Early Christmas Heads Up

6/12/16

A good weekend on the sport front with a full house of five winning recommendations out of five between Premier League Picks (Sunderland at 12/5, Chelsea draw no bet at 6/4 and Middlesbrough at 4/5 equating to a treble of just over 14/1), and NFL Week 13 (10/11 and 5/6).

Ross will be back on Thursday with his Week 14 picks and I’ll return on Friday for the next preview of the weekend football alongside the weekend racing preview. Paul Smith will be previewing the Fourth Test between India-England on Wednesday morning and we are now just over a week away from the World Darts Championship where Mike Henderson has already been studying up after the first round draw was made. His preview will be uploaded next week.

Before then we have the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup preview in Ante-Post Focus on Wednesday where the BetVictor Gold Cup 1-2 of Taquin Du Seuil and Village Vic head the weights. I have featured that handicap as part of the Race Trends section. My 33/1 ante-post shy at the stumps for the Becher Chase in last week’s Ante-Post Focus, Portrait King, outran his odds to finish sixth, but just not quite well enough for a return to keep our good record in that weekly column going.

I uploaded Week 4 of Cheltenham Festival Ante-Post last night recommending two bets at 25/1 and 16/1 and hopefully both horses will enhance their Festival claims this weekend. Just an early heads up with regards to Christmas for this specific column - Weeks 5 and 6 will continue as normal on December 12^th and 19^th but the calendar this year means that Christmas Day falls on a Sunday so there seems very little point to upload a Cheltenham Ante-Post preview on Monday, December 26^th as there is hardly any racing in the midweek lead up to Christmas to look back on and what there is would not be relevant to the Cheltenham Festival anyway. It also seems a bit odd, plus also a quick turnaround, to review the Boxing Day racing on the same night. Therefore it makes sense to give that week a miss and cover all the action over Christmas in a mega review the following Monday.

As usual I will be covering all the good stuff during Christmas week in the Race Previews section; the four-day Leopardstown Meeting, the two-day Kempton Meeting, the Welsh Grand National card, the Challow Hurdle card at Newbury and Cheltenham’s New Year’s Day fixture plus anything that else that takes my fancy.

Moving away from the jumps and I have decided to attend the Dubai World Cup for the first time this year. Flights and hotel already booked. It will be my first trip to Dubai in any capacity so any advice on nice places to visit etc. are gladly welcomed! This also means that I will be taking a far greater interest in the Dubai Carnival meetings in the build up to the meeting so I am familiar with the local runners ahead of the big day.