The 2024 Aintree Festival is upon us and starts this coming Thursday, 11th April. With it, the RAWK Aintree tipping competition returns for its 11th edition.
Can last year's Aintree top tipster
Aedge659 claim his 5th career major and also become the first RAWK Tipster to win the Aintree trophy back-to-back, while also becoming the first player to win a single RAWK tipping trophy for the 3rd time? Lots of records for The Edge to break this week.
Or perhaps
OldFordie will follow up on his Cheltenham heroics while in search of the elusive career Grand Slam!
Or will
BoRed finally get his hands on the big prize?
***Aside from some Grand National Bonus Points, the rules and scoring run very much in conjunction with the Cheltenham tipping contest with which many of you are now familiar.***
Players, old and new are most welcome.
Pick one horse per race on each of the 3 Race days. Points are accumulated as follows depending on where your selection is placed.
Winner - 15 points
Second - 10 points
Third - 7 points
Fourth - 4 points
Points are only awarded for places conforming to the bookie's industry standard (e.g. 2 places for races with less than 8 runners, 3 places for 8 or more runner races and 4 places for 16+ runner HANDICAP races). I appreciate some bookies pay out on 5,6,7 or even 8 places on certain races but these are purely promotions on behalf of the individual bookies and will NOT apply to this competition.
To avoid any confusion over the above, points will be awarded for the places specified on the results page of the Sporting Life Website
https://www.sportinglife.com/racing/resultsBonus points are available as follows. Please note, that there are now even more bonus points for winners and placed horses at 100/1 and over.
Winner 100/1 and over = 30 Bonus Points
Winner 33/1 and over = 20 bonus points
Winner 16/1 and over = 15 bonus points
Winner 8/1 and over = 5 bonus points
Placed horses 100/1 and over - 15 Bonus Points
Placed horses 33/1 and over - 10 Bonus points
Placed horses between 16/1 and 33/1 - 5 Bonus points
NOTE: A horse cannot gain both win and place bonus points in any one race.On each day's racing, you must also pick ONE NAP horse. If your NAP selection wins, then you receive double points. In previous years you simply received a 10-point bonus for picking a NAP winner. I feel that a double point bonus may encourage people to try and NAP a more risky selection at longer odds and therefore gain more points. It also gives people further down the leaderboard a chance to move up with a bit more of a risk/reward tactic.
So to clarify, if you picked a 10/1 winner you will get 20 points as standard (15 + 5). If you made this your NAP of the day you would receive double and get 40 points. Napping a 33/1 winner would get you 70 Points (15 + 20 x 2). Napping an odds-on favourite gets no odds bonus and you will be awarded the standard 15 points for a winner, then doubled. (15 x 2 = 30). And so on.
If you tipped a 33/1 horse that finishes 2nd you will get 20 points (10+10)
Grand National BonusThere is also a bonus for picking the big race winner on Saturday. The 'Grand National' Bonus Points - An additional bonus of 10 points is added to your base score for anyone selecting the big race winner. So napping the grand national winner could result in a monster haul of points.
Entries are to be posted in this thread before the first race each day. You can also post your selections for each day the night before or even post all 3 days' selections before Thursday if you so wish.
I will update the leaderboard each evening on this post.
TiesIn the event of the leaders being tied for the lead after the final days of racing. The overall winner will be determined by the number of winners picked, if still tied then it will go to 2nd places, then 3rd places, and so on until we have a winner. If the players cannot be split we will have a playoff on the earliest UK meeting on the Monday immediately following the festival.
Non-RunnersAny NRs in your selections will be replaced by the SP Favourite.If you don't think you've got the time to make any selections on one of the days just post something along the lines of "Fav every race". In the event of JT Favourites, your selection will be deemed as the favorite that is first alphabetically.
**Anyone with edits on their original posts AFTER the start of the FIRST race each day, will void all their selections for that day!!!*****Any player who neglects to post an entry of some kind for any TWO of the three festival days will be removed completely from the competition. NO EXCEPTIONS***.Please feel free to edit your selections right up to the time of the first race or post your whole week's selections in one go. I will also accept late entries on each day for the remaining races that day.
Any questions about the point scoring or selections please feel free to ask in this thread or drop me a PM.
No real prizes I'm afraid - just the glory of being crowned 'RAWK Aintree Festival Champion Tipster 2024' while also getting your name inscribed on this lovely virtual trophy!
