Editor's Welcome It seems like only 5 minutes ago we were celebrating the New Year, but now Cheltenham has been and gone and the flat season is on the horizon. I hope you enjoyed the free tips I sent you during Cheltenham. Standard members should have just scraped a profit by taking the prices but lost 0.6 of a point at SP. For Gold members as well as the 9/1 winner on day 1 we also sent them a 33/1 winner on day 4 and a few placers along the way which returned 35.6 points profit at SP. All of the selections came from Nick Hardman who had a huge Cheltenham and cleared over 100 points profit over the 4 days to the advised prices. If you like a bet on the big races, you like making big profits and are patient enough to wait for big winners then I urge you to consider following Nick Hardman. All his selections are posted in the Betting School Insiders Forum or if you like to only bet at the big festivals then his Festival Tips service provides selections just at the big events, like Cheltenham, Aintree etc. In this month’s mag we have Nick Hardman looking at trainers that do well at the end of the National Hunt season and our Acorns column now taken over by John Burke looks at systems for the new flat season. By the way if you would like to receive all the selections for the systems we feature each month we will mail them out to you each day for just £5. This is an introductory price to test the water and to see how many readers would prefer us to find the selections for them. We'll work out a proper price when we know what the demand is, of course if you sign up for a fiver we won’t put your price up unless you cancel and re-join. You can sign up here http://www.oncourseprofits.com/selections-found-for-you/ We have an interview with a guy who was with the Winning Line during the glory years, Winning Line which was a huge tipping service in the 90's. I actually met Steve in a London pub a few weeks back and had a very interesting chat and reminisce. We have a profile on a hero of the old days and the usual product reviews and tipster top ten. And by the way the review team have made their first firm recommendation in a long time! Aintree is next up and I'll try and send you some tips for that. All the best. Darren Power PS: If you've picked up this issue from a friend and would like to subscribe for free Click Here Cover image credit: By Vegas Eddie [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Click Here to Join Carl for this Weeks ITV Bets National Hunt End of Season Trainers to Follow Seasonal betting systems are something I am a big fan of. The early part of the National Hunt season is often seen as a difficult one for punters as we have the crossover between the end of the flat and the start of the jumps. However, some trainers have their runners fit and raring to go from the offset and identifying these trainers and the type of runners that they fire from the get-go can be a profitable exercise. Nigel Twiston-Davies is an excellent example. This applies to flat trainers too and the likes of Richard Fahey are usually fast starters. It is no secret that the likes of Nigel Twiston-Davies and Richard Fahey are quick off the mark in their respective codes. But what about the end of the season? This angle is often overlooked and I am going to try and unearth some trainers to follow for the end of the jumps season. This usually coincides with the ground firming up but also coincides with some of the big festivals like Aintree, Punchestown and Cheltenham. I am particularly interested in the final two months of the season, March and April. I have crunched the numbers to try and uncover some potentially profitable angles. Without further ado, let’s take a look at those trainers and the race conditions where their runners excel at the backend of the jumps season. Willie Mullins Surprise, surprise it’s Willie Mullins first up. All his runners are overbet these days but backing his March and April runners blind since 2005 would have actually turned a profit. In fact, the Betfair SP profit is spectacular. However, this is most likely due to one or two that went off at big odds on the exchanges and in order to create something with more substance to follow, we need to dig a little deeper. First let’s take a look at the performance of all of his runners in the months of March and April since 2005. Now let us look at those results if we break them down by race type: As you can see, it is the bumper and hurdles runners that we need to focus on in the first instance. These have a combined record of 259-1266 (20.45% strike rate) and realise a profit of £294.01 at Betfair SP. At this point it is the strike rate that interests me most and I am going to see how this can be increased. So, we will begin with the hurdles. The first thing to note is that his runners racing over 2m 5f and further do not do particularly well in terms of win rate and profit. Eliminating these leaves us with the following results: That’s a pretty impressive 38% return on investment at Betfair SP. We could just leave it there, but I want to see if there are any other patterns lurking beneath those impressive stats. It is best to concentrate on those with small to moderate experience over the smaller obstacles and sticking to the runners with between 0 and 4 career wins over hurdles does mean we are looking at a small improvement in the overall figures. The juvenile 4yo hurdles have a decent 23% strike rate but they are not profitable and that probably means they are typically overbet. By concentrating on those runners aged 5yo to 9yo we are left with the following figures: As you can see, we sacrifice a fair few winners, but the ROI is now up at 58% at Betfair SP. These runners are profitable in both handicap and non-handicap races. The non- handicappers have a 26% strike rate and the handicappers have a 17% strike rate, although the latter show a bigger profit, suggesting a fair few have gone in at decent prices. We can sneak a bit more profit if we stick with those runners with less than 9 starts that season: The table above shows that the strike rate is highest amongst those runners making a late seasonal debut or having run just 1 to 4 times that season. Finally, I want to see which tracks, if any, Willie Mullins sends out most of his end of season winners. Several tracks are notably in terms of success and profit. These include Cheltenham, specifically the festival, Punchestown, Gowran Park, Cork and Fairyhouse. Combining the runners from these tracks gives the following results: We are down to just 80 winners and the strike rate is pretty much the same as we have seen throughout this research on the Mullins hurdles in March and April, but this time we see an incredible 89% ROI at Betfair SP. Now we can switch our attention back to the other runners who show a profit in the latter end of the jumps season and they are the bumper horses. As a reminder, here is their performance since 2005: We can improve on those figures if we concentrate on those having their first run in a bumper and those that have had a run in such races but finished in the first five last time out. In other words, we can eliminate those that did not run well. Next, we can factor in the age of the runners and it is the 4yo and 5yo bumper runners that do best in terms of profit and return on investment. We lose a few winners along the way from the 6yo and older runners, but we end up with the following figures: In terms of favoured tracks, the Mullins bumper horses that qualify do exceptionally well at Punchestown where they have a record of 16-56 (29% strike rate) for a level stakes profit of £50.82 at Betfair SP. Jennie Candish From the obvious of Willie Mullins to a shrewd trainer that may slip under the radar. Jennie Candish has proven to be a profitable trainer to follow in March and April in the last 5 consecutive seasons. As you can see, she has a near 20% strike rate since 2005 and backing all her runners would have seen you make a tasty £200.45 to level £1 stakes at Betfair SP at an exceptional ROI of 77%. Winners and profits alike have come in chases, hurdles and bumper races. The chasers do particularly well and are operating at a near 30% strike rate. Winners and profits could also be found in both handicap and non-handicap races, with the handicappers having a better strike rate. We can improve on those figures by sticking to the races run over 2m ½f to 3m 2f and sticking to fields of 5 to 18 runners.