Betting Advice For Cheltenham The excitement generated by the Cheltenham Festival alone makes it the foremost annual horse racing event in the UK, let alone the British National Hunt season. With origins that go back to the mid-nineteenth century, there are no signs that the popularity of this spectacular festival of racing are diminishing here or in the UK. If anything, the live television coverage it now has brings it to an even wider audience today than it has ever enjoyed before. Betting still remains an important part of the festival for many who attend and the 2017 event will be no exception. If you are looking to place a sporting wager or two on the races at Cheltenham, then you might like to consider the following factors before deciding where to put your money. The Size of the Market The Cheltenham Festival generates a huge turnover of bets each year. This means that bookmakers are keen to get their slice of the action. If you take into consideration the total amount of wagers made over the four days of the festival across all platforms — online, on track and in betting shops — then the total market is something in the region of 475 million Euros. That sizeable sum is more than enough to attract bookies and many of them will seek to use the festival to attract new customers. Therefore, shopping around for the best place to put your bet on is more important with Cheltenham than it is with other meetings. Nearly all the big operators will offer one-off deals or special offers as well as competing with their odds. The intensity of competition increases close to the first day and continues throughout each race day, so select your chosen bookie with care. Betting on Outsiders or Favourites ©Healy Racing PhotosCheltenham has a well-deserved reputation for throwing up great results if you like to back the occasional outsider. In the last three years alone, handicapped winners have romped home with odds of 33 to 1, 28 to 1, 25 to 1 (twice), 16 to 1 and 14 to 1. This does not necessarily mean that bookmakers are getting things wrong, but that the festival seems to throw up more surprises than other meetings — great news if you like to back longer odds. In the 2016 festival, no favourite won in a handicap and only one of the most-favoured horses finished in the top places. The year before, only two favourites were placed. This means that increasing numbers of bookmakers are offering fifth position as a place to keep favourite-backers interested — well-worth considering if you fall into that category. Consider the Course When Reading Form Cheltenham has three different courses that races are run on. The Old Course, the New Course and the Cross Country Course all have different sections of faster and slower ground. Therefore, it is important to take into account the course, some of which offer more uphill sections than others, before reading the form guide for a particular race. Old Course races tend to occur at the start of the festival with the New Course being favoured on Thursday and on Gold Cup Day. Whichever course is used for a race, the finish line comes after an uphill section. As such, staying power is something that is definitely of use to most horses that find themselves in contention with a furlong or two to go.
