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Described by the Jockey Club as ‘the crown jewels of British Flat racing’, the ‘Classics’ are a series of generation-defining, Group 1 races, run over three different distances, on three different racecourses, usually between May and September. In chronological order, they are the 1,000 Guineas and 2,000 Guineas, run over a mile on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket on consecutive days in early May, the Oaks and the Derby, run over a mile and a half at Epsom on consecutive days in early June, and the St. Leger, run over an extended mile and three-quarters at Doncaster in September.

The 1,000 Guineas and the Oaks are restricted to three-year-old fillies, while the other three Classic races are officially open to three-year-old colts and fillies, but not geldings. However, it would be fair to say that fillies in the 2,000 Guineas or the Derby are few and far between.The 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St. Leger and the 1,000 Guineas, Oaks and St. Leger, respectively, constitute the ‘Triple Crown’ and the ‘Fillies’ Triple Crown’, although the former was last won by Nijinsky in 1970 and the latter by Oh So Sharp in 1985.

The term ‘Classic’ was not coined until 1815, the year after the inauguration of the most recent of the five races, the 1,000 Guineas, in 1814. The 2,000 Guineas was established in 1809, the Derby in 1780, the Oaks in 1779 and the oldest of the quintet, the St. Leger, in 1776.

‘Tote’ is the shortened form of ‘Horserace Totalisator Board’, which was originally founded, as the ‘Racehorse Betting Control Board’, under the auspices of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, in 1928. The Tote remained a state-owned and controlled bookmaker until July 2011, when it was privatised, with stewardship passing to established bookmaker Beffred, at that stage, and, subsequently, to a consortium of investors known as the UK Tote Group in October.

Unlike other bookmakers, on-course, on the High Street and online, the Tote is a pool betting operation. Rather than bet at guaranteed, fixed odds against a bookmaker, Tote punters effectively bet against, or with, each other. All the money staked on a particular market is added, or ‘pooled’, together, the Tote takes a fixed margin, or commission – which is how it makes its profit – and the winning dividend is calculated by dividing the net prize pool by the number of winning tickets in the pool. Winning dividends are declared to a £1 stake, but, obviously, successful punters are paid out pro-rata.

Of course, Tote betting involves a degree of uncertainty insofar that punters cannot determine, at the time they strike a bet, what their exact return will be. A small number of winning tickets in a pool may lead to a bigger payout than fixed-odds betting, but, by the same token, if the prize pool is small, and the market weak, winning dividends can be skewed by one or two large bets. Thus, on the whole, Tote being tends to be the preserve of small-scale, recreational punters.

‘Starting price’ is a fairly self-explanatory term insofar that it describes the official odds at which a horse starts a race or, in other words, the odds available to bettors at the ‘off’ of the race in question. If a bettor strikes a bet on British horse racing with a licensed bookmaker, on the High Street or online, and fails to to take a fixed price – that is an ‘early’, or ‘board’, price – before the race gets underway, that bet is settled using the starting price (SP).

According to the ‘Racing Post’, an estimated 50% of bets on horse racing in betting shops are settled at SP. SP is also in intrisuc to best odds guaranteed (BOG), offered by some, but not all, bookmakers, whereby bets are settled at the fixed price taken or the SP, whichever is bigger.

The responsibility for ensuring that the returned starting price accurately reflects the odds available at the ‘off’ of each race falls to an independent body known as the Starting Price Regulatory Commission (SPRC). Historically, the starting price was based, exclusively, on betting shows from on-course bookmakers, subject to qualifying criteria specified by the SPRC.

However, a review of the procedure, conducted by the SPRC in 2020/21, concluded that on-course prices, alone, no longer produced an accurate starting price, granted that just 1.4% of bets on horse racing are actually struck on the racecourse. Consequently, since May 1, 2022, starting price has been determined mainly using off-course prices from a sample of bookmakers who comprise a ‘significant share’ of the overall betting market, again subject to qualifying criteria.

In horse racing parlance, the term ‘nap’ is used to indicate the selection in which a tipster has most confidence or, in other words, his or her best bet at any given meeting, or any given day. However, as American writer Mark Twain wrote in his novel ‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’, published in 1894, ‘It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.’

Of course, when it comes to tipping winners, there is no ‘magic bullet’. In the absence of so-called ‘inside’ information, which, by definition, will never become public knowledge, tipsters must rely on diligent study of the form book. A quick look at the ‘Racing Post Naps Table’, in which, at the time of writing, well over half of the tipsters listed are operating at a level stakes loss, in some cases significantly so, reveals that some are significantly more conscientious, or just plain lucky, than others.

In providing a ‘nap’ selection, a tipster is merely voicing an opinion and, regardless of the tipster, whether or not that opinion is valid always remains to be seen. Tipsters live or die by their profitability, so if things are not going well the temptation may be to ‘nap’ selections that are increasing obvious and short-priced, which, while theoretically more likely to win, represent poor value from a punting perspective.

‘Nap’ is the shortened form of ‘Napoleon’ and is taken from the nineteenth-century French card game of the same name. In that game players bid on the number of tricks they believe they can win, up to a maximum of five, which is. known as ‘Napoleon’, or ‘Nap’ for short.