December Micro Systems
October is in the books although I’m sure it was only March just a few weeks ago! The clocks have gone back, the winter is on the way and the National Hunt season is well under way and will be even more so when get to our December systems. First though, a look back at how our October micro systems have fared. With one big exception it was a decent steady month and even the big exception Trainer, as we’ll see in a moment, had a vastly different showing on the place market.
The exception was Joseph O’Brien, where our search for a big priced winner continues to remain just out of reach. One of those horses did give us a double figure Place SP though.
Here’s the table for all of our October systems.
The totals first, although there’s a lot more to unpack than that in a real mixed bag! Wins ended down 10.46 points due in no small part to the win losses on Joseph O’Brien with -20.32! Places on the other hand were up an excellent 26.56 points! Again, due in no small part, to Joseph O’Brien, with +19.07! It’s fair to say he had a big say in the overall picture.
Overall though there’s quite a lot to like across the October micro systems. Really only Cromwell and Beckett had no positives and Herrington too but with minimal bets. Joseph O’Brien’s micro system, as mentioned, had a cracking month on Places and an awful month on Wins! If one of those had won we’d have been well in but it wasn’t to be.
Elsewhere, the Appleby system was excellent, hitting 50% wins (and 75% places!) for a combined 21.44 points of profit. Dunlop was another good one too, making 14 points of profit on wins and a point on places too. Moore and Burke both made profits on win and places whilst Aidan O’Brien had a very tiny win loss (-0.06pts) but an excellent 11.29pts profit on places.
The others, Bromhead, Walker, Crisford and Fergal O’Brien I’m personally happy to include again next year as they either had just 1 or 2 bets across the whole month or in Henry De Bromhead’s case, was just a point down across win and place.
To be honest I’m not totally against including Joseph O’Brien again either given his 43.75% place record for the month and big profit. Although I’d need to have another look to see if there’s any adjustments that can be made.
I’m still convinced there’s a big win to be had on him.
Time now though to turn our attention to what December will bring us.
December’s Trainer List
Here are all the trainers with 30+ winners during the December of 2022, 2023 and 2024.
And here is out list of overall profitable jockeys when riding for any of the above.
We’ll start with Willie Mullins.
I’m going to approach Mullins from a different angle first by taking a look at the horses Official Rating (OR) for the upcoming race compared to its OR on its last win.
There’s quite a clear area where the bulk of the winners and the profit is coming from.
Next, we’ll have a look at race types. With it being Mullins and prices inevitably going to be on the low end then I think it makes sense to go for a high end strike rate. That gives us three race types where he has been 50% or higher during the last three December’s.
A final filter now albeit with the usual caveat of small sample size. However, anything less than 30 days since the last run has not fared anywhere near as well as those having at least a month off and the two wins were low odds.
Just 2 wins from 8 compared to 11 from 17 beyond 30 days.
This leaves us with a nice little micro system that will hopefully give us a bit of profit. The levels of 2023 seem unlikely as his horses rarely go off with even mid range prices if they’re in anyway fancied but we shall see!
Note Daryl Jacob is included in the jockeys so the figures match. He retired at the end of last year so can be left out of the system.
Next up is a look at Dan Skelton.
Our main focus here looks like it will be to reduce our bet total as we’re starting from a good place but quite a hefty number of bets.
With that in mind we’ll start by removing Non Handicap Hurdles and Chases. Both have a poor strike compared to anything else and a decent number of bets in the context of our data.
Horse age gives us another good chance to shed some more bets. If we concentrate only on those aged 4 to 8 we lose just one win and remove 21 bets.
A look at the best finishing position in the horse’s last five races shows that those who are having their first run are unsuccessful.
At this point I am going to split this into two systems. All filters so far will apply to both and then from here we will look at them separately.
Handicap first then.
We’ll start by taking a look at the class move for our horses. All our wins are clumped together from a drop of 2 to a rise of 1.
A look at prize money gives a few more bets we can lose. Anything above £17000 is a comparatively miserable affair. We do lose one big winner but we are after a decent strike rate to go with a profit. Those in the higher prize money categories produced just 3 winners from 25 rides.
Revisiting our age range for our Handicappers we can trim our range to 5 to 8 year olds.
A glance at prize money suggests we can leave off the big races. Just 2 wins from 18 when the prize money has been beyond £25000.
Our final filter will be on days since run. Anything that has been out of action for more than 75 days has not produced anything of note and seemingly needed the run. Just 1 win from 9 rides.
This leaves us with our Skelton Handicaps system. There is potentially a bet a day, based on last year’s figures but it may be less. If the strike rate holds up, the more the merrier!
Now to return to where we were and look at the Non Handicap races.
As it stands with our original filters and just Non Handicap races our data looks like this.
A quick look at jockeys and we may just as well stick to brother Harry.
Anything comfortably beaten last time out appears not to trouble the judges in their next run. In the past three Decembers at least!
And this leaves us a decent looking micro system for Skelton’s Non Handicap runners for December.
Gary and Josh Moore now.
We’ll start by removing any horse that has either not run yet or not placed in the first three in their last ten starts.
It’s looking ok after this but we have a few too many bets still so we’ll dig a little further. A look into race types shows that Handicap Novices and Nurseries along with NH Flat are void of wins so we’ll remove these and shed 14 bets.
We can lose a few more by removing those wearing tongue ties.
A further 13 can be lost here. Every horse that failed to complete its last race mustered just 2 places between them.
Days since last run will be our last port of call. There’s a clear range where the best results are coming from. 16 to 75 days. Any long term absence is 1 from 6 and any quicker return is just 1 from 7.
This leaves us this promising looking system.
Now for the big win elusive Joseph O’Brien. This is becoming something of a personal mission!
His last three December’s look very good right off the bat and after a good look through there are no filters worth adding that make any real difference. So, it’s a simple straightforward system. Let’s see if this is the month.
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