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I am sure this thread will not have a very long life (longevity, I had to check the spelling) but just may throw up an interesting answer or two.
Creating an individual rating can be quite complex, depending upon how detailed you require it to be and my own experience has ended up with the forecast favourite more times than not but where I have found them to be of value is gauging the strength of a selection, although that is not the reason for opening up this idea because I am sure we can all use such self made ratings in different ways.
I will post two such “point ratings” and will be most interested to make any comparisons if other ways are posted.
Billy's Outback Shack
I do think it better to offer each suggesting a post entry entirely exclusive to its own individual way.
There can be no better place for me to start than with FENMAN’s Simple Rating Method.
2pts for a winner last time out.
2pts for running within 7 days.
1pt for running between 8-14 days.
1pt if a course winner.
2pts if a distance winner.
1pt if the FORM horse (Spot).
2pts if betting forecast favourite.
1pt if 2nd, 3rd, 4th in the betting.
MAXIMUM 10 points.I interpret from FENMAN’s book that such ideas can be incorporated as an additional tool within other methods, perhaps as a way of rating a daily newspapers tips as a way of finding the strongest among them etc.
Billy's Outback Shack
SYSTEM 14: PERFECT POINTS taken from Racing Ahead’s 20 Super Systems booklet.
I have recently started working this idea and am enjoying a modicum of success which has prompted opening of this thread.
It can be used in accord with various newspaper ratings/TimeForm/RPR/official handicap figures etc. and so may be a case of ideal for ALL.
It is perhaps a little more complex than that of Fenman’s and I may split the post into two parts.
Start by awarding points based on the latest 3 runs; –
WIN = 5PTS
2ND = 3PTS
3RD = 2PTS
4TH = 1PTOther factors: –
3pts for a Distance win
2pts for a Course win
4pts for a Course & Distance win (CD)
2pts for a Beaten Favourite (BF)
3pts if in the first 3 of the betting forecast.A maximum score possible being 24pts.
Claimed as a good method in itself which can be used to find a top rated selection (as per Fenman) but the rating can be taken two stages more and also worthy of use with any other points rating.
Note the afore mentioned rating of the daily newspaper/Timeform/RPR/official handicap and add this figure to the figure previously arrived at. Say, a top or best score of 24pts and if (looking at todays SUN newspaper) the SPOT rating is 99 the resulting figure becomes 99 + 24 = 123 etc.
Again there is yet another part to this rating and worthy of its own entry simply because it can be adapted with other rating methods and does not get lost within this post.
Billy's Outback Shack
System 14: PERFECT POINTS (Part two)
For myself I am using these figures with the PERFECT POINTS method but I hope you as I believe they can be adapted within alternative ideas as an improvement.
Having already found a resulting score for the horses in any chosen race (a maximum of 12 declared runners is suggested) add the resulting points derived from the price of each horse.
The betting market ratings are said to have been calculated from a 10 year analysis of racing results.
For these ratings, look at each horses price in the betting market and allot the rating as follows:National Hunt.
Evens = 21pts
11/10 22
6/5 23
5/4 19
11/8 17
6/4 17
13/8 19
7/4 17
15/8 16
2/1 14
9/4 13
5/2 12
11/4 12
3/1 11
10/3 10
7/2 10
4/1 8
9/2 8
5/1+ 7ptsFLAT
Evens = 23pts
11/10 = 21
5/4 20
11/8 19
6/4 18
13/8 17
7/4 16
15/8 16
2/1 15
9/4 14
5/2 13
11/4 12
3/1 11
10/3 11
7/2 10
4/1 9
9/2 8
5/1+ 7pts Billy's Outback Shack
I cannot find any recommendation for race selection when using the PERFECT POINTS method other than a maximum of 12 declared runners but the little success I have had so far has come from the highest class race of the day but today has proved to be somewhat of a challenge.
Haydock 3.30 Class 3 with 6 declared having one said to be Doubtful, however the top weight horse trained by “big gun” Paul Nicholls (Won) does not have a rating in my morning paper (Mirror) but still is tipped by Bouverie and is the Sunday Mirror daily selection and is 3rd in the betting forecast. Any resulting rating is impossible and so the race for me is passed by.
Haydock 5.00 Class 3 with 5 declared offered up SHARPASAKNIFE Won 2nd fav. & IMPULSIVE AMERTICAN 3rd fav. with equal scores and without enough history regarding the method decided again to swerve the race.
I have then looked for a class 4 race of which there are several and so I zoned in on the 2.20 at Haydock having the fewst number declared (5) and found a real “hotty” being clear by 10 points, HOLLIES PEARL Won but at odds-on again I have chosen to give it a miss.
So, on to the next class 4 race with 8 delared to run:
Haydock 4.30 where LORD LANDON scored me 148pts over LISTEN BOY with 143pts and so is 5pts clear, available at 11/4 I am being cautious with an each way punt. 3rd at 5/2 a pat on the back for being cautious returning only a 45P lossLORD LANDON: –
Form 412 = 9pts
“D” = 3pts
Mirror rating of 121
Forecast favourite = 3pts
Total = 136ptsForecast price of 5/2 = 12pts
Combined total of 148pts (Listen Boy 143pts) clear by 5pts.
