I’m old enough to remember the days when, if you wanted a bet on the horses, you would find a dingy turf accountant with blackened windows. It was usually William Hill or Ladbrokes until the cheeky Victor Chandler spoilt their party. Smoking was compulsory and you would go and read the form in The Sporting Life where pages were affixed to cork notice boards with drawing pins. Sometimes, when the form continued onto another page, you would need to surreptitiously unpin the page and sneak a read. Helpful old punters would take it upon themselves to scribble out the non runners with their half size ball point pens. Then you would listen to the audio commentary on the race, hoping all the excitement would be on your pick.
I don’t miss those bookies at all, except it does feel considerably more rewarding collecting winnings in five pound notes than looking at a credit on your internet account. The internet has, for me at least, meant a lot more time is dedicated to horse racing. Access to betting exchanges, instant odds comparisons between bookies and as much information as you can handle is now available at the click of a mouse. There is all manner of software and bots, and huge numbers of sources offering information, some of it free and some on paid subscription. The free information usually relies on sponsors, and those sponsors are invariably bookies. The Sporting Life still exists online, but the first stop for most punters now, and the paper version which appears in the High Street bookies, is The Racing Post. There is the free online version which provides the basic racecards and all the information you can get in the shops, or there is a paid version if you want to delve deeper with your research.
Nowadays, though, punters tend to be more sophisticated and are looking deeper for that edge. In order to facilitate this, ratings are available from many sources and sellers have these constantly in development and redevelopment. What ratings hope to do, by delving into a huge amount of available data, is to provide one runner’s mathematical chances of winning its race when compared to all the other competing runners in the race.
Ratings are nothing new of course. The benchmark company has always been Timeform, established in 1948 in Halifax. But there are many other ratings available now, all vying for a market with an ever increasing degree of sophistication. There are some very smart people out there using all manner of mathematical computer programmes with as many factors for inputs as you can possibly imagine.
What I would really appreciate would be a Which? style assessment of all the leading ratings providers. They all tend to claim to be the best, so that a level stakes wager on every top rated runner is breaking even, or that 70% of winners are rated in the first three, etc etc. This is unlikely ever to happen because of the sheer time and cost which would be necessary. However, if all those providers wish to get together and put up a wage package for the next three years, I’m willing to give it a shot!
Anyway, all this is a long introduction for a blog on the subject matter today, which is Geegeez Gold. For anyone reading this, it is very unlikely that you haven’t come across Matt Bisogno at some stage. Matt lives and breathes horse racing. He has been developing his website and offering racing systems over many years. He and his syndicate own a seven year old bay gelding called The Geegeez Geegee which has won three of its races. He has an excellent understanding of his sport, even though his modesty on the subject comes through in his blogs. His enthusiasm is infectious, and in my opinion he is also a very fine journalist. The Geegeez blog is always my first port of call during any of the festivals and is, to me, an excellent starting point for my betting. There are also some incisive articles about the industry as a whole which, due to the wide readership, serves as a pressure point for the punter.
And so far, all this is free. I imagine running the Geegeez website is expensive and time consuming and I have no idea how viable it is. There was a time a year or two ago when Matt was seriously considering throwing in the towel (I know from his blog), but I think the weight of support after this persuaded him to carry on. And what he has done is built and built and built on what was there. The free membership is fantastic. However, with all the extra aspects you get from Geegeez Gold, the serious bettor can find all the resources he needs to plan his betting day.
What I can’t do is give you any idea of profitability. This is not a tipping site – yes, it does have its tipping arm which HAS thus far been profitable, and depending on your level of staking, you could conceivably use it just for that. Rather, it is a state-of-the-art resource for punters to use their own skills and methods to find winning bets, whether win, lay or trade. It is also a community for like-minded punters to share their thoughts and, indeed, their tips.
So – what you need to know is that, once on the website you go to the day’s race cards and, when you find your race, all the information you need is a click away. There is so much information available – everything you will need – that you might think it inscrutible, but it has been superbly designed for for the end user. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Mac man, I’ve been using them since the very first machine, the reason being that, unlike PCs, they are intuitive. You make the most obvious click and it gives you the result you were after. Well, that’s what happens on Geegeez Gold.
There’s no point in me listing all the facilities this has available for studying form, there is far too much, so instead I’ll list everything that’s missing. Actually, I can’t think of anything. It will take a while to navigate in exactly the way any particular user wants, but they will soon find their way round. Personally, I usually start with Instant Expert which gives me an idea where to start and what to look for in a particular race – or, indeed, if it’s a race worth looking at at all. What’s more, the tools are configurable, meaning you can personalise your form study to maximise ease of use and relevance of information.
So – I know there are many punters out there who just want to be told which horses to back, and Geegeez isn’t really for them, even though there are daily reports such as shortlist and Stat Of The Day which have made long term profits.
So – you can have access to Geegeez Gold for a measly quid for a month, and I would certainly encourage you to sign up, run through the videos, visit the blog and forum, join the tipping league and share the wonderful enthusiasm of Matt Bisogno. And make your punting more fun, and more profitable.
Go here now to start your trial:
