Sunday 26 October 2008

The Tote ‘Ten To Follow’ Competition



Politicalbetting.com tries again

OK, so we didn’t win anything last year but it was good to see PB’s name in the Racing Post when we were front-running early in the main competition and again when we got close to the January prize.

For those not already familiar with it, the Tote’s popular Ten to Follow competition is a decent value bet and can provide a lot of fun throughout the jumps racing season at relatively modest cost. The general idea is that you pick out ten horses from the Tote’s list and score points if and when they win, or finish second in the big ‘bonus’ races. Entry is £12 per line. Top prize is likely to be about £500,000 and there are monthly prizes of £10,000 each with a special £25,000 prize for the Cheltenham Festival in March.

Team entries are common; in fact, in view of the fierce competition, individual entries are unlikely to be successful. You really need to put in a lot of lines to have much chance. When I floated the idea of a PB syndicate entry last year, I was almost overwhelmed by the response, so this year I intend to impose a maximum stake of £50 and I will cap the entry at £1,000 so that it doesn’t get too unwieldy. Any prize money (don’t laugh) will be split pro-rata according to stake.

It helps if I have a couple of other PBers as Committee Members to help with picking horses, running the thing and ensuring fair play. Last year, Cheltboy, StJohn, Icarus and Yokel lent valuable assistance. I’ll be leaning on them again but if anybody else wants to join in, just let me know. I would also welcome any suggestions for horses to put in our entry, especially if they are unlikely to be on anybody else’s radar.

If interested, please drop me a line at arklebar@talktalk.net . State how much you want to be in for and give your real and ‘stage name’ and the email address to which you want communications sent. Please note that this email address will be visible to other members of the syndicate. (Sorry, but the admin becomes impossibly time-consuming otherwise.) The competition starts on November 14th but the sooner you get in touch the better; if oversubscribed, it will be first come, first served.

Full details of the competition can be found here.

Hope to hear from a good few of you soon.

Peter Smith (Peter the Punter)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Peter - what is a standard contribution? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?!?

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark

Most people just chuck about £20 at it if they're entering on their own. Last year, we had contributions ranging from £10 to £125. The total entry came to about £1,200. This year, I'm limiting it a max of £50 each (minimum £10) and when we get £1,000 together I'll close entries.

The advantage of a Syndicate of course is that if one of your horses gets injured, you've still got other line running.

We had a good run last year but lacked luck at the crucial stages. All good fun - but don't expect to win.

Peter the Punter said...

Test

rob's uncle said...

The link 'Full details of the competition can be found here.' doesn't work.

Anonymous said...

Test - this is Alan J posting - I've been unable to post on main threads for a week now

Peter the Punter said...

Rob

Sorry, we're apparently a bit ahead of the game. The jumps Site won't be up for a few days yet.

I'll correct this as soon as it's available.

Peter the Punter said...

UPDATE - Tuesday 27th November 2008

Places are going fast - we have a 70% take up already - so if interested, please email me straight away at arklebar@talktalk.net

Cheers

ptP

Peter the Punter said...

Fully subscribed now.

Further details will follow shortly.

Thanks to everybody for your interest.