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Can anyone help with this query?
I know that in handicaps the horses are listed in the racecard in descending order of weight, ie the horses with the most heavy weight carried are listed at the top of the card & then going down the card, the weight carried decreases.
What I don’t understand is where there is more than one horse with the same weight, what determines which of these horses is listed first.
A system I am looking at states as one of it’s rules that the horse to be considered must be at the top of the card. I am trying to analyse the effectiveness of the system using past races, but do not have many racecards on record, I would like to use the records of the ratings available on Adrian Massey’s site. Using this I could determine the top weights ( and so determine which was at the top of the racecard), but this would not work if there was more than one with the same top weight.
Any help would be much appreciated
Greg
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Quote: from cosmic on 10:59 pm on June 7, 2007[br]Can anyone help with this query?
I know that in handicaps the horses are listed in the racecard in descending order of weight, ie the horses with the most heavy weight carried are listed at the top of the card & then going down the card, the weight carried decreases.
What I don’t understand is where there is more than one horse with the same weight, what determines which of these horses is listed first.
A system I am looking at states as one of it’s rules that the horse to be considered must be at the top of the card. I am trying to analyse the effectiveness of the system using past races, but do not have many racecards on record, I would like to use the records of the ratings available on Adrian Massey’s site. Using this I could determine the top weights ( and so determine which was at the top of the racecard), but this would not work if there was more than one with the same top weight.
Any help would be much appreciated
Greg
Horses carrying the same weight would be in alphabetical order, if your system depends on this, forget it !
I don’t know for certain, but it’s not alphbetical. I think it’s the order in which they are declared to Wetherbys.
<br>For horses allocated the same weight in a handicap, Weatherbys conduct a ballot to set the order they appear in the list of entries when the weights are published, usually five days before the race.
The order can be important as it may affect which horses are eliminated if more are declared than the safety limit for the race.
AP
Actually that doesn’t make sense to me.
I don’t see why all horses allocated the same weight can’t be listed alphabetically and THEN, if safety numbers are exceeded (ie 15 if a handicap;) ), a ballot can take place to determine which horses line up and which don’t.
Doing a ballot before it’s necessary seems a bit like having a penalty shootout before the match!
Ballot beforehand makes plenty of sense. Makes it easier for trainers to assess which races they are likely to make the cut for and then decide whether they run in race x or y.
<br>DB,
Every horse below the safety limit at the five day stage is given a cut number – if you look in the Post where the weights are published for entries, you’ll see the numbers at the front of the horse name on the racercard.
On the Weatherbys website for the final declaration stage, once the number of decs exceeds the safety limit, they display the ‘cut number’ of the last horse currently guaranteed a run. That means connections know precisely whether they are in the race or not and in sufficient time to declare for an alternative race.
If you left the ballot until after the decs were known, that info couldn’t be supplied.
There’s no great effort involved here – the ‘ballot’ is actually a few lines of software to provide random allocation of positions – almost identical to that used to do the draw for stall positions.
AP
If the racecard order of horses running off level weights in handicaps was determined by alphabet then surely the register of names would be skewed to ABC… at the expense of …XYZ.
Would you rather name your 70 rated handicapper Aaron Aardvark or Ziggy Zephyr?
I’m obviously not making myself clear here
Why not just allocate the numbers of same-weighted horses on an alphabetical basis and then have the ballot to determine which ones will/won’t get a run in the event that they all stand their ground. This won’t skew the names towards ABC as Drone suggested.
PS – I appreciate that it is an irrelevance anyway but I don’t follow the logic of doing away with the alphabetisation at the end of the handicap.
Thanks for the help.
I’ve only just received the system & will need time to check a number of races with it.<br>Other than the question of positions in the racecard, the system does seem logical.
Ok I’ll admit it, it’s one I bought off ebay (not something I would usually do), but the feedback from other purchasers of the same system was good, so I thought it’s worth trying.
I will keep two sets of records, one for using the rule of only the top horse on card regardless if there are others with the same weight, and the other using all horses at the top weight. This won’t mean a enormous number of bets, other rules mean that there are in fact few bets, many days seem to have no bets all.
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