Welcome to Punters Corner with Roman Koz

The article "Lights on at Money Valley" (Herald Sun , Jul 26) was a magnificent advertisement for Moonee Valley but as hard as I looked I saw nothing for the punter. A $75,000 luxury car for the trainer who horses win more than one million dollars at the night meetings, a $30,000 cash prize for the jockey whose mounts win more than one million dollars at night meetings and the introduction of a 55 second challenge for the fastest horse over the new 955m course would win the trainer a $55000 car and the jockey a $10000 watch.

The ride of the night earns the jockey $500 and an $85000 bonus for any trainer who trains the winner of the 3yo Alister Clarkes Stakes-Wfa Cox Plate double is also on the agenda as well as other jockey and trainer incentives. According to MVRC Chief Executive, Michael Browell, the club has "dared to be different" and different it has become because the initiatives will benefit owner, trainers and jockeys tremendously but what about Mr/Ms Punter?

Is there anything like a few $500 free bets or prizes for a punter or two or is there anything like a tipping contest where a common pool is won by the best tipster on the night? What about a few free tickets to the Cox Plate or even a free seasons ticket or two? What about a seasons ticket with reduced costs per meeting? What about, what about, what about????

It constantly amazes me the punter is so often forgotten in promotions yet where are the clubs without them? Just watch the crowds drop anywhere and the first thing lamented is all the outside competition racing has to contend with but nought is mentioned about incentives to head trackwise.

Personally, Moonee Valley is my favourite track by a good two lengths. I love the closeness of the track, the undercover facilities and the nooks and crannies of the grandstand but if I just had a few serious incentives to go I would be there more than just a couple of times per year.

Listen up, Moonee Valley. What about some bonuses for the punter?

For years and years the catch cry of form students has been weights, weights and nothing but weights however in recent times there has been a movement in the punting world that believe this worth challenging. Rem Plante drove a push for weights with his Nomograph ADE Scale, where you had to use a ruler to measure the importance of weight shifts, and immortal Australian punter Don Scott really hammered home the arguments for weights in his series of books. In my early days I was enthralled, as many punters were, by the amazingly analytical discussions on radio each Saturday morning by Cliff Cary. These were out and out weights men.

Whether you believe in weights these days or not is up to you but tomorrow in Race 7 at Moonee Valley there is a classic weights situation that would have had Cliff Cary waxing lyrical and declaring one horse could not beat the other home, at the weights. On July 10 Figure Of Speech, carrying 55kg, beat Crabs, carrying 54.5kg, by one length or, as weight experts say, by 1.5kg.If Crabs had 1.5kg less there would have been a theoretical deadheat therefore there is 2kg between the two, at the weights.Tomorrow, after the claim, Crabs will carry 51kg while Figure Of Speech will carry 59kg thus Crabs is 6kg, or 4 lengths, better off.

Form students will point out Crabs has had 11 runs at MV for 1 win and Figure Of Speech two runs with one of the runs a respectable 4.8 lengths defeat in the Moonee Valley Cup. Not even Crab's mother would believe he could finish as close in a Group race run at Set Weights and Penalties on Cox Plate day.

You know what I am going to ask, don't you. Which of the two do YOU favour to finish ahead of the other?

Far too many punters shy away from favourites yet they offer the punter a better opportunity for profit making than the so called "value" horses. Value horses typically are 5/1 plus and for some punters horses must be 10/1 or longer before they are considered for betting purposes. What has to be realized is the shorter the price the less the punter loses per dollar invested hence it makes sense to seek bets in an area of less volatility.

If a study was to be made which detailed 500 runs for every price range from $1.10 to $101 plus it would show, barring minor variances, an amazingly linear set of profit and loss figures. I mention profit because in some studies I have seen over the years the shortest priced favourites, that is, those at $1.30 or less show a profit yet those are the exact horses Mr and Mrs Public try to avoid by citing they are not "value".

Where a mug punter can turn the corner and become an astute punter is in their assessment of whether a favourite is a true favourite. Broadly speaking the favourite has passed the overall scrutiny of the punting public but as good as the public is overall it still makes mistakes. By the way if you don't think the public is all that good then try and pick 30% winners race after race all year long over all sorts of distances, classes and track conditions. In order to increase the 30% figure the punter must delve deeper into the form lines and start eliminating dodgy favourites.

