We have received one or two knocks regarding some of our selections recently and we now accept we are there to be shot at. We feel much more comfortable about it these days and will post the negative with the positive. Interesting and fun to receive the one from Albie in Glasgow when he said a ‘blind man could have picked the three Nicky Henderson horses sent to Kelso.’ We led our blog on 15 February saying that ‘Nicky Henderson Does Kelso’ and if Alby cares to notice we did not pick any of those for the Pacafi Bet but was merely relaying information to anyone who might have missed those statistics! We felt them newsworthy.

Alby went on to rubbish us as a tipster – we replied to him that we do not see ourselves as that as such. We have a strategy/system that makes incremental gains and when we spot opportunities (when time allows) we mention them. We told him that our selections must be seen in their entirety and that we would not apologise for picking those short priced horses because nearly 80% of the time they come with value attached! Those who follow our selections to trade off have made big money. Generally we beat SP and beat it handsomely and one has to remember that our work is done the night before so that we can nominate early in the morning. We select before we see the market moving proving we understand value!

Apart from pointing the reader towards those three winners our second part of our blog was our concern over hot favourite Southern State where we gave our reservations. The horse got beat so without actually nominating a Pacafi Bet that day we felt pleased that we gave the reader some concise and relative information.

Although we are a tiny website we take our role very seriously. We back our selections personally and imagine some of those reading do also and we understand we have a responsibility. We hate a losing bet and although we know we will make up the lost ground we take every loss personally. We deal with it but it leaves a mark on us. We are a fledgling site and learning all the time so there will be times when we fall short but please be assured of our honesty and commitment.

Since we launched The Racing Horse we have made 163 selections of which 92 have won (56% strike rate) at average odds of over 11/10. We do not have long losing runs and of those bets we have beaten the starting price about 80% of time. We are solid and those who understand staking plans can substantially enhance those figures.

Despite these figures we believe that we are under-performing slightly. On our previous trials and then the paper trading before that our strike rate was just over 58% so there might be evidence of a tightening of the arm. We know those horses that qualify for the Pacafi Bet (the pool from which we select our bets) and win remain at over 60% so we know there is improvement within the current set-up.

As we learn, gain experience and become more professional we hope to find another percentage point or two to add to the above. Of course it is the time factor that is our biggest enemy because we cannot devote 24/7 to the site even though it feels like it sometimes.

Our thanks go to Albie as he gave us the opportunity to explain further what we do.