Imagine you own a horse running in a lowly maiden somewhere in the country. Your trainer tells you that maybe today is the day and that he really has a chance. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that you might scrape up $500 to have a bet.

You arrive at the track and about twenty minutes before the race you have visited the stable and watched as the strapper and trainer put on the saddle, check the girth strap and make sure all the horse's gear is right.
The strapper takes the horse to the mounting yard and you follow.

With ten minutes to go you listen in as the rider mounts up and receives his instructions from the trainer, now it is time to head to the betting ring with your five hundred dollars, not a huge sum by any means. It costs four times that much each month just to keep the damned thing in work.

In the betting ring, if you're lucky, there are a few dozen punters, mostly pensioners and holiday makers having a day out. Somewhere amongst them are one or two bookmakers betting to a 160% to 200% market and your horse is $2.30. You're disappointed but what can you do. You go over and ask for $500 at the $2.30 "Turn it up" he says " Where do you think you are, bloody Randwick? I'll take $300 at that price" and he turns the price down to $2.00. At this you have no choice but to take the price for your last $200. You head off to watch the race.

In the meantime, the price change hasn't escaped notice and a few punters "follow the money" with $10, $20, and $50 bets. The course broadcaster has noticed the price change too so on Sky Channel and TAB radio we hear "there's been a big go for the favourite and he's now very close to the red but still a bit better on the TAB."

What happens next? The TAB is flooded with thousands of dollars of bets across the nation as everyone rushes to get on. At an ordinary country meeting the off course bets can exceed $200,000 and of this half may go on
the favourite in the last minute or even less.

How many of those punters are aware of the real circumstances? Wouldn't they be shocked of they knew that a single owners bet has swung all that money? The owner probably doesn't know any of the form and possibly the trainer
only knows how his own horse is going.

At Winform we follow the form, because we know that the prices are illusory. Many times they do not reflect the real chance a horse has of winning, and this is where we make our money. When that flood of money arrives for the
"good thing" we get on the horse or horses that have been "pushed out" in the market by this mostly false trail. That is why the average winning price of our Winform's Top Two selections is between $5 and $6, even though we are
happy to back a genuine favourite at a short price. The majority of these short priced runners lose, lose lose!

Think about it next time you hear "the call".