Micro Systems
Micro systems can be a great thing to add to your portfolio and can be surprisingly profitable at times. While each one might have anywhere from just a few bets a month to even a few bets per year, if successful they can all mount up.
The benefit of a portfolio of micro systems can be that with the fact that if just one or two perform very well or pick up a big priced winner it can easily cover any that are not proving profitable.
There are many different ways to approach trying to find one.
Due to the nature of them we are of course always at the mercy of small sample size and statistical noise which could be what we are seeing rather than a potential profitable system. In my opinion this means it’s important not to add too many rules and try to keep them as general as possible.
With this in mind I’m going to look at the month of December on the National Hunt to see if there’s anything to get our teeth into. The bumper Boxing Day set of meetings will of course fall into that so it should give us a good size sample to start with.
As anything found will likely have a trainer element to it, I’m going to start by using just 2021 and 2022 for our data so I can then see how it performed in 2023 with a view to using it this December.
I’m going to start though by getting up a selection of jockeys that might give us the best opportunity to find a Trainer / Jockey combo that can help us to a few wins for this coming December.
For my initial filter I will set a minimum number of past rides at 10 for the two months of December 2021 and 2022 and initially select just those who have an Industry SP A/E of 1.00 or above. IE, those who are winning at or better than the ISP odds of their mounts suggest they should.
It’s worth noting that an A/E of 1.00 or above does not automatically mean they will be profitable as a whole.
This filter initially gives us 118 Jockeys.
And just to show how you can’t just hand pick something like that and see that 2021 and 2022 got huge profits (1247pts!), which of course they would, and then expect it to continue to be profitable.
A quick look at December 2023 with that set of Jockeys shows a loss of -291pts!
This is just a process to narrow down the field as it were to look closer at combinations of trainers/jockeys
As we only have two months’ worth of rides to work with then we of course need jockeys with some wins under their belts to try to find a micro system. Here is a list of those jockeys above who all have 10 or more wins over those two Decembers in our data.
We’ll ignore for the moment the likes of stable jockeys like Harry Skelton as they are generally over bet if successful and need a bit more dialling down to find any profitable angles. So, let’s start with Jonathan Burke.
This initially looks promising, particularly with TR George, but a look at December 2023 sees that he only had rides with Harry Fry 16/2 and Alistair Ralph 4/0. So, it looks like there is nothing to be had here.
Up next is Gavin Sheehan and he gives us this set of figures.
Removing Greatrex and King, combined 2 wins from 23 rides, from the list and looking at 2023 gives us the following.
This shows a nice profit on the wins for each year. December 2023, however, saw him only ride for Snowden and a handful of rides for Hobson and a marked drop in strike rate as well. Let’s take a look at race type to see if there’s anything there.
Handicaps look to be where we could have some success.
With just Handicap races used we now get a rather nice set of trainer figures.
And by year it’s all looking rather good as well. We also have a place profit each December as well.
This looks like we have something that will give us around 15 bets this December and hopefully continue to profit as it has the past three years.
System: JO-121-91-12-24
Let’s take a look at Adam Wedge’s stats now.
Most of his rides are for Evan Williams but there’s been some success elsewhere too.
This shows a nice profit for both the 2021 and 2022 Decembers of our data. Adding in 2023 actually gives us a small win profit once again as well. This can be seen in the following table.
All those wins and almost all the 2023 rides, 4 from 22, came with Williams again.
Let’s take a look at race types once again for 2021 and 2022.
A look at Maidens and NH for 2023 shows a similar unsuccessful pattern so we will remove those.
As there is no more than 1 win for any other trainer and there were no wins at all for anyone but Williams in 2023, I suggest we stick with just him.
This gives us final figures of:
The profit was lowest for last year, although still a nice 8pts up from just 18 bets and the strike rate was comparable so it was mainly just a case of lower priced winners than the previous two years.
System: JO-121-90-12-24
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