I’m back to eat some humble pie for my Melbourne Cup tips. It looked good for a while but alas Royal Supremacy couldn’t maintain the run down the home straight and the Point Of Law had plenty in reserve to shoot past everyone and take a clear win.
1st: 20. Point Of Law
Tote win: $7.80
Tote place: $3.10
Betfair BSP win: $7.19
Betfair BSP place: $3.72
There’s a video here if you’d prefer this information in video format. Otherwise most of the information is summarised below.
My tips for the 2026 Melbourne Cup
3. Knight’s Choice
5. Vauban
7. Royal Supremacy
13. Onesmoothoperator
(Note: In the video I accidentally refer to Ciaron Maher as the jockey of Royal Supremacy. Ciaron Maher is the trainer. I meant to refer to Ben Allen but looked at the wrong column when preparing my notes and the graphics.)
It’s a wide open field this year without a clear favourite, which to my mind advantages the horses which aren’t in the top tier of the betting market. That said, I’m backing these for a place primarily with a small win bet just in case. They all are paying nice dividends which I consider well above their actual chances.
Of these, Onesmoothoperator is my best bet, followed by Knight’s Choice who I think will be helped by the overnight rain.
The horse who I do not fancy
20. Point Of Law
Won the Geelong Cup recently but has never raced at this distance or at Flemington. The Geelong Cup is over 1000m shorter and I just don’t fancy the chances of this horse maintaining the run over the longer Melbourne Cup trip.
Australian TV broadcasts
Nine is the primary free to air broadcaster. Note that while Seven is airing Randwick races today, they don’t have rights to Flemington. Nine is the official Free To Air Melbourne Cup broadcaster on channels 9, 90, 8 or 80 depending on your location. Also available via Foxtel on channels 100 and 209. Also streaming on 9now.
Sky Racing is the master rights holder for The Melbourne Cup. Available on Foxtel channel 526, the apps of most bookmakers and TAB, and on the big screen at just about every licenced venue and racetrack in the country. Not available on Kayo.
Racing.com is broadcasting on free to air channel 78 or 68 depending on your location. Also streaming on racing.com. Note that the Foxtel, Kayo and 7plus version of Racing.com are contractually unable to air today’s Flemington races.
I have to note that I prefer the Sky and Racing.com broadcasts over Nine as they both focus on the racing and analysis of the racing, and spend less time on the fashions on the field and cross-promotion of other programs.
Australian radio broadcasts
Racing radio stations. Sky Sports Radio (NSW/ACT), RadioTAB (QLD, NT, SA, TAS), RSN (VIC), SENTurf (WA), SENTrack (various locations). These have a frequency in almost every town in the country. Sky and RadioTAB frequencies can be found at https://skyracing.com.au/listen/frequencyFinder while many of the RSN, SENTurf and SENTrack frequencies can be found at https://www.sen.com.au/guide
Triple M: In the capital cities and possibly also being carried on some of their regional station. Also on the Listnr app.
Tapt Media: 2GB Sydney, 3AW Melbourne, 4BC Brisbane, 6PR Perth. Also syndicating to many regional stations. Also available via their website.
ABC Radio: Nationally on ABC Local Radio. On the ABC Sport DAB+ station. Also on the ABC Listen app.
International broadcasts
New Zealand: Trackside 1
United Kingdom: Sky Sports Racing
South Africa: Super Sports Africa
Other countries: Check stations which normally carry horse racing.
Everywhere outside Australia: Racing.com and 9now should be accessible with a VPN. Both require free registration. Racing.com in some cases works without a VPN. Note that Sky Racing World, a paid subscription, does NOT have rights to today’s Flemington races.
Best of luck!
Samuel
For the avoidance of doubt with new gambling advertising laws coming into effect in Australia: this content is not sponsored by, paid by, or affiliated with any gambling or wagering provider.
Following up on a video from last year, today I provide an updated selection criteria for NRL betting with Hard N Soft Staking, and apply a similar approach to AFL betting.
I thought that over the next few weeks I might feature some of the songs which I was particularly fond of when I was a kid. I dare say my taste in music as a kid didn’t align with any of my peers, and in fact I have been told many times that I was born middle-aged and there’s probably a grain of truth to that.
As a kid I went through a phase where I wanted to grow up to be a bus. Not a bus driver, but a bus. I would run around the school playground being the bus on the 333 intertown route through Canberra with specific parts of the playground acting as various stops along the way. So with that in mind, it’s probably not surprising that I was fond of Red Simpson’s song “I’m a truck” which tells a story from the truck’s point of view rather than the driver’s point of view.
