Sorry!

Six series? Really?!

Sorry. I’ve been so head down in the Winning Trainers launch and working with new subscribers to get them up and running that I haven’t scribbled anything on here for a few days.

Luckily, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been top content galore posted by the rest of the team, and regular visitors to the site will have hopefully enjoyed at least some of the following fine fare:

– An excellent article by Tony Keenan on the value of bad favourites

– A nice winner (coupled with a non-runner) from Chris on the Daily Dabble yesterday

– An 11/2 winner for Chris on Stat of the Day on Monday

– Plus daily infusions of statistics aimed at finding winners from magical Mal Boyle…

…and pithy news editorial from Ian Sutherland as well.

So, yes, with luck, I’ve not been missed at all, thanks to the excellent contributions of the rest of the team. Good chaps!

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So what of Winning Trainers 2.0, this thing which has been commanding my energies? Well, it’s been a strange beginning, to say the least. It was a bit of a roller coaster on both sides of the counter.

On the setup side, I had a disastrous day. First, for some reason, the pdf downloads were not working and were instead redirecting poor suffering subscribers to that annoying bloody video of me!! It took me and a techie an hour to work that out, and I finally nailed it: we had to remove the www. from in front of the download web addresses.

Yes, sometimes it’s not nearly as complicated as you first think…

Then, without so much as time for a cup of tea and a pat on the back, an absolute howler was detected. Right on 200 sign ups into the launch (half way), I realised that the payment processing hadn’t happened and that, whilst everything seemed fine, nobody had actually paid!

Sure, invoices were sent out, and the system was behaving perfectly… except for one minor issuette. *GULP*

I had to delete all the user accounts – having first emailed them and explained what had happened (if that was you, thank you so much for re-signing up and I’m really sorry for the aggravation) – and then I had to deal with my affiliate partners, many of whom are personal friends.

Luckily, the guys I choose to work with are good eggs, and they understand from their own efforts that sometimes bad stuff which shouldn’t happen, happens.

Anyway, long and short, we are now – finally – where we need to be. Phew, indeed.

**

So, to the horses. We had three main service bets, one at 5/1 and a couple of shortish favourites. As is sometimes the way, the longest-priced won and the other two were a little disappointing.

The first didn’t just win. It absolutely romped home.

On the bonus angles side, there were two of interest. The first, a Claimer King from the free report I gave away last week, was Elusive Hawk. He duly obliged at odds of 6/1, which was nice if you were betting yesterday, and still reassuring if you weren’t.

The other, an ‘After A Break’ horse, again from the free report last week, was Atlantis City. He ran a scorcher in a field of fourteen to be a half length second at 8/1.

**

A curate’s egg of a day and, with subscriptions now filling up (correctly!), I’m looking forward to spending plenty of time working with the Winning Trainers 2.0 guys. If you’d like to join me/them, there are still spots available (thanks to my idiot cock up yesterday), and you can read all about it here:

Read about Winning Trainers 2.0 here.

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What else is new? Well, nothing and quite a lot, actually. What I mean by that is there’s very little to the naked eye which is new. But, behind the scenes, things are happening… Pretty soon – hopefully in the next fortnight – we’ll have a tipping league in situ with free bet prizes up for grabs.

This will be a lot better than the previous competitions where you had to leave a comment with your pick for a specific race nominated by me, and I had to manually ‘settle’ the bets.

Now, you’ll be able to bet win or each way on any horse in any UK/Irish race you like, and to whatever stake you wish (within your allocated budget). So rather than see who is best at picking races of my choosing, we’ll see who the best tipsters are on their own terms. Can’t wait to share that with you!

**

Also very nearly ready are live odds on the racecards. The new super-fast racecards are here. And in the next couple of days you’ll be able to review the recent form of the runners and then, when you’re ready, click straight through from the odds to place your bet.

We’re working hard on this part of the site, and will very soon be adding a full results service, plus some special reports, including a pretty cool pace analysis report which I’ve not seen anywhere else, and which is working out pretty well in tests here.

We’re able (and you’ll be able) to see, at a glance, races where there’s a sole front runner who has a chance of getting his own way and nicking the race; and races where it looks like there will be a pace burn up, and horses can be opposed in favour of a midfield or closing type. Powerful stuff. And all free to geegeez subscribers.

So I’ll look forward to sharing that soon.

**

There are a couple of other irons in the fire, designed to make your racing experience more seamless, engaging and fun, and I’ll tell you about those closer to the time when they’re ready. Lots to look forward to. 🙂

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Talking of that pace report, King Of The Danes might make all in the 2.35 Goodwood; there might be a burn up in the three mile chase (4.30 Wetherby) and a hold up type like Lost Glory, De Boitron or Pigeon Island might swoop late (sorry for pigeon swooping pun, awful); and Achalas might be interesting off the front in the staying handicap at Salisbury tonight (7.45) for a shrewd trainer and decent jockey.

Don’t blame me if they all get beaten – that’s just what the report is telling me!

Again, sorry for recent radio silence, and I hope to bring you more site enhancements very soon.

Matt