By the time the Festival comes round plenty of people are holding juicy looking vouchers about horses that are now much shorter prices than they were months ago. Others are cursing themselves for backing ante post as they have already done their dough with their backed horses being ruled out of their originally designated races.

With just a month to go to the Cheltenham Festival should you be looking to lay your money down now or should you wait for the day?

There is not much point in betting now unless your fancy is running in the next week and is likely to fall in price as a result of that run. In the next week or two bookmakers will start going NRNB (Non Runner No Bet) about the Cheltenham Festival and at that stage you don’t have to worry about backing a non runner as you will get your money back if it doesn’t make its intended target.

That’s all well and good but we still can’t be sure how the ground will ride during the Festival and at this stage it is worth keeping your money safe until the evening before the race. This is when the so called ‘day of race’ market will be available and  you can normally get your bets on with the minimum of fuss knowing who is running and on what ground.

You can of course wait until the day of the race but there is nothing worse than opening the Racing Post and seeing Pricewise has tipped up your main fancy and you can either only get £10 on at the advertised price or that price is long gone.

When do you think is the best time to get your Festival bets on? Let us know and we can make it as profitable as possible.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Cheltenham Festival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.