There are eight meetings today. Forty odd races, from Beverley at one o'clock to the evening card at Wolverhampton. The Saturday papers are full of it and every tipster in the land has a nap, a next best and an each way treble. I've got three horses, and that's a busy day for me.
The temptation on a big Saturday is to find more bets because there's more racing. It's exactly the wrong way round. More racing doesn't mean more good bets. It means more races, most of which are big field handicaps where I've got no edge, with a few good bets scattered through them that take the same amount of finding as on a Tuesday.
So I've got a rule, and it's the one rule I'd keep if I had to throw the rest away. The main list never has more than four points on in a day. Three win bets and a place, or two wins and two places, however the card falls. If I've found five horses I like, one of them doesn't make it, and it's the one with the least in hand on price. Members see that cap on the card every day, so the worst a Saturday can cost is never a surprise.
The reason isn't caution for its own sake. It's that a big Saturday is the day the bank can go. Eight meetings, eight bets, a bad afternoon, and you've lost in six hours what took a month to make. The four point cap means the worst Saturday possible costs four points of a forty point bank, and I've had those. They're annoying. They're not a crisis.
It also keeps the list honest. When you can only have four points on, you ask harder questions of the fifth horse. Is it a bet, or is it a horse I fancy because it's on the telly. Half the time it's the telly.
Today's three, for what it's worth, are at Chester, Sandown and Beverley, all near the front of the market, all horses whose last run tells a worse story than their form does. If all three go in it's a lovely day. If none do it's a point and a half down, and Monday's Southwell card will be along shortly.
Lee
See exactly what I do for two weeks.
For only £5.
Every bet I make, by email each racing morning, with the stake and my line on why. Pay £5 today, then £49 on day 15 for the winter pass to 31 March.
If your first month on the £49 loses, I refund it. Nothing renews after 31 March. Full details.
More from the notebook: Royal Ascot, the week I watch · The place bet's job