Early gains auger well for Mark Your Card
2018-02-28
We’re nine weeks into 2018 and already the message is writ large: MARK YOUR CARD ARE BACK. The three-times champions, stung by losing out last year, have made a spectacular start to 2018, following January’s table-topping 46.5-point yield with a 59.2-point February haul, which again earned top spot.
A sixth of the way into 2018, and Mark Your Card have already established a lead of more than 75 points over their nearest challengers. Clearly, it’s too early to talk in terms of a fourth Besttipping crown, but a couple of similar efforts will guide the leaders into an extremely strong position.
Steve Jones, whose Daily Bargain broke Mark Your Card’s sequence of Besttipping titles, lies in second place this time around, with his Probets service, which earned a 23.9-point profit in February. Personal Info finished third with a 4.7-point yield with the same firm’s Saturday-Only service securing fourth spot with a 0.2-point gain.
The success of 14/1 advice Michaels Mount at Doncaster on 8 February, set Mark Your Card off on a winter feast with a run of big-priced winning advices. These included: 10/1 Transient Bay (Uttoxeter, 10 February), 12/1 Bell Heather (Wolverhampton, 10 February), 11/1 Reverant Cust (Catterick, 12 February), 10/1 Muffins For Tea (Taunton, 20 February) and 10/1 Houndscourt (Southwell, 25 February). Each way returns included 66/1 advice Remiluc, fifth in the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury (10 February).
March has traditionally been a profitable month for Mark Your Card with gains of 98 and 71 points respectively in 2016 and ’17. A repeat will leave the Isiris-based service well-set on the journey towards a fourth Besttipping Challenge.
The service that has emerged as the most viable challenger to Mark Your Card is Probets. Introduced in 2013, Probets has lived very much in the shadow of its illustrious stablemate, Daily Bargain. Nevertheless, it has posted solid profits in each of the last four years and is well on the way to surpassing the 46.2-point yield earned back in 2014; February’s 23.9-point profit (88% return on investment) pushed the 2018 yield to 30 points.
Like Daily Bargain, Probets advise one selection per day. Tips are advised on the eve of the race, which means that subscribers can invest before the early prices have disappeared. Both Daily Bargain and Probets look to identify over-priced candidates, but Probets differs in that selections tend to be shorter in price (around 3/1 compared to Daily Bargain’s 11/1). This often leads to impressive sequences such as February’s run of seven consecutive winners (17-23 February). The odds of the seven in question were 9/2, 9/4, 7/2, 3/1, 5/1, 2/1 and 11/10. That’s a 12,161-1 seven-timer. My goodness!
Personal Info posted their sixth profitable month from the last eight with another impressive combination of single bets and dutching advices. Dutching involves selecting several horses with the aim of posting a profit if any one of them wins. This approach has yielded good results for Personal Info in previous months and was the case again in February, with money made in two out of three examples. This included a race at Thurles on 8 February when three selections were advised. One, Clinton Hill (7/4), finished first while another, All For Joy (5/1 advice), came in second. Nine singles bets were also advised, resulting in seven winners and two seconds.
Personal Info also posted a February profit with their Saturday-Only service, the tenth time in the last year that this service has registered a monthly gain.