Betfair Official Blog

Racing Betting: TehHoldSteady, a God among tipsters

Jack Houghton has bad news for our racing columnists. There's a new guy in town, and he's good... Very good.

Simon Rowlands should now be regarded as useless. Graham Cunningham the same. Wayne Bailey, Andrew Hughes. Blah blah blah. They're all finished.

In fact, any tipster of the old-school might as well consider themselves retired. The game's up. Find something else to do boys.

Trust me, you're all peddling a second-rate product in an outdated format. You might as well be trying to sell Betamax videos of old Eldorado episodes.

It's a bit of a tragedy really. It's not as if you're bad people; it's just that time has moved on and you haven't realised it. You're a bit like those poor souls who persevered incommunicado when the rest of us visionaries were toting tool-box mobile phones.

All that work, all that knowledge, all that analysis: laid to ashes by the emergence of a tipstering deity. His name?

TehHoldSteady.

Okay, it's not exactly a catchy nom de plume for our new spiritual leader. But that's what he calls himself and it's not for us mortals to question. Just whisper it quietly and be glad of his intonations.

Not usually an advocate of religion - all that kneeling down plays havoc with my knees - this dawning of faith has surprised me. I guess, until now, most would have called me a heathen. Whenever asked if I believed in god, I would always reply, smugly: "I used to be an atheist; then I realised I was God."

No more. I worship TehHoldSteady now. And youtube is the church at which I hear his wisdom. Please join our holy throng here.

[link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILPrTzFMClk&feature=PlayList&p=16AFC3E860991EB3&index=0]

Anyone who has taken the plunge and watched his latest sermon will be unlikely to read on. How can this nonsense I'm writing compare to the word of the divine? But if you haven't yet watched, you may be interested to know what TehHoldSteady offers.

In the broadest sense, he's a tipster who propagates his thoughts via a vblog, or video web log in the long-hand. And it behooves us all to listen to what he says. So far he has a 100 per cent record. And how many of the unqualified monkeys allowed a platform from which to tip can claim that accolade?

But this success rate is of lesser import than the elegance, panache and downright élan with which he delivers his verdicts.

Last week, after his customary greeting: "Hello there interwebs," he continued to tell us that Natagora would win the 1,000 Guineas. He told us 7-2 was the price to take, as she would probably start "around two and a half." How right he was.

Now, TehHoldSteady is not the most succinct of tipsters. We didn't find out the name of the horse he recommended until the end of his piece. Before then he regaled us with his computer woes, told us about his state of mind, informed us his cat was going mental and then forgot which horse he was about to tip. But the mind of a futurist has a lot to compute, and he got there in the end, so he should be forgiven. The tip, when it came, was worth the wait.

In other offerings, he asks the most pertinent of questions. "What year is it?" for example. Some might think he doesn't know. Some might think his previous admittance of: "I've been pretty sober since Wednesday, although I have had some morphine in" perhaps indicates he is not the most stable-minded of men and that, just maybe, him asking the year is a genuine request for information. But they would be wrong. This man not only knows what year it is, he knows the time of day when it comes to tipping horses.

So I'm starting a cult. Start posting below when you too have joined the church of TehHoldSteady and let the profits roll in.