Someone who's followed the list a while said the reasons were a bit short. One line, usually. Dropped in trip to the distance it won over, last figure was on heavy. That's it. She wanted more. I thought about it and I'm keeping them short, and here's why.
A reason has one job, which is to tell you what I saw that the price didn't. If I can't say that in a sentence, I haven't seen it clearly, and the horse shouldn't be a BSP Favourite. A long reason is usually a short reason with hedging around it, and the hedging is there to make the bet sound better than the line does.
I've read a lot of tipping copy over the years. The giveaway is always length. Three paragraphs on the trainer's record at the track, the jockey booking, how it worked on the gallops according to a man in the pub, what the ground will do if it rains, and somewhere in there the actual reason, which is that it was second last time. Everything else is a story, and a story is what you tell yourself when the price isn't enough on its own.
So the line you get is the thing I'd say if you stopped me on the way to the car. Beaten four lengths for seventh on ground it hated, back on the sand where it's won twice. That's a reason. If the horse wins, that's why. If it doesn't, that's still why I had it, and you can judge the reason against the result and decide whether you'd have had it too. Every horse on the members' card comes with one, and over a season you'll know my thinking as well as I do.
What I won't do is tell you I've got information. I don't. I've got the form book and the price and a set of questions, the same ones every day, and the honest thing about that is that you've got the form book too. The reason line is me showing you where I looked. If enough of them make sense to you over a season, you'll trust the ones that don't.
Lee
PS: the exception is the comeback horses, when I start doing them. A horse with an F in the line needs a second sentence, because the first one has to say it was going well.
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More from the notebook: The results pick the method, not me · The place bet's job