So what constitutes a false favourite? Clearly lack of fitness must be the leading reason and pre race the first clue we punters have is the date of the horses last start. The worst dates are those for first uppers and the higher the racedate number the riskier proposition the favourite becomes. All previous runs around first up runs must be evaluated especially in relation to distance. A first up win over 1000m is not the same as a first up attempt at 1200m. Any favourite first up at 1200m who has only won at 1000m, or even 1100m, is a false favourite. Keep away from them and you will save money.

The death of a top class racehorse is always a sad moment for the racing fraternity and with the death of Zeditave another chapter of Australian horserace history passes by. The racing world loves a fighting racehorse, who just gives and gives, and Zeditave was one of this rare type of racehorse. I am not sure whether it was one of the jockeys or the trainer, Angus Armanasco, but it was said the jockey needed to be quite strong as Zeditave only needed to see a whiff of a space between two runners and he would start to barge his way through. Timidity was not in his makeup.

It's easy to forget he won his first six starts as a 2yo, including the Blue Diamond Stakes, and came back to win another eight races to finish with an amazing fourteen wins from just seventeen starts. Amongst those wins were the Futurity Stakes, William Reid Stakes and the Lightning Stakes as well as winning the Champion Three Year Old of his year. Vale to Zeditave.

While trawling through the fields I came across Race 1 in Brisbane where the topweight Hidden Wonder is weighted on 58.0kg with the rest of the field on the 53kg limit. As punters we must always look out for the rising classy types and try and follow them through their careers but the horse not always mentioned is the "class racehorse of the field". This is the horses that has stood out as far as this class is concerned.Would you ever want a clearer indication of a horse the handicapper considers a standout? When you realize the trainer, Kris Lees, has travelled from Newcastle with his mare, and has found what looks a very winnable race, you start to reach for the wallet.

Hold onto your hats because the first faltering steps of the 2010 Spring carnival is about to lurch into action this Saturday. Although the official racing year starts on August 01 the unofficial start, as far as I am concerned, starts with the wfa Sir John Monash Stakes and here it is.

As you know I am in Mark Kavanagh's corner this Spring (wow, that's not hard to do) and I note he has Elusive Touch entered while I have decided to add Joseph Pride and Chris Waller to my trainers list and the former has entered Electric Dreams. Formwise, at the weights, we are guessing as fitness levels versus weight advantage (Royal Ida must have that at wfa) is always just an educated guess but if I am going to follow a couple of stables I need a plan of attack.

The plan will be to back the runners I like from the stables to win $100 each win as long as I receive what I consider a fair price. Naturally, that's when the fun begins because "what is a fair price?" but that will be my decision as the betting progresses. Sometimes it will be 20/1 while other times it will be 2/1. What about you? What are your thoughts about stable betting? What is your minimum acceptable price? Yes, there is a bit to think about, isn't there. If my attack works early in the carnival I shall be raising the objective per win and who knows what amount I will be shooting for by the time the real Spring carnival is in full flight? It could be chocolates or boiled lollies.

The keen ones among you will have had a look at the weights for Saturday and would have noticed two Bart Cummings runners have been entered: the enigmatic Moatize and the Melbourne Cup aspirant, Precedence.

Like I said earlier - hold onto your hats.

I was going to follow up my trainer blog tomorrow, or even Saturday morning, but as I will be chauffering a punting mate from Queensland this weekend and time may be an issue I thought I would have a look at the jockey figures as well this morning. He must be a good mate because he will have me rising about 4am Saturday morning to drive to Cranbourne and for an early Sunday drive to Caulfield not to mention pick up and dropping off at Tullamarine. Guess who is shoutimg me dinner on Saturday night, plus drinks!!

Once you compare the trainer figures with the jockey figures you could easily come to the conclusion following jockeys is a better overall proposition as even though two jockeys stand out across Australia, figures wise, the gap between several of the other jockeys is not as wide as the trainers, the way I look at the stats. If we start from the top we find Australia's best jockey, based on The Sportsman's figures, is Paul Harvey from WA (54.5 wins - 220 runners - 24.77%). Close behind is Nash Rawiller (79 wins - 353 runners - 22.37%) and the next closest is Brent Evans (Vic: 27 wins - 145 runners - 18.62%). There are several jockeys just behind Brent Evans and they include J Parr, M Rodd, J Bowman and C Lever.

