How to Play the Early Days of the Flat Season

The excitement of a new flat turf season is upon us once more, as we look forward to the Brocklesby, the Spring Mile and of course the Lincoln tomorrow at Doncaster. But that buzz can quickly give way to head scratching as we start to ponder which horses that have been absent for most of 200 days might be fit enough on this first spin of the year.

Here are two or three thoughts that might help with sorting the not today's from the ready's in our quest for some extra, erm, readies...

Trainer Form

How can we know if a horse is fit? Some talk about trainer form, either historical at this time of year or recent in the past few days; and it's not unreasonable to think in those terms. But a hitch at home - say a gallop getting washed away, or a problem with a high pollen crop in a nearby field - can upend history and delay a trainer's team for a few weeks.

Meanwhile, recent form cases are often built on the basis of just one or two runners which, while better than zero, is a very flimsy sample size.

Combining the two may be better than relying individually on either; and trying to squeeze a bit more meaning out of small samples by using percentage of rivals beaten (PRB) rather than win, or even place, strike rates seems sensible, too.

Here's a list of trainers who traditionally hit the turf flat season running: this group has 50+ UK flat turf runners in March/April across the past four seasons and an Impact Value of 1.25 or higher, and they're ordered by win strike rate.

Early Season Trainers: those who hit the ground running

It's no surprise to see Charlie Appleby at the top of the pile. We can either disregard Mark Johnston or consider combining son Charlie's form into the mix - personally, I'll ignore that row. William Haggas and Charlie Hills appear to be fast starters and potentially offer a small bit of value; whereas the quick from the blocks efforts of Team Gosden and Sir Michael Stoute are undone for us punters by typically short prices when they've won.

Further down the list may be where the more interesting characters hang out. The likes of Eve Johnson Houghton and Ben Haslam and Jack Channon are worth drilling into a bit further.

This second table is taken from the Trainer Statistics 14 Day report, with 5+ runs and a PRB of more than 0.55.

Trainers in recent good form and with runners at Doncaster

There is no crossover between the tables; no trainer appears in both tables. Karl Burke was just off the 14 day table, with a very good PRB of 0.55; and Julie Camacho was just off the early season four-year form table with an IV of 1.24. Burke has six runners at Donny on opening day, all fancied, and Camacho has just Lattam in the Lincoln, also well enough found in the early market.

You can draw your own inferences from the tables, but a couple of observations from me:

- Keep an eye on the runners from the Haggas yard tomorrow. Are they well supported? Did they run with credit, even if not winning?
- Ditto Charlie Hills. (fwiw - nothing at all - my one token interest in the Lincoln is on his 33/1 rag, Galeron, so I'll be watching keenly enough)
- We know horses from the Clive Cox, Marco Botti and Jennie Candlish yards are running very well at the moment
- A few other names on that list - Kevin Frost, Richard Hughes and your pick from the rest - are worth noting, too.

Here's another way of looking at trainer form...

Slow starters and expensive from an ROI perspective

This table comprises eight trainers who tend to start on the turf slowly. They all have a pretty painful ROI, too, with the possible exception of Phil Kirby. Tim Easterby has actually saddled 26 flat winners on the turf in March or April since 2021, but they've come at the expense of 423 non-winners. And an ROI of -51%!

These are all good trainers, but for differing reasons they tend to fare poorly in the early weeks of the flat turf season. (Note, any one of them could have a magnificent month, caveat emptor, small samples, etc).

Here's the 14 day trainer form table similarly flipped on its head and sorted by percentage of rivals beaten (PRB), lowest at the top:

Recent middling form

Are these trainers to avoid? Probably not, at least not solely on the basis of the table above. But theirs might be horses to have a question mark against unless you really like the rest of the profile. Again, I'm not saying they can't win - duh - but I am suggesting I'll personally be a little less forgiving when trying to frame a case for any of these.

In summary, trainer form is much more nuanced than "Charlie Farley had a winner yesterday so he's in form". Combining longer-term early season performance with recent evidence based on PRB might be a good way to get a better handle on the subject.

