THE ARGUMENT FOR

BY TONY KEENAN

Ante-Post betting on Cheltenham has had more deaths than an octogenarian celebrity on social media and, while it may not be what it once was – Willie Mullins bingo and the four-day (soon to be five-day?) Festival, I’m looking at you – there might be life in the beast yet. I have some thoughts.

1 ANTE-POST BETTING IS FUN

Modern betting can be cold with its spreadsheets and models (computer, not catwalk, ones) but no one can convince me that a punter gets the same kick out of a winning bet placed five minutes before the off as one placed five months beforehand. The latter is like a relationship, it ebbs and flows, petty jealousies creep in as you look as other punters with better looking dockets, but hope remains that it will blossom in spring.

In the weeks beforehand, you are constantly checking for news of your selection’s well-being, hoping they will make it to March intact, inwardly cheering when one of its rivals gets ruled out (note to self: do not do this publicly). This is the dream and while most will falter on the day or beforehand, a good ante-post winner is rewarding in more than the financial sense.

2GET YOURSELF ON A RUNNER

In my younger and cockier days, I bet many horses that didn’t run in the races they were supposed to. This reached its peak around 2016 when I backed 12 consecutive Willie Mullins runners that didn’t run where I thought they would, things reaching their apotheosis when Black Hercules won the JLT that year without a cent of my money on – it had already been used to back him for the National Hunt Chase and the RSA!

Part of this is an occupational hazard as horses can switch into unexpected races but there can also be punter arrogance here; you might well be cleverer than the trainer and they do make mistakes but there are no prizes for betting the right horse in the wrong race. Moral of the story: consider what suits the trainer, owner and even jockey and get yourself on a runner.

3LOOK AT THE MALIGNED RACES

They say the middle child in a family can be neglected (as a first-born, I wouldn’t know) but there can be little doubt that there is something of a middle-distance race syndrome going at the Festival, chiefly with the two big Thursday chases, the Ryanair and the JLT. There are still those three-day Festival truthers that would do away with these and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say connections don’t want to win these races, they certainly lack the allure of the contests run either side of them distance-wise.

This means the ante-post markets for both are littered with horses that aren’t going to run with the sum of probabilities of those likely participants often adding up to less – and sometimes much less – than 100%, an overbroke book. That’s a race you want to be betting in.

4CONSIDER RELATED FORM ANGLES

No bookmaker is going to let you bet Willie Mullins to be top trainer and Paul Townend to be top jockey in a double at the start of the meeting. It is a related contingency, if one has a winner the other likely will as well. They do, however, permit a form of related contingency, the related form multiple, where horses from the same race or crop go different routes at Cheltenham.

This is not a thing every year – there were thin pickings in 2019 – but it is worth watching out for. At Fishers Cross and The New One went their separate ways in 2013 after a neck separated them on Trials Day, with both winning at the Festival, while fans of the Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Novice Hurdle form in 2015 got the motherlode as Windsor Park, Martello Tower and Killultagh Vic all won at Cheltenham. Make sure to get on before the first one has run.

5THE HIDDEN COSTS OF ANTE-POST BETTING

Not everything about ante-post betting is rosy and there can be costs, aside from the obvious one that your bet may lose. The non-runner, no-bet ‘concession’, with its watered-down prices, can tempt punters into bets they shouldn’t make; beware bookmakers bearing gifts. Tying up bankroll is a cost and there are plenty of meetings between now and Cheltenham, not that you’d know it with all the hype.

There is also a significant time cost to studying any of the Festival handicaps. Looking at those races a fortnight out when the weights are released can mean you have to go 70 horses deep with all the multiple entries; that sort of depth is the guts of a full card most days. I’m all for ante-post betting being fun but when the fun stops and all that.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST

BY MARK COSTELLO

The term ‘ante-post’ means before they go to post, and a lot of punters like to take that to extremes, placing their Festival wagers before Christmas or in the 10 weeks leading up to the meeting as the entries trickle out. Yes, we know you once backed the RSA Chase winner at 14/1 in January and he went off 9/2 on the day - you haven’t shut up about it since – but what about all those ante-post bets of yours which never even made it to the races? Or the ones who ended up winning the ‘wrong’ race? Be honest – you would be far better off if you kept your powder dry until the declarations were out. Here are some reasons why.

1NO VALUE

All ante-post betting is high-risk, especially when it comes to horses. Injuries are common and ground conditions are more unpredictable than ever these days. These unknowns should be factored into the prices on offer but it certainly doesn’t seem like it.

And don’t talk to me about ‘non-runner, no bet’, a gimmick the bookies like to introduce about a month before the meeting. It is an undeniable fact that they shorten the odds the moment this so-called concession is introduced.

Let’s look at all the Grade 1 winners at the 2019 Festival and compare the prices on offer on those horses a month beforehand, to the price they were on the morning of the race and their SP.

In my book, this table should be enough to put you off ante-post betting for life. The right thing to do is to keep your money in your pocket until the night before or even the morning of the race.



2SPECIAL OFFERS

What about those special offers the bookies offer on the day of the race. Here’s a few from last year’s newspapers:

“We’re paying five places instead of four”

“Money back as a free bet on losers if the favourite wins”

“Money back as a free bet if you lose, on the first and last race every day”

“Paying four places instead of three on the Gold Cup”

“1/4 the odds a place on all Festival races”

“Money back as cash if you lose on the 1.30pm race every day”

This is potentially a huge advantage for the punter. In theory you could guarantee yourself a profit with some of these concessions. It has been clear for years now that the big bookmaker chains treat Cheltenham as a marketing exercise, a recruitment drive for fresh blood. They don’t mind losing a few quid if it means winning a larger share of the overall trade. Clued-in punters should be equally ruthless.

3TOO MANY OPTIONS

If Willie Mullins like to keep his Cheltenham options open until the last minute, so should you. Let all the other players, including the weather gods, make their moves before you commit. Let the Cheltenham preview circuit blow itself out with its endless stream of overconfident predictions. Allow yourself to take a fresh look at each race on the day, unhindered by attachments you have made to certain horses weeks and months in advance.

An emerging trend in recent years has been the increased concentration of the good horses in the hands of just a few trainers and owners. These connections will be doing their damnedest to keep their horses apart and find the easiest possible race they can win. You simply cannot expect to guess their running plans weeks in advance, so stop torturing yourself.

The betting market will be at its closest to 100% on the morning of the race or even later. That’s when you should swoop.