What surprises, as with the trainers, are the poorer figures for a few of the higher profile jockeys. In Sydney G Schofield (11.55%), Blake Shinn (10.94%) surprise a fraction while in Melbourne D Dunn (9.48%), D Nikolic (8.52%) C Symons (8.50%) have poor figures but the most surprising is C Newitt (7.63%).

I need to say, however, that the figures, for trainers and jockeys, presented cover all price ranges and some will have better percentages if we use figures closer to the favourites end of prices.

Just the same Rule 1: Jockeys must be "follow Paul Harvey" and Rule 2: Jockeys must be "follow N Rawiller".

For years I have wondered why Australian horseracing rates the best jockeys and trainers based on their total wins for the season and I have come to the only conclusion possible: it's the easiest. The rest of the world has many definitions of success but generally percentages become the only true barometer. Would you invest your superannuation money in a fund yielding 6% or 5.5%? The answer is a no brainer.

This season the Sydney training premiership will be won by Peter Snowden. Based on published data on Tuesday in "The Sportsman" he has trained 92 winners from 543 runners for a win average of 16.94% while Gai Waterhouse has trained 68 winners from 347 runners for a win average of 19.59%. A quick tap on the calculator shows Gai is a 13.52% better trainer (19.59% minus 16.94% = 2.65% x 100 = 265%/19.59 = 13.52) yet no recognition is shown for her better performance.

Punters backing every runner trained by the David Hayes stable in Melbourne and Adelaide would be wondering why such a high profile trainer has such poor training figures. All told he has had 73 wins from 734 runners for a strike rate of 9.94% but he is not the worst. In Perth Neville Parnham has had 613 runners for 39 winners for a miserable win percentage of 6.36%.

We punters have a hard, tough life but surely concentrating on the truly top trainers MUST be the way to go if following trainers is one of our betting strategies. For the record the best trainer in Australia, based on the figures in "The Sportsman", is Mark Kavanagh with his Melbourne and Adelaide runners totaling 82 winners from 323 runners for a fantastic win percentage of 25.38%. Backing every one of his runners actually showed a profit, albeit a mere $2 odd, but which punter can honestly say they had 323 bets across all sorts of classes and broke square.

So, Trainers:Rule 1 for the 2010-2011 racing season has to be "follow Mark Kavanagh". This does not mean you have to back every runner but closely following this excellent trainer, when all the planets align, must have you in the right ball park to start with.

If you would like a personal tip from a trainer you could not have gone past Gerald Ryan's move to bring Ironstein to Caloundra for the Cup. Ironstein had won his last two races in Sydney quite comfortably in restricted Benchmark 80 races and to have Ironstein contest the Listed Caloundra Cup, against the solid staying contenders in the race, was a confident move worth noting.

The likes of trainers like Gai Waterhouse, Peter Snowden and Peter Moody shift from state to state regularly these days and an interstate move by them is similar to knowing water comes out of a tap however some trainers don't overdo this sort of training and Gerald Ryan is one of these trainers. Trainers like Chris Waller and Joseph Pride from Sydney rarely travel interstate but watch them when they do in the future for this duo are top class trainers. Be aware there are many trainers who move around and win a race or two but long term you lose backing them as they seem to have too many runners so think about your Trainers Stable carefully.

While you are thinking about trainers try and think of how some trainers have won races. Were they first up or off a 7 day or less back up? The trainers of regular winners off breaks or quick backup runs really need to know what they are doing. What are the trainers like at getting their horses to win two or more consecutive races? There are many ways to think about trainers and their methods and if you can work a few out you have a big start in the right direction.

In the next couple of weeks I will be thinking about which trainers I will follow over the Spring carnivals. Undoubtedly C Waller and J Pride will head my list as will G Ryan when he brings runners south to Sydney and Melbourne.

