Posts Tagged denman
Trading the drifting Denman
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 28th, 2010
With a tough week already, it looked like Saturday was going to be a white out as well. Fortunately Newbury survived with a quality card and that gave me a reason to sit behind my desk. I’ve typically done OK at the Hennessy gold cup, so wanted a fair crack at it. When you have been going for a few years you can’t but resist looking at previous years and having that as an unofficial target. Tough when the most of the racing has been cancelled.
The predominant factor in the early market was the drift on Denman.
Denman was asked to carry 2st and with uncertain ground, it was probably this that set of the drift. I don’t follow horse form so I can’t confirm that, but I suspect that the ground could have been reason that the drift set in? With that weight in such a competitive field, I’d also be surprised if the market didn’t think Denman was a little short at his early price. Either way there was a drift.
So how would you trade this? Most people would extrapolate the current trend and lay first, but that would have been a disaster here as Denman went off at an SP of 5.9. It’s typically a common issue that you see in many markets, that people put too much weight on something that has just happened and project it into the future. Often the past has little relationship to the future.
If I toss a coin and it comes up heads ten times in a row I may suspect the coin is biased. But unless I have firm evidence of that, I have to assume the next toss is 50/50. Most people would put undue weight on heads in this scenario. I didn’t choose heads and because of that got the result I wanted from this race. But I bet you there were a lot of people that laid at 7.60!
Only a few seconds..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 15th, 2010
Amazing how a few seconds can make such a difference.
Ahead of the Eon chase we were speculating in the office at how short a price Denman was. In fact it was more like moaning, because we knew it would make getting anything out of the race pretty difficult. Our conclusion was that the incredibly skinny odds of 1.17 or thereabouts really represented the fact that Denman was going to win easy, except if he fell. We watched the race and witnessed Denman just trotting around the Newbury circuit with ease. We still continued our discussions as the race was underway. At which point I piped up and said, “I’m going to lay him”. I already had a reasonable, though not spectacular, profit on the race and just fancied my chances. No sooner had I said that than he stumbled, I never got filled at 1.05. Then he clattered into the next and it was all over. A few seconds early and I could have possibly had my biggest ever single daily total! Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing.
I switched quickly to the gold cup market but it seems many others had already and his price had already drifted enough.
So close for Kauto
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on November 21st, 2009
Well, what a race that was. I really though Kauto Star had lost it, but it was always going to be a bob of the head that got it ultimately. The market got the photo finish wrong for once, but I must admit I also thought Kauto Star had lost it.
Benefit of form and horse related knowledge made this a good trade opportunity today. This morning I phoned around a couple of horse racing types and talked to them about the race. One thing came across and that was that Kauto liked soft ground and it seemed to be a race well set up for the horse. You can see the market thought so also.
I managed to equal my total on the race from last year, on what turned out to be a good day. But I should have done better to be honest. With plenty in the bank I kept trying to catch a bounce out, but it never happened. I wasted a lot of money doing that. Sometimes it works very well and it was worth a go. Made more on other races, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
In reaction to this race I laid Kauto Star for the King George VI. Will hold the position for a little while, but it looks like I have made a mistake there as well. I don’t trade Ante Post much unless I have a good reason to do so, so I am not well practiced but it seemed an opportunity. Denman runs next week so I guess that will define how the Gold Cup ante post looks between these two.
