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What is the Totesport Ten To Follow?
The Ten-To-Follow (TTF) is an exciting horse racing competition run jointly by the Tote (aka Totesport) and the Racing Post newspaper in the UK. Of all the big-money competitions around, this one is the nearest there is to being a game of skill rather than purely a game of chance. It has aptly been dubbed the "thinking man's lottery".
The Racing Post first introduced the competition way back in 1993. It proved so popular
with the paper's readership, from the start, both home and overseas readers, that the competition has been run twice a
year ever since. There is one competition for the Flat season [which we stopped covering
with our TTF system after a bad rule change in 2004 (since reversed from 2008)], and another much more popular, and more valuable competition
for the Jumps season [which we still cover with our TTF system on this microsite].
From the TTF's early, tentative beginnings, it steadily matured in both finesse and popularity
to a stage whereby the expected prize-money to the winner for a Flat season soon became a £100,000+
and, for a Jumps' season, £300,000 or more.
To take part, you need a good knowledge of horse racing yourself or you need a knowledgeable
friend or friends who will team up with you. Without access to racing knowledge there
is absolutely no point entering. You would stand no chance at all - this competition is
not a mindless game like the lottery, bingo or scratchcards.
The first task Ten To Follow contenders have to do is study a large list of 500 eligible horses. The list is published in the Racing Post in April (Flat) and October (Jumps). The list
has to be whittled down to a more-manageable shortlist of around two to three dozen top-class, and potentially top-class, animals. This difficult whittling is one of the key things
our system does for you. Once you have a shortlist, you then have to perm the horses into any number of different lines of ten horses, and submit your lines using either the postal entry forms provided in the Racing Post or by phone or the internet. The newspaper, with the help of the Tote, tracks the performance of the tens of thousands of entries throughout the season, and prints a new leader-board twice a week, usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. A horse is awarded a number of points every time it wins a race, the amount varying from 10 through
to 50 points, depending on the quality of the race won, plus bonus points according to the Tote odds of the winner. The ten people whose lines amass the most points by the end of the competition's run win big prizes. The person with most points wins the bulk of the prize-money on offer. In addition, there are separate bonus prizes of £10,000 each month for the leading points' scorer for the month. And there are three further £10,000 prizes for the leading points' scorers at two top class Flat meetings (Royal Ascot, and York's Ebor Meeting), and at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival. Hence, even if you fall out of contention for the overall prizes, there are continuing opportunities for the monthly and festival prizes.
The prize money comes from the entry fees that competitors submit with their entries.
The cost of each line is £10 so, to submit twelve lines, this would cost £120.
This may seem a lot but, when you consider that it will bring you lots of fun, enjoyment, excitement
and anticipation for the whole length of a racing season, it is well worth the cost whether
you win or lose.
How to enter the Tote Ten To Follow
Entry instructions for the competition are published in the Racing Post, during the run-up to
the start of each new competition i.e. in the months of April (Flat), and October and November
(Jumps).
There are three possible ways to enter. By post, by telephone, or online through the
Tote's website. Postal entries have traditionally been the standard way to enter.
But, as of the 2005-6 Jumps season, a new 'substitutions' rule was introduced which created
a big inducement (advantage) to telephone and internet entrants. This made it virtually
essential to submit entries, for that season, by the internet (or telephone) or not at all.
This unlevel playing field drove out so many former enthusiasts that the rule was amended as
of the 2006-7 Jumps season to permit substitutions to postal entries also.
Why is the 'tentofollow' Competition so special?
