Cheltenham Festival Roll-Ups

[Odin]

Are these roll ups working?? From what I see on here there are many losing bets. If you fancy one at the Fez, regardless of the price, why not just stick a point on it and then top up here and there. It'll soon add up to a decent amount. Surely that's better than many wasted points trying to chase roll ups? Picking one horse to win will always be easier than picking 2.

I won't know for sure if mine have worked until after the fez, but a summary of my current roll up position is...

My maximum allowed pot for roll ups is 100 points.
So far, 35 points placed, 7 still running (23% - currently on a 9 bet losing run, would hope this percentage will be around 30% by the festival), plus Cape Gentleman cashed out for 0.5pts profit. So 27pts lost immediately.

Horses I still have running and points return:
Journey With Me (AB) 238 pts
Echoes in Rain (CH) 168 pts
RWF (NH) 197 pts
Galvin (XC) 167 pts
Shewearsitwell (MH) 180 pts

So if any of those win, it's a massive winner - potentially doubling or more my investment. However, I've also missed the prices on several horses and been very stubborn about not doing singles because the amount I'd win for my stake doesn't interest me. This means I missed out on:

Galopin Des Champs (RSA) 25/1, TMSG (MH) 10/1 and Bob Olinger (RSA) 20/1

The other negative I've found on a personal level (don't know how much this affects other people?) is that I can sometimes chase a price and place 'stupid' roll up bets without due diligence. I estimate that I've lost 5-10 points doing this and now that I've recognised it, I'm trying to reduce the number of occasions it happens significantly.

I guess it depends how you bet and how much you want to make from an individual horse based on your staking plan. Roll ups work well for me because they allow me to have a 1pt bet every week that goes towards Cheltenham and I bet every week anyway so it helps rack up the free bets.

[Hurricane fly]

Are these roll ups working?? From what I see on here there are many losing bets. If you fancy one at the Fez, regardless of the price, why not just stick a point on it and then top up here and there. It'll soon add up to a decent amount. Surely that's better than many wasted points trying to chase roll ups? Picking one horse to win will always be easier than picking 2.

I suppose everyone will be different

I typically only do roll ups from anywhere between 1/2 - 3/1. Try to keep them low risk but enough to make a difference to a price. As a result my win loss is pretty good for them.

However I can appreciate some may use a 10/1 shot and a 20% strike rate will be the same as a 100% strike rate on evens

[Craigy14]

Are these roll ups working?? From what I see on here there are many losing bets. If you fancy one at the Fez, regardless of the price, why not just stick a point on it and then top up here and there. It'll soon add up to a decent amount. Surely that's better than many wasted points trying to chase roll ups? Picking one horse to win will always be easier than picking 2.

I’ve not actually done any this year yet, but I’m definitely being selective with who and what I do it on.

A select few horses I’ve wrote in my diary that are too short for a single that I expect to win or be bang there come March. I see no point trying to roll up horses bigger than say 6-7/1 as it’s getting a little greedy. The shorties, Shishkin, Honey for example.

I think from memory I used about 10P (max) for roll ups and landed 3 decent ones (Shishkin, Envoi and Monkfish). Looking at the 7P lost I was definitely ahead with what I returned from Shishkin and Monkfish. Lost couple on Monkfish before landing him and lost 3 on CPS I think was the other.

[Zachx02]

Are these roll ups working?? From what I see on here there are many losing bets. If you fancy one at the Fez, regardless of the price, why not just stick a point on it and then top up here and there. It'll soon add up to a decent amount. Surely that's better than many wasted points trying to chase roll ups? Picking one horse to win will always be easier than picking 2.

Only ever tried 2 sets of 2, one pulled off with Raducanu and one failed since Manobo didn't get declared for the Long Distance cup this saturday, I don't do them unless I see a good opportunity to get very big odds because I'm a small stakes player so I just end up putting a lot more points on singles than do rollups

[Spectre]

I've been meaning to add my thoughts to this thread to sometime, so Lobos's post has prompted me to do so.

I started this thread out of curiosity. Roll-ups weren't something I'd done previously and I wanted to see what kind of success people had, or not as the case may be. I wanted to figure out if it's something that I could add to my strategy. I had a little bit of success last season, but I found myself increasingly unable to make myself press the button on them. I basically had 'the yips' I couldn't remove the feeling that I was potentially throwing away and losing multiple points on an event that's still not yet happened.

I keep records for everything I do, so I decided to keep records for 'what I didn't do' with the roll-ups last season. As it turned out I would have turned a profit, but not as much as I would have hoped for, and certainly not a profit that makes the risk worthwhile. And definitely not a profit that I could say I could achieve this season. The truth is I got lucky and I'd be lying if I claimed otherwise. It felt that I could just as easily have lost, and that's not why I do what I do. So I set about to see if I could isolate what good roll-ups looked like, and it turned out they were usually relatively short priced single events, or very well highlighted standout antepost punts on another event. So it became clear that I just needed to be selective and patient for the right opportunities to come along rather than try to force it. I also decided that for every very good opportunity I found I would allow myself one speculative opportunity. Nothing outrageous, just a better priced first leg that appears to offer good future value.

