Jockeys & Trainers / Wayne Bailey / 02 December 2008 / 6 Comments

Wayne Bailey highlights the trainers who perform best in Christmas month.

Well, not a bad month for November's trainers to follow really.

It could have been a lot better had some of those massive priced seconds gone in, but still - profit is profit at the end of the day and I won't complain. In total, we had 13 winners from 75 bets (17.33%) and had you put £10 on each, you'd be £190.50 better off (using Betfair SP). Once again, I must stress that anyone using traditional bookies must seriously think about their betting habits as a profit of only £52.60 was shown using the industry SP - a huge difference.

While it wasn't as good a month as October, November's money brings the total overall profit £1165.80 to £10 stakes since I started the trainer to follow articles.

If you are a first time reader, it's pretty simple what I'm trying to do. Basically, I try to find the trainers that do consistently well at the given time of the year. A consistent strike-rate (and profit) year-on-year is one of the main things I look for, but I'll also go a step further and have a look at the current horses in training at each yard. If I believe their current string of horses can continue the trend, I'll follow the trainer. It's not rocket science, but it has served me well over the years and paid for a few bills along the way.

Speaking of bills, December is full of them! Having a four-year-old daughter means I have to keep up-to-date with what's hot and what's not in the toy store - and believe me, life size Dora The Explorer dolls ain't cheap these days. Let's hope December's trainers can help me out in that regard!

In all seriousness though, I must give the usual health warnings and if anyone is going to follow this, do it only with money you can afford to lose. Just because something worked in the past doesn't mean it will in the future and like all gambling, there's plenty of risk involved. Don't bank on it to pay for the wife's new fur coat at Christmas as she could be disappointed if things go awry!

So then, on to the trainers to follow. Once again, I'll be using Betfair SP and will report back at the end of the month with a profit/loss figure:

Alan King
Around this time last year, I advised punters to back Alan King's horses in December, and he duly showed a profit of £1148.60 to £10 stakes.

King eases his horses into the season but by the time December rolls around, he's firing on all cylinders. He's been warming up with some wins in November and now is the time to get on.

David Pipe
David Pipe caused quite an upset on Saturday when Madison Du Berlais won the Hennessy Gold Cup at [43.0] and his treble that afternoon hopefully signals the end of a long losing spell. While we've only two years of data to go on, Pipe has performed extremely well in the month of December, and shows plenty of profit to go with it.

William Jarvis
While the data sample is relatively small, William Jarvis has a cracking strike-rate in December of over 33% and shows a very reasonable profit to level stakes. William Jarvis knows the game well and older readers will remember his father Ryan firing the winners home with regularity from the 50s to the 70s. He probably won't have as many horses running as the others at this time of year, but he's fairly reliable and I'm hoping for more of the same from Phantom House Stables.

Miss Venetia Williams
Williams actually worked for Pipe's father Martin, before taking out her own licence in 1995. She usually has plenty of horses running at this time of the year, and since 2003, she's had 73 winners from 381 races during December and shows a healthy profit to boot.

Alan McCabe
Once again, the sample is relatively small as McCabe has only held a licence since 2006. However, being a relatively small name, I think punters have been quite slow to realise his potential, and also the money that can be made following his horses. There probably won't be a huge amount of bets, but I'm hoping he can keep up his good December form this year.

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