The great attraction of this particular racing competition is that skill, knowledge and experience
count for everything. If you are somebody with those things, or you know somebody else
who is, and you can combine those attributes with inspired judgment, then it is quite feasible
that you could be a future winner. Over the years, the big prizes have been won by all levels of racing enthusiasts, from trainers' assistants, to form students and unemployed punters. But, most important, there have been several repeat winners, including people on our own team. Which goes to show that skill, not just luck, is a significant factor. In fact, one of
our team has so far won over £212,000 in prizes and, later, another of our team was well on course to collect a similar amount when a heartbreaking end-of-season run of eleven seconds
in eleven races robbed him of outright victory, and he had to settle for a 9th-place consolation
prize of only £3,000 in the end. That was before we started to publish our system
online in 2001. Since then, the system has produced ever increasing chances of winning
for a slowly growing band of followers - but nobody managed to capitalise on the opportunities
until success finally came in 2007-8.
How many horses should you do? What are the odds? How to perm them?
One year, the competition was won by somebody who scribbled out just two lines covering twenty
horses while sitting on the loo. And another year by somebody who did three lines, also
covering twenty horses. However, twenty selections is not enough to provide a steady flow
of runners in the critical races. And, if you don't have runners, then boredom, followed
by loss of interest, soon sets in - not to mention the increased likelihood of rapid failure.
Our early experiences of the competition showed one needs nearer 40 horses than 20 to be reasonably
hopeful of having a runner in most of the critical races. However, one also has to be
aware that the chances of lining up any 10 from forty is an enormous 847 million to 1 against.
To put that in perspective, the odds of winning the UK National Lotto (6 numbers from 49) are
only 14 million to 1 against (and only £1 a line, not £10!). The compromise strategy employed
by our system, between having enough runners on the one hand, while still hoping to be able
to perm them on the other hand, is to limit the system's shortlist to never more than 36 horses,
less when practicable (the lowest was 26 once). The odds of lining up any 10 from 36 achieves
a 70% reduction in the odds, down to 254 million to 1. However, we further subdivide the 36
horses into five or six smaller, separately permable subgroups, which brings the odds crashing
down even further. In fact, in the first few years we were posting the system online,
we succeeded in reducing the initially horrendous odds down to a much more viable 180,000 to 1
against lining up the best ten. Unfortunately, though, later rule changes in the competition put the Flat version of our system out of
action from 2004 to 2007, and also forced us to broaden the perming
instructions for the Jumps version in order to still be in with some sort of reasonable expectancy
of trapping a winning combination. Consequently, the odds of perming any ten horses are 4
million to 1 for the NH version (which has five subgroups), and 2 million to 1 for the Flat version
(which has six subgroups). A lot better than the lottery, but still frighteningly high. However, that
is a worst case scenario. In practice, the odds are likely to be considerably lower
- one time, remarkably, as low as double-figures. That happens in years when the form
works out well, with the stronger fancies doing their stuff. And/or in the years when
our shortlists have contained a lot more than just ten countable, scoring horses, as in the
2005-6, 2006-7 and 2007-8 seasons, for example.
The odds against ever lining up a winning line from any sizable shortlist will always be very
daunting, of course. No point in pretending otherwise. And, one year, our shortlist
has totally blown out which doesn't help! And, inevitably, it will do so again sooner
or later. Nevertheless, win or lose, the odds are always going to be a lot better if you
use our system than if you do your own thing and try to pick your own lines of ten from the
full list of 500 horses and perm them ad hoc. The odds of you pulling that off are 245
million million million to 1 against. Need we say more!
In practice, you can shorten the odds further by using the stronger fancies in more lines than
the more speculative fancies. For instance, some sections of the system's shortlist are
built around blocks of four horses. In fact, the first Jumps' block (which is for 2m Champion
Hurdle types) always includes exactly four horses. Sometimes a block will contain a blank
space - this has to be permed in pro-rata with its position in a block and serves later as a
wildcard entry. The top (strongest) horse should typically go in twice as many lines as
the bottom (weakest) horse in a block of four (or four-times as many in a block of 8).
And the horses in between, or blank space(s), pro-rata. So, if horse A was
in six of your lines, horse B might be in five lines, the blank space in four lines and horse
D in three lines. So the coverage might look something like this...
