Tournament betting was the talk of the town last week and The Melbourne Mail is officially caught up in the hype.
There is a slight change in the mentality required to play tournaments at TopBetta, which you can join here, and one of those changes comes in the way we look at the last race on the card.
Page one of the punting rule book should clearly state that there is never a last race and chasing losses is a fast route to the poorhouse.
However, in tournament betting there is a last race and if your not in the money you may as well be swinging for the fences.
The last at Flemington on Saturday throws up a nice chance to make a late push up the leaderboard for tournament players.
Rough Justice arrives as a warm favourite on the back of his good win last time but the value may rest with the runner up there Belesron.
Belesron conceded Rough Justice too much rope in the first 400m, handing up a touch over 3 lengths over those initial stages before pulling the best part of a length back in each of the remaining 200m sectionals to the finish, ultimately closing the margin down to a neck as they went past the post.
There's not a lot between them on that evidence. Rough Justice is capable of running to a slightly higher mark based on his Timeform ratings from last campaign but Belesron's rating profile is trending the right way as well and he looks like making Rough Justice find that peak if he wants to record a third straight win.
At the odds on offer we'd rather be with Belesron, and with Rough Justice sure to be popular it could provide an opportunity for us to finish off just as strongly in the tournament as Belesron hopefully does on the track.
Race three is a very competitive three-year-old race with a handful of the field having shown plenty of promise to this point.
One of them is the filly Lahqa who looks ideally suited third up at 1400m.
We backed Majestic Lass off the same formline last week and she unfortunately got turned over but that's not dented our confidence in that race being above average for the class.
Lahqa is almost certainly going to need to be above average to be winning on Saturday against a strong looking line up but the $10 on offer looks to sell her chance short.
THE MELBOURNE MAIL
Bet Of The Day: Race 9 #5 Belesron @ $5.00
Each Way Play: Race 3 #4 Lahqa @ $10.00