I was in Temora earlier this week and as often happens when I have some time away, I had some time to do some thinking. This particular topic is one I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I had some time to really pull my thoughts together while I was away.
In today’s video I discuss how my thought process has shifted from “AI sceptic” to “AI pragmatist” and how a book called AI Betting Edge helped to reframe the way I think about AI’s role in betting. I also give some thoughts on how I now approach the use of AI in betting and how I thinks approaching it with the right mindset can make it a useful and powerful tool for every bettor.
Today I’m taking you in my time machine back to 2003 for a look at a project I worked on in high school: a video mini-documentary about the photo finish camera.
The project was supposed to be a speech to the class about something electronic, explaining some of the history of the thing, how it works, and how it’s useful. As the spring racing carnival was well underway at the time, I thought the photo finish camera was a timely electronic object to focus on, and got the class teacher’s approval to put together a video presentation instead of a direct speech to the class, with the teacher’s stipulation that I must appear on camera during the video.
I have actually shared the mini-documentary itself previously, way back in 2007, but now with the benefit of much more hindsight I have the opportunity to not only share the video and some stories of its production, but reflect on how I might have done it differently if I could do it today, and also take a moment or two to correct a few factual errors in the video, which also have their own interesting backstories.
I’m sure just about everyone reading this blog today hasn’t seen the mini-documentary before, so I hope you enjoy it. Those of you who have seen it previously: I hope you enjoy the expanded information and reflection on it.
My apologies for the extended absence. Alas I have been very busy in the last few months and struggled to find time to keep on top of my bots at times, let alone find time to create more videos. Thankfully things have settled down a bit in recent weeks and I have had time to both get back on top of my bots and get ready to produce more videos, the first of which starts now with a video looking at some level staking ideas in RPM Bot.
A look at a method of backing low-priced favourites in Australian harness racing, to turn a profit (with a bit of patience) using Hard N Soft staking in the Hard N Soft Bot.
The long-awaited “even better” RPM Bot strategy is here (and I’m sorry it took me so long to get it done).
In this video I demonstrate the strategy in RPM Bot which has been performing even better than the strategy in the previous video. Including full details of the strategy settings, a demonstration of how the RPM Bot follows price movements and makes its selections, and a detailed breakdown of strike rate statistics by country and race type, plus some surprisingly good news for people who prefer level staking.
Video chapters for your reference:
00:00 Introduction
01:10 Results
05:57 The bot settings
08:24 RPM Bot in action – making selections and winning races
17:33 Strike rate statistics and level staking performance
28:40 Conclusion
29:48 Addendum – France to the rescue!
Today I’m taking a look at the RPM Bot. I explain how it tracks and measures price movements in horse racing markets over time, and how this can be used to find winners at some very nice prices.
Today’s strategy looks at horses which the market has overlooked paying 8.00 to 10.00
Microsoft’s insistence on having Windows install updates and restart whenever the computer feels like it poses a problem for any 24/7 computer operation, including betting bots, where interruptions can be inconvenient and costly.
There are a couple ways to regain control of Windows Updates so that they install on your schedule and only with your permission. In this video I look at how to configure Group Policy to manage updates (only available for Pro and Server editions of Windows) which is the most reliable and flexible way to manage updates, and also Windows Update Blocker which is the only decent option if you’re using a Home edition of Windows.
Important: Windows Updates contain important security fixes. Disabling Windows Updates permanently can result in your computer becoming insecure. If you use the steps in this video, it is important to continue to install updates periodically. Failing to do so is at your own risk.
A lot of the NRL teams are fairly evenly matched which provides plenty of opportunities for non-favourites to win, which is a perfect scenario for Hard N Soft staking. In today’s short video, I run through how the strategy has been performing and the criteria I use to choose which games to bet on, using Hard N Soft as my staking method.
I’m back from a bit of a hiatus with an update on a harness racing strategy in the ANZ Bot which was briefly mentioned in a video some months ago.
Today’s video goes into more detail of the strategy and shows how it has been performing well over a number of months, including a run of eight winners in a row just prior to recording this video.
I know some of you are awaiting email replies from me. I’ve recently discovered that some auto-filtering had been turned on in my email which was hiding many legitimate emails from my view, so I’m only just finding many of these emails now, and hope to have replies done over the next day or two.