Royal Ascot 18/6/25 - The Painted Desert

Most bookmakers bet on the grass at Ascot. The good people in the maintenance team spray paint hash marks in front of our pitches where picnics are verboten, to allow punters to access bookmakers without stepping in anyone's egg and cress. Wasn't needed today as the lawns in front of us were a barren wasteland. Betting started slowly, had a massive lull in the middle and finished poorly. So, as always, please read "max" and "jackpot" in the context of a desperately poor take.

1) 4 losers, jolly True Love won us very small and we managed to lose in the places on the most bookmaker friendly place market of the day. Barely a move in either direction. We did have a very nice table of ladies behind us, however, who probably contributed 30% of our take. I was torn as to whether they were Spanish or French. Steve and Kevin on the other pitch were taking many more bets but at an average bet size that didn't overly trouble the scorers.

2) In a repeat of race 2 we had four losers and this time we didn't avoid the winner Carmers but, in a pleasant bit of inverse proportional (err) ness, we won back on the places what we lost on the win. Still quagmired financially amongst the parched earth. One of our table of ladies said "d'accord" so I was leaning with French.

3) More like it! We stood favourite, Cinderella's Dream, and Fallen Angel and hit a result in the fast finishing Crimson Advocate, topped up place wise as you'd expect with 7 runners when the odds on jolly comes 2nd. I proudly exclaimed "Bon chance" to our ladies. They looked slightly fearful.

4) And the good news continued as we stood Los Angeles and Anmaat and got a midrange win with Ombudsman but harder to top up in the places with an each way punter friendly event. Turned out our ladies were Ukrainian. I'm surprised they cam back tbh,

5) Boring book which resulted in a boring win on jolly My Cloud which, somewhat disappointingly, won without coming from the clouds.

6) Done On A Name Stakes with Miss Information inevitably a loser at Ascot in the archetypal CairnBet bingo book.

7) Stood the top two and got our reward in the last on next in Havana Hurricane which was, somewhat surprisingly, close to a skinner. The CairnBet bingo book cost us in race 6 but got us a beauty to finish with. Any line or your 4 corners.

As always with these weeks it's a case of in, food, blog, bed so they're short and occasionally sweet. Ladies Day tomorrow - we're hoping for an oasis of betting from today's desert. Until then...