Totescoop6 ~ The Horse Racing National Lottery
Perhaps like me you shared in the jubilation of Agnes Haddock as Taranis came to win the totescoop6 handicap hurdle at Sandown last Saturday. By selecting the winner, Agnes secured herself a £248,288 bonus to add to the £410,332 she won by completing the totescoop6 the previous week. This king’s ransom came out of a workmanlike £2 bet.
To win the totescoop6 prize fund a punter must pick the winners of six selected races on a Saturday.
Channel 4 had a camera fixed on Agnes as the race unfolded, and as Taranis jumped to the front at the last hurdle, viewers witnessed as her expression turned from one of hope and yearning to sheer exaltation at the line. Fantastic television!
My wife and I hugged each other and we were genuinely thrilled for the laundry woman from Cheshire. “It’s like she’s won the Lottery” said my wife. “No it’s not!” I contested, “It takes skill and judgment to pick the right horses – the Lottery only needs you to pick 6 numbers at random.”
The irony of Agnes’ win was not lost on me: this luckiest of lucky ladies had picked her horses purely on folly, or because the names appealed to her!
Her first selection Simon won at 7-1 in the 2.25 at Southwell. Agnes said: “I picked it because I used to work with a really nice lad called Simon.”
Her second choice was Exotic Dancer which Agnes chose because she had backed it previously, and it trotted up at 6-1 in the 2.45 at Cheltenham.
She got inspiration for the third winner — 6-1 Clouding Over in the 3.05 at Southwell — because it started to rain when she went into a BetFred bookies to place her bet!
Her fourth choice, Mountain, was a non-runner so her money automatically went on the favourite, Katchit – which won in the 3.30 at Cheltenham at 2-1.
Agnes’s fifth and sixth horses Haggle Twins and Whispered Secret both romped home at 8-1. And finally… she arrived upon Taranis to carry her hopes for the Bonus because it was the number thirteen horse, and her birthday is the thirteenth.
Despite this fairytale win, I maintain that although the Scoop6 is the horse racing equivalent to the National Lottery, there are several distinct differences. The totescoop6 offers far better value than the Lottery. Serious punters can win a huge return on a tiny stake.
Although there is the argument that all sorts of charities benefit from the Lottery, it is strictly for mug punters. Unfortunately for the charities and Camelot, these punters are in short supply nowadays as more and more people are not in it to win it any longer. By contrast, 100,000 players every week are investing in the Tote Scoop6, in the belief that they are in control of their destiny regarding the wager. To an extent, they are correct, and they certainly have far more control than is the case in the National Lottery.
Odds of more than 14 million to one govern the Lotto, whereas Tote Scoop6 punters can reduce their odds dramatically, by making their own decisions regarding the horses that they nominate to carry their cash.
Returning to the basics of probability, the realistic price of selecting the first ball that drops out of the Lotto machine is of course 48/1 whilst (taking form analysis out of the equation) the price of any horse to win a ten-runner event (as an example) is 9/1.
To summarize, and this is only my tongue-in-cheek opinion, the Lotto balls are for losers, and fair-play to Agnes Haddock for winning the totscoop6!
About the author: Max Redd has been making a living betting on horse racing for over 10 years. He runs the Redd Racing betting advisory service which offers members a FREE trial and a 60-day money-back profit guarantee.