Price Movement

A much shorter section here. How can we know if a horse is expected to run well? Look for the blue on the odds grids! This is actually not a terrible strategy in general, but at this time of the year - when punters not connected to stables must take fitness on trust - the markets are a really helpful barometer.

The problem with betting 'blue' horses is that by definition we've already missed the price. Furthermore, it is often the case that such horses drift back out again closer to the off - those subsequent drifts do not stop horses winning!

I religiously check the odds grids at this time of year, especially for less obvious horses which I then try to 'reverse engineer' a form case around.

The Geegeez ODDS tab only starts to show blue (shortening) and pink (drifting) from 9am on race day. We deliberately ignore the cheap moves overnight, before BOG (for those who can get it) comes in and at a time when a very small amount of money can move a horse's price materially. You can still see that price movement on our grids by clicking the little coloured chart icon:

That will open a window displaying either a table or graph (it remembers which one you last looked at), as follows:

Table view of odds movement since first show the night before

Note that we also don't clutter up the table with millions of rows showing tiny odds moves back and forth - who needs or wants that? Instead, we publish a couple of overnight price rows, then a morning (7am) row, and then hourly from 9am, and then every 15 minutes from one hour before race time when prices may fluctuate more meaningfully and frequently.

In my opinion, that's a much better digest of the price movement of a horse or race, and a lot easier to absorb.

Here's the graph view:

Odds chart, configurable to view all or some runners; and best or average price change

There's a bit more going on here with various configuration options. You can vary the start of the time period, choose average odds or best available, and add/remove horses from the view. Hovering over any line on the chart will display the odds for all chart lines (runners) at that point in time.

It's really useful and, if you're not currently using this tab, I'd recommend you start doing so.

What else?

What else should we consider at this time of year perhaps more so than generally? Well, one to think about is the influence of draw and run style. I've written about this ad nauseum, as has Dave Renham. You can check out much of our work by typing 'draw' or 'pace' or 'run style' into the search box on this page.

Specifically for tomorrow's big mile handicaps, the Lincoln and Spring Mile, the draw chart looks like this (16+ runners, between good and soft, handicaps):

Doncaster 1m handicaps, 16+ runners good, good to soft or soft, 2009+

The main blue line represents PRB3 (the average percentage of rivals beaten of a stall and its immediately neighbouring stalls - so, for stall 3, it's the average PRB of stalls 2, 3 and 4). This is a way to flatten out any daft-looking outliers and attempt to make things vaguely meaningful.

50%, or 0.500, is a figure meaning runners from a stall were beaten by as many rivals as they beat; so more than 50% is positive, less than 50% is negative. Positive meaning can start to be implied at around 55% (depending on the size of the sample) and negative at around 45%.

What is noteworthy from this chart, then, is that virtually the entire line exists between 0.45 and 0.55. One might argue that close to either rail is a positive - as it often is at many courses in huge field straight track races - and that right in the middle is no man's land. Having said that, here are the winning stall numbers of the Lincoln and Spring Mile since 2013, in numerical order:

1
1
2
3
3
3
4
4
5
6
8
10
10
12
15
15
15
16
17
20
21
22

You can win from anywhere, but the middle third has had the toughest time of it overall.

At this time of year more generally, keep an eye on any potential changes to draw biases: there can be a small edge before the market fully catches on. For example, when Chester introduced a false rail on the bend into the straight it reduced (though failed to eliminate) the inside draw bias. That was an opportunity to get solid value on wider berthed horses whose win chance was a little underestimated. It still is to a small degree but, like everything in the dog eat dog world of punting, the market corrects soon enough.

Keep an eye out for the next material change.

And finally...

I had hoped to share a major new addition ahead of the start of the flat season, but it's not quite ready. We should have it online next week and, without explicitly stating what it is, here's a sneak preview - you'll be able to figure it out!

Good luck with your flat season play. Obviously, geegeez has you increasingly well covered - check out our brand new whizzy bangy sales letter if you're not yet on board and see if there's anything that can maybe help you (hint: there is!).

Matt

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