DON’T BET ON MAIDENS!

Plenty of blokes will tell you “don’t bet on maidens” there’s too many unknowns, only mugs bet on maidens, jump-outs aren’t real trials and my favourite “maidens are lotteries”

THEY ARE WRONG!

I received some advice from Deane Lester who is the undisputed best form analyst in Victoria and arguably one of the best in the country. I hold him in very high regard and his words have stuck with me.

“Ego gets in the way of a lot of punters and they want to find feature winners, a Tuesday maiden and a Saturday listed race both pay in Australian dollars” He is absolutely spot on here. Backing a $4 winner in a Sale maiden puts the same amount in your bank as a $4 Melbourne Cup winner.

“you’re effectively betting in a smaller 8-10 horse field with 2-3 winning chances as opposed to betting on 6-10 winning chances in a field of 14-18+” again I couldn’t agree more! you can look at a maiden and almost immediately put a line through half the field or more off the back of poor previous races, poor trials or simply the wrong breeding for a sprint race. Granted you will come across those rich Super Vobis maidens with 12 first starters and a lack of official trials. But it’s like any race really, if there’s too many unknowns you simply DON’T BET. Like anything there is no exact science you will always get surprise results occasionally. The key to long term punting is minimising risk. 3 chances out of 10 runner is more favourable than 8 chances out of 14 runners.

“Backing jump-out & trial horses is a good strategy, my take on that is you are backing a fresh horse early in their prep and they’ve shown you they are going well bu trialling & jumping out well” This is especially important for 2yo & 3yo maidens when education is paramount to performance. Traits they show in a jump-out are usually traits they bring to the track. for example jumping cleanly and showing early speed, this is very important for juvenile races. I am not suggesting all maidens will be won by on speed horses at all but they make their own luck up front and out of trouble. On the flip side bad manners they show in jump-outs more often than not become bad manners they bring to the track eg. over-racing, racing greenly, laying in under pressure & folding when the pressure goes on to name a few.