Hong Kong horse racing is the slickest, smartest racing product in the world. High on quality and integrity, huge on turnover and straightforward to understand, and without the burden of being beholden to a breeding industry tail that wags the dog in most of the other major jurisdictions.
Racing in Hong Kong is for the fan, for the punter and has a simple structure that everyone can understand, a closed pool of around 1400 horses, just over 800 races a season at three racetracks, with strong prizemoney and some world class jockeys and trainers.
All Group races are open to international competition, however, the ones that really attract foreign attention are the Longines Hong Kong International Races (HKIR) on the second Sunday in December, featuring as many as 30 visiting equine stars over the 4 G1 races, and Champions Day in late April, with 3 G1s on the card.
HKIR has grown over the past 3 decades to become one of the world's great racing events, targeted by the biggest names in the sport, and Hong Kong's international week also features an exciting contest between 12 of the world's top riders in the Longines International Jockeys' Championship at the unique Happy Valley racecourse on the Wednesday night prior to international day.
The betting numbers on G1 races in Japan dwarf Hong Kong, or anywhere else, but Japanese punters shun minor events and the average betting handle per the race in Hong Kong is the highest in the world at around $US 20 million a race.
Since commingling in recent years allowed bettors in dozens of countries to place local bets on Hong Kong races that were then transmitted into big pools in Hong Kong, it has attracted many thousands of new followers who have voted with their pockets and wagered $US billions from overseas alone on around 840 races last season.
So there must be many fans, new and recently-regular, with questions about how Hong Kong racing works, how it is the same as other jurisdictions and how it differs. We consider ourselves experts on Hong Kong racing so use the Contact Us link at the top of the page to fire in any of your questions and we will post the answers.
About our product:
The Hong Kong Winning Factor was previously sold in Australia as The HK Set through The Punters Show and 12Follow, and has returned a full-season betting profit at most seasons. Betting returns for past and current seasons, broken down by day, by month and for the overall season, are on the Results page.
These results before 2017-18 were ONLY for day meetings on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, as we had not previously offered midweek night meetings.
Recommended bets have a suggested stake in units, with the size of the bet calculated on a notional bank size of 500 units and the edge we believe the bet offers in the win market.
What is a unit? Well, that is up to you - your unit might be $10, it might be $100. Over time, we would average around 6 units per race so use a unit level that you can maintain at this level through losing runs.
While the Hong Kong Winning Factor is intended as a profitable standalone, we have subscribers who do their own analysis and use Hong Kong Winning Factor assessments to refine or review their thoughts.
When will you receive HK Winning Factor tips? The sheets are emailed to you between around 90 minutes before the scheduled time of the first race at each meeting.
Bookmakers and Betfair are part of the betting landscape in some countries like Australia and Great Britain, but are illegal in many others. There are occasions where we recommend taking an available price on corporate bookmakers immediately, and our results will reflect that price, however we know that a proportion of our client base will not have access to those avenues.
Most recommended bets will not have a price specified to take as we know there are swings and roundabouts, where the Hong Kong tote or final price at the online bookies might ultimately might pay the same or better, but we do attempt to indicate whether we think early odds will shorten. When our recommendation states the bookies' price "looks a good price" or "looks top odds" or language of that kind, we believe that price should be taken immediately for those with that bookie access. That's how they will appear in our results. Other bets, without such an indication, will be resulted according to the price available at race time.