So far this season I only have only two roll-up attempts. The first is USA Ryder Cup and Australia Ashes. Both short prices but combined more than double the odds on the well fancied market leaders. The second was a very well highlighted antepost bet, Rohaan in the Champion Sprint this weekend at double his current odds. I'm pretty confident about the first one with the USA already in and there being no way England beat Australia in the Ashes. Rohaan is far more speculative. And that's my approach. Find a really tight roll-up like USA/Australia, which then gives me the freedom to back a more specualtive one like Rohaan where I can effectively lose a point off the price that I gain from the first roll-up coming in. That way I keep my discipline and I'm not wasting points chasing a horse or horses I want onside just because I've either got a hole or an imbalance in my book.

Observationally overall my thoughts are similar to Lobos. When I read this thread I think most must lose and waste points based on what's posted. I respect that many successful first leg roll-ups are done without posting on here and there is more success than is perhaps seen. But if that's true, there are almost certainly even more that go down. I do see a small number of people who seem to be doing this successfully though, so it's a strategy that works if executed well. The true measure is post-Festival though, because as Odin says, the whole point of getting inflated odds is that the final leg still has to win for you. You can pick the best roll-up horses, but they're worth nothing if you're not connecting them with the right Festival horses.

I'm utterly convinced that you need a sound strategy if roll-ups are part of your Festival betting approach. It's far too easy to waste points and lose control. And as I said, I only see a small number of people here who seem to be genuinely selective in their approach and/or appear to have a disciplined plan. That said it's each to their own, and we all do this for different reason. I do it to make money, and others do it for fun, so I'm not meaning to be judgemental. But I would think that if you are advanced enough to be attempting roll-ups it's something you take pretty seriously, and therefore surely you should have a plan to make it profitable. What's the end goal? How much are you trying to win from the Cheltenham horse? Why that much? Andy why do you need to put the roll-up on all? Is it a spur of the moment whim? Is it because you fancy something? Is it because it's been talked up? Perhaps just because you've been doing some form study for a general bet? Or is genuinely part of a very deliberate plan? And how are you going to be sure that the final leg is the right Festival horse?

I'm posing some questions here, and I'm genuinely interested to hear what people think. What's your own approach and strategy to this? Has what I've written made you take a step back and have a re-think? Or perhaps I'm talking complete nonsense? Is my own strategy a good or bad one? What can I or should I be doing better? I'm prepared to cop for it if I'm wide of the mark with anything in my post, becuase I think this is a good debate to have.

[Many Clouds]

I do something similar to roll-ups, basically me and a mate both put a 1.25pt bet on the footy/horses every weekend and most weeks save 0.5pts in a pot for Cheltenham bets. So 0.5pts pretty much guaranteed goes in then anything we return from our bets goes in. Its the only bet I really have each week so gives you that chance to have a bet and to build up the pot for Chelts. Some years haven't returned as much as we have bet sometimes more, probably averages out overall but gives you that bet every week and bit of excitement of building up your Cheltenham pot. So far this year we have put in 72pts between us. From that we have saved 10pts and returned 126pts from bets so 64pts ahead at the moment, best year so far.

I think another really good thing about doing it this way is when it comes to Cheltenham week it doesn't really feel like you've spent your own money on either ante-post bets or on food/beers/bets during the week as its been accumulated a bit at a time over the year from a small basically unnoticeable outlay each week. Also nice at the end of the week when we half the winnings that's when it feels like a big bonus.

Not exactly the same as roll-ups but similar that all the money we return on footy/horse bets during the year gets rolled onto Cheltenham bets.

[robith]

Similar to Hurricane Fly, my main roll ups (until the jumps proper gets going and there's something I really really fancy) are short priced things. I'll use free bets to take a free swing at them and will use them to get horses like Appreciate It, Bolly etc up towards the 10/1 mark.

For bigger priced day to day selections, I'd rather purely back as a single and use the profits to fund AP selections*

*Until Hugh Taylor starts dropping those 2pt AW bets

[Odin]

*Until Hugh Taylor starts dropping those 2pt AW bets

Hadn't even thought of this... keeps you off the radar if these are roll ups doesn't it?!

[Spectre]

I do something similar to roll-ups, basically me and a mate both put a 1.25pt bet on the footy/horses every weekend and most weeks save 0.5pts in a pot for Cheltenham bets. So 0.5pts pretty much guaranteed goes in then anything we return from our bets goes in. Its the only bet I really have each week so gives you that chance to have a bet and to build up the pot for Chelts. Some years haven't returned as much as we have bet sometimes more, probably averages out overall but gives you that bet every week and bit of excitement of building up your Cheltenham pot. So far this year we have put in 72pts between us. From that we have saved 10pts and returned 126pts from bets so 64pts ahead at the moment, best year so far.

