/ Perfect Punter / 24 March 2010 / Leave a Comment

Cheltenham Radio presenter Dave Farrar brings you ten lessons to take forward for Cheltenham 2011

Iloveitihateitiloveitihateitiloveitihateitiloveit. Cheltenham week will forever be my favourite of any year, and that will never change, but as well as lifting you, inspiring you, bringing out every emotion possible, the place just below Cleeve Hill can try your patience like nowhere else. I ended up having one of my best Festivals for years from a punting point of view, and I'd love to say that it was all to do with the Perfect Punter mentality kicking in, to do with a gimlet eyed and devastatingly analytical approach. But that would be a lie.

Every well planned bet, every coup that I'd been planning for months, went wrong. My profit came from guesses, from happenstance. It made me doubt the sense of this entire Perfect Punter endeavour, but then I realised that different rules apply at Cheltenham, and that, unless you're a Patrick Veitch or Dave Nevison, a pro who needs it, then normal betting rules should go out of the window and Cheltenham should be about enjoying the best that racing has to give for a week. So, after a hurly burly four days, here are the rules that I am determined to employ next year.

1) If, from the previous year's Ryanair onwards, you tell everyone who'll listen that Imperial Commander will win the Gold Cup and that the whole Kauto/Denman thing is a mirage, then make sure that you have a proper bet on the horse, so that every text message you receive thanking you for the tip and congratulating you on what must have been a life changing bet doesn't feel like a dagger to the heart. For what it's worth, I think that the Commander is way too short for next year's race, and that Cooldine may be the one that improves enough with age to win next year.

2) Either treat Cheltenham Week as a jolly, enjoy what the town has to offer and stagger blearily through racing, or go there as a pro and analyse races properly. Don't go down the half and half route that I saw so much last week. Men who should know better allowing alcohol to convince them that this would be the bet that changed their life. By all means chuck a tenner at a race, but four figures? Nooooooooo.....

3) Don't wear slippy leather soled shoes in the toilets on the way to the Guinness Village. Unless you give yourself a chance of some traction, it's like Laurel and Hardy, only with more wee.

4) Tom Segal in the Racing Post proved this week that blindly following Pricewise isn't the worst thing to do at Cheltenham. A [13.0] and [40.0] winner on the opening day was proof that, while it's fun to try and work things out for yourself, it's more fun to back winners, however you find them.

5) On that same subject, if a well dressed Scouser comes up to you and tells you, and I mean TELLS you, that a Donald McCain horse will win the next race, then take note and back it. (See last week's Perfect Punter)

6) When the aforementioned Scouser tells you that one of his party won Slimmer of the Year , don't introduce the odd looking bloke with saggy skin who's standing next to him as the "Slimmer of the Year" on air, only to be told that you've got the wrong bloke and the real weight loss champion hasn't arrived at the course yet.

7) No matter how bullish you are about the chances of a horse, and how rock solid its chances seem on the book, never take anything for granted at Cheltenham. Strange things can happen, even to horses who have won there before, as I found out to my cost with Tell Massini in the Albert Bartlett.

8) We fail to learn this lesson every year, but you could do a lot worse than to ignore what bare form figures suggest, and remember to keep on your side the Cheltenham veterans who love this course and run big races here. At decent prices, I give you Mister McGoldrick, Arcalis and Pigeon Island.

9) Get to the course as early as you can. It's the best way to cut out the noise, to take a quiet moment, and to make your selections as sensibly as possible before all logic is drowned out. Plus, at 10.30am on a sunny day, there is nowhere in the world that's more beautiful.

10) My final lesson has to be the negative one that we learned from Binocular's win in the Champion Hurdle. I'm not sure what the lesson is, but I do know that I've never felt more angry as a punter. I don't know what happened, and I can't suggest that anything untoward took place, but I do know that a horse for which every vibe had suggested was not right (compare for example the performance of Solwhit, whose preparations were similarly hampered) won the race practically on the bridle and that the contrast between what we were told and what ended up happening was just wrong, plain wrong. I don't mind feeling like a mug, but at least give me a chance to be a mug on my own terms.

And that, friends, is it for another year. Roll on the next 11 months and three weeks.

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