Introduction

I've decided to go all high-tech for 2010 to celebrate the 18th anniversary of my Grand National Bulletin! Rather than issue a long word document on e-mail on the eve of the big race, I'll be able to provide my analysis much earlier this year, then post further updates in the build-up to this year's event to give you the latest news and views from the ground.

For those of you who are new to this annual bulletin, the basic premise is that the Grand National is not (contrary to popular opinion) a lottery. There are a series of very strong trends that help you to pick the winner, or at least provide a shortlist of potential candidates.

By following a series of statistics this shortlist highlighted the winner of every Grand National from Party Politics in 1992 through to Earth Summit in 1998. Admittedly, it did go a bit awry from 1999 to 2002, but after these wilderness years and a few tweaks to the system it was well and truly back on track with six more winners from 2003 through to 2008.

So that's 12 winners in just 16 runnings of the big race - not a bad strike rate!

But what about last year, I hear you cry... Did you manage to point us in the right direction of 100/1 winner Mon Mome?! Sorry, no... Almost, but not quite.

However, that was my fault for trying to be too clever - for the first time last year I introduced a breeding category that excluded all French-bred horses. If I had stuck to my tried and tested system, then Mon Mome and the third placed My Will would have both made the final shortlist of just seven horses.

I was kicking myself repeatedly after the race as all of the other statistics pointed firmly to Mon Mome's chances:

Age - 9
Weight - 11 stone
Rating - 148
Chase runs - 24
3 mile + wins - 4
Season runs - 6
Previous run - 21 days
National form - 10th in Grand National, 9th in Scottish National and 8th in Welsh National (all in 2008), 8th in the Midlands National (also 2nd in Welsh National in 2006)

In other words, apart from this one spurious statistic about breeding he ticked all of the right boxes. In fact Mon Mome had actually started favourite for the Welsh National just four months earlier, so he was certainly not a no-hoper. The real question is how the horse was allowed to go off at 100/1!

So now we have to attempt to solve this year's puzzle...

As usual we'll apply all of the trends and statistics to get to a shortlist of potential winners. However, as this bulletin is published earlier this year there are still 75 horses entered - and a maximum of only 40 can run. There is no chance that the bottom 15 horses will get in, and the cut off point is likely to be around 10st 4lb or 10st 5lb.

All pages will therefore be updated on Monday 5th April when the five day declarations are through. I will also post the full list of runners and riders etc. at this point.

Happy reading - and good luck!