*IMPORTANT: the email I sent this morning opened with "Let me start with the caveat. Free, potentially, yes; but risk-free"

It should have said "Free, potentially, yes; but NOT risk-free" - sincere apologies. Matt

Last Tuesday marked the end of SotD's eighth full calendar year since its inception as a non-tipping piece back in November 2011, so thank you to those of you (including Matt) for putting up with me all that time!

The logic behind this daily feature is to take a slight step from the normal form book/ race card approach to betting, since form is temporary at best and race cards are still largely inadequate, although Matt's efforts here at Geegeez are the exception to the rule.

My brief is to give some statistical pointers as to how you could frame a bet from another angle and whilst we don't expect all of them to win, we do expect a decent run for our money and often the stats we quote will pinpoint winners elsewhere too. So it's really more than a tip, it's a way-in to a bet that you can use over and over again.

We attract lots of new members to the site every year, thanks mainly to the continual improvements made to the racing toolkit and partly due to SotD's success, and this is bringing in more savvy punters looking for better data, information and racecards than they'll find anywhere else on the 'net, so here's briefly how I "do my bit"...

My first port of call is find runners who fit a stat (or usually a number of stats) suggesting they will go well. I have quite a large portfolio of saved micro-systems and angles (our Query Tool is brilliant for this) and they generate a list of possibles each day. I also look at the Shortlist report and the qualifiers generated from the Report Angles facility and I end up with a fairly long list of horses/races to assess.

I then cross off the races that I don't even want to consider and only then do I start to look at a race card. Where I have multiple selections in a race, I'll then make a decision on which would be my preferred runner in the race. At this point, I should now have less than 10 races/horses on my shortlist, I then put them in an order that I think reflects their likelihood of winning and at this point, I look at the prices.

Once I've got the prices, I cross out those that don't offer me enough perceived value and then the one that now stands top of the list is the daily selection. We aim to have the selection online in the early evening before racing (preferably by 6.00pm) where possible but occasionally due to home-life, travel plans and/or holidays, it can be later, but there's a selection every day except Sundays and we don't take Bank Holidays, Easter nor Christmas off!

That said, we are currently trialling a morning of racing delivery of Stat of the Day, with the pick generally online by 8.15am.

I try to find runners priced around the 11/4 to 6/1 mark at BOG prices and look for some value in the odds achieved, but sometimes I have to stray outside those parameters a little. A large proportion of selections are sent off at much shorter odds than advised, and constantly beating SP is a key in making long-term profits. Basically, our profit figures aren't massaged by some freakishly long-priced winners, nor is our strike rate bolstered by a string of odds-on jollies.

What we do have is a consistent approach that aims to highlight one value selection per day and although this "one-a-day" stats-based approach to bet selection suffers all the obligatory peaks and troughs associated with betting on horses, we did manage to make a profit yet again in 2019, but it was a real tough slog towards the end of the year, if I'm brutally honest.

Normally at this point, I'm typing this out with a fairly satisfied smile on my face, but the final quarter of the year gave us little to smile about. Nevertheless, the bigger picture is that we managed to secure yet another yearly profit, our eighth on the bounce. We're quietly proud of our record of profit in every year since SotD's inception, for what is essentially a free add-on to the Gold toolbox package, but we're also aware that recent form has been below long-term levels... although I think I said that form was only temporary anyway!

A full month-by-month analysis of SotD's results can always be found at
http://www.geegeez.co.uk/stat-of-the-day-month-by-month/ , and the overall picture for 2019 was as follows:

Number of bets/selections/pts wagered: 290 (two fewer than 2018)
Winning Bets: 66 (67 in 2018)
Strike Rate: 22.76% (2018 = 22.95%)
Average payout from winning bet : 3.93/1 (2018 = 3.57/1)

Yearly Profit: 35.46pts (2018 = 14.16pts)
Profit on Stakes Invested: 12.23% (2018 was 4.85%)

From inception in November 2011 to end 2019: +531.87 points

The overall bottom line is still, we think, impressive and one that both Matt and I (it's a team game) are happy with; and, although I've been quite vocal in expressing my disappointment about the way 2019 fizzled out, a 12.23% return actually shows us in a good light against many of our peers.

We're already up and running for January, a month that has traditionally been kind to us, so fingers crossed for more of the same and a good year overall.

Many Thanks for being a part of Geegeez and SotD,
Chris, Matt and the whole Geegeez team.

***Stat of the Day is just one component of the excellent package available to all Geegeez Gold Members, so if you're not part of our community already, why not take your £1/30-day trial now?

Click here for more details.