Devon Knows How They Make It So Good!

A quiet early start to the week here at Star Towers.

Monday and Tuesday were very quiet, although both showing small profits on the day. Lady Kathleen’s last flight tumble at Plumpton when having the race at her mercy being the turning point of the day (a £50k wager at 4/5 being turned over).

That evening’s Premier League game between Wigan and Man City also saw us escape, with a large Asian handicap bet on City getting a half stake return. We’ll quite happily take an imaginary yellow card from Mr Mancini for getting away with that as Wigan defended doggedly to keep the margin down to a single goal.

Tuesday passed without any real incident at all. In fact I struggle to think of any meaningful bet that passed through the books.

Wednesday of course saw the return to action of Star Sports very own horse Gaul Wood. Plenty of blogging and tweeting inches have been written already about him, but suffice to say everybody was pleased with his facile win in the 1250 at Lingfield. Some shrewdies took advantage of a great offer on the twitter, with us refunding any stakes up to £200. Basically we were giving money away! Don’t ever say bookies aren’t generous! The sp was 1/7! It’s something to even get a horse to win a race, but to win at such a sort price is incredible. We are hoping the handicapper isn’t too hard on him now and we can win another race on the all-weather before going onto the turf. The eventual target is Royal Ascot, providing we adhere to the dress code.

Thursday saw an amazing morning. Since we took over Vickers a year or so ago we have a lot of small punters in the morning who are a bunch of lovely people and great to deal with. To our amazement the first punter on was quoted a price for a horse at Chepstow and instead of her usual £2 wager, she asked for £50! Of course I had to double-check, but indeed it was a £50 wager.

This was followed on by another £5 punter who asked for £100 on Australia in the upcoming world 20/20 cricket. Suddenly I had visions of what was going on in deepest Devon – was Mario Balotelli driving round the streets of Barnstaple giving out £50 notes to passing strangers? If he was then he must have moved pretty quickly because a £100 punter from the Manchester area started betting in £1000 units, Crystal Bonus at Chepstow being the first of those bets. In the real world we had a decent day with defeats for Wouldyouletmefinish at Taunton and Brave Alliance at Ludlow.

Friday wasn’t the greatest day. The morning’s après-prayer meeting at Meydan didn’t help the p&l column, with wins for Jamr and Prince Bishop putting us on the back foot. Later on in the night at Wolverhampton, Welease Bwian weally cost us pwenty when winning!

Saturday turned out a good day eventually. The day’s Premier League action was kind to us with £100k worth of business out of Liverpool vs Bolton and £50k for Stoke v WBA staying in the satchels.

Over at Ascot, Somersby turned over the well-backed pair of Wishful Thinking and Finians Rainbow. Good stuff for Henrietta Knight who seems to have finally realised that those sandy things that stretch out from her stables are called ‘gallops’ and if sometimes your horses run up and down them they get fit and run faster for longer!

Which leads on to today… The Aussie Open has seen us lay Novak Djokovic in the men’s tournament at 5/4. But here we laid the Roger Federer game to go over 3.5 sets and Caroline Wozniacki’s match following on to go over 2.5 sets. Fed as usual played tennis on the bridle, disposing of the Aussie Tomic in 3 one-sided sets. The latter game gave us a little more to be worried about, as though the Dane won the first set 6-0, she managed to let a double service break slip in the 2nd set, before regaining her composure to win 7-5. As Jim Bowen used the say ‘The money was safe!’

Well it’s been a great, super, smashing week here after all and I’ll be back for more next week.