How to Choose a Horse Racing Nap of the Day?

What Is A Nap In Horse Racing

Before I get into how I decide which of my selections will be my NAP of the day, let's just establish and explain just what a NAP is in horseracing.

So, simply, the term "NAP" means a tipsters best bet of the day, or sometimes it is used as the best bet of a meeting. 

I prefer to have only a single Horse racing NAP in a day.

By doing so, it becomes much clearer which selection is considered the best bet across all racing that day.

Where does the word term NAP come from?

So with that out of the way how does one go about deciding which of his selections is the NAP.

Easy if there is a single selection on a day but most tipsters will provide more than one tip per day and in some cases, in particular on racing websites, press, and national newspapers, there will be selections for each race at each meeting. 

The papers may have a NAP per meeting, others will have a single NAP for the day. 

You can view today's horse racing naps here.

How Do I Decide My Nap Of The Day?

I have already explained that it is the best bet of the day, so how do I decipher which is best? Should it be?

• The best chance?
• The best price?

The Best Chance

This isn't always the case although it seems to fly in the face of reason to not NAP the selection you think has the best chance of winning.

It may be that your pick does indeed have the best chance of winning its respective race, but if the odds reflect that and are very short, then I would not look to NAP a very short price or even odds on price even if I think it is the most certain of my picks for a day.

For example, backing ALL horse racing favourites would see you win only around 35% of the time. 

Backing ALL ODDS ON horse racing favourites would see you win only around 60% of the time. 

Now some tipsters will regularly pick the shortest price horse, but we know that the betting odds are the most important facet of making a profit.

If their Nap is always short they will struggle to make a long term profit.  

The Best Price

What defines the best price depends upon your perception of the term. 

I would consider a bigger price the best price as opposed to the shorter price being the best price. 

I guess it comes down to your personal perception of the most overused word in horse racing betting, "Value". 

Become an expert in value betting and improve your profit prospects.

The price that is perceived as the best "value" would be a stronger candidate for the NAP of the day for me.

In effect the best bet at the best price.

So these are two reasons why it may be the NAP but still, I have yet to explain how I "decide" which is the NAP

It is a few more factors - I will look at races I know from my records that I have a higher success rate of finding the winner. 

If I am poor at selecting winners of five or six-furlong sprints on the flat but much better at a novice hurdle, if there are selections in both these types of races on one day, the likelihood is that I would look to the hurdle race for the NAP

If one of my selections has become so because it has been running in "unsuitable" conditions, whether that be over the "wrong" trip or on the "wrong" going and it should be returning to "suitable" variables, again, this is a contributory factor to a likely NAP from me. 

When I state "wrong", this may not be correct but is my personal take on what I consider right or wrong for the horse given the way I have read the previous form in the book.

I will also look again at what I perceive to be value. 

You may have seen my previous blog about Amy Ryan. I believe lady jockeys will always add a point or two extra to the prices they are available at and therefore provide a long term edge over the bookies if selecting the right horses, this too can go for less well-known jockeys and indeed trainers. 

I am more likely to NAP a relatively unknown trainer of my horse, or jockey of my horse than a Jamie Spencer, Ryan Moore, Michael Stoute, or Richard Hannon runner. 

That is not to say they may not constitute the connections of my best bet on any day but with those types of connections often leading to their runners being overbet and short on value, they are less likely to appear with the suffix of NAP in my advice.

Effectively I am looking for what I have proven to myself to more adept to in terms of picking winners in the past and elements of the runner I have selected being more conducive to offering a better price than I feel it should be.

So that's how I decide what to NAP on a daily basis.

I hope it is of some help and if you are new to making your bets or writing your selections on the forum on OLBG, it provides a little guidance on how to go about deciding on YOUR NAP of the day.

Horse Racing Nap Criteria

Different tipsters select their horse racing naps in different ways. 

If you are looking to select a horse racing nap each day you may like to consider the following areas to narrow down your nap. 

Further study will always be needed before selecting your chosen nap of the day. 

You may find the following betting school article helpful - how to find winners -101 tips to choose a winning horse racing bet.