I received an email yesterday from a friend who was complaining about the fact the horses he selected to lay would often drift out in price before the off. His problem was that he was using a system that relied on selecting horse with a maximum Racing Post forecast. The problem was that his system also had a maximum liability limit.

The fact is that if you find factors to indicate that a horse is a good lay bet you can be certain that others will also pick this up. The overall result is that as more and more punters seek to lay the horse the price will drift out.

Of course one option is to place your bets early while the price is still low. However, this brings its own problems because you are then betting without the full market information. There are experts who consider that you should only place bets on the Exchanges minutes before the off. It is a fact that the majority of price movements will take place in the 10 minutes before the start of the race.

I do not know if any of my readers have any strong ideas on what is the best time to place your bet on the exchange. I think it is an area that could stand more research to find out the best time to place value for money bets.

There were no Dee Dee Lays yesterday but today there is a lay bet it is  Nisaal in the 3.15 at Beverly.

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Royal Ascot is over for another year, and what a meeting it was. Normally for the serious punter this is the kind of meeting to avoid for betting purposes but not this year. Apparently over the 5 days the bookies lost around 50 million pounds so I hope you got your share.

There were 13 favourites or joint favourites that won with the lowest priced being Harbinger at 8/11. By the end of Fridays racing the bookies were claiming to have lost on 20 of the 24 races and with several well fancied horse coming up with the goods on Saturday the situation will not have got much better.

Before you start to shed a tear or two for the poor old bookies remember that they are still coining it in on the World Cup were the results have been to say the least unpredictable.  What is it they say; as they give with one hand they taketh with the other.

It must be that time of the year, I have had at least six different e-mail offers for can’t lose systems in the last week. The trouble is that for each system there will be about 5 to 10 individuals promoting the new system in the hope of making some commission.  Please, please do not get suckered into buying these systems. There are no secrets, loopholes or magic keys to making your horse race betting pay.

You need a consistent approach, some knowledge, possibly a selection method or system and judgement. With those 4 components you stand a good chance of having success. This weekend I spent time re reading Jonathan Burgesses “Racing Specialist” which is a 180 page ebook which provides a selection system highlights first or second favourites that are likely losers. I have been using this approach for some time now and I have found it profitable, but it does require you to make a judgement decision at the end. Compared to some of the systems that have recently been offered at £70 or £90 a throw the Racing Specialist does represent tremendous value. For more details visit Racing Specialist.

I am afraid there is no Dee Dee Lay selection today but hopefully we will come up with something for tomorrow. Those of you who study the information in Racing Post’s Signposts feature will hopefully have noticed that on Saturday Tropical Treat was sent nearly 400 miles from Ray Beckets yard in Hampshire all the way up to Ayr and won at a handsome 5/1. I hope you spotted that one.

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As ever Royal Ascot has produced a feast of fine racing this week and today’s card looks to be the icing on the cake. Apart from the much fancied Harbinger who looks a sound bet in the Hardwick Stakes the winners will take some finding. With some forecasted high priced favourites this may not be the meeting for layers either.

I can understand the fascination of the big meeting such as Royal Ascot and there is no doubt they are wonderful spectacles. However, for the punter the races are incredibly difficult to fathom and I suspect that at the end of the meeting the big winners will normally be the bookies.

Surprisingly this year the punters have done better than usual and the bookies are claimiong this Royal meeting has been bad for them. Looking at todays card though I should think this could all change. I till maintain that as a general rule  anyone who wants to make a profit from their horse race betting  should be  avoided the  big  meetings  like the plague.

Today at Ascot there are 116 runners and it will take a considerable amount of time to go through the form of all the runners, There is also the problem than some of the runners previous form will be from outside the UK. This makes comparisons difficult and with so many horses specifically tuned up for today’s races it is going to be a minefield for form followers.

An alternative is to go and look at the Lingfield card where admittedly it is not going to be such a high quality of racing.  There are only 66 runners spread over their 6 races and many of the horses have run against each other in the past. This makes form reading and hence selecting winners or losers somewhat easier.

