February Analysis

Time to have a look back at February, which was of course severely hit by abandonments in the first part of the month. The number of lost days contributed to our lowest number of bets in a month since the seriously weather-smashed month of December 2010.

Let's have a look at the numbers:

Bets: 38

Wins: 5 (13.51%)

2nds: 9 (24.32%)

3rds: 3* (7.89%)

Placed total: 17 (44.74%)

Average odds taken: 7.83/1

Average SP: 7.62/1

Average win odds: 6.5/1

Profit/Loss: +4.5pts

Return On Investment: +17.19%

First things first, it's obviously pleasing that we ended in profit - nothing dramatic, but that's two of our last three months we've ended up. We would have been in profit for January too if it wasn't for the poor performance of our 2pt picks through that month which dragged us down to a small loss.

Without wishing to be something of a stuck record, the significant feature again was the number of seconds, which was again significantly high compared to our average. We had two 14/1 shots beaten just over a length and it's these sort of margins that obviously make quite a difference in the short term. Long term, it all equals out and we look forward to the adjustment coming.

The gap between our average odds taken, and average SP was small, although a little misleading because of the small number of bets and a couple of large drifts (Dinarius 12/1 --- 22/1, and Ski Sunday 11/1 --- 16/1 really affected the figure). Despite this it was good to see that we did beat SP.

On a wider picture, the month was very significant as it was the first where we introduced 0.5pt win bets in certain circumstances. Not a good start for these bets (Selections: 12; Wins: 0; Seconds: 3; Thirds: 2) but very early days and we fully expect these these to be profitable in the long-term.

* We have counted our placed fourth, Cloudy Too, as a "third" for ease of long-term reference.