I struggled over the title of my post this morning. I'm covering a fair bit of ground today and the St Leger will be only a small part of it. However, I finally plumped for the St Leger as it's the big race of the weekend and it does get a mention.

Kicking off though, a complete change of pace with a look at a little strategy that has served me well over the last few years.

Big Brother Trading Strategy

The new series of Big Brother starts tonight. I'm guessing that many readers are not huge fans and I'm not ashamed to admit I hardly watch any of it myself. However, that's no reason to dismiss it as a betting medium that can return us profits the same as any other!

The Big Brother betting market is very volatile. Prices for contestants jump around crazily in response to the day to day happenings in the house with no real regard for the underlying fundamantals of what's actually going on.

The strategy I'm advising takes advantage of this volatility without requiring us to spend mind-numbing hours actually watching the show. It has made me money pretty much every year and i can see no reason why it shouldn't work again.

After the contestants go in to the house tonight, I will be laying the field at around 3.5 - 3.7 on Betfair. I will probably get one of them matched immediately. I will make sure that I change all bets to keep in running as they suspend the markets on a regular basis. I will then forget about the show for a week or so before checking in to see if any more bets are matched. For this strategy to pay dividends we only need to lay 3 housemates. In previous years I have managed to lay 4, 5 or even 6 of them simply because of over- reactions to the daily goings on. Then about 3 to 4 weeks before the show ends, I will cancel all unmatched bets and forget about it. On one glorious year ( I think it was actually a celebrity version of the show) I managed to lay 6 housemates at 3.7 - and none of them won! Happy days!

There you have it. A nice low risk, low effort way of trading Big Brother.

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 I forgot to say about the change of look for the site! I thought it looked a bit neater/cleaner. What do you think?

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St Leger Day

I'm struggling to find an angle into the St Leger. The prices look about right to me and Sea Moon is the most likely winner. I won't however be taking any of the 6/4 available because I think it offers no value. Everybody's favourite Italian has a fantastic record in the race and Blue Bunting has to be respected.

Given the lack of value available, I will be sidestepping the race in favour of The Portland Handicap at 2.35pm. Obviously the winner will be a lot harder to find but that can create value in itself!

I look the look of 2 of the runners for very different reasons.

Ancient Cross - is the stand out trends pick for me. Currently available at 16/1 generally, I have backed him each way.

Waffle - A Simple value call on this one. Has come in for some heavy support in recent days and the 12/1 I just took with the sponsors Ladbrokes looks like value. Unfortunately, it appears I took the absolute last of that and 10/1 is the best price now (also with the sponsors). David Barron's team haven't been firing on all cylinders the last couple of weeks but he knows how to win this race and Richard Hughes is an eyecatching booking. The money is speaking for this one in a big way.

I'll leave it at those 2.

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 The Major

Next week, I am adding a new feature to the site.

From Monday morning, a betting colleague of mine will be posting his daily selections in a new area of the site called Tipping Trial. I have, rather unimaginatively, nicknamed him The Major because of his previous experience in the military and he has been proofing his selections to me for the last couple of months with a great deal of success. Over around 100 bets, he has been achieving an ROI  in excess of 30%, which takes some doing!

His selections will be freely available to all readers. I recommend that everybody checks back each day after 10.30am to see what he will backing. Obviously it is a new venture for him so caution is the order of the day and as always I recommend paper trading before risking any of your hard-earned (or hard won!)

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 That's all from me today.

Whatever you are backing over the weekend, be lucky

 Kieran