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Horse |
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A |
A |
A |
A |
A |
A |
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Horse |
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B |
B |
B |
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B |
B |
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Blank |
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w |
w |
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w |
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w |
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Horse |
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D |
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D |
D |
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...where 'w' can be any horse or horses picked from the same block and/or from any other block
anywhere in the entire shortlist. In this example, the 'w' could be used, say, to cover
Horse A one more time (i.e. 7 times instead of 6), Horse B one more time (i.e. 6 times instead
of 5) and any horse from any other block two more times (i.e. using the blank like a wildcard).
This is only a small example with only a few lines, but it shows how to weight horses and blank
spaces according to their positions within a block.
By repeating the above style of weighting for each other block in the shortlist, the theoretical
odds can be significantly swung in your favour in years when the form works out as it should.
This tactic helps to make it perfectly feasible to cover 36 selections in a relatively small
number of lines with a high expectation of success. Until, that is, the competition actually
gets underway, and all the wrong results start happening!
In our perming illustration above, we have used a block of two from four which, admittedly,
is easy to cover fairly tightly. Where it gets harder is in some of the other blocks in
the shortlist which involve either two from eight or (Jumps) three from twelve. There
is no way those blocks can be permed tightly within themselves - let alone with the other blocks.
It would take 6 million lines to cover every possible combination. But, whenever the stronger
horses do the biz and/or an excess of countable horses occur within the eight and twelve horse
blocks, which is often what occurs with our shortlists, then the chance of success is always
going to be there.
If, as we have advised elsewhere, you do about twelve lines each year (cost £120), we recommend
you should, in your first four lines, cover all 36 selections, using a mix in each of those
lines of stronger horses with more speculative horses. By covering every horse at least
once, you will, at least, enjoy a steady flow of runners to keep your interest up, right through
the season, with many of those runners in the crucial key races. Also, by the end of December
(Jumps comp), if there are ten or more winners in the shortlist, you will have every one of
them at least once somewhere in one of those first four lines. Sod's law says, of course,
they'll fall 3 3 2 2 but, if they fell right for you, and it's obviously a possibility, then
you could be in line to win the first bonus prize of the competition i.e. the £10K for
most points in December. And that particular prize is proving to be the easiest opportunity
of winning as our shortlist provided multiple winning lines in three of the four Decembers from
2004 to 2007. A third advantage of covering all 36 horses at least once is, come January,
you will be guaranteed all of the shortlist's winners somewhere in your entry and, with the
aid of two substitutions per line, you may find you at least have some lines worth aiming at
the Cheltenham £10K bonus prize (Jumps comp again) if not the overall prize.
If you do a dozen lines then, after covering all 36 horses in the first four lines, you should,
for the remaining lines, start applying some weighting to the horses (i.e. covering some horses
more than others, maybe even leaving some out altogether). Mix them about a bit, using
50% skilled judgment and, just as important, 50% imaginative intuition - giving it your
very best shot to try to bring the eventual best-scoring ten from the shortlist together in
one of your lines.
In any year when there are vacancies (blank spaces) in the shortlist they must be included pro-rata
in your lines in accordance with their weighting (position) in their block. Each vacancy
serves as a wildcard as per the system's wildcard rule. Do not bypass or ignore the vacant
slots as they provide a powerful fine-tuning opportunity. Similarly, do not abuse a wildcard
opportunity by bringing in personal fancies from outside the shortlist. It may not seem
like it to you, but it will mean you are effectively trying to cover more than 36 selections.
That, of course, will dilute your entry and, ultimately, reduce, not enhance, your chances of
winning.
We are occasionally asked are we not spoiling our own chances of ever winning the competition
again by publishing our shortlist and rules for all-and-sundry to see. But it's not a
problem. The more people who do the competition, especially the large syndicate entries
all doing their own thing, the bigger the pot for everyone else to share. Moreover, the
chances of two different people entering identical winning lists of 10 horses from the
same shortlist of 36 selections is, at £10 per line, financially non-existent. |
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Which horses should you do?
