Tango made for Jade
It was great to see Ali get the first 40 of the series in last week’s Strictly, more so having tipped her to be top scorer at 100-30. Craig Kelly’s elimination also rewarded those who took our advice to back him to go at 10-11.
With 8 couples left, the scoring is getting tighter and as such, it’s far from easy to predict the judges’ leaderboard. Jade is always consistent, is getting better by the week, and has a tango this week which Ian Waite has been raving about in training. She is a strong fancy to be top scorer at 5-1, while the cover should be Ricky Whittle at 5-4, doing a jive.
While the jive is a hard dance to score highly in, Ricky is well capable of putting together something exceptional, so take the 5-4 to at least cover your stake on Jade, or sneak a small profit. Jade has twice been cruelly robbed of top spot by Whittle having been tipped by us – in week 5 undone by that unforgivable 10 from Alesha – and we’re fearful of a hat-trick. But you only need look at Jade’s stunning foxtrot in week 7 to appreciate her ballroom prowess:
As far as lowest scorer goes, the logical way to proceed is to go on dances that traditionally score poorly. Laila, dancing the rumba, and Chris, dancing the paso, look the most likely to be propping up the leaderboard, and at 5-1 and 7-1 should both be backed, for a ‘Dutch’ return of just over 2-1.
In the elimination market, we would still recommend Ricky Groves to go at a best-priced 13-8, and covering on Nat at 9-2. The reason is, his support doesn’t appear to be as strong as the likes of Phil, Nat, Laila and Chris, so even if he is mid-table, he could easily drop into the dance-off.
The bottom 2 combos market hasn’t been kind to us bar a 20-1 return on Jade/Jo Wood a few weeks back, but we’re going to steam in again. We firmly believe it will be Ricky Groves + 1, and given the likely composition of the leaderboard, are willing to take a more selective approach this week in suggesting you back Ricky G and Nat (5s), Ali (14s), and RickyW (33s), balancing stakes so you lock down the same sort of profit regardless of who out of those 3 hopefully joins him in the dance off.
Rob Furber