Few things make more of a fool of you than Cheltenham. My original selection Imperial Commander beats the revised selection Denman and apparantly confirms the maxim that you should never change your mind. Am I now convinced that you shouldn’t change your mind? Have I changed my mind about changing my mind? No. It is one race in a lifetime of selections. This occasion might have been a painful one, but there are plenty of other more pleasant experiences where I have changed my mind. I will continue to make assessments right up to the off and bet accordingly. You can do the right thing and still suffer. Maybe I didn’t study hard enough, or perhaps I missed some important clue. If anything, I didn’t change my mind enough!

In order to improve as a tipster it is important to try and make an objective assessment of your bets. The upshot of the week’s work is that I made 18 selections, only one of which won, but five others placed. Menorah was a winner with the first selection and Zaynar, Son Amix, Time For Rupert, Najaf and Denman made up the other places. It left a £1 level stakes loss of £1.44 (-8.0%) on the win markets and a level stakes profit of £9.74 (+54%) on the place markets (at Betfair SP, less 5%). However, we know that the level stakes profit does not tell the whole story. According to the Betfair SP I should have expected 1.79 winners and 5.11 places by chance, so I performed a little worse on the win markets and a little better on the place markets. It was not a disgrace, but I cannot hail a magnificent success. Back to the analysis next week.