Here we are at the end of the financial year as well as the Brisbane carnival but in no time whatsoever the Spring carnivals will be upon us. I am reminded of this in no mean order as I note that the high class runners Predatory Pricer, Herculian Prince and Hinchinbrook are strutting their stuff on the training tracks and Theseo is already out and about running 1200m gallops. I also noted in an article in "The Sportsman" that Bart Cummings is firing up Allez Wonder, So You Think and Faint Perfume for their spring campaigns as well as the promising Precedence. No doubt Bart has a couple of other Spring candidates on the boil and we all await to see how many Group 1 races this legend can win in the 2010-2011 racing season.

Personally, this is the time of the year when I start planning my 43rd Spring campaign. In the August edition of PPM I will finish of a series of articles by discussing my thoughts on tackling the trifecta and First Fours. So far my attacks on both forms of betting has been littered with hard luck stories and tales of amazement and the development of a hole in my wallet that almost needs medical attention. It is my intention to tackle the toughest, better class open handicap/s available each week using the Roving Banker option.

I have tinkered with a target betting method for a few months with different objectives and divisors for win and place betting and have finally felt it is time to up the ante a fraction. I like the idea of forming a no form study "Betting Stable" where I back each horse to win a certain amount per run (target betting) and I will be really tightening the figures I have in the Generic Ratings (Universal Handicap) project I have been developing for the last twelve months. This is simply a set of ratings for every runner on my list over certain distance ranges for each runner.

I could add other betting attacks, such as trainers and jockeys, but how many different bet forms can one person keep a proper track of? Laying horses on Betfair is another option but this demands a tremendous amount of self control and I sometimes wonder how much of that I have!!

What about you? What are your Spring campaign plans?

I knew the lure of Fox Classics would get to me eventually and here I am watching/listening to an episode of "Gunsmoke". Things will only get "worse" because I have only recently started subscribing to the Foxtel package that allows me to watch just about every channel and while I have been trawling the Foxtel program guide my lips are starting quiver with anticipation. Although most of you would be aware I am a horseracing tragic you do not know years ago I was TV addict.

The first television show I ever saw was the UK series "The Adventures of Robin Hood" starring Richard Greene and by the end of the show I was hooked. Within a matter of a couple of months I started collecting magazines, like TV Week, TV Times and Listener In Weekly. To say I devoured their pages would be an understatement and within no time at all I knew all the stars and costars of all the television series of the time, especially the westerns. I don't know what causes people to become record keepers but there was no stopping me and within a couple of years I had index cards on over 1500 character actors and actresses. I might add I was about fifteen.Every time I saw a familiar face I jotted down their appearance and eventually I was able to list the names of actors not even shown in the official cast lists.

To say I loved a western would be the classic understatement and shows like "The Lone Ranger" and "Rin Tin Tin" were precursors to later adult shows like "Gunsmoke", "Cheyenne", "Bronco", "Bonanza" and the show I will be watching in about 30 minutes, "Maverick". To this day I can still rattle off the main stars of all the major western TV series of the late 1950's and 1960's as well as many of the other genres as well. It was while I was watching "Cheyenne" I came across my favourite character actor, the unbelievable Jack Elam, through his portrayal of a character no one bar myself seems to remember called Toothy Thompson. If any of you have seen the "support your local sheriff" films where Jack Elam costarred with Brett Maverick (James Garner) you will understand what sort of a scoundrel Toothy
Thompson was.

As "Gunsmoke" is about to finish I note that an actor called Ken Curtis is portaying the character Festus Hagen, the follow on side kick to Matt Dillon vacated when Dennis Weaver (Chester Goode) left the series. Ken Cutis was in a TV series called "Ripcord" with Larry Pennell ...... gosh, I need to stop. Go to the website http://www.b-westerns.com/kcurtis.htm and have a look at the photos and information.. I suddenly have the urge to watch "Rio Grande" after reading this quote, "One of my favorite western musical memories is Ken Curtis doing the lead (with the Sons of the Pioneers) on "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen" in the Ford and Wayne RIO GRANDE (1950)"

Now, moving on to
"whose the tall dark stranger there, Maverick is his name"

Blow me down: Roger Moore is on the show BUT not as Brett's UK cousin Beauregard. Sit back, Roman and enjoy.