With just under a week until the 2023 Festival kicks off on Tuesday 14th March, it's time to get this years tipping competition rolling again. The previous 15 editions have all been really good fun, competitive with a healthy turnout each day.
Last years competition went to the wire with 8 players in the mix. Eventually 'OldFordie' snatched victory from Bryan on the very last race. Can Fordie become only the second player to secure back-to-back titles since 'Alex' did it 11 years ago!?
The general rules of the game are quite simple and remain the same as the last few years in which we began to include bonus points for placed horses with larger SP's as a general consensus revealed that we agreed players tipping a large priced horse that manages to place should be rewarded as such.
SO, on to the Rules...
Pick one horse per race each day of the festival. 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 bookies 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 on only the places specified on the results page of the Sporting Life Website
https://www.sportinglife.com/racing/resultsAll important Odds Bonus points are available for certain winners and placed horses that are above a certain price. (SP).
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 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 days racing you must also pick ONE NAP horse. If your NAP selection WINS, then you receive DOUBLE points. In previous years, players received just a 10 point bonus for picking a NAP winner. I felt 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 leader board a chance to move up with a bit more of a risk/reward tactic.
The double point NAP bonus worked well in its first year (2014) and WernerRed scored a huge 100 points on day 4 and probably would have won the whole competition had he not entered the competition late on Day 2.
So to clarify the scoring and NAP bonus - 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 would gather no odds bonus and just get you the standard 15 points for a winner then doubled. (15 x 2 = 30). And so on.
I will provide a daily points tally and overall leader board each evening in this thread and will also update the tables on this OP.
Important info:
Entries to be posted in this thread BEFORE the first race each day. (you can also post the night before if you wish).
Any Non-Runners in your selections will be replaced by the SP Favourite. In this case and there are joint favs, then you will be assigned the first horse alphabetically.
If you don't think you've got the time to make any selections on one of the days at least try and post something along the lines of "Fav every race".
**Anyone with edits on their original post AFTER the start of the FIRST race each day, will void ALL their selections for that day!!! No exceptions**Any player who neglects to post entries for any 2 of the 4 festival days will be removed completely from the competition. NO EXCEPTIONS. This rule allows players to miss posting selections for any single day and also gives new players the opportunity to join the competition a day late (Wednesday).
Please feel free to post/edit your selections right up to the time of the first race each day or maybe even post your whole weeks selections in one go. (reminder: NR's will be replaced by SP Fav)
Again, if you're pressed for time to get your entry in, I'll even except an entry posted in the thread consisting of random numbers eg: 8,5,11,9,3,2 or maybe even 'number 2 every race'. If any of these number selections don't figure in the race you will still get the SP favourite and a chance to score points.
Late selections will be accepted on any day but obviously only the selections for the races that remain at the time of posting will score points.
Any questions about the point scoring or selections please feel free to ask in this thread or drop me a PM. We will not be having separate threads for chat and selections this year we can just keep it all contained in this thread.
No prizes I'm afraid - just the glory of being crowned RAWK's Champion Cheltenham Tipster 2023 and become the 16th name in the 'hall of fame'.
You will also have your name inscribed on the much sought after 'virtual' trophy (as seen below)
