October Pointers for both Flat and National Hunt Racing

As we move into October there is usually a change in the feel of the weather and in horse racing there starts to be a shift too. October signals the last full month of the flat season and for some of us our thoughts start moving to the National Hunt scene.

In this article I am going to see if I can find any positive angles on either the flat or over the jumps in October. I am going concentrate on UK flat racing, and the stats have been taken from the past 10 full seasons (2012 – 2021).

Any profits/losses have been calculated to Betfair Starting Price (BSP) less 5% commission.

Now, many punters think October is a tricky time. There are many reasons for this:

1. The flat season has been a long one and some horses will have peaked already with their level starting to dip; others would have been saved for a late season campaign but may be difficult to assess as a result.

2. The going can change markedly in this month which can turn flat form lines on their head.

3. In terms of National Hunt racing, a good proportion of runners are coming back off a long break and hence fitness and hence form is tough to gauge.

There are other reasons I could cite but suffice to say there is plenty of logical thinking behind thinking October is not going to be an easy punting month.

However, before writing October off completely I have found a few positive angles.

1. Favourites in 2yo Nursery Handicaps – this may surprise you but favourites in 2yo nursery handicaps have proved profitable in October over the past 10 seasons.

Here are the overall figures:

The performance has been consistent too with 7 winning Octobers from the last 10.

Also, when I checked the A/E index it was 1.05 which is extremely positive.

More consistency can be seen when we split the data up into turf racing and all weather racing; both have shown a return of 6p in the £.

Another notable stat is if we focus on nursery favourites that finished second last time out.

There have been 131 runners from this group of which a huge 51 have won (SR 38.9%). Backing all of them would have seen a £58.53 profit (ROI +44.7%).

One area to avoid though seems to be the better class of track. In the UK, the general consensus is that there are eight Grade 1 tracks – these being Ascot, Doncaster, Epsom, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown, and York.

Nursery favourites at these tracks combined in October have a below par record with 21 wins from 100 (SR 21%) for a loss of £26.46 (ROI –26.5%).

Editor’s Note:

From the above research we have added the following system to our portfolio for October.

System 32 (JO-95-32-10-22-DR): Back the forecast favourite in two year old only handicaps where the forecast favourite finished 2^nd last time out, excluding Grade 1 tracks.

We will include selections from this system in alerts to Platinum members. You can upgrade here.

2. Past heavy ground winners racing on heavy ground (flat racing) – I mentioned the potential for significant going changes in October and this idea exploits this.

When the going is heavy, we are looking for any flat horse that has won at least one race on heavy ground in the past. Here are how such runners have performed:

Runs	Wins	Strike Rate (%)	Profit / Loss (BSP)	ROI (%)
431	53	12.30	+ £12.78	+3.00

A small profit from what may look a modest strike rate.

However, the average SR% for all runners in October is only 9.4% so 12.30 is a decent enough figure in reality. It should be noted that we can improve on these figures by ignoring last time out winners. If we do this the profit figure increases to £55.86 with returns of just shy of 18 pence in the £.

For our Gold members Dave lays out for us five further pointers of interest for this transition period between the Turf Flat and the National Hunt campaigns

To read the rest of this article upgrade to a Gold or Platinum account now by clicking HERE

David Renham