I was sat scanning the markets this morning as a friend of mine has a horse running. I came across this race and the price for Phluke leapt off the page at me!
IMPORTANT I am NOT saying this horse cannot win this race, I am just saying the price of this horse is a joke based on all known stats. Obviously there could be some information within the stable that suggest otherwise e.g. Niggling injury now gone and running close to his best. However, I am not privy to that info so I can only base my judgement on the stats I can find.
The horse is 9 years old so he is not exactly unexposed! He has run 63 times on turf and won 10 times, not that bad but also not a world beater. His handicap mark has been dropping like a stone and that does suggest he may come close to winning soon. However he is running off 58 but he's been within 3lb of that mark for his last handful of runs and he has not managed to get his head in front.
The last win was May 2008 so that is a long time ago. I also noticed that the last time he won over today's trip was in April 2005 and that was on the AW. It suggests he doesn't quite get home over 8f and although he is running 7f 214 yards today that is close enough to 8f for me!
I am sure that today he will be up with the pace and be bang their with 1-1.5 furlongs to go...........but can he see it out to the winning post?
Anyway the aim of this post was not for everyone on here to simply lay the horse, I am aiming more at the trading aspect. Surely other punters/traders/layers etc will pick up on these stats and realise the price of 4.5 is rather skinny. The one problem is the nature of the race and the fact that nothing else stands out.
It's one I will keep an eye on because if the rest of the gambling world take a similar view we may get a decent drift on this one. This should be priced at 6.00 IMHO so it will be interesting to see where it finishes up both in race position and price!?
PS Queue the gamble of the year and a steaming price
PPS One thing I meant to say is that this is probably the worst field of runners you could ever get in a single race - they are all useless!! One of them has to win though!
