst loser. Please bear in mind that "best" and "worst" are relative when dealing in a book which contained 200 quid's worth of bets.
7) In answer to your unspoken question- yes I did belt out The Proclaimers standard on every bet for "I Am Gonna Be". Our 15p tipper joined in. Norma next door even looked tempted. It didn't win but we barely did on the outsider Coral Blue. A couple of fivers at 20/1 or so is enough to wipe out profit on a day like today.
So there we have it. We don't do anything for a month and then, like Liverpool's defence, we offer up two quick ones in no time. We also lost small on a day when most bookmakers won. We know this will happen from time to time and today it did.
The take was desperately poor but we will probably have another look at this fixture next year as last year was decent but a dismal day for us in every respect.
January and February are pretty poor months for us, we are not out again now until the Eider in a few weeks but even that meeting is pretty marginal. We'll be there though, barring abandonment or snowfall. Until then...
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