Using Hot Form To Back More Horse Racing Winners

Sam Darby, a professional tipster who operates a service called ‘Winning Post Profits’ on the Surewin platform, shares with us the main method he uses for filling his tracker with future winners, which enables him to back hundreds of winners a season.

The Most Important Race Of My Life

I was very fortunate to stumble upon this profit making strategy very early on in my adult life, and I’ve now been able to use it for two decades to line my pockets with bookmakers’ money.

Whilst at University, I was working part time in a bookie. My strategy in those days was to back anything that a few of my favoured tipsters tended to agree on, a strategy that was never going to make me any money in the long term.

It was around that time that Rock Of Gibraltar was retired. It had been highly publicised that Sir Alex Ferguson was a part owner and I learned that he also had a stake in a lightly raced 3yo called Gatwick.

The horse had only run once as a 2yo, and it was a promising debut, so I thought perhaps this horse was the ‘new Rock Of Gibraltar’ and worth following through the ranks. I backed him on his first start as a 3yo and he won a maiden at 4/1 so I was fully invested in the Gatwick fan club.

He was a similar price to win on handicap debut at Newbury next time out so I backed him again. He could only finish 3rd on that occasion and I was left disappointed that he seemingly wasn’t even good enough to win at that level. What I’d witness in the next few months though would transform my approach to betting on horse racing and would help me back thousands of winners over the next 20 years.

Since I was working in a bookie at that point, I was obviously watching a lot of racing. I soon noticed that many of the horses that had finished around Gatwick in that Newbury handicap were winning on their next starts.

When Gatwick was next entered to run, the winner of that Newbury race had already won twice since, the runner up had come out and won and the 6th placed runner had won subsequently too. I recognised that Gatwick had obviously run in a very strong handicap at Newbury and he’d actually achieved plenty by finishing 3rd. As a result I had my biggest bet ever at the time on him to win at Goodwood and he landed a big gamble (around 5/1 into 9/4), winning cosily. 

Runners from that Newbury race would continue to win, or run very well in defeat, in the coming months. Once the first nine runners from that race had all run at least twice, the form figures from their next two starts (in order) would read:

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The remarkable part is that anyone who had bet £20 each way on every one of those runners, on their next two runs, would have won an incredible £2,422. That was at SP as well, getting the juicier early prices would have generated even more profit.

The first nine finishers in that Newbury race would go on to rate 183lbs higher in total which suggests that might have been the best piece of handicap form ever in terms of many well handicapped horses clashing.

As for Gatwick, he’d follow up his Goodwood win by landing the Silver Bowl at Haydock before finishing a non stayer in the Derby. He’d win another handicap in the autumn and his last run of the season came when rated 108, 25lbs higher than when he was beaten at Newbury on his handicap debut.

A Fluke Race or a License To Print Money?

That race got me wondering. Would more races behave like this (providing future winners) if I spotted them early enough?

I don’t think there has been a race as strong as that Newbury handicap in terms of so many runners that were that well handicapped, but each spring there will be numerous handicaps that throw up plenty of future winners and I’d eventually come to know these races as ‘hot form’.

The most common type of ‘hot race’ is a big field 3yo handicap, just like that Newbury race. The more lightly raced runners that clash, the better the chance that many well handicapped, future improvers, are coming up against each other. 

Whilst those types of race are more likely to end up as hot form, races featuring older, more exposed runners, can also become hot form, although they are a bit less common.

In a typical flat season, there will usually be around fifty races that throw up several next time out winners with maybe ten or so races being ‘red hot’ contests that could have six, seven or eight future winners coming out of them.

Finding Hot Form

There are a few different ways you can go about finding these hot races, depending on how much time you have on your hands.

There are subscription sites that can make this a relatively quick process. Some will allow users to search races, highlighting any contests that are already throwing up winners (or placed horses), based on exact user parameters. Other sites will list runners with upcoming entries that come from races that can be considered ‘hot’.

These races can also be found using free sites and tools. These methods can take a bit more time, but they also ensure no stone is left unturned and this is actually the method I use as I can monitor races in ‘real time’ and be first to figure out which races are in fact hot.

One great tool to use is on the AtTheRaces website. On any results page there is a ‘Future Form’ tab and this will show subsequent runs for all participants in the race, at a quick glance. If you look at any race, through the Future Form tab, around 2-4 weeks after the event, you’ll usually get a very good idea of the strength of the form from how well the runners have done on their next starts.

If the race is weak, it can be discarded. If the form looks strong, any that haven’t run yet can be added to your tracker and if there haven’t been enough subsequent runners, the race can be bookmarked and checked again in a week or two.

It’s important to give a race a few weeks to work out. If you check too soon, there probably won’t have been enough subsequent runners. If you wait too long, even if the race was hot, there won’t be any runners left to back next time as they’ll all have won.

Ideally you want to look at these races after two runners, that have finished within a few lengths of the winner, have come out and run.

Which Runners To Track From Hot Form

The simplest formula might be just to follow the placed horses from each of these hot races, but to maximise returns it’s best to embrace a slightly more complicated method of deciding which runners to track going forward. You want to back every possible future winner from each hot race and many of those finish outside of the places in their hot race.

The simplest ‘formula’ is to follow any runner with close proximity to a subsequent winner. The further ahead of any subsequent winner a runner has finished, the better handicapped they are likely to be.

Let’s create an example to better explain this. 

In a 16 runner handicap, the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 8th might have already come out and won next time out. The winner, runner up, 5th and 7th are obviously going to be of interest as they’ve finished ahead of a next time out winner. Whether or not the 9th is worth following depends on how far behind the 8th he was. If it was only about half a length then they are worth monitoring. If it was a couple of lengths then there is a good chance they aren’t well handicapped.

Another consideration is the fact that the bare result isn’t often an accurate reflection of each and every runner’s ability in each race. In most races, some horses can have their efforts ‘upgraded’ and others can be ‘downgraded’ compared to the actual result.

Going back to the hypothetical race above, where the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 8th have since won, it’s highly possible that the 5th might be more interesting in the future than the winner or the runner up. That may be because of the distance, the ground, the draw, a pace bias, race fitness, trainer form or any other factor that affects how well a horse runs.

After the hot race has been found and the most interesting runners from that race have been identified, those runners need adding to your tracker so that you’ll be notified when they are due to run. If possible, it’s always worth adding a note to each runner that explains what race you are tracking them from, what conditions the horse wants and whether or not they need upgrading or downgrading from that tracked race. With over 500 well handicapped runners going into your tracker each season using this method, you’ll appreciate having those notes when the horses are due to run.

Does Every Horse Win?

Sadly, not all of them will win. Some of the runners you add to your tracker will never be seen here again, be it because they are sold abroad or they receive career ending injuries. Some have lengthy absences from the track and never regain that same form whilst others might just be campaigned in the wrong races by their trainers.

Fortunately, a good proportion of them will win, be it next time out or in the near future, on the assumption they are running in appropriate races. 

As is always the case in horse racing, sometimes they’ll run terribly for no reason next time out but that just means they’ll be a bigger price next time out, when they may well bounce back to form. It’s usually best to give each runner two or three chances in their ideal conditions before you give up on them.

Overall, there should be more than enough winners, and therefore more than enough profit, to cover the losing runners that let you down.

I’ve been using this method of finding, tracking and backing future winners for the past two decades and hopefully this is something you can now use to profit from yourself.