Take last week's. It told us simply that a racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time. Apart from being clever, it is particularly fitting for this time of year, a time when the thoughts of betting people everywhere turn to Cheltenham and that holy grail of the gambling world - the ante-post touch.

Every bet that ends with a bookmaker lighter in the wallet is a good one but an antepost one is special. Because an ante-post bet convinces you just for a moment that you've got the game worked out. When War Of Attrition (right) won the Gold Cup at Cheltenham last year, the SP of 15-2 was a mighty price to be picking up your winnings on. But even this time last year, eight weeks short of the race, he was available at 14-1. Those who took him at that price could sit back on Gold Cup night and reflect on a job expertly done. Even if it was the only bet that saved their week, here, at least, was evidence that they knew what they were about.

Having a good ante-post interest warps your senses to a degree. Your grip on logic loosens a touch. Say you backed Dessie Hughes's novice chaser Schindlers Hunt for the Arkle in the week after his win at Leopardstown on St Stephen's Day. You managed to get 101 that week and although you were a bit miffed at not going in earlier and getting 20s, you're still happy enough.

A strange thing happens now, though.

You start hoping against hope that his price shortens between here and the festival. Question is, why should you care?

You've got your money down and the only thing that will materially affect you personally is whether or not the horse runs his race. Hoping the price comes in is surely doing nothing only wishing less good fortune for others than you yourself are in receipt of.

That's the curse of the ante-post bet.

Part of your wish for a tumbling price will be because you hope he wins the big novice chase at Leopardstown next Sunday, thus proving his good form ahead of the big one in seven weeks time. But the bigger part of it is your own pitiful human weakness, the puffed-up delight you will take when Schindlers Hunt comes in at 6-1 on the day.

The ante-post punter comes in all manner of shapes and size but, in the main, three distinct kinds can be identified. The first is your serious punter, your what-do-you-mean-youonly-got-sevens man.

Come the festival, he'll have an interest in four or five horses in each of the big races and two or three in the rest. These are bets that will have been carefully husbanded through the winter. I heard of a man last week who not only had backed War Of Attrition at 40-1 for the Gold Cup in October 2005 but had done the same with Kicking King the previous year. Little wonder he could afford to have a poke at a few others along the way.

The second is your Cheltenham-only man. Whereas the first chap will barely have the festival over him before Aintree, Punchestown and, Lord help us, the flat season is in his mind, the second will have been thinking about the third week in March since the day after the All Ireland. Around the start of December, Brave Inca was available at as big as 7-1 for the Champion Hurdle. That it lasted for about a half a day at the most was down to this man and his ilk, the ones who chase down even slightly inflated prices like a peloton reeling in a breakaway.

The third is your posturing fool, otherwise known as the rest of us. We are the several thousand who get taken for a ride on a single racehorse.

We are the ones who goggle each year at the festival when we're introduced to one of the men in the preceding two paragraphs - the men buying the pints and tipping the barman - and resolve there and then that we're going do it his way next year. We are the ones who long to live the ante-post dream not so much so that we can bank a few quid, but so that people will point and stare as we walk bolt upright to the bar, carrying the comportment not just of winners, but of shrewd winners.

So do it. Take Schindlers Hunt for the Arkle or Asian Maze for the Champion Hurdle (16-1). Do it today and when they come in, don't even mention to anyone that you read it in the paper. The antepost punter credits only himself. For he knows in his heart that nobody else will.