I think another really good thing about doing it this way is when it comes to Cheltenham week it doesn't really feel like you've spent your own money on either ante-post bets or on food/beers/bets during the week as its been accumulated a bit at a time over the year from a small basically unnoticeable outlay each week. Also nice at the end of the week when we half the winnings that's when it feels like a big bonus.

Not exactly the same as roll-ups but similar that all the money we return on footy/horse bets during the year gets rolled onto Cheltenham bets.

I agree it's not roll-ups, but a really good example of taking it a bit less seriously, having a bit of fun along the way, and having a nice stake for the Festival itself without feeling as though you've spent a fortune on bets out of the same month's wages.

I did something similar with my father in law and my wife's brothers for many years. We stopped when he passed away as it would never have been the same again. It was a bit of fun that we still took seriously.

[robith]

Hadn't even thought of this... keeps you off the radar if these are roll ups doesn't it?!

Another poster put me onto this, and we had a lot of banter about it last year in my diary. I'm formally tracking them this year so I'll be able to report back at the end of the season

[Kautostar]

I don’t really get roll ups if I’m being honest to me it’s just a way of cheating yourself into thinking you’ve got value or a bigger price on a horse. Just have two pots 1 for ante post and 1 for other betting. If your double on say 2 football teams wins then decide if you want to put those winnings on an ante post bet for Cheltenham.
Sometimes you waste more funds trying to get a treble rolling onto something than it would have cost just to back the horse in the first place.

[Spectre]

Similar to Hurricane Fly, my main roll ups (until the jumps proper gets going and there's something I really really fancy) are short priced things. I'll use free bets to take a free swing at them and will use them to get horses like Appreciate It, Bolly etc up towards the 10/1 mark.

For bigger priced day to day selections, I'd rather purely back as a single and use the profits to fund AP selections*

*Until Hugh Taylor starts dropping those 2pt AW bets

I think a system based approach is a good way to go at it Rob. If you have something that's profitable, and your aiming at the right horses at or towards the head of the market to keep the chances high at the other end, I'd say you have as good a chance as any to make it work.

I don't have a system like this so my approach is to rely on patience and discipline, which probably means I'll make less bets but also make a lot less money than your approach will.

[Spectre]

I don’t really get roll ups if I’m being honest to me it’s just a way of cheating yourself into thinking you’ve got value or a bigger price on a horse. Just have two pots 1 for ante post and 1 for other betting. If your double on say 2 football teams wins then decide if you want to put those winnings on an ante post bet for Cheltenham.
Sometimes you waste more funds trying to get a treble rolling onto something than it would have cost just to back the horse in the first place.

That's true KS, but how do you decide when to do it, and how do account for the lost stakes if you are writing off every other loser because it's not associated to your antepost Festival betting?

Surely it makes sense to make the decision before the event of the first leg, or perhaps split stakes. Say half into your general betting fund, and the other on half on your roll-up.

Only you know whether you are profitable on your football doubles. If you are it's a good approach, and if your not it isn't.

[robith]

I don’t really get roll ups if I’m being honest to me it’s just a way of cheating yourself into thinking you’ve got value or a bigger price on a horse. Just have two pots 1 for ante post and 1 for other betting. If your double on say 2 football teams wins then decide if you want to put those winnings on an ante post bet for Cheltenham.
Sometimes you waste more funds trying to get a treble rolling onto something than it would have cost just to back the horse in the first place.

I will say, on this forum you don't really find anyone doing that. We're accountable in our diaries, and people tend to talk about building the return from a result, rather than blagging about unrealistic prices off a roll up imo

[Odin]

In terms of my approach, it's generally longer priced than most here by the looks of it. A quick glance at my 'winning' bet odds shows: 6/1, 7/1, 4/1, 15/8, 8/1, 4/9 & 4/5, 5/6 & 6/1, 11/1. The goal is for any given horse winning to return at least 75% of my whole outlay for the festival, which can be taken over one roll up or multiple roll ups (RWF took me 3 winning bets to hit that mark I think). The 75% is because the first couple of roll ups got to about this point and I didn't want to keep throwing attempts at them when they had already got to that number, ideally I'd like every horse to return 100% of outlay, but it's not realistically going to happen.

In terms of selecting the roll up horse, I basically pick my strongest antepost fancy at a decent price on the day so favourites like Honey/Bob don't tend to come into it - I'd rather use them as makeweights for antepost doubles/trebles/fourfolds. For the 'on the day' roll up horse, it's simply meant to be my strongest fancy of the day's betting (which I've admittedly moved away from to my detriment recently), regardless of price. I bet every weekend for fun anyway and have been able to go on a few holidays because of it, but I'm hoping to turn Cheltenham into a specific profit making exercise where I win a 'proper good' amount and if executed right, a single roll up could take away all the risk of losing in one race.