THERE has been a huge amount of race-specific Cheltenham advice flying around of late, and I’ve had my say on the Championship races elsewhere, but there are

still underlying rules that we all need to abide by to avoid bad beats next week.

In this week’s column, I’ve tried to cover off some of the most dangerous traps that Cheltenham Festival punters tend to fall into. Best of luck, however you decide to play it.

Only bet race-by-race if you’re ‘having fun’

I USE the old rabbit ears for good reason there, as while we’re all reminded to gamble responsibly, the corollary to that is that we’re all meant to have fun as we slowly lose our pocket money through the course of the day.

It’s like a structured payment scheme – you shell out upwards of a hundred quid – also available in euro – to get into the course; a sort of “natural amphitheatre tax” if you like, but in order to actually enjoy the day, you then have to pay £7.50 for “tonsil lubrication” before every race (some tonsils work harder than others and need extra lubrication as a result).

It’s unethical, and quite possibly illegal, to cheer home a winner you haven’t backed, so you have to cough up another £20 per race in case the ethics police have you ejected. This is twice as likely to happen at Cheltenham for reasons I shouldn’t need to explain. This system works well for society as a whole. Everyone is drinking, gambling, singing and falling over responsibly and having their pockets lovingly emptied at the same time.

The drawback for the assiduous punter is that four days of this sort of fun will frequently put a large hole in your budget, which is fine if you’re going broke responsibly, but not as much fun as you’d expect when you check your bank balance the following Monday.

It’s twice as bad when your wife checks it. Perhaps your idea of fun – like mine – is coming out of Cheltenham just ahead.

Let’s be blunt, it might be amazing to win a million quid, but there is no sweeter feeling than throwing your entire soul into defeating the old enemy at Cheltenham and coming out £12.40 to the good. If that is what you strive for, then you can’t waste money betting on races you don’t like, or Guinness you don’t like, for that matter.

Don’t listen to a friend of a friend of a friend

AND definitely don’t listen to the milkman of a friend of a friend. You have been poring over the entries, acceptors, confirmations and declarations for weeks on end. You’re a smart lad/lass and you know the strengths and weaknesses of the major contenders.

So why are you backing something you couldn’t make a case for in the Coral Cup on the basis of a rumour, the source of which is always impossible to locate? Well, you figure, I didn’t fancy anything anyway, so what’s the harm?

After three hurdles, you begin to feel the harm swelling inside you, but it’s not financial. Oh, the shame of wading in like a mug when all your finely honed instincts told you to leave it well alone. It’s not the losing, it’s the losing your dignity that hurts. You’re better than that, and you know you are.

Don’t get derailed by trends (adopt serious face at this point)

CONTROVERSIAL one this, and there are some fine exponents of the Cheltenham Festival trend, but while good analysis – even someone else’s – is always to be respected, the truth is that trends should be demonstrating underlying principles. Those which do are taken as gospel, by trainers as well as punters, while the more recently unearthed ones, which are captivating because of their novelty, tend to be anomalies.

Certain trainers tend to smash trends for fun. Willie Mullins can only win with novices was one compelling trend in the pre-X age, and easy money was to be had laying his runners in the championship chases. That was still statistically true seven or eight years ago but say it now and you’ll rightly be laughed out of town.

Henry de Bromhead is also no respecter of trends, ignoring rules that say contenders for certain races should have run X number of times or in specific races to be considered. His 23 Festival winners shows that his cavalier attitude to “the stats” is paying off for him. His Workahead will try to win the Supreme straight out of a maiden hurdle, which is unheard of, but Henry seems serene. Henry is always serene – take note.

Look for the facts behind the trends, not simply the trends, to aid your punting. Hold-up chasers perform better on the Old Course than the New Course for example, but not for the reasons usually put forward. Front-runners are generally favoured on both Old and New courses, but the primary difference between the two tracks at the Festival is that a significant strip of fresh ground is kept for the Gold Cup, meaning that the course is remarkably narrow on the Thursday. That exacerbates the disadvantage faced by hold-up horses in those races, and a closer look at the stats shows that the profit to be made siding with prominent racers on the New Course comes almost exclusively from races run on the Thursday.

Another danger with “front runner” trends is that all P&L is based on the front runners in the races analysed, which is a data point known only after the fact. Front runners can be backed blind for a profit at most tracks, but backing horses who you expect to make the running isn’t the same thing. Any stat suggesting an advantage to those making the running should be fact-checked based on previous run styles to see how robust it is.

Don’t trust the official going description

THE going next Tuesday is very likely to be good to soft. That’s what Jon Pullin is aiming for, and that’s what Simon Claisse was aiming for before him. They are both good at their jobs (Philip Arkwright was firm, but then he was a Major), but they are slow marking their own homework, so are almost certainly going to give their work an A* unless there’s an unexpected downpour on Monday or Tuesday.

The going is a hugely important part of your appraisal of a race, so don’t blithely assume it’s yielding. The Supreme is almost always a true-run race and the winner’s time tends to be a very accurate gauge of the actual state of the ground.

So go through the recent history of the race and note which times correspond with what going – Timeform’s independent assessment based on actual times is obviously a better guide than the official reckoning, but as long as you do your research now, you’ll be on solid ground – so to speak – after just one race next week. That can be invaluable.