THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING…

INFORMATION is regarded as the Holy Grail. Ask any punter what he would prefer. The formbook or information – and he will invariably say information.

Ask any professional punter and he will say the formbook. Both have their merits and in a balanced attempt to back winners, both are essential tools of the trade. But whereas it is possible to bob along without information, it is difficult without reference to the formbook. The reason is simple although many of you will have difficulty accepting it.

So let me put it this way. If I claimed to have seen a UFO and that I could provide a picture to prove it and that William Hill were offering 100/1 about such an occurrence, would you be tempted? Hopefully not. The reason for this is that past records suggest that I am incorrect. I may not be mad or deluded. But I am almost certainly wrong. What I saw was likely to have been an air balloon, an aircraft of some kind, a shooting star, or even a trick of the light: in other words, the formbook points to me being wide of the mark.

But if you were a Buddhist monk or someone who had spent a lifetime in an Amazon jungle, you may be inclined to believe what I say could be true. That is because without the aid of a chronicle charting countless false sightings in the past, my argument and my photo seems plausible.

Horseracing information can be similarly misleading. Conveyed with the best of intentions, it often originates from a source that may have interpreted what it has seen incorrectly. Now if the formbook can back up what is being said, that is a different matter. But, in the case of unraced horses or those with little or no form, you are relinquishing your judgement to someone else.

There was a time when information was eagerly awaited. The phone call the night before informing you that a certain Newmarket yard was about to unleash a flying machine the next day. Yippee! You sleep fitfully, planning next day’s betting plans. You spend the money in advance: a holiday, a new car, a weekend in Amsterdam minus the missus. You are up as it is turning light, you are at the newspaper shop as the shutters rattle and there it is, priced in the betting forecast at 6/1. Even allowing for a few other people being in on the coup, it would still open up on course at 10/3 at worse.

Nowadays you switch on the internet or open the paper with numbed resignation. The Newmarket correspondent naps it. Everyone seems to know what you know and its forecast price is 11/10, meaning after the first chunky bet it will be a universal 4/5 chance.  Whether it wins or loses is now irrelevant. Back horses like this on a regular basis, however good they are reputed to be, and you will lose in the long run.

But suppose you spot a horse in a handicap that is exposed but is back on a mark lower than it has won off, has reasonable recent form suggesting it has not regressed, has its ground, its trip and wins at this time of year. It is lightly tipped and is 6/1 in the betting forecast. To top it all a good jockey has gone out of his way to take the ride. Now this is an interesting prospect. If you have the opportunity to ask the question, all you really need to know is if the horse is well enough to do himself justice. Time and time again so called informants let horses like this run loose. But ask them whether the animal in question is all right, okay, or in form and they will reply, ‘Yes, of course, he is going there to win if he can.’

‘Well he can,’ you reply; ‘what’s more I think he will.’

‘I wouldn’t put you off backing him,’ is the response.

You have been handed a free bet!

Maybe the horse wins, maybe he loses. But I know which of the two outlined bets I would rather be on: a horse that is close to even money, possibly odds-on, that I don’t know the colour of, or one I have worked out that only needs to run to form to win or finish second and is 6/1.

You may have noticed the title of this piece refers to our friends the Russians. During the cold war, the KGB were past masters at the game of espionage. They had little else to spend their money on, so invested millions on potential informants and contacts in the knowledge that many would be next to useless. They would cultivate sympathisers, or fellow travellers as they were then known, in the belief that one day, one of them could provide a scrap of information so vital, so beneficial to Mother Russia, that it could alter the course of history.

Whilst waiting for such critical and influential news, they would keep everyone on the payroll happy. They would give them tickets to the Russian ballet when it was in London; send occasional cases of vodka to their doors; take them to dinner at fancy restaurants and make them believe that the information they were supplying was of utmost importance.

Bear with me here as I am coming to the point, and like all good points it needs setting up. Let us say that the KGB recruited a lady – let’s call her Gladys – in charge of rations for aircrew at RAF Brize Norton, the place military aircraft take-off from. Year after year, Gladys has been given tickets to see the Bolshoi Ballet and has been made to feel important by her other employers, despite the fact she has never been able to tell them anything more salient than whether aircrew prefer chutney or Piccalilli on their sandwiches. Now, on the eve of a confrontation between East and West, she suddenly contacts her controller, stating that instead of supplying the usual rations this Friday, she has to make arrangements for fifty-times that amount. From a simple, almost innocuous piece of information, Russia is able to deduce that there is to be a major military move on that day. Gladys has paid them back a thousand times over and her information could alter the course of a significant showdown.

That is what I term the KGB factor. The sleepers who one cultivates to relay the bleedin’ obvious in anticipation of the day when they will impart something that makes all the difference between a winning and losing year.

To keep such people on board can be expensive: being told what you already know, or have no interest in knowing, can be frustrating – particularly if it costs you money. Gone are the days when information was reserved for the privileged few. Now, it is only a newspaper away.

To keep such people financially happy is often not cost effective. Only the biggest players can afford to maintain such a situation. But used in conjunction with the formbook, information can tip the balance between profit and loss. It is a pendulum that can tilt in either direction and one that requires fine-tuning.

In our next article on this subject, we will discuss how you go about making sure you are adequately informed.