November was the best month in the book, nineteen points up, and the first of December was the worst single day in it. Four bets, four losers, three and a half points gone by half past three. Wainwright at Ayr, Shipbourne at Kempton, and two at Plumpton. I'd like to tell you what I did about it, because that's the useful part.
Nothing. I made a cup of tea, I wrote the four losers in, and I looked at Tuesday's cards the same way I look at them every night.
That sounds smug, so let me take it apart. The four bets were sound. Each one was near the front of the market, each one had a line that read better than its last figure, each one was at a price that paid for the doubt. Three got beaten in finishes and one ran badly. If I'd had the same four bets on a different Monday, two or three would have won, because that's what bets like that do over time. They didn't, and the day cost three and a half points of a bank that's well over forty now. That's the four point cap doing its job. The worst day the method can have is a bad afternoon, not a bad month.
The thing I'm proud of isn't the discipline on the day. It's that I didn't have a fifth bet. There was a horse at Wolverhampton that evening I half liked, and on a day when you're three and a half down the urge to have it on is strong, because one winner at 3.5 gets most of it back. That's chasing, dressed up as a bet. The horse didn't pass the questions in the morning and it wasn't going to pass them at six o'clock because I'd had a bad afternoon.
A chunk of November's nineteen points came from Walk On High at Plumpton on the third at 7.73, a horse the market had completely gone off after one bad run. So the bad Monday came the day after the best month I've had, and I think that's worth saying. The book doesn't know what month it is. It just lands or it doesn't.
Tuesday had two bets. One won. The book is now three points down for December, with twenty nine days of jumps to go, and I'm about as worried as I was on Sunday night, which is not at all.
Lee
PS: same stakes tomorrow. It's the only advice I've got and it's the only advice that's ever worked.
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More from the notebook: The results pick the method, not me · Why I stopped worrying about a quick return