April 5 — Betting Tissue Club race is race 5 from Sha Tin
This week’s betting tissue club race is Race 5 (the trappy Class 1 Harlech Handicap). You can view all past races for the runners from the excellent hkjc.com website (click on highlighted link above and then on each runner).
You can download the betting tissue club calculator (Excel file) here: STApril5Race5
You will need to complete your tissue, save it using a unique file name, and then upload it to this webpage using the secure form below. You should only fill in the odds column (blue) in decimal form (other columns contain formulae that do the calculations for you).
Upload your form before midday (BST / Irish and UK time) on Saturday. Submissions after this time won’t be included. Also remember to check back here later on Saturday to view the summary of all submissions and read my thoughts on the race..
Upload form
For more complete information on how the Betting Tissue Club HK works, click here.
Betting Tissue Summary
Thanks as always to everyone who took part. A total of five people submitted tissues (six with mine), which was down on last week, but still not a bad number.
Below is the summary table of all the tissues. This week’s race was a very tricky one to get to grips with and that is highlighted by the wide variation in odds that most of us came up with for most runners.
With that in mind, instead of providing mean and median odds (both metrics provided books way below 100%, which would consequently have provided way-too-generous odds), I have provided mean and median ranks for each horse. The lower the number, the closer to the head of the betting in each person’s tissue the horse was.
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HORSE |
CONTRIBUTORS’ TISSUE PRICES (100% BOOKS)
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| THP | LTO | HKR | RN | SB | SL | Mean Rank | Median Rank | |
| Dark Dream | 13 | 19 | 100 | 5.8 | 31.8 | 63.3 | 7.7 | 9 |
| Eagle Way | 10 | 19 | 75 | 16 | 17.8 | 5.9 | 5.7 | 5.5 |
| Fast Most Furious | 13 | 17 | 5 | 90 | 23.7 | 3 | 5.5 | 6.5 |
| Ho Ho Khan | 6.5 | 16 | 4.5 | 5 | 19.7 | 14.5 | 3.8 | 3.5 |
| Time To Celebrate | 21 | 16 | 42 | 99 | 25.5 | 51 | 8.2 | 9 |
| Chefano | 8 | 9.5 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 4.1 | 7.5 | 3.5 | 3.5 |
| Helene Charisma | 13 | 8 | 100 | 99 | 15 | 8.7 | 5.7 | 4.5 |
| Helene Leadingstar | 15 | 11 | 42 | 30 | 6.4 | 20.8 | 6.2 | 6.5 |
| Savvy Nine | 13 | 5 | 32 | 4.9 | 23.6 | 18.9 | 4.3 | 5 |
| Butterfield | 5 | 4.5 | 3 | 6.1 | 3.7 | 25.1 | 2.7 | 1 |
As you can see, the only thing we (generally) agreed on was the good chance Butterfield seems to have; it’s also worth flagging — given the wide variation in opinions — that we all priced up Chefano as a single-figure chance.
In pricing up the race, I again sorted the horses into a rough order in terms of their likely chances based on my speed ratings, but also on watching their recent runs and taking into account the draw and jockey bookings ahead of Sunday.
The horses that had the best recent speed ratings on my figures were Chefano, Ho Ho Khan and Butterfield. The former has twice recently run times equating to base speed ratings (before sectional upgrades) of more than 100, which is a very high level of form on my scale. The only reason I don’t make him favourite is that he has been ridden by Moreira and Purton this season and neither picks him here. He did also disappoint last time, but I think there were valid excuses seeing as he led that race and that isn’t his normal style.
Butterfield has been running consistently well (ran creditably when outmatched last time and won the time before when putting up a good rating), has a lovely low weight and Moreira in the saddle. Those three things combined make him favourite in my eyes.
Ho Ho Khan was next in for me having run his best race for a long time most recently when not getting the clearest of runs. He has been running in Group races for some time and this slightly easier assignment, coupled with the signs that he was running back into form last time, means I think he is worth a lot of respect.
In truth, the others I thought were much of a muchness, hence my pricing them relatively similarly. I felt that just about all of them had the form to win if running to their best, but in most cases it would take a fairly significant step up on recent efforts to do that.
Dark Dream is interesting for the simple reason that he won this race 12 months ago and Purton has seemingly elected to ride him here. None of his recent form would be good enough, but one suspects he may well step forward a good bit based on those two pieces of information. If there is a surprise market springer, he may just be the one.