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Despite the criticism the handicapper proved spot on regards Song of Paradise, unfortunately the same can’t be said of the horse’s connections.
I don’t see consistent horses being punished unduly and don’t see why they should be rewarded with lenient handicapping just because they are consistent, it wouldn’t be fair to the other horses in the race if they were.
John
If you believe the handicap system is flawed then you should be celebrating, if you can find something better. Run your own way of handicapping and benefit from it by betting horses you believe are wrongly handicapped. If it is flawed and your way is better, then i would think its a punters dream. Why would you want anything changing?
Why do you think it is unfair John, that horses are given ratings for what they’re thought capable of (given optimum conditions)?
If horses are given ratings for what they’re thought capable of, then every horse should have different ratings for various trips and ground conditions. As far as I know this isn’t the case.
Another handicapping weakness is the fact that the mark allotted doesn’t take the horses’ fitness into consideration. I’ve never seen the handicapper mentioning any weight related ratings, as he should do. Otherwise all horses would be equally fit at any time and almost exactly built. What would you describe a horse as “lightly framed” or “big chasing type”, if size and weight don’t matter?
The BHA are hopeless handicappers and the best they try to do is rate a horse as a guesstimate of what it might do under optimum conditions which might have no relevance to the race the horse actually runs in and the conditions on the day. If they were any good at the process they would not have to keep altering their guesstimates so often. It remains up to the punter to rate horses for every race it runs to make any sense of the horse’s ability on the day. Giving a horse a single number is laughable and they do not even have the honesty to say a horse is somewhere between 105 +/- 9 ie their methods cannot differentiate between their rating and a horse as being truly somewhere between 96 and 114. They refuse to weigh horses and the body weights in NH can vary by 50 pounds or more between races. So you have an unfit horse carrying 50 pounds extra body weight being dropped 5 pounds in a slow race. Next time when it runs it can have up to a 55 pound pull which means it should be racing in several classes above. It coasts to a 3 length win and goes up 5 pounds meaning it “only” has a 50 pound pull next time. It is truly a nonsense and the fact that people are so easily conned is down to the bookmakers convincing BHA that they need wall to wall bad racing to fund the Levy.
The current system encourages the trainer to disguise ability, the bane of a backer’s life.
The current system encourages the trainer to disguise ability, the bane of a backer’s life.
Betting encourages connections to disguise a horse’s ability, let’s ban betting.
Value Is Everything
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