Perth 26/4/23 - Correct Answer, Wrong Workings Out

Forget Kelso last week, for the last couple of nights we've been graced with actual bookmaking royalty as Pinno brought his tash, his repartee and his clubs to stay with us. He even deigned to allow me to thrash him at golf. Twice. You can teach many things but you can't teach class. A very enjoyable 36 holes followed by tag team couch snoozing whilst attempting to watch the Leeds v Leicester game. It may have been the golf that brought on the intermittent slumber but the Brewdog was the more likely culprit.

Arrived at Perth to see queues forming at the entrance and a number of coaches lined up. We were optimistic our 2nd midweek venture in a couple of weeks was to pay dividends in the hope of a decent crowd. We got that bit horribly, horribly, wrong. Business was desperately quiet throughout punctuated by the odd reasonably sized bet so please read the following in the context of only taking 30 bets a race. CairnBet regulars will know that we have a maximum liability overall which is capped at a maximum of around half of what we take on a race. The "half of what we take" liability gave us virtually no room for manoeuvre at all so we had to go a wee bit higher but it remained steadfastly modest.

1) Max liability (75% of what we took) on Invictus World plus half on jolly Bleu Denfer and coppers on Dance Thief. We got a skinner with the massive priced Nowinittowinit. This particular skinner, of course, being on the rather skinny side. Still expenses were covered. We honoured our Twitter obligation to Paul next door and gave him a free quid bet which he fecklessly gambled on the absolute rag Bayonetta. Which ran on to finish 3rd. Phew, thank goodness he didn't have a ten bob each way- we'd have lost half the profit. Almost without any exaggeration. Forecast also skinned for the fiver reverse on the 6-8/8-6 result. Our cup doth run over.

2) We limped on at our 30 bet a race quota and had half the runners bogeys in a 6 runner job (jolly Huelgoat, Universal Folly and Fusain). We thanked our lucky starts that Thommo wasn't in attendance to utterly mangle the favourites pronunciation. Though we did very much enjoy whoever was calling the race discuss errors in the horse's "pronounciation". Highbrow irony from the CairnBet blog- who'd have thunk it? Grey Skies an appropriately named winner and another virtual skinner for another couple of hundred quid. Hard to win much when you don't take much, even on the bookie friendly results in the first two.

3) A Lucinda favourite at Perth is about as palatable a winning combination at Perth as gin and dishwater from a bookmaking perspective. Half the profit gone and Sword of Fate nibbled a bit more away as the worst place. Still, we doubled our forecast profit for the day with another tenner chalked up. Woo hoo.

4) Max on jolly Makinyourmindup which was never in it- he'd gotta speed it up. A Eurovision gag seems appropriate- you're welcome. Lucinda's outsiders get a bit of interest at Perth as well so another stonking looking result on Giovinco didn't quite translate to as much as you'd expect. Still a win is a win and this was a win. Smallish but positive. Scu sounded happy as well. I suspect that's not the last we'll hear of that win. Very impressive.

5) 6 runners, 3 losers again in what was becoming rather typical fashion for us. Brides Hill fell at the first and the other liabilities (Haute Estime and Kapard) never threatened so a decent win was eked out on 2nd favourite Pink Legend. As is often the case when you have a terrible book (and we had a terrible book after laying the 11/10 favourite for a chunky bet at 13/8) we ended up winning supplemented by 3 tenners in the forecast. Don't want to be looking at that every race though.

6) How many girls' names can you get in an 8 runner race? 7 as it turns out. Including 2 names in the same horse. We had liabilities on Linda and Lil whilst Soph, Holly, Maimie and the double bubble Marta/Lindy at the bottom of the market were all winners. Starlyte was also a loser and I suspect some C list celebrity somewhere has a darling daughter of that name also. As it turned out it was original favourite, and least likely girl's name, Autumn Return who continued to gently nudge us forward again.

7) And the final race threw up the "Wrong Lyrics" race. I started the warbling with "Last of the Famous International Playboys" chucked out on every bet for "Lastofthecosmics". Steve, realising that I was no longer getting my Pap FM quota, shoehorned the Take That dirge-fest "Greatest Day Of Our Lives" into the "The Longest Day" betting and, for light relief most of the bookmaker row joined in with classic La's hit "There She Goes" along with a number of like minded punters and even that was spelt "Their" in the equine world. Presumably for copyright purposes. Honestly it was like a 1970s street party in the last today. Fortcanyon gave us the best result of the day despite doing the price hokey cokey as we stood Something Golden and Lastofthecosmics. Biggish liabilities in the place market on Cosmics and Red Missile paid off as we had a cracking place result as well.

Overall the figures were 150 bets short of what we would consider workable but we ended up with a pretty solid win given the awful take. 10/10 for the answer, 0/10 for the working out.

We're trying again tomorrow in the rain. Not expecting much but we'll try. Until then...