Your National Hunt Season Notebook

Most of us keep a jumps notebook of some sort, on paper or in our heads. This is that notebook, with 134 big races already in it and ten years of history behind each one.

Everyone who follows the jumps keeps notes. A horse you liked at Chepstow in October, a name you meant to look up before the Festival, a yard you have clocked going well. Most of it is scribbled down and lost.

Your National Hunt Season Notebook is that, built in. Every big jumps race from October to May has its own page: what has won it for the last ten years, what those winners did next, where they came from, and a space to put down what you think. It is free to every member, and the thoughts you keep are yours alone.

The notebook

Open Season Notebook from the sidebar, under Stats & Alerts.

The season's 134 races are stacked as bands you can open and close: the Cheltenham Festival first, split by day, then every month in season order. The current month opens for you, and whichever bands you leave open are remembered for next time.

At the top, a line tracks how far round you are: your thoughts on 0 of 134 big races, 0 picks made. Each race shows as a card, with + Add your thoughts until you have, and a green chip where that race has a habit of throwing up Festival winners.

A race page

Click any race and you get its own page, headed Your <race name> Thoughts: Your Paddy Power Gold Cup Thoughts, Your Gold Cup Thoughts, and so on.

Your thoughts

The point of the thing. On every race you can keep:

• I like, a ranked list of the horses you fancy for it. Order them as you please, and star one to make it your pick.
• I'm against, with a reason, because the ones you have struck out are worth remembering too.
• Add a horse by name, straight on the page.
• Your notes, free text for anything the lists do not cover.

Nothing here is public. It is your notebook.

The last ten years

Beside your thoughts, every winner since 2016 with its age, starting price, official mark and trainer, and underneath each one what it did next, with the finishing position as a coloured chip and a link to that race. Horse names link through to their full history.

Under the table sits Back the winner next time out: what a point on each winner's next run would have returned, at both SP and Exchange SP. On the Paddy Power Gold Cup that is 10 bets, 1 winner, and a profit either way, which tells you something about the sort of horse that wins it.

Winners' profile and trends

The spread the winners came from, and the trends that actually hold: age, official mark, price, how favourites have fared, each shown as how many of the ten it applied to.

The Cheltenham Festival link

Premium and Professional. For a race outside the Festival, this is the section that earns its place: of the horses that ran in each previous running, how many went on to win at the Cheltenham Festival, split by the same season and the following one.

It is written out in plain words rather than left as a table to decode: 159 ran. 76 went on to run at the Festival the same season, and 5 of them won there. It tells you whether those Festival winners had won this race or been beaten in it, which is often the more interesting half, and the toggle at the top swaps the Festival for our big races, so you can see which other good races this one feeds.

Where the winners came from

Professional. The other direction: each winner's last run before the race, and the patterns between them.

Where two or more winners came out of the same race, or the same kind of race at the same course, it is pulled out as a card. The table underneath gives each winner's last run, where it finished, the kind of race and how many days before. Prep races are one of the oldest angles in jumps racing, and this is the shortest route to seeing which ones feed a given target.

Putting horses in it

The quickest way is from the ratings themselves. On any racecard, click the NagMe pencil beside a horse and the pop-up now offers Add to Season Notebook alongside Create NagMe.

That opens a short second step: which race you are filing it under (the ones it looks suited to are suggested first, then the Festival by day, then the rest of the season), whether it is one you like, your pick, one you are against or just a form line, and a reason, which starts from your NagMe note if you wrote one. There is a tick to set a NagMe at the same time, so you get told when it runs.

You can also add a horse by name directly on any race page, which is easier when you are thinking about a race rather than looking at a card.

What each plan gets

• Free: the whole notebook, your thoughts on every race, the last ten years of winners with what they did next, back the winner next time out, the winners' profile and the trends.
• Premium: all of that plus the Cheltenham Festival section and the our-big-races toggle.
• Professional: plus Where the winners came from.