Your horses have to be chosen from a master list printed in the Racing Post newspaper.
So they are actually giving you the winning list to start off with! It is definitely in
there somewhere - all you have to do is fathom out where, using knowledge and judgment!
Easier said than done, true, but perfectly feasible, and always very enjoyable just trying.
However, our own carefully prepared shortlist, published here on this website each season, is
as good a starting point as you could possibly hope to find.
One big tip, when reading any articles about your fancies, is not to be sucked in by glowing
reports about the stars of last year (which any fool can write). All too often,
it will turn out that it was last year you needed them, not the coming year! The bulk
of past stars regularly fail to shine again in the following season to the same degree as before.
Though the few that do are usually vital to a winning entry. So, a balance between horses
with known class and horses with potential high class, combined with an expectation for every
selection to achieve 75 points on average, based on the type of race you expect it to be targeted
at, is what should dictate the actual horses you should do.
How many lines should you do?
As we said in the left hand column, the competition has been won by people doing as few as two
or three lines. But that was unusual. Most winners have usually made a much more
determined attempt to win than that. In fact, a lot of entrants form small syndicates
with friends and family in order to spread the cost of entering a reasonable number of lines.
If you were to cover up to 36 horses, as we tend to do, you need to enter at least a dozen lines,
more if you can afford it, though do not go over the top. In this respect, the competition
is much like the Lotto. Beyond a certain point, doing more lines will not increase your
chances of winning - it will merely increase your chance of losing more! Try not
to lose sight of this simple law of probability.
Twelve lines at £10 a line would cost you £120. Equal to just £4 a week
for a prolonged amount of entertainment and enjoyment that lasts all season long.
In any competition there must, by definition, be a great many more losers than winners.
But this particular competition is, without doubt, as we said at the start, the "thinking
man's lottery". So, make entering it every season [Jumps only after 2003] a regular
part of the rest of your life!
Well-structured lines are so important
To give yourself a realistic chance of winning the competition, and the first prize of £100,000+,
you require a well-structured entry that has been put together better than anybody else's.
This difficult structuring of the lines is another key thing our system does for you.
A well-structured entry for the Jumps is one where every line entered contains horses, in appropriate
proportions, that will be contending races like the Champion Hurdle, Stayers Hurdle, Champion
Chase, Arkle or R&SA novice chases, Paddy Power Gold Cup, Hennessy, King George, and Gold
Cup. Click back through the "Prvs TTFs" tabs at the top of each page if you
would like to see how our structuring strategy was applied, with enormous potential, in 2007-8,
2006-7, 2005-6, 2003-4 & 2001-2.
A well-structured entry for the Flat is one where every line entered contains horses, in appropriate
proportions, that will be contending all the top-class Flat races throughout the season, from
sprint distances, through the Classic distances, to the Cup (staying) races.
The "Prvs TTFs" tabs at the top of each page will take you all the way back to the
pages for 2003, 2002 & 2001 if you want to see how our structuring strategy was applied
to the Flat in those early years online - again with astounding potential.
Easier than ever to win on the Flat
The prophetic heading above first appeared on this page before the 2001 Flat competition
started. It was prompted by changes made to the competition rules for that season.
The changes came after a survey of entrants' opinions the year before which favoured a later
closing date for entries at the end of May, not the end of April. Our confident prophecy
remained true for three years [2001, 2 & 3] after which the later closing date was, unfortunately,
changed back to the earlier starting date in 2004. That rule change put the Flat version
of our system out of action. That remained the situation for four more Flat seasons until, in
2008, in an effort to stem the dwindling support for the Flat competiton, the organisers restored
a later, more sensible starting date.
