Robin Keck's Stable Form: Hot and cold

Betting Strategy / Robin Keck / 25 May 2009 / Leave a Comment

Mr Keck interrupts his holiday to tell us why he welcomes Venetia's poor form, why Keith Reveley is out in the cold and who is back amongst the winners...

The Flat Season is getting more interesting as we have more 2009 form to rely on combined with regularly changing ground conditions. Pre-Betfair, when I couldn't lay horses, this would be a good time to announce to Mrs K that we need to spend more quality time as a family. Thankfully, those darkdays are over so despite being on a family holiday on the beautiful South Devon coast, I'm in the local cafe tapping away on t'internet. I'll make up for it (aka pay for it) later.

Column highlight of the week is the continued poor form of Venetia's horses with 7/4, 6/5, 4/7 shots all running poorly (although former was placed in third). As I warned last week, you have to tread carefully when this stable goes quiet so I was (for once) patting myself on the back for my discipline when not chasing the place price on Lord Jay Jay at Stratford. He won the race nicely at 7/1 although her stable history suggests I shouldn't stop laying the shorties for a place just yet and she stays on the Cold list.

On the flip side (and to paraphrase Alan Partridge) Keith Reveley can consider himself 'subject to a sacking' from the Cold list. Without a by your leave he gets a horse placed on Friday before an 8/1 winner on Saturday. I suppose Friday was a gentleman's warning which was quite polite of him in the circumstances.

I'm glad I ruthlessly sacked David Barker and Walter Swinburn from the Cold list last week - they are both back amongst the winners. Walter is too popular to instinctively interest me from a value backing point of view but I have my eye out for some proper priced winners from Barker this week and the latter is on the Hot list.

I had Tim Easterby, Tate, Duffield, Given and Jonjo all on my 'consider Hot' list last week. Only Tate and Duffield have been promoted and the latter in particular seems likely to produce level stake profits over the coming weeks. Both are now on the Hot list.

I was most excited last week by the weaker form of the Brian Meehan stable. He only had three placed runners (no winners) from 14 entries this week ending with poor runs from both his 3/1 Irish Guineas runners. I can't get enough of pundits referring to his strong early season form although the Curragh defeats may ensure the stable falls under closer scrutiny going forward. He remains firmly at the top of my Cold List for now.

Going forward I'm going to keep a running PNL for this column but I need to get my own rules clear.

1. Each accounting period runs from Monday to Sunday with a virtual starting bank of £250.
2. Hot stable horses are backed to win at the Betfair starting price with a virtual £5 per bet.
3. Cold stable horses are place laid at the Betfair starting price with a virtual £10 per bet.
4. Unless specified in the previous column all 'Cold' stables are sacked if they have a winner or two consecutive placed horses (horses with a Betfair starting win price of less than 1.8 are excluded from this caveat).
5. Horses running from stables 'under consideration' are excluded for betting purposes.
6. Naturally I can change or refine the rules every week to try and make myself look more profitable/less stupid than I actually am.

P.S. I'm all ears for any medium sized stables I've overlooked. Do feel free to chip in or, even better, suggest your own 'Hot' and 'Cold' stable and I'll publish your results too.