Professional golfers have a saying, “Drive for show but putt for doe”. This means that it is impressive if you can hit a ball long and straight off the tee but it is the ability to sink the putts that keep your score low. In horse race betting, occasionally backing big priced winners will impress your friends when they happen. The ability to quietly make small but regular profits over the year will impress your bank manager even more.

As they say, go for the low hanging fruit, it is easier to pick. And talking of low hanging fruit we had another successful day with the Dee Dee Lay selections yesterday with 3 successful bets and a none runner. Today we have 4 lay bets again and they are

3.00 Ayr  Tropical Treat

4.40 Ayr   Klynch

3.35 Haydock  Autocracy

5.40  Newmarket Marju King

Finally for the Barry Dennis fan club the great mans Bismark for today is I’m a Dreamer in Newmarkets 2.45 race.

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Have you ever wondered why there are so many offers for “fantastic” “cannot lose” “the secret to winning a fortune” type of horse racing systems on the market? Does it ever cross your mind why there are new ones appearing almost daily.  The reason is simple because there are so many butterflies out there just waiting for such offers.

For all I know you may well be a butterfly yourself. It is very easy to spot such a creature; they flit from system to system looking for the “Holy Grail”.  Their biggest sin is that they believe all the c**p that they read about these systems. Despite in some cases years of disappointment and frustration they still part with their hard earned money in the belief that this one will be different.

Is there a cure for the butterfly syndrome?

The treatment involves the patient accepting one simple fact. There is no guaranteed get rich method of making money from horse race betting. Yes, it is possible to make a profit; many people are proving that but not thousands of pounds a week using small stakes. Most successful punters have a system or systems which over a period of time give them a consistent return. What they do not do is abandon a system because it has a poor week. They may draw back and reduce there stake or even stop using the system for a short time but they do not abandon it.

More importantly, they do not, unlike the butterflies, throw it away and send off for the next fantastic new system they see advertised.

To my mind these butterfly types are forever chasing around in an ever decreasing circle until they disappear up their own… well you know where they disappear to.

If there was a secret it would be to search for a sensible and realistic system, either your own or someone else’s and stay focused. Accept that there will be losing days, weeks and possibly months but if it shows consistent profits over the year then you have got a good system that is worth sticking too.

The Dee Dee Lay was a successful bet yesterday and today I have 4 lay bets for you|:

8.30 Goodwood  Times Up

5.10 Redcar  Caracal

5.40 Redcar   Final Ovation

6.00 Newm  Land Hawk

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They tell me that the English language is continually growing and listening to teenagers talking I can well believe it. They seem to invent new words on a daily basis. Also words can become fashionable and currently unsustainable is such a word. The current public service pensions we are told is unsustainable, Premier footballer’s wages are unsustainable and I believe that horse racing in its current form is unsustainable.

Today there are 6 race meetings including Ladies Day at Royal Ascot. The seasons as we used to know them are gone; flat racing goes on all the year round thanks to all weather tracks and summer jumping means that the National Hunt season finishes on one day and the new one begins the following day.

The overall result is that more horses are in training many of whom are simply not good enough., The prize money is spread too thinly and it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone other than the top trainers and owners to survive in the long term,

Looking at meeting like Royal Ascot would give the impression that everything in the garden is rosy but this is far from the truth. This year that has been a major reduction in the amount of money racing is going to receive from the Levy board. The main source of the Levy Money is the 10% of profits from UK racing that the bookmakers pass on. However, because some major bookmakers have moved much of their business out of the UK this amount has considerably reduced.

Whose interest is it to have 6 race meetings on one mid week day? The answer is simple, the bookmakers. There have been so many examples of the BHA appeasing the bookmakers rather than the general racing public.

I would like to see a maximum of 3 UK race meeting during the week and possibly no racing at all on Mondays. I think that more could be done with Sunday racing which on the Continent is one of the most active racing days of the week with most classic and Group One races being run on that day.

My answer is less but better rather than the hotchpotch of fixtures that we have at present. But that is just my view perhaps you think differently.

There is only one selection for Dee Dee Lays today and that is Bobble Hat Bob in the 7.20 at Foss Las.

