A world of confusion and late gambles - Tom Segal on how track biases are making it hard to bet with confidence

Confidence is vitally important in any walk of life. When you feel you're in form, whatever you do tends to be the right call. In contrast, if you're lacking in confidence, everything becomes a chore and it's hard to see the ball clearly.

Horseracing is no different but these days it's often pretty hard to have too much confidence placing a bet because before racing starts it's virtually impossible to know where the best part of any track is going to be or where the jockeys are going to race. 

Take last month's Ebor festival at York, where there was clearly a massive track bias towards those drawn low, which hasn't been the case on the round course for years. The very first race was a big-field sprint handicap, which really came down to a handful of runners because anything drawn in double figures had no chance.