And to clarify, I want to be the Sherlock who has Lucy Liu as a companion, rather than the Sherlock who has Bilbo Baggins as a companion.

With the Cheltenham Festival near, readers of What Really Wins Money’s February newsletter have plenty to chew over, thanks to some cracking tips and angles.

For everyone else, it’s a case of getting your deer-stalker on, giving Lucy Liu a ring, and deciphering the best past trends which lead to the horses most likely to continue the winning trends.

I’ll be going through the cards for you once they have been finalised. I’d first like to point you in the direction of some excellent free websites which list the key Cheltenham March festival trends for all races.

The first website you should take a look at is www.cheltenhamtrends.co.uk. A rather imaginatively titled website, this is an excellent free resource for looking at the ten-year patterns of races gone by. These can be superb pointers in enabling us to shortlist large fields into manageable sizes.

A great example of a killer stat which immediately narrows down our focus comes in the Stan James Champion Hurdle, the 3.20 p.m. race on Day One of the festival – 11 March.

Twenty of the last 23 winners of this race finished in the first six in the betting!

There you go. Where do you think your focus will be for this race?

The second free resource you should look at is http://www.poundstopunters.co.uk/cheltenhamfestival2014.html, which, as well as listing key trends, also provides a table showing the last ten winners, including trainer, jockey and price.

This table is excellent, as it will immediately identify for you races where you should categorically avoid the favourites, and perhaps chance an each way horse at huge odds.

For instance, take a look at the JLT Festival Handicap Chase. This is the 2.40 p.m. race on 11 March.
The last four winners of this race have been priced at 33/1, 5/1, 14/1 and 28/1. There has only been one winning favourite in ten years. This is surely a race where we can take a chance on a double-figured odds horse or two and back them each way?

Some people will be forgetting the huge part Irish horses and trainers play at Cheltenham, which is why I’d recommend a trip to this website: http://www.irishracing.com/cheltenham/, which focuses on the Irish contingent running at Cheltenham.

If anything, the Irish have got a ‘best pubs’ guide, which is, ahem, indispensable.

Once all of the race cards have been finalised for the festival, Lucy Liu and I will be working our way through the key trends, stats, and previous ten years worth of data and coming up with a shortlist for you here at the WRWM eletter. Lucy assures me she’s ready to go.

I’m off now to do something rather elementary – have a cup of tea.

Have a great weekend!