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What an excellent days racing it was at Ascot yesterday with brilliant runs from Goldikova and Canford Cliffs. I also think that Paco Boy also put in an excellent effort to run Goldokova to a neck. There were some interesting comments after the race from some quarters questioning Richard Hughes riding of  Paco Boy but to my mind that is nonsense.

Paco was held up a little but that was no fault of Hughes and he started his run well early enough. Some people said that in a few more yards the French filly would have been caught but it is worth noting even 10 yards past the post she was still in front. There is little doubt that Goldikova is one of the outstanding fillies of the decade.

Yesterday was a good day for the punters with only one winner priced at over 9/2 and it is always nice to hear the bookies squeal. . This is not that unusual at this time of the year when many of the top flat horses are at the peak of their form. I always think that if you are a layer of low priced favourites from the middle of June until the end of July it is a good idea to take a holiday.

There are no Dee Dee Lay selections today but I do have an each way fancy for a horse running at Kempton this evening. In the 8.10 John Best runs Hurricane Spirit a two time course winner. Today’s Ascot card does not look anywhere near as straight forward as yesterdays and I think I will keep my money in  my pocket today.

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Only last week I was complaining about the quality of the supporting card on Derby Day. That is a complaint that cannot be levelled at the opening day of Royal Ascot.

With the Queen Anne Stakes, King Stand Stakes and the St James Palace Stakes it is a menu to suit any flat racing fan.

These good races have attracted some fine horse not only from the UK but Ireland, France and Australia as well.  By the end of racing today some reputations will have been enhanced and others tarnished but to predict which is not going to be easy. In most races a strong case can be put forward for a number of the runners. I think I will simply have a fun 3 doubles and a treble bet on the first 3 races. My selections will be Paco Boy, Canford Cliffs and Total Gallery. This is a bet more in hope than anticipation but it will be a bit of fun.

As the search for race course and TV commentator Doug Fraser continues it has been reported that a body has been recovered from a river in Leeds. Fraser, the voice of At The Races Northern and Scottish racing was reported missing after failing to turn up to commentate at Hexham on June 5^th. A positive identification of the body is expected by tomorrow.

Today the Dee Dee Lay Selections are

3.50  Ascot   Siyonri

8.00 Brighton D’urberville

5.15 Thirsk   Path of Peace

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The World Cup is now well under way and the nation is divided into those who love football and those that hate it. I have a feeling after England’s display on Saturday the number of the latter may have risen considerably. As one who spent his football playing days”between the posts” I can sympathise with Robert Green. A forward can miss an open goal and it will pass almost unnoticed but a goal keeping faux pas almost inevitably leads to a goal.

I was pleased to see that both the press and public are supporting Harry Findlay. The almost unanimous opinion seems to be that the BHA have made a huge mistake and totally over reacted. I fear that whatever the outcome of the appeal against the ridiculous 6 month warning off notice, we have seen the last of Harry Findlay owned horses running in the UK. Can racing afford to lose characters like Harry?

Tomorrow sees the start of Royal Ascot and it looks as though the weather will be kind. The highlight of tomorrow’s card is the Queen Anne Stakes which will see Rip Van Winkle, Paco Boy and Goldikova take each other on. Aiden O’Brien claims that he is concerned that Rip Van Winkle has not had the benefit of a run and this could tell against him. My own fancy is Paco Boy but there will not be a lot between the three on the day.

Our Dee Dee Lay on Saturday surprised us all by winning at 17/2 but those of you who are sticking to the maximum odds of 8.0 will have passed this one over. Currently I am running tests on the selections to see if applying the strict 8.0 maximum odds is more profitable that the other two options. These options are to lay any selection that is over 8.0 at 7.9 and leave it to stand during the run or simply backing the selection whatever the odds are. I shall publish the results of these tests at the end of the month. On Saturday if you had used either of the 2 options you would have lost. Overall we are still showing a profit on the Dee Dee Lay which is the important point.

Today we have 3 selections although I suspect that they may all end up over our maximum odds but we shall see.

4.15 Carlisle    Not My Choice

8.55 Warkwick   Seasider

9.05  Windsor   Granny McPhee

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