I made a trip over to Tindall's bookshop in Newmarket yesterday, which doesnt have an Amazon level of stock but does have more betting and horse racing books than your average Waterstone's.

If you are ever in Newmarket it's towards the north end of the high street. If you need a Timeform book from 1973, they've probably got it!

What I came away with was The Thoughts and Secrets of Successful Punters by Mark Littlewood.

The first person interviewed is Hugh Taylor from At The Races

Hugh said a few things that are worth noting if you are serious about your betting.

The first is something I've said before and it is the key to successful betting and well worth repeating.

Price is everything in betting

This is a fact that people don't always get. It doesn't matter what you are betting as long as you get the right price.

If you're betting at bigger prices you may have to wait longer for your profit, but as long as you are getting value prices then it will come.

Back to Hugh. On losing runs and his preference for bigger priced selections.

Long losing runs are inevitable for punters/tipsters going for bigger-priced horses.

He talks about his method for selecting his bets and he is in the watch the races and note horses to follow camp.

That is to say he records and watches every race run looking for…

horses that have run better than their bare form suggests

Hugh says he has in the region of 200 horses that he is following and he uses alert services to tell him which of his noted horses are out that day.

And finally back on the subject of big priced runners and losing runs he says…

Most big priced runners are actually underpriced in relative terms compared to market leaders – for instance, 33/1 shots have only won 1.6% of their races in Britain since 2000, which means the average 33/1 shot is nearer a 66/1 shot. This makes finding the overpriced ones even harder but you simply have to take the long-term view, not all 33/1 shots are the same!

There's certainly food for thought in this book and I'll be picking out more gems from it over the coming weeks.

If you want your own copy it is available on Amazon