September is nearly fourteen points up and it had the lowest strike rate of any winning month in the book. Thirty of seventy bets won. Last September I had sixteen from thirty four and lost eight points. Same month, nearly the same rate, opposite result, and the difference is a decision I made in the summer that I want to explain, because on the face of it, it looks like the wrong one.
The list has always had a main part and a smaller part I call the extras, horses that come off a different set of questions and go on as win bets with a place bet alongside. The extras' place bets were landing most of the time. Reassuring. I looked at them properly in August for the first time in a year and they weren't paying for themselves. Landing seven in ten at 1.2 with the three losers at a quarter point each is a bet that goes nowhere over a season, and it was dragging the return on every pound staked down a touch while it went.
So they've gone. The extras are win only now. The main list keeps its place bets, because those do a different job and the figures say they earn it.
The reason this looks wrong is that it gave up some winning bets. A chunk of the ones that would have landed this month were taken out, and the strike rate on the whole list dropped because of it. What went up was the return, because every pound that was sitting in a 1.2 place bet is now either not staked at all or in a win bet that pays properly when it lands. And the worst dip got smaller too, which surprised me until I thought about it. Place bets at 1.2 don't fall far, but they fall often, and over a bad fortnight the quarter points add up.
I didn't replace them with anything. That's the bit I'm most pleased about, because the temptation was to find some other bet to keep the volume up. A reassuring run of winners isn't a reason to keep a bet. The return is. And the return said no. Members get the list as it is now, with the bets that pay and without the ones that only looked reassuring.
The jumps are back properly next month. Cheltenham's first meeting is on the twenty third of October, and the winter is where the list has done its steadiest work, though I'll say now that the summer just gone has beaten it. The book doesn't care what season it is.
Lee
PS: if you liked the extras' place bets because they landed so often, I understand. So did I. That's exactly why I had to look at them.
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More from the notebook: Mojito Des Mottes, and the best month in the book · Breeding says where a horse should get the trip. The record says where it does.