The reason the Flat TTF became easier for somebody to win in 2001, and fairer for absolutely
everybody, was actually fourfold: (i) most important of all was that the start of the competition
was deferred a month, to the beginning of June, just before the English Oaks and Derby, instead
of at the beginning of May (just before the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas) - the later start meant
there was some current Classic, and major trials' form to go on, (ii) the Godolphin horses
that would come to Britain had previously been a dire guessing game but were now much more likely
to be known, (iii) the number of horses to choose from for the Flat was halved, from 1,000
down to only 500, (iv) the number of 50-point bonus races was nearly doubled - from only
9 in 1999 to as many as 16 in 2001, with all the new ones being top-class conditions races,
as opposed to handicaps, thus making the type of horse to concentrate on even simpler.
In the years prior to 2001, missing out on more than one Classic winner had been like the kiss
of death for the rest of the season. But, thanks to the later start in 2001, and the extra
bonus races, the need to bias your entry around a lot of mainly unknown, underexposed 3yo milers
(for the two Guineas races) was completely eliminated. We were so confident that the changes
would make it easier than ever to win the Flat competition that 2001 was the year we first posted
our Ten To Follow system here on the internet for all to see. Straightaway, the system
went on to produce a line that beat the real winner's score to potentially win the first prize
that year of £116,000.
The following year (2002) saw two more official rule changes. This time, done without
canvassing competitors' opinions. One unfortunate change was the promotion of three Breeders'
Cup races from 25-point races to 50-point bonus-status (idea abandoned in subsequent years).
The other unfortunate change was the doubling of the cost of entries from £5 per line
to £10 per line. These new changes sadly resulted in around 25% of people then dropping
out of the Flat competition, or having to reduce their number of lines. But the first-prize
for the Flat, that year, nevertheless rose hugely, from £116,000 in 2001, to £166,000
in 2002. A very nice touch for the winner. [Our system managed a line potentially
worth 2nd prize (£23,740) that year.]
It was another possible 1st prize for the system in 2003. But then, in 2004, the Flat
competition sadly reverted to an earlier (pre-Guineas) closing date in April. The extra
bonus races still meant, at least, that missing more than one Classic winner would not necessarily
be the kiss of death it had been before. Nevertheless, it was obvious the Flat competition
was being made impossibly difficult for our systematic approach. And so it was that, after
enjoying remarkable online performances in the three Flat seasons of 2001, 2 & 3, we had
to discontinue our Flat shortlists as from 2004.
What next?
As you will have gathered from the preceding item, we stopped participating in the Flat version
of the competition after 2003 as the balance between skill and luck had been tipped too far
the wrong way for our liking. Fortunately, the competiton rules were modified for the 2008
season so the Flat version of our system is again viable - and has been revived.
Since 2003, we have, of course, persevered with the Jumps, despite that also having been made
more difficult (as of the 2003-4 season). But not impossibly so - as you will soon
gather if you work your way through the other pages in this Racing Section.
Finally, if, at your first attempt at the competition with our system, you do not succeed, do
not give up. Come back to this website to see if there was some aspect of our system that
you interpreted incorrectly, or failed to implement accurately. It is a recognised human
failing that we often read what we want to hear, not what is actually being said. Then
go back to the drawing board in good time for the following season. And remember that
just seeing your name on the leader board is a very major achievement in its own right in this
competition. To actually win some money will, frustratingly, always elude all but a tiny,
fortunate few.
If you have any comments, queries or, nearer the time, some horses to suggest for possible inclusion
in our next Jumps shortlist, click the Contact button below to e-mail us.
We have never knowingly failed to respond to any new, first-time e-mailers.
If you do write but do not get a reply, not even after a while, it will, unfortunately, have
meant your e-mail to us, or our reply to you, will have been blocked somewhere
along the line by over-zealous anti-spam filters. So, if it happens to you, please don't
bear a grudge or be put off our system because of it 'cos we're nice guys really.
Cheers everybody, and good luck. |
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