Tom Roper's Weblog

FT on denial of service blackmail

Fascinating piece leads the front page of the FT today, suggesting that East European gangs are threatening online bookies with distributed distributed denial of service attacks unless the bookies pay protection money. The gangs are supposed to operate out of Eastern Europe and are targetting bookies in the run up to Cheltenham and the Grand National. This is reminiscent of the protection money demanded for a racecourse pitch in former times. Paddy Power has already had such an attack. The official line is that the bookies will stand together, and there is to be a meeting of the major online bookies, appropriately in Gibraltar, later this week

Saturday's selections: Ascot & Doncaster

Uttotexter didn't pass their inspection, a pity, so today I have:
200 Ascot Kadara
205 Doncaster DIamant Noir
235 Ascot Le Roi Migeul
315 Doncaster Magical Balliwick ( you may recall earlier win with this beast this month)
Jonathan Rendall writes an amusing piece in this morning's Times on gambling and is correct about the unlikely and unexpected beauty that can be found at a racecourse on an otherwise dreary afternoon. The intellectual challenge seems to me the point,. I made some remarks on online poker a while back, and it seems to me that, while conventional poker has a lot to offer and I wouldn't mind a game, though I haven't seriously played since the Junior Common Room of Eliot College twenty five or more years ago, even the real game, with fifty-two cards cannot match the subtle variables of a horse race: going, form, jockey, trainer, parentage to name but a few, plus the fact that a race will never be contested by the same field as in a previous season. I hear of some chaps in Hong Kong (inevitably) who were using a computer model to try to forecast the results of races. their model had something like over 300 variables when they stopped counting.

Magnier pronounced Magna

And today in the Times Cornelius Lysaght clears up the little matter of how his name should be pronounced. Was I alone in imposing a Frenchified pronunciation on the name? Advice from the BBC's Pronunciation Research Unit, endorsed by the man's office, is that it should be said as Magna as in Carta. Very useful as he is much in the news, not because of Coolmore but because he and J P McManus have been unwise enough to invest in a football club.

Magnier in FT

Fascinating piece in today's Financial Times by Rachel Pagones, bloodstock editor of the Racing Post, on John Magnier and the Coolmore stud. When they started off with Green God they charged 1,500 guineas for him to cover a mare. Now at his Ashford satellite in Kentucky, stallions with Storm Cat for sire or grand-sire can ask for $500,000. Coolmore earn 70.5% of the Irish bloodstock industry's income. Bloodstock is now throroughly globalised: Green God would cover 40 mares a season, while one of Coolmore's stallions in 2004 will cover 200 and then head for the southern hemisphere to do the same again in their season.
Magnier and his associates had two new ideas: syndication of stallion ownership, unusual when they started off in 1971 and buying yearlings, then a twentieth of the price of stallions. This allowed them to buy more and offset the cost of duds against those they got right: they reckoned they needed to get it right every four or five times.
I think full text is only available on the FT site to subscriber., but the article is worth reading and is:
Pagones, Rachel
How Magnier became king of the turf
Financial Times January 29 2004: 18

Today's selections: Naas and Cheltenham

150 Naas: Contempo Suite
200 Cheltenham Guilt
235 Cheltenham (Cleeve Chase) Hardy Eustace
305 Cheltenham (Pillar Chase)Therealbandit
335 Cheltenham (Ladbroke Chase) Whereareyounow

Two out of four

Not a bad day by any means: I had Magical Balliwick in Connaught Cup at Wincanton ( won 3/1) and Claymore in 245 at Wetherby (5/1) in a yankee. If only Perouse (see previous posts to this blog) had managed a win instead of second place in the Lanzarote Hurdle at Kempton....but he blundered at the last which cost him the race, but only just. Fourth selection was Shardante in 320 at Wetherby, who was doing well until unseating his rider.

Online poker

Nothing to do with rugby or horseracing, but the Times for two days now has been flogging online poker for all its worth. Is this simply journalists trying to fill space, do News International own an online poker site, or is there some other explanation for this puffery?
It seems to me entirely pointless, just like the lame attempts of some bookies to offer what they called "virtual horseracing" a few years back. Only the most compulsive gambler could gain any pleasure or interest from what is nothing more than a rather complicated online fruit machine. I haven't played the game for many a year but the essence of poker has to be the physical presence of the cards, the hands, the dealer and the other players and the interplay of them all is something that cannot be reproduced online

1st January 2004

Cheltenham selections

Undocumented successes

Good stuff on Tuesday. Poor racing, I thought at first, but looked at the Stratford card and made selections for each race: again I made a 50% strike rate, and at workingmens' prices too: Knightsbridge
King in the 210 at 5/1, Monte Cristo in the 240 at 4/1 and The Grey Butler in the last at 5/1 again.
But no selections at Cheltenham today (visit to aged parent in Cambridge coupled with child care duties made serious study of form impossible). Have had an e-mail saying that the UK fantasy horseracing site is being relaunched. A good thing, but in its heyday (when i won the December 1997 title) it was free, whereas now they want £3 a month membership.
New Year's Eve stretches ahead: possible evening with neighbours off, which is perhaps a good thing, wife retired to bed unwell, children watching awful rubbish on television. What else to do but blog, unless I go out for a run?

Observer cartoon

Today's Observer runs a cartoon (Roasted) in which two employees of a Starbucks-like coffee house discuss rugby. " Karl, is rugby unfashionable again?. asks one, "any day now" replies the other, "thank God" says the first.
I agree: the consequences of winning the World Cup have been unfortunate and unsportsmanlike. The post office sells stamps emblazoned with the 20-17 final score. When the Webb Ellis trophy was paraded at the Varsity match last month, many of the crowd were more interested and excited by this pointless half-time ballyhoo than by the game itself. Let the game return to decent obscurity.
The other problem with contemporary rugby is that the fans are so ghastly. More of this anon. I have promised my son that I will take him to a Saracens game.