Henderson Hurdlers

I was very irritated with myself on Monday.

A glaring oversight,  a result of being too poorly organised and frantically busy, ended up costing me a decent win.

I was working on a variety of things on Monday morning including sending out my selections for the Morning Value Service, preparing a post for the blog, dealing with the gas board who came to service the boiler and generally running around like a headless chicken trying to get on top of things.

I had word from a colleague early on that the Henderson yard were incredibly bullish about all their runners so had a quick look at the markets – a lot of shorties that I didn’t really feel were worth backing in singles so I resolved to put on a raft of trebles, Yankees and accumulators as soon as I had a moment to myself. I then returned to the other things I was doing, promptly forgot all about the bets and my moment never came.

You know the rest of the story.

My colleague contacted me late afternoon to say that he had cleared better than 5 grand on his various multiples at pretty small stakes.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned there

1) Time management has never been my strong suit and I need to work on that area of my life with some urgency.

2) It’s my impression that Henderson seem to perform better early to mid season. I’m not saying he doesn’t do well later in the season, because he clearly does, I just have the impression he’s a more profitable betting proposition early doors.

I’m a big fan of the Master of Seven Barrows from way back despite his tendency to keep the punting public in the dark. A few years ago he was kind enough to write and deliver a very moving eulogy at the funeral of a close friend of mine (a former employee of his). I’d always liked him before that but he really rose in my estimation that day.

Anyway, back to my Monday evening musings. Having had the impression of his early to mid-season over performance, I decided to have a proper look at the numbers to see if I could firm up or dismiss that impression.

The numbers below definitely confirmed my impression:

Month                  Runs      Wins        S/R         SP  P/L

January               480         133           28%          -18.56

February             557         139          25%           -44.31

March                  744         115           15%           -110.47

April                     527         86             16%          -145.17

May                      251         46             18%          -39.84

June                      77           17              22%          -21.38

July                       30           6               20%          -8.65

August                  25           7                28%         -1.95

September           32           9                28%         + 9.95

October                150         36              24%         -17.89

November           494         149            30%         + 17.77

December            461         114            25%          + 110.53

Very nice profits achieved simply backing every Henderson runner in December over the last 8 years.

Unfortunately those bare figures are hiding 3 losing years – one of which was a fairly hefty loss of just over 26 points.

Drilling down a little further improves things. The table below shows the December performance of Henderson Hurdlers.

Runs      Wins     S/R            P/L                        

255         67         26.27%     91.29            

 

This reduces the number of losing years to 1 (2004 in which 11 points were lost) I’d be tempted to leave it there but if you wish to improve returns further you could leave out his qualifiers at Windsor, Towcester, Plumpton, Fontwell, Taunton, Lingfield , Leicester  and Exeter where he has a combined record of 1 win from 37 runners.

That produces the following overall results:

Runs      Wins      S/R            P/L                        

218         66          30.28%    123.29                   

There we are then, a decent little system averaging just over 15 points a year with a better than 30% strike rate.  To recap, the rules are:

All Nicky Henderson runners in Hurdle races in December except those running at:

Windsor

Towceser

Plumpton

Fontwell

Taunton

Lingfield

Leicester

Exeter

 

I’ll be backing them!

 

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 I've been informed by a number of readers that they had some difficulty purchasing the 'Boys beat Girls' package offered last week by Alchemy Racing. I've enquired with Nick over there what the issue was and he's informed me the thorcus was rotating in the milode ( or some such techy gobbledygook)) which caused problems for potential purchasers. As quite a number of people missed out, they've ironed out the glitches and decided to reopen the offer today at noon for a short time. If you were interested last week, head back over there now and check it out - because you just might be able to get your hands on it this time! I think it's a great value package they've put together.

Alchemy Racing Package

Have a great weekend and be lucky whatever you are backing

Kieran