Tips, Tricks and Tools for donkey hunting
Now I am not going to just come right out and give away all my dirty little secrets, but happy to give the punters a bit of a leg up here. These are some of the tools and form guides that Old Man Ed/Cunstable Country uses when trying to line up a winner.
Before delving further, I must state that the #1 supplier of my winning bets is PURE AND UNADULTERATED WATCHING. I will watch the daily NSW country and provincial races of an evening, even if I have already watched them throughout the day.
What do I use/prefer:
Blackbooks - Punters.com.au
Sectionals - Punters.com.au
Speed Mapping - Racenet.com.au, Racingzone.com.au, Racingandsports.com
Runner notes/Formlines - Racenet.com.au
Barrier, weight and Speed map data - Racingandsports.com
Head to Head data - Racingzone.com.au
Punters.com.au
I personally use the APP as my main Blackbooks but in terms of form, I use only the sectionals data from the desktop website. The top function for me is the ability to select or deselct runs to suit exactly what I am looking to find out.
Examples:
Removing runs at distance that are over a certain amount of years old
Selecting runs either side of a distance to get an ‘idea’ for horses who have yet to race at the particular distance
Sectional Data alone won’t find enough winners to remain profitiable but is a solid foundation.
*I would not use the speed maps from this site.
Racenet.com.au
Racenet.com.au is my main tool for ‘runner notes’ outside of Steward’s Reports, checking specific runs at ‘point in prep’ (1st up, 2nd up etc) and also a very useful tool for exploring formlines, this does require the desktop version however.
You can select multiple variables/conditions which will be filtered below. Clicking on ‘full results’ gives the opportunity to further dig into winners/non-winners coming from the previous races.
I find their tempo to be reasonably accurate and their speed maps somewhat accurate. I create my own speed maps but as a general rule, Racenet’s are more than satisfactory.
racingzone.com.au
This website provides one of my favourite data-sets for creating speed maps. The In-Run data can be sorted via any of the click-able modifiers to get a great idea about a runners standard positioning throughout a race/distance/surface.
Head to Head records can also be acessed which include relative weights +/-.
The website also provides a satisfactory barrier bias tool for track/distance.
*I find the racetimes and Last 600 Sectionals to be a bit off for this site but reasonable enough.
*As with Punters.com.au I would not use the speed maps from here.
Racingandsports.com
Great website for data. Using the ‘LOOKUP’ section from the MENU, barrier position stats, tempo/bias stats, weight carried stats and more can be found for every track.
Their form section has another of the main tools I use for speed maps. Average barrier speed represented in metres/second which combined with the mapping data from the other sites further increases the accuracy of a speed map. I use the setting grid from this site to envision the settling positions.
