Marmalade

May 23
Marmalade gets the top pupil award today??

06:10 Royal Randwick
Witherspoon EW

06:10 Royal Randwick
Witherspoon EW

Have a nice weekend everyone
 
 

forever young in the heart (and head)?

Last Eight
Looks a right bunch of old shrewdies?
(well I know 3 of us are pretty ancient)
 

 
Good luck all

19:15 Gulfstream
Private Message
 
If NR: 20:48 Gulfstream - Conquistador EW

20-17 gulf poseiden

Gulfstream 2017
Poseiden

20:17 Gulfstream
Poseiden EW

20:17 Gulfstream
Poseiden EW

20:45 Will Rogers Downs
Victory Stripe

Tampa Bay  7.53.  Autograph.

Good luck everyone and huge thanks to @BillyHills for organising this as brilliantly as ever!  

Random Name Picker
 

Just got to go for this one!
19:00 Tampa Bay Downs
Marmalade

Just got to go for this one!
19:00 Tampa Bay Downs
Marmalade

As always, many thanks @BillyHills for keeping the site and comps running ?.  This is the best-run and most enjoyable forum on the internet, and I want it to keep going.  My recent efforts on South Africa venues have been awful, and I don't expect I'll be any better at the US ones, but I want to keep supporting this site so I'll give it a go! ?

21:39 Gulfstream
Morocco 8/1 EW betfair

As always, many thanks @BillyHills for keeping the site and comps running ?.  This is the best-run and most enjoyable forum on the internet, and I want it to keep going.  My recent efforts on South Africa venues have been awful, and I don't expect I'll be any better at the US ones, but I want to keep supporting this site so I'll give it a go! ?

As always, many thanks @BillyHills for keeping the site and comps running ?.  This is the best-run and most enjoyable forum on the internet, and I want it to keep going.  My recent efforts on South Africa venues have been awful, and I don't expect I'll be any better at the US ones, but I want to keep supporting this site so I'll give it a go! ?

As always, many thanks @BillyHills for keeping the site and comps running ?.  This is the best-run and most enjoyable forum on the internet, and I want it to keep going.  My recent efforts on South Africa venues have been awful, and I don't expect I'll be any better at the US ones, but I want to keep supporting this site so I'll give it a go! ?

First of all I have no issues with the competition as it is, and I think @BillyHills does a fantastic job keeping track of everything every day.  So no complaints here, just thanks.  Having said that, I welcome the suggested changes because I think, for all the reasons stated by others here, the new regime will give those of us who don't get 50/1 winners something to aim at.
As for S/R or number of winners - I've just spent 20 minutes arguing with myself (!!), and my other half (who walked out half way through), over which I prefer.  I shan't bore you all with that sad debate, but the outcome is I think maybe number of winners with S/R as a tie-break.

Proposals 
As promised is the tables thread I am looking at ways to reward the more consistent players and also ways to keep up the interest to the end of the month.
I find that clear leaders sit on their profit and players attempting to qualify for the Cup are doing the same which leads to many players not picking selections in the last couple of days or more.
Just to be clear I have no feelings one way or another on how players go about approaching the competition, we all have our own way of betting, we just want everyone to feel they have something to play for.
I have noticed over the last few months some rumblings about the way players approach the Naps competition and there is no doubt we have had a shift in more players going for the speculative outsider than we have before.
I had a look at the figures and we are regularly hitting around the 19% S/R these days where as before we were often around the 25% mark. This is totally down to more players going for 25/1+ selections.
The players who genuinely sift through the cards to find their best bet of the day feel as though they have no chance in winning the monthly competition. I can see once a player has hit a 50/1 winner just playing for a Cup place is not the best of incentives.
I think we can reward performance and profit and have been looking at the last 12 months figures to see how we can do it.
At first I thought it would be best just to award the player with the highest strike rate a percentage of the winners prize but I also don't think encouraging people to select 1/4 shots everyday is helping anyone, so taking that a step further, what about if we had a profit figure that you needed to surpass as well?
If we say took the highest strike rate of those that made a profit in the month of at least £10 that would kill off any ideas of odds on shots every single day. Of course you would expect some short priced horses to be chosen and I have no problem with that, if its a Nap, its a Nap but by having the £10 figure it really rewards those that have performed well that month.
I have done a couple of tables to show how it would have panned out since January 2019 up until last month. Interestingly just 2 winners of the comp came out with the best S/R. 8 players were in the top 4 cash prizes but it would have given 7 players a prize that wouldn't have normally received anything. I would say overall that suits most type of punter. Of course people may bet differently knowing about the new prize.
In the second table i took away the upper profit limit and this highlighted the problem of players sitting on a small profit just to qualify for the Cup, I feel this would just get worse if there was a prize for the highest S/R only.
I propose a prize of £20 for player with the highest SR that has at least £10 profit on the month. This prize may well go to a player in the top 4 already but the winner of the whole competition will still quite rightly win the most cash whatever the result.
The second part of the new formula is to limit the amount of players qualifying for the Cup. At the minute anyone finishing in profit (or even, lol) gains automatic qualification into the following months KO Cup. This can be as many as 30+ players and this often leads to a few players reaching a profit figure and then stopping posting for last few days of the month, or even worse players reaching 15 bets and then just stopping. 
If we had a figure of 25 players only to qualify for the Cup then it would make it more exciting and something to aim for in the final few days of the month. I will also award a runners up prize for the KO Cup which has been asked for in the past.
I am not looking to change any of the main rules of the comp, i think we should keep the main core of what the comp is all about ie; picking one horse per day. So we wont be changing that or messing about with stakes etc.....
Let me know if you think this would be a way forward, please bare in mind we have a budget and we want to keep things simple.
 
Proposals as from April 1st
Winner : £60
Second : £30
Third : £20
Fourth: £10
Highest S/R with min £10 Profit : £20
Cup Winner: £30
Cup Runners Up: £10
Top 25 only to qualify for Cup.
 
Table of those with the highest S/R and achieving a £10 profit 

 
 
Table of those with the highest S/R, no upper limit on profit
Those in grey did not make the £10 profit mark.

 

A very well thought out idea @BillyHills I would be happy with either number of winners or S/R, whichever is easiest for you given all the hours you put in.