A couple of GN questions I need answering please!!

1. Bindaree
2. Hallo Dandy

Amberleigh house placed third,then won year after in 2004

2 Amberleigh House as far as I can see!

There are loads of horses who have placed or won and ran well the next year. Suny Bay, Hedgehunter, Slim Pickings, State of play, Don't Push it. The main problem is their good run usually see's a rise in weights and in years gone by if that meant taking them over the dreaded 11 stone mark it usually curtailed their chance of winning.

GCW - I agree.
And I always draw a line through horses who completed the course the previous year - both Mon Mone and Amberleigh House go against this trend but generally speaking any horse who has completed the course will see his weight rise the following year which makes his task that much harder.
Plenty of horses have won having fallen the previous year, I remember old West Tip doing this in the 80s and 4 or 5 have achieved this in the last dozen years or so.
I'm therefore against Cappa Bleu, Seabass and Sunnyhillboy despite them all being in the top half dozen in the betting...

Cappa bleaus mark is lower than last year,weight is misleading

I'm on Cappa Bleu but not backing the other two. Reason being is that he is ona lower mark than last year. Also the horse he finished second behind LTO went on to run well at Cheltenham. May have improved being as lightly raced as he is.

True, but 2lb lower I think doesn't give him enough help to win the race, he'll run well and should get placed again.
Also only 2 runs this year and I am a big believer that fitness is a key stat (3 runs) especially as his second run was 7 weeks ago, had it been 3/4 weeks back I might have been tempted to ignore that...

So if he had ran in 4 gruelling races on heavy that would of been plus.Stats can often blind

There's a balance I think but with sufficient recovery time I'd like my horse to go there being fit and battle hardened.
Stats are trends and trends give us punters a chance to build a profile of what it takes to be a winner of a certain race, they're not for everyone of course and there will always be exceptions but I like to use them as a base.

I always use trends,but i feel following this one might prevent you from having the winner in your final selections.Lots of horses this year have had two or less runs.
Cappa also has not had a gruelling Welsh National run this year.

what about Little polvier

The problem with stats and trends is they don't ask WHY. On average, it's probably true that over the years horses who have run less than 3 times fared poorly. What that completely misses though is that the race has changed in recent years. The fences are easier, the race is generally classier, and the prize money is better. This all leads to a marked trend towards laying horses out specifically for the National, something that was rarely done in the past. So nowadays it is increasingly common for horses to arrive at the race very lightly raced. But if you look at stats over a longer term, the chances are that most horses with one or two runs had had seasons interrupted by injury.

most trainers have not run their horses to often this winter due to the bad state of the ground, i have listened to trainers saying we want to run x amount of times but the weather has scuppered most plans hence the lack of runs for a lot of this years field

TEAM SPIRIT ran 5 times and placed at least once, before winning at final
attempt.

I found a good site on Twitter, plenty of stats. According to it Amberleigh House (I think) last placed to win following year. Check for yourselves to be sure though, maybe I`ve missed one, lists 1-2-3 since race began:

http://www.grandnationalrecords.co.uk/grand-national-1-2-3.htm