Pot-lucky or Penniless - the search for KZN Gold

Tomorrow (Saturday 13 June) ushers in Gold Challenge time at Clairwood, a banger of a race day with the main event falling just 600m short of stealing July thunder this year as the stars  emerge for a pre-clash of sorts. At the top of the betting boards for both the Gold Challenge and the Vodacom Durban July is the brother/sister combo of Pocket Power and River Jetez. Much has already been said about them by journalists and mouthpieces countrywide, leaving little left to twitter on about here.

Throw in Kapil, Buy and Sell and a few others lost to July double digits and things are going to be a lot clearer by the time the sun sets on Saturday.

As for the rest of the meeting it's the Armageddon of racecards; close on 150 horses competing across a 10 race program and wide open like whore's product. Expect a Pick-6 dividend big enough to ooze tears to the eye, even with the likely banker success of Pocket Power and River Jetez coupled in the main event.

I'm all out of punting ideas after taking yet another beating on Wednesday, this time by the Tarry machine's rollout of 5 winners..

almost 6 in fact because Mr. Top came within a breath of winning the 8th race for them too. That race however, came at a time when I had finally decided that the stable was undefeatable on the day so I got stuck in to Mr. Top trying to capitalise on their winning run! No surpises then when the result flashed up, well prepped for in fact since in the 3 previous races I had wagered win bets on In Writing, Kimigaio and Rushing Wind, all left slurping sloppy seconds to Tarry explosions. Whatever.

Here's an incentive to sharpen your betting prowess : Interbet has launched a Return on Investment competition with R2000 up for grabs every week - winner takes all! There's no entry fee or forms to fill out, just wager at least 10 (separate outcome) horse racing bets using your Interbet account between Monday morning and Sunday night and you're in. If you have a bad week, no problem there's always next week to try again when scores are reset, last week's hero is cut down to naught-zero and everyone starts afresh.

This competition is open to new and existing Interbet customers alike so if you don't have an account yet, open one quick and easy on www.interbet.co.za, chuck in some dough and start playing direct with the Tote or the 100 Bookies active on the exchange.

For this competition, all bets with the Tote count, and all straight bets (fixed odds win/place) with the Bookies count. Fixed odds multiples with the Bookies DO NOT count, and bets wagered on (future) race outcomes that do not conclude within the same competition period, DO NOT count eg. a bet on the July taken next week would not count towards your competition scorecard.

Score is calculated as follows : If your bet is a loss, your score will log as -100 (100% loss) for that event, irrespective of rand value. If your bet wins, your score will be the return on investment (ROI) expressed as a percentage ie. Win amount/wager amount x 100.

At the end of each week (Sun midnight) your overall ROI % will be calculated by first adding together the scores generated by each qualifying bet, then dividing this by the total number of bets for the competition period. He/she with the highest score and also showing a rand value profit, wins R2k into their betting account easy baby.

Read more about it on the www.interbet.co.za - good luck to all and may the best addict win!

..and remember that unlike real life, the size of your bet in this competition does not count, only the ratio between wager and return.