A Shin Hikari, the highest rated horse in the world was a flop today and I am kicking myself for breaking my golden rule of never backing odds on horses. I will have to give myself a good talking too tonight!
Day three at Royal Ascot is Ladies Day and I have a 7/2 shot to back tomorrow.
The Gibraltar Darts Trophy takes place this weekend in the Gibraltar’s Victoria Stadium, where the remaining 32 players will compete to lift the trophy on Sunday night.
It is the third event on the PDC European Tour this year with £115,000 prize money up for grabs. Last year’s winner Michael van Gerwen is hoping to retain his title but there are plenty of players who are aiming to stop him.
16 seeded players enter at the second-round stage today and on Sunday it will be a hectic day with the third round, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final taking place. Every match is a short format, the first to 6 legs.
In the the last European Tour event Michael van Gerwen beat Peter Wright in the final and looking at the draw here I can see the same happening again.
Michael is a ridiculous price of 8/11 to win considering that he has Gary Anderson in the same half of the draw, but there is no Phil Taylor to contend with this weekend.
Peter Wright has potentially 2 tricky opening matches to overcome with Daryl Gurney and then maybe the recent tournament winner Gerwyn Price, after that it should be plain sailing to the the final.
Ideally I would love to back MvG to win outright and then trade Anderson and Wright on Betfair but they don’t seem to have an outright win market available so I will have to improvise. Instead I will back Wright to win and should he reach the final I will have a bet on the other finalist to guarantee a profit no matter who wins.
Although this tournament isn’t televised you can watch every match for free on Betfair. You don’t need to have a bet on a match to watch it, all you need is to have money in your account.
If you haven’t got a Betfair account yet click here to get the BET £10 & GET £30 FREE offer for all new accounts. As the offer suggests, once you have put on a £10 bet with the sportsbook, not the exchange, you then get 3 x £10 free bets.
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Play is currently suspended due to the weather on Sunday and they are still playing round 3, which has given me time to check out the players at the top of the leaderboard.
Brian is the current joint leader at -13 and is ranked 513, yes 513. In his last tournament he finished tied 55th and missed the cut in his previous 4 matches!
Jason Day is only 3 shots back at -10 alongside last weeks winner Charlie Hoffman.
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NB – Lay means not to win and can only be placed on a betting exchange such as Betfair.
Another odds on favourite Cue Card lost yesterday in day two of the five day festival. I am sure that Douvan will buck that trend today but at odds of 1/5 it’s a race to watch rather than a race to have a bet in.
I am going for the 2016 English and Irish Grand National winning trainer’s Mouse Morris’s Alpha Des Obeaux here. He finished second behind one of my Cheltenham Festival naps Thistlecrack last month and came second at this festival last year to the useful Nichols Canyon.
We have seen plenty of favourites getting beat here at Punchestown who ran at both the Cheltenham Festival and Aintree as 3 races in 6 weeks can be a tough task! But Alpha Des Obeaux missed Aintree which is looking like it may well prove to be a big plus.
Magical Memeory won 3 handicaps over 6f last season including the Steward’s Cup. Last time out he finished 3rd in a Group 1 at Haydock in September less than a length behind the winner.
McIlroy and Spieth are the final 2 ball in round 3, which I am hoping will be the sign of things to come as the two of them going head to head will be fantastic viewing for years to come.
Both of these are priced at 3.40 (5/2) to win this and Spieth is 1 shot clear going into round 3. If had to pick the outright winner between them I would have to go with Spieth as he has only played here twice and came first last year and second in 2014, the best McIlroy has managed was 4th.
It’s very windy for the third round again and Rory hits his ball as a lot higher than most so I think the wind will catch him out today. Also I heard one of the commentators say last night that Rory has had 13 double bogeys at Augusta since 2010!
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NB – Lay means not to win and can only be done on a betting exchange such as Betfair.
There are 5 class 1 races in Ireland today and I am getting stuck into 2 of them which are both at Fairyhouse.
