Popbitch Guide to Horse Racing
Written by: admin
Even if you don’t know anything about horse racing, it’s easy to follow with this short crib sheet.
A ten part guide.
Get to know the very best week of horse racing in the world - The Cheltenham Festival
And make a bet with Betfair (you get a free bet up to £25)
http://bit.ly/btZsVL
PART 1:
1. Horse Racing:
There’s a track, usually circular or oval, and a bunch of horses with little men wearing bright colours on their backs. During one afternoon’s race meeting there’s around 6 races, with about a thirty minute gap between each race. This is the time you drink, eat and place bets.
There are two different types of horse racing – National Hunt and Flat. National Hunt aka jump racing involves horses jumping over fences. In Britain this happens in the Winter, when the most famous races are the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National. In the Summer you get the posher kind of racing, where royals and celebs hang out wearing ridiculous hats and tail coats. National Hunt racing is a great place to start watching as it’s down to earth, there’s unlikely to be a dress code and most people are there to watch the horses and get a few drinks in.
2. The Horses
Horses start flat racing at the age of two or three. A lot of them retire when they are three, although some go on for a couple more years. The most valuable thing about successful flat racehorses is what they do after the track – breeding new flat race horses – so they don’t race for long in case they start to lose races and therefore drop in value. They then go to a stud farm and get to hang out having sex with other incredibly expensive horses for years.
This is not the case for jump racers. They start when they are a bit older and they can go on racing for years. This makes the horses more popular and usually more famous as they are not usually retired at such a young age and thus become familiar faces to race-goers over a number of seasons. The reason why this happens is because the horses have no breeding value, as all jump racers are geldings. A gelding is a male horse that has been castrated. I mean – you wouldn’t want to jump over a fence if your bollocks were going to catch on them every time, would you?
Some of the most famous recent horses include:
Red Rum, who won three Grand Nationals in the 1970s, a feat no horse has equalled. He’s one of the few horses to have brought out an autobiography, although it is true that it was ghost-written.
Desert Orchid aka “Dessie”, the most famous grey horse. Between 1986 and 1999 he won most big National Hunt races, including the Gold Cup. He retired in 1991 but then made appearances at many of the big horse races, and raised a lot of money for charity.He died in 2006, aged 27.
Best Mate never finished below second in a race and won three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups, 2002-2004. He was pulled out of the 2005 race a few days before it happened, after bursting a blood vessel, but came back later that year only to die of a heart attack in a race at Exeter. Best Mate was cremated and his ashes scattered near the winning post at Cheltenham, and there’s a Best Mate statue at Cheltenham now too.
Cheltenham Festival
For the last half century the Cheltenham festival had become the biggest National Hunt, or steeplechase, event. Because of the sport’s Irish roots – and because the racing usually coincides with St Patrick’s Day – a lot of Irish horses and spectators turn up. It is now the best National Hunt race meeting in the world. It is held over over four days in the second week of March. It features eleven Grade One races (ie the top level of race) and the Cheltenham Gold Cup on the Friday is the most prestigious Jump race in the world. The Grand National may be more famous but the horses who compete in the Gold Cup will be the best horses.
The start of the first race is marked by a lot of noise from spectators, known as the Cheltenham Roar.
The Cheltenham Festival is home to four of the biggest races in national hunt racing – the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the World Hurdle and the Champion Hurdle.
Tuesday has the Champion Hurdle
Absolutely all sorts of stuff about the Gold Cup and the Festival:
Odds/Betting
These show how likely it is for the horse to win the race.
If you are at the track thet are usually in the form of a fraction - eg 5-1
Which would mean the bookmaker think it has got 5 times as many chances of losing as winning.
“Evens” – means its got as good a chance of winning as losing
1-5 means it is thought to be very likely to win. (five times as likely to win as lose)
The favourite is the horse that the bookies/people think has most chance of winning. He will have the shortest odds.
e.g if you bet five pounds to win at 5-1 – if it wins you win 5 x 5 pounds – 25 pounds – plus the fiver that you bet (or “staked”) back
Each way – You can bet on a horse to finish in the first three of the race – you get 1/4 of the odds
e.g if you bet five pounds each way on a 8-1 horse. you have to give over ten pounds total – 5 pounds which backs it to win, and 5 pounds to back it for a place
(In some races you will win an each way bet if the horse finishes fourth or fifth – it depends on the number of horses in the race.)
The more modern way of showing odds is as a decimal. This is what you will see on Betfair.
Most bookmakers come up with odds that reflect how they think the race will go. You will get better odds at Betfair because it is a betting exchange, ie you will be betting against other people. For example, if you want to bet £10 on a horse to win, this means that someone else out there is betting £10 for that horse to lose.
Decimal Odds differ from the Odds traditionally quoted in the UK in that they include your stake as part of your total return. If you place a bet of £10 at Decimal Odds of 4.0 and win, then your total return (including stake) is £40. In the UK this would be quoted as 3/1, returning to you winnings of £30 plus your original stake of £10.
Converting Decimal Odds to Traditional Odds: Decimal Odds minus 1.0 = Traditional Odds (x to 1). Eg 4.0 = 3/1, 1.80 = 4/5 (0.8 to 1)
Evens in traditional odds is 2.0 in Decimal Odds (1.0 + 1)
Make a bet with Betfair (you get a free bet up to £25)
http://bit.ly/btZsVL
Tags: Best Mate, betfair, Cheltenham Festival, Desert Orchid, Racing, Red Rum
Posted in Popbets, Uncategorized |
