OZmium Sports Betting and Horse Racing Forums - View Single Post - Ratings2Win

Part 2 - Back this horse next time it runs in a suitable race.

This is the second part of our post about leaving notes for yourself as a reminder of something that the horse did and in turn for something that you should do next time it runs. We have dealt with Black Book and how Axis can help you there. In this part we will cover Comments.

Making Comments

Unless we are talking about small notations that you might enter as you are black booking a horse, race / video comments are only generally recorded by professional punters. For the professional punter that records comments for each horse in each race, we have developed a module within Axis named "Axis Pro Functions" that is the result of extended consultation with several professional punters who make race/video comments frequently. This simple yet powerful facility allows them to perform this function with a minimum of fuss and has the ability to sort and organise the information using several but relevant ways to assist them. It even allows for clients to swap comments between themselves.

Not all of us will have the time and resources to do this however it is still possible to utilise comments in Axis through the Race Day Portal (the software's main interface) even if you just want to remind yourself occasionally of something to jog your memory later. You don't have to be a 'pro' but a reminder of a track bias, state of the 'fence' a bad run or a 'forget run' notation for a horse can remind you later where you would otherwise forget, especially with the amount of racing today. You don’t have to comment on every horse, race or meeting, but you can, and you can easily distinguish between and enter meeting, race or a single horse comment. Of course you can at any time edit or delete a comment as necessary.

Making a comment is an art form in itself. We have come across some less experienced clients that make the mistake of entering too much detail into their comments. This is a waste of time both in terms of reading and writing apart from which it uses additional computer resources to both save and/or retrieve the data.

Take a look at this horse comment: “Blasted out of the barriers, eyeballed the leaders 3 wide, kicked at the turn and courageously battled on just beaten on the line.”

Very detailed and it paints a picture when you read it! Firstly it took time to write, more importantly it takes time to read and comprehend and when you have to read 16 of these just to compare horses last starts from just one race you’d better watch the clock so that the race does not start before you are finished reading. Comments like these serve no benefit to you. If you intend to make comments on a even a semi-regular basis then you need to be consistent about the way you make them. Consistency is the cornerstone of punting and it applies to making comments just the same as to betting or anything else. Your comments should have a structure which answers the necessary questions as to what happened in the race. Let’s breakdown the above comment and see what relevant information we can extract from it.

The first part deals with how the horse began, next with what happened in running and lastly what happened at the turn and in the straight. It is also a good idea to read the stewards reports so that you can note of any important information that occurred post race or identify something that you might have missed in running. Further, we have no need to write words when a few acronyms make reading speedy and precise. So the ideal format for horse comment is “START,INRUNNING,TURN/STRAIGHT,AFTER”.

The format together with acronyms turns our above lengthy comment into: Jg h3w kt bog Ok .... I think I need an interpreter please! Here is what that means; “Jumped good, handy 3wide, kicked (at the turn) boxed on good ” Now that is much faster and easier to digest.

You can just make these comments only when something important happens because commenting on how every horse jumps is wasting your time as most horses jump OK. Just like any other language in a few weeks you’ll understand your own version of abbreviated comments with absolute fluidity. You will be able to record them quickly and read them just as fast saving you valuable time. Now you have the ability to open doors that were previously not available due to all of this extra condensed information. It takes work in order achieve the results that most don't, but it's doing what others don't or won’t that sets successful punters from those who make up the losing statistics. Axis provides these and other necessary tools that are not available in other racing software packages, tools that will transform your punting and assist to keep you in front of the game.