It was the final meeting of the season (The Glorious Finale) at our favourite track and, after the cancellation of the two Musselburgh meetings and the losing day at Kelso we had a bit of catching up to do. Perth has been very good to us over the years and it remains one of the few options we have in midweek for a workable option, despite the perceived wisdom that you can't win at Perth.
Like many tracks it is suffering from a field size problem which looks like it will be a continuing problem with an overstuffed fixture list and a diminishing pool of horses. That does get the creative juices flowing and we pull out an array of forecasts and, where possible, "betting without" markets to create alternatives for punters not desperate to punt at 1/6 in the straight race market.
1) And on the subject of 1/6 shots we kicked off with one here (Happy Dex) and it was, of course, our only winner on what was a tiny take. The obvious forecast was pretty short as well so we laid the 1-3 and 1-4 forecast for a modest sum and had 1-2 a wee bit onside. The jolly made hard work of it and 2nd fav Lady Stanwix hit 1/2 in running before a late rally meant we got off to a small win instead of a small loss.
2) Another 4 runner job and we had Spark of Madness in for the max and Tico Times in for half. Only one winner from a long way out and our small profit from the first was eradicated and became a 0-0 bore draw after the 2nd.
3) Finally we started to see some activity, mainly on the jolly Poppa Poutine who we got stuck into for a max. Couple in the middle of the betting treading water and 3 decent winners at the bottom. One book observed that we "had a good book" but that was mainly because it looked "normal" to them. It wasn't as Poppa shortened relentlessly with our red all over it but we got a solid result with Catchmeifyoucan going well throughout and finishing strongly. In case you're think that all of a sudden we have gone into positive bookie mode we managed to give a bit back on the places in the best place market (from our point of view) we were going to see all week. We are simply never happy...
4) No normal book here. Apparently we had a poor book with 4 losers out of 7. In truth the right ones shortened and our book was worth 7 times what the previous one was. It just looked odd. We cashed in with a dream result as the smashed up Charlie Uberalles triumphed over all to give us a lovely win, this time supplemented by a cracking place result as well. 2 on the run and we were flying.
5) Straightforward book here- 1 loser for the max, Idlico, and a variety of winners from "virtually nil" to "ooh, that'd be a nice one". And we got the nice one as well, with Curious Times prevailing over aforementioned Idlico to make it 3 on the run after our other jackpot, Malangen, went out like Crisp all those years ago only to fall into a similar hole, albeit half a mile sooner.
6) And the gifts of Perth kept giving as another one from the bottom of the market, Shanbally Rose, came late to give us the absolute best possible result we could have had in win and place. We had 2 losers (Izzys Champion and Monsieur Co) and one straight across (Golden Chancer) all at the top of the market which supplemented our result still further. Apropos of absolutely nothing, as a result of many miles on the road, I "collect" business names which are puns and my mate's window cleaner is called "Monsieur Corners" which is one of my all time favourites.
7) They bet them all here so no hedging intervention required. Sadly they bet Calliope a bit more than the others so our day ended on a small loss but we could have absolutely no complaints overall and we outperformed our "green up" figure by about a factor of 4. Same again tomorrow please...
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