Jumps Horses to Follow

The rule

Handicap mark up 7lb or more during the season, and won or placed on its last run.

The rise is measured within one code (a hurdles mark against a hurdles mark, a chase mark against a chase mark), from the first run of the season with a mark to the last. A horse the handicapper has been raising all season, still finishing in the first few at the end of it, has not finished improving. The market prices the mark it has, and is slow to price the mark it is heading for.

Every season, the year after

Level stakes at Betfair SP after 2% commission, first six runs of the following season.

Why we trust it

The bigger the rise, the better it does, and each half on its own does nothing: it needs both, still improving and still in form.

What the market already knows

Each of these came out at an A/E of about 1.00 the following season, so it is already in the price:

• Novice hurdlers, first-season chasers, and good hurdlers going chasing
• Horses with a high RaceMetrics Rating at the end of the season, or one that rose sharply
• Rising speed figures, a career-best last time, or a good last run on its own
• Horses beaten narrowly several times without winning
• Class 1 winners, multiple winners, age, sex and where a horse was bred

Read this before using it

• About 100 ideas were tried on the same seven seasons, so some luck is likely in the best one. What makes this one believable is that it gets steadily stronger as the rise gets bigger, and that both halves on their own do nothing.
• The profit leans on bigger-priced winners: with every winner capped at 20/1 it breaks even, against a 20% loss for every horse on the same cap. Expect long losing runs.
• It held for each of the first five runs of the following season and faded by the sixth.
• Some of these horses will have been retired or injured over the summer. A horse with no entries yet is not necessarily out.
• This is a list to follow and test, not a set of tips.