Getting the value is only half the battle when it comes to punting - as I was very rudely reminded this week

Paul Kealy's Betting World is part of our Ultimate Daily newsletter service for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers, who receive a different weekly email every evening at 6pm.

Subscribers can get fantastic insight from the likes of Kealy, Lee Mottershead and Tom Segal every week – plus, starting last week, our regional correspondents James Burn (Lambourn) and David Milnes (Newmarket) with the latest from their area. Those who aren't yet signed up for The Ultimate Daily should click here to sign up and start receiving emails immediately!

Not a Members' Club Ultimate subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive The Front Runner five mornings a week plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content.

Getting the value is only half the battle when it comes to punting. They've still got to win.

I was rather rudely reminded of that this week after backing Glorious Angel for the Scottish Sprint Cup at Musselburgh on Saturday.

Having had the early part of the week off for once, I didn't get around to looking at Saturday's racing until the final declarations on Thursday, but the one horse who immediately stood out was Glorious Angel.

Rated just 84, she had run to a Racing Post Rating of 96 when not beaten far in the Cammidge Trophy at Doncaster a week earlier, and the handicapper had decided not to trust the form and let her stay on the same mark.

The Musselburgh race was set to be run on heavy ground over 5f, and on the last two occasions she had encountered those conditions - both last October - she ran to RPRs of 97.

She was weighted to beat Vintage Clarets by even further than she had at Doncaster on the second occasion then, and her other two main market rivals, Silky Wilkie and Zarzyni, had never run within 10lb of their best on such a surface.

And Glorious Angel was 8-1 fourth favourite, pretty much across the board, behind them.

Grant Tuer: saw Glorious Angel narrowly denied at PontefractCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

I simply couldn't believe it and I don't mind telling you that I had my biggest bet for quite a long while. I also don't mind telling you that it wasn't actually that much as I'm a far more timid punter than I was when I was younger (and dafter!), but such is the state of bookmaking in Britain these days that it still took five bookies to get on. I don't know how proper punters manage it - they're surely not getting on at early prices.

Anyway, by Saturday morning Glorious Angel was 11-4 in places and closing in on the head of the market just behind last year's winner Silky Wilkie.

I thought it was where she belonged and I was getting ever more confident, but then the news filtered through that a tiny amount of overnight rain (3.25mm was the rather precise report) had pushed Musselburgh over the edge and that the meeting had been abandoned.

I was fuming. I must have spent the entire day moaning about how I'd been denied a decent payout, even though I hadn't actually lost a penny.

Then Glorious Angel turned out at Pontefract on Tuesday - and managed to get beaten in a much weaker race at odds of 5-1.

She'd opened up in the morning at around 9-4 and her biggest danger in the early market was Vintage Clarets, so I thought the race was there for the taking and backed her accordingly. And then again as she drifted.

Glorious Angel did comfortably see off Vintage Clarets, another drifter, but could not get to grips with the front-running The Bell Conductor, a horse who had been in the form of his life on the all-weather but did not boast a single line of turf form to suggest he could win that off a mark of 92, albeit his best turf run as a younger horse had been on heavy ground.

Perhaps The Bell Conductor has just improved enormously at the age of seven, but perhaps Glorious Angel just isn't as well handicapped as I thought she was.

I'll never know whether she would have beaten horses who would not have been suited to the conditions at Musselburgh, but I can't be anywhere near as certain as I was on Saturday morning. I'm afraid it's back to the drawing board.

Read these next:

'He might be better off a stronger gallop over shorter' - Paul Kealy with four weekend selections 

Who's the next Hedgehunter? Willie Mullins preparing top team for Grand National, including 16-1 shot with 'a huge engine' 

Racing Post Members' Club: 50% off your first three months 

Sign up to receive On The Nose, our essential daily newsletter, from the Racing Post. Your unmissable morning feed, direct to your email inbox every morning.