Sean Boyce is our chairman for the night. He's been a presenter for At The Races since the start and he'll definitely be giving us some nuggets of information as well as making sure we don't fight too much. In his college days Sean was encouraged to have ante post bets for the Gold Cup on Garrison Savannah whilst he was out injured. The impeccable source of this info was the stage manager for a theatre production he was in. He couldn't watch the race as their was a matinee performance that afternoon. He says he can still remember his stable mole sticking his head through the lighting box window in the middle of an emotional scene on stage grinning from ear to ear and giving him the thumbs up. "Garry had won and the audience was wondering why I was grinning inanely during one of the tensest moments of the play".

 Michael Shinners is definitely a rarity among bookmaker PR reps, in that his dry and laconic wit does not make the mute button take a pounding. His first Cheltenham memory was the 1996 Sun Alliance Novices Hurdle, when the Aiden O’Brien trained and Charlie Swan ridden Urubande tried to duck out jumping the second last, before being straightened out to win the race by half a length.  As a student at the time he was richly rewarded with £5 at 8/1!

Michael's biggest priced winner was an ante post bet on Sublimity after he won a hurdle at Navan, to win the 2007 Champion Hurdle.  He was 1/3 but still won by 20 lengths quickening clear.  He was left at 100/1 and although a stab in the dark he went off 16/1 on the day and did the honours.

Hopefully he has one of those lined up for us.

 Neil Channing attended his first Cheltenham Festival in the early 80s. The 1st Cheltenham races he watched were in the Sea Pigeon/Monksfield/Night Nurse era but the really early memories were the days of Desert Orchid when, as the college bookie, he cheered home Norton's Coin and moaned as Yahoo was collared close home.

An early bookmaking hero bet £10,000 in cash on Beech Road while Neil was standing and chatting to him in the Cheltenham ring. Although that was the year Kribensis won, the memory of the relaxed way the transaction occurred so impressed him that he just knew this was the game for him. The next eight years were spent as a Silver Ring bookmaker and his final five years on the course were as a front row Tattersalls bookie with too many wild swings to recall.

Last year was one of Neil's better Cheltenham Festivals. It's not every year you bet the Gold Cup winner at 33/1 and every Bettingemporium customer was certainly pleased that he banged in a couple of 10/1 winners to go with it. These days he never even thinks of going to the course, choosing instead to wake up at 4am and to sit on the internet reading everything possible rather than wasting time travelling.

Rory Delargy is a UK Racing analyst who writes a tipping column for The Irish Field.

His best bet was also his worst bad beat - he was convinced that Asian Maze was a superstar when seeing her win at Punchestown as a novice, and he spent the six months leading up to the 2006 Champion Hurdle backing her to win at huge odds. It was assumed she’d go for the Stayers, but Rory was convinced otherwise, and odds of 100/1 all in were frighteningly tempting. When one unnamed firm went 66/1 NRNB, Rory took to the streets to shovel what he could on at the price, and by the day of the race he’d staked more on her than he’d ever done before. Come the day, she was as short as 12/1, and the selection of Tom Segal in the Racing Post, but was brought down by a swinging hurdle before halfway. To add insult to injury, she went on to beat the Champion Hurdle third by seventeen lengths at Aintree, and poor old Rory was left to ponder what might have been.

A Cheltenham resident Rory has not missed a day of the festival since the decade he worked for Ladbrokes but this year he'll be the one sole Irishman flying from Cheltenham to Ireland to cover Cheltenham for an Irish firm whilst all the other Irishmen are going in the other direction.

 As well as exclusive and special Free bets, offers and enhanced prices available on the night everyone will get a free copy of the following: