Cheltenham Festival 2025 (Preview) - What Will You Get For Your Money

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This is the thirteenth Cheltenham which Betting Emporium have published all my bets and we have a group of regular customers who have been with us that whole time. When you throw in the Goodwoods, Ascots, Aintrees, Yorks and the odd Epsom and Newmarket it's been quite a journey with some amazing highs and one or two terrible lows. For those people I don't really need to explain what you will get for your money, but for those of you joining us for the first time I thought I'd lay out exactly what you can expect so that you'll know when the bets will come, how many bets there will be, how much we suggest you should bet on the horses and what the results might look like.

  Each day I'll write a summary of each race discussing many of, or all, the horses and these will appear on the site from 9am each day when you'll get the write up for the 1.20pm race and then you'll get an additional write up every half an hour so the final race will appear at noon. I totally understand that some people would prefer to get the bets earlier, maybe overnight or some people might like them all in one go but I do have my reasons for working in this way. I don't want to get the bets up too early as I like to have the maximum amount of information possible and late non-runners, late changes in the going, late moves in the market and extra information coming my way from fellow professionals I talk to are four examples of reasons I like to wait until the morning of racing to do my main work. There are a few of us following these bets and I do want all subscribers to get their bets on at the prices I recommend, so I don't want to publish the write-ups prior to 9am when the markets are much weaker. The first race each day generally has a pretty solid ante-post market so by the time we bet on races where the prices may move a bit faster it will be after 9.30am and hopefully that will mean we all get on.

  In some races I will suggest betting as many as four or five horses and probably in those races all the bets will be each-way. In other races I will bet just one horse and in maybe a couple of the races in the week I might have no bets at all. Even if I don't suggest a bet in the race I will still write my reasons why and my general thoughts on the race. Sometimes in those races I suggest a lay bet, a Tote bet or a match bet but I don't include them in results as the prices are more fluid in weaker markets or they may have a dividend we can't predict. The stakes I suggest on each bet will vary from one point to fifty points and I will try to stick to an average of around fifteen points on each bet and around thirty points on each race. In a race like the County Hurdle I could see myself having four bets with one horse being a six points each-way, one being seven points each-way, one being eight points each-way and one being ten points each-way. That would make that a really important race for us with over sixty points staked. It's possible that in some other races I might just have a bet on one horse of just seven or eight points so, you can see, that the variance will be pretty big with some races being much more important in terms of how the week goes. I would guess we'll stake around 1000 points and over the years at Cheltenham that number has varied between 700 and 1100.

 A common question that people ask is how much should I bet or a better question maybe which is how much should I bet to make it worth paying £200? We have done horse racing for twelve years at Betting Emporium and in that time we have had around 2300 bets staking almost 43,000 points with an ROI of just over 2%. Personally, I'm pretty disappointed with that ROI which has been as high as 5%. If you bet £10 a point at Cheltenham last year you'd have staked a total of £7270 and won £428. I would suggest that £10 a point is the right amount to bet if you plan to pay £200 for the tips although you are extremely unlikley to lose every bet, as we bet several horses in a lot of races and have lots of each-way bets. In past years you would have had a worst ever Cheltenham when you lost £3700 and a best ever when you won £5969. You'd have had six winning and six losing festivals since 2012 although a couple of those losers were very close to break-even. As you can see though, these numbers are not really for everyone and I want to make sure you understand what a "normal" week looks like.

 I would just stress on our ROI that it is based on very easily attainable results. We have a strict rule at Betting Emporium not to tip on things that people can't get on. We give you the bets when the markets are liquid, we only bet on the festivals when bookmakers will take your bets, we do insist on only recording prices that were easily available, and we don't bet with tiny firms that we can't all get on with or on prices that stand out with just one firm. There have been years when these rules have cost us, I particularly remember one Oaks winner that I suggested we should back, but which shouldn't go on the results, as the price wasn't easily available, and that was a 100/1 winner that would have really helped our ROI. I guess we could dump all of those rules and have a 10% ROI now but I don't see the point of boasting about mythical bets that weren't really available. I often see other tipping services Tweeting enthusiastically about things they bet at 5/1 that when I know the price went within 20 seconds and they then Tweet pictures of winning bets that their customers placed at 11/4. We definitely aren't that kind of service but it does mean our ROI is lower.

 Talking of losing we have now done fifty-seven racing festivals for Betting Emporium and although we have made a profit overall we have lost on thirty and won on just twenty-seven...we win more money on the weeks when we win than we lose on the weeks that we lose. There are twenty eight races at the Festival and we will probably need at least six winners to make a profit, given that we don't tend to bet short prices. If we have five winners we might win a little or lose a little but it will be close either way. I would definitely say that if all of this sounds like it's not the style of betting you enjoy, if the sums involved sound way too much for you, if the swings involved are likely to be uncomfortable for you or if you hate the idea of losing then this is probably not for you and you really shouldn't subscribe. If getting involved with Betting Emporium and this Cheltenham week is likely to cause you to get into financial difficulty if things go wrong, if you think there is a chance that you are the sort of person who might write to us, at the end of a tough week when we have all worked really hard, had very little sleep and lost our own money, to ask for a refund or to be rude in any way to any member of the Betting Emporium staff then I shall say quite strongly right now that we really DO NOT want your money, please just go and do something else but definitely don't think about subscribing. It's certainly possible that if you are one of the people who feels like they can't really afford to bet a tenner a point but you decide to give it a go anyway, that everything goes well and we win on day one and you don't look back. It is also very possible that things start badly and you run out of money immediately before we have five winners and turn it all around. I won't labour the point but I do want people to go into this with their eyes wide open and I hope we are all adults and can take responsibility for our actions.

  In terms of getting the bets on we do recommend that you open up as many accounts as you can but I do appreciate that some firms are less keen on taking racing bets than others. We do have some strict rules with Betting Emporium and one is that we don't tip things that are simply errors by the bookmaker or where there is a stand out price offered by just one firm. Generally, I will attempt to only suggest a bet where at least two firms have the price and I will avoid mentioning some of the very poor firms and focus on those with betting shops as well as Bet365. I would say that if you can get on with Betfred, Paddy Power/Betfair Sportsbook, Hills, Ladbrokes/Corals and Bet365 or at least three of those you will be Ok. Where I tip a win bet I will mention exchanges but I'll suggest a price with a bookmaker as there may not be liquidity for us all to get on with exchanges although the price may be a little bigger. It's likely that people who have followed us in all fifty-seven meetings have made a fair bit more than 2% as they have shopped around for the absolute best prices and we have recorded our results at a touch off the top price in some cases. I would also ask that people don't immediately smash into the exchanges on the bets the second they go up as that will trigger a lot of blue on Oddschecker and might stop us all getting on. Perhaps have a try to get on with the bookmakers first.

 Personally, I use BetConnect for quite a lot of my racing bets and you get the choice of the prices from various bookmakers and standard tattersalls each-way terms. The people who are laying your bets there get the Best Odds Guaranteed, any offers going for account opening and the extra places, but you get to play at 2% commission, with a load of firms you might not be able to get on with and without having to split your money around a load of places. They are putting the racing markets up at 8am this week and the liquidity there is pretty decent. If it's not an arb with Betfair your pretty much guaranteed to get your bet. Details of BetConnect are here

- Neil Channing

Our full four day package includes all the write ups by Neil together with details of all the bets that we have and costs £199.

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