King Cobweb hasn't won a race for a long time. Don't let already fat, rich bookies trap you in their web and take your money. One way to help yourself financially is to avoid backing horses in Saturday city races that haven't won a race for 52 weeks or more. Sure the odd one will win, but not enough will win to ever make you change the rule.

On 27/12/12 I penned a story entitled “New Year Punting Resolution Number Two: Don’t back horses that haven’t won a race for 52 weeks or more in Saturday city company”.

In that article it was pointed out to readers to “give long term losers a big swerve in Saturday city races throughout 2013” – and beyond. It was also stated “if the horse hasn’t won a race in the last 52 weeks just put a line straight through it – as historically most of them will never win another race. Yet amazingly alleged “experts” blindly tip punters into them day in and day out.

You wouldn’t want to know it but on the next day God decided he’d play silly buggers with me and he let three of the “long term losers” win and those three were Break The Ice ($2.80 fav), Discreet ($2 fav) and Equissential ($14).

Naturally I wasn’t impressed by being made look like a real goose by “The Big Fella”, so I contacted him and asked him what the go was and what he said was “you are spot on disciple Philip but I’m not big on punters. Where in the Bible does it say everyone should go to the track or the club or the TAB on Saturday afternoon and get on the soup and hiss at horses and pull the whip thinking they are a jockey and all this crap? It doesn’t, so by me doing a job on the long term losers and letting a few win, mug punters will be able to do their dough on them throughout the year and hopefully a few will retire from punting and do some charity work or something in lieu of punting”. I must say that relieved me no end to hear The Big Fella’s words but he did say to me as we finished the conversation “do up an article at the end of each month for the next 12 months and you’ll be able to prove your point without a problem”.

So here is a list of all the horses that started in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne Saturday city races from 1/1/13 to 31/1/13 inclusive. The track rating at the end of the meeting is noted below.

So from just one month of Saturday metropolitan racing in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, some 113 horses that hadn’t won for 52 weeks inclusive or longer raced. And of those 113 horses only five (or 4.43%) won, which conversely means 95.57% of “long term losers” failed to win a race again. The five that won and the time they’d been absent from the winners list were Snow Cover (13 months), Triple Elegance (22), Kutchinsky (31), Shadows In The sun (20) and War Charm (12).

If a punter had $1 a win on all long term losers they’d outlay $113 and the return, based on their official starting price, including their $1 stake back would be $48.50 so they’d get 42.92% of their outlay back, meaning they’d lose 57.08% of their stake.

Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there is the second big montage of photos from the Marburg harness racing meeting and Doomben gallops last Saturday. On www.sydneyracing.com.au the performance of past and present Aussie shuttle stallions heading to overseas destinations is reviewed, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au Matt Nicholls pens another interesting read.