This is a competitive grade 2 with the first 4 in the betting being between 7/2 – 4/1. At a first glance I though I would put a line through this race as it look very open but after digging a bit deeper I spotted Gwencily Berbas. He has won 2/4 races since coming to Ireland in 2015 including a grade 2 & 3. But what I really like is that she beat a grade 1 winner in Naas in November.
He is 4/1 to win but I am going for a win at a lesser price of 5/2 but I get my money back if he finishes 2nd or 3rd AKA cover bet 3 places or insure bet 3 places. 4 bookies do this bet Bet365, Sky Bet, Powers & Hills. No BOG unfortunately.
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One horse stands out here and that’s Emily Gray who won a listed race last time out in February so should make light work of this grade 3. The horse that finished 2nd is also a listed winner too!
Emily Gray was 10/11 last night and is slightly less at the moment so I will back her now at just over evens with Betfair Exchange and hope it gets matched in running. In hinds
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You can only pick out an in running price before a race starts on a betting exchange such as Betfair.
Today is the final day of the group stages where see the field reduced from 64 players to 16 with the top player from each group going through to 16 man knock-out format.
So far so good with 4/5 tips right so far and I will continue to lay for the rest of the tournament.
There are 32 matches again today but I only going to look at the 13 matches of players who have won twice and try to pick out the weakest opposition and lay them.
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* Lay means not to win and is ideal for match play as you also win if the match is halved. You can only lay on a betting exchange such as Betfair
Click here to see the draw and my outright wins/trades.
Round 1 starts at 1pm on Tuesday 22nd of March and concludes on Wednesday night. I am putting all my tips up for round 1 in 1 post and have grouped together matches for both days with bookies offering the best prices.
In the last ETC tournament Fu won his first 4 matches either 4-0 or 4-1. On the head to heads Fu is ahead 3:1 winning easily enough 10-3, 10-3 and 4-2 and I think Fu will win this either 4-1 or 4-2.
Ding is playing well again as mentioned in my previous post. Dave has lost his last 2 best of 7 frames matches 4-1 and one of those defeats was against an amateur and I expect Ding to win this with plenty in hand.
Shaun Murphy’s season is back on track after he recent win in the World Grand Prix. The last time these played each other Shaun won 4-0. The last 3 times these have played Murphy won -1.5 frames and I think Shaun will serve up more of the same on Tuesday.
Ali Carter is the favourite to win this match but I don’t think he will win as if you exclude the Championship League (Best of 5 frames) and the Shoot out (1 frame) Graeme has won 4:0, so it’s a Dott win for me here.
These 2 have met twice and Michael White won them both 4-2 and 4-3. I don’t think this will be a 1 sided match and I expect a similar scoreline Tuesday night.
I expect this to be another close match as Mike Dunn’s last 6/7 best of 7 matches all went to a deciding frame and the other match ended 4-2. So over 5.5 frames looks very possible.
These 2 have played twice since Kyren Wilson turned pro and on both occasions they went to deciding frames. This should be another close match but it’s a toss of a coin who will win for me.
Robert Milkins tends to play well in this short format and Penfei is off the boil as his last 4 wins were all against amateurs, so my money is on Robert to win this.
Surprisingly these 2 have never played before but I am siding with Mark King as he plays well in the best of 7’s. He has reached the quarter-finals in the last 2 ETC tournaments and made the semis in ETC 2. Sam Baird’s best result all season was way back in November where he reach the semi-finals of ETC 4.
I don’t usually like backing flat horses on soft ground as some runners have never run on it before but Devonshire is the only horse to win at this level as she won a listed race in Listowel back in September on soft. I watched a replay of her last race in a group 1 in Woodbine where she finished 7th, but she can be excused for that as she encountered trouble in running.
Aiden O’ Brien has a runner in this race, Fluff, who won her first and only race in April on similar ground (good-soft) but hasn’t been seen on the track since. She has a Group 1 entry after winning a maiden so connections have high hopes for her. I am going to trade her as she can obviously run fresh just as a cover bet to my main selection Devonshire. E.g back Fluff at 5/1 and lay at 4/1 in running.
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You can only trade or back to lay on a betting exchange such as Betfair.
Apex Sports Tips 