Billy's Outback Shack
I am enjoying a quiet day at home VtC and throwing out some ideas just to see if anyone is interested and as I said within the first post I doubt very much if it will have much of a life.
During this quiet period I have decided to clean up an old lap top and was amazed to find a similar idea which was proposed to me via a member of this place and perhaps it may be worthy of dusting off and given a fresh airing.
I have it listed as: –
CLIVE HOLT “SUPER” FINE FORM SYSTEM.
Score the previous 2 race results as: –
5pts 1st
3pts 2nd
2pts 3rd
1pt 4th2pts former “D” winner
1pt former “C” winner
3pts 1.2.3 in the betting forecast (Timeform preferred)
4pts handicap rating (D. Mail Formcast preferred)20pts = the top score
Target 2/1+ as a betting opportunity
Now there must be some other old codgers here (I cannot be the only one) who will take an interest when the name of Clive Holt is raised and am sure there are some tales to be told and perhaps could even bring this one up to date.
Billy's Outback Shack
Perfect Points has found two selections this morning without having to drop race selection to the next class and so to continue the cautious experiment I have kept to each way bets: –
Ludlow
3.40 Class 3 HOPES WISHES (is 5pts clear of Midtech Valentine) available at 11/4 Non runner
4.15 Class 3 CLOONACOOL ( is 5pts clear of the favourite Presenting Arms) available at 7/2 Lost
I hope they both run well.
Billy's Outback Shack
Billion
I should like to offer two thoughts on the matter of ratings.
First, there is the question of purpose. Many would, I suspect, answer that ratings are to identify the horse in a race with the best chance of winning (which can then be backed, or maybe turned into “true odds” for comparison with available odds with a view to discerning “value”). But there is another possible answer, namely to see if there is a horse in the race with all the necessary characteristics to win it. (This is the distinction VDW made when referring on the one hand to the winner of the race – something every race has – and the “winner in the race”, which is much rarer.) The reason this distinction is in my view important is that it better enables one to frame and weigh the components of a rating scheme.
Second, there is the issue of the complexity of racing. Most rating schemes such as those you’ve mentioned comprise a list of factors believed to be relevant to identifying the horse with the best chance of winning, and then weigh them without reference to specific circumstances, ie the scheme is in principle as useful for a 6f race on the AW at Lingfield, a 5f handicap at Chester or a race at Goodwood.
To illustrate, the Fenman simple approach you start with (max. rating 10) puts 10% of the weight of the rating on the horse being a course winner and 20% on it being a distance winner. Leaving aside the issue of whether a distance winner should get 20% and a horse than finished close up over the same distance in a much higher class race should get 0, this implies that distance is always twice as important than winning course form. But the reality is that while the known ability to act on a course can be of little importance on some courses it can be very significant for others, and the weighting needs to be reversed. (If I am considering backing a horse on the AW at Chelmsford I am wholly unconcerned if it hasn’t won there provided it has either run well there without winning, or has shown it can act on, for example, the AW at Lingfield. But if I am considering a horse running at Southwell, I remain interested if it has won or run well there before, but am no longer interested if it hasn’t (unless it is a known regular front runner), irrespective of its form on any of the other AW courses, as a significant number of horses simply don’t cope with the kick back from that course.
In short, although horses top rated by any half-plausible rating system (including those of the likes of the Post and Timeform) will throw up a proportion of winners, much more often than not they disappoint. Whereas if one is clear about the purpose, and has a rating scheme which reflects the complexity of the puzzles we face every day on the rich variety of courses that comprises the UK racing scene, one can do rather better.
Wow! Thanks GeorgeJ for your input which I think I will have to read a couple of times again to fully digest the full content but nevertheless such an excellent post desrves to be read and understood.
I must say I am a very poor reader of form and always have endevoured to keep my selections to being as simple as possible and further believe clever staking can possibly make up for any weakness within my selection process and it is also interesting that VDW is raised (we are never far away from the great man, love or hate him) because he is also known to use staking to improve returns but perhaps “Staking” should be kept in a different thread.
I would be interested GeorgeJ to know if ever you were to use a rating system based on points how would you balance (or weight) the component elements.
I really did not think I would get into “points/ratings” as I have these past few days and with such superb racing on offer today it may be for watching and learning, nevertheless I hope it is still worth posting what looks to be the ones to watch.
Clive Holt: –
Lingfield
2.10 LANCELOT DU LAC on offer at 7/2 2nd
4.15 KADRIZZI available in the early market at 7/1
3.45 GRENDISAR could be worthy of an interest bet at 6/5 WonPERFECT POINTS
Lingfield
3.45 GRENDISAR clear by a country mile making the 6/5 available look generous. Won
2.10 LANCELOT DU LAC shown at 7/2 2nd
3.13 MINDUROWNBUSINESS is also the early favourite at 9/4 lostI am at present on an old lap-top dug out from the back of my wardrobe because the latest model I have is giving me “gip”. So old it is that it is loaded with Xp but running a treat as Xp always did but I found an old file full of forgotten systems from which I dug out perhaps the simplest of them all (well I did say to GeorgeJ I aim for “simple”) and the little beauty found a couple of nuggets yesterday when targeting the better races of the day. Now I am not getting too excited and it is hard to isolate the best race(s) today because they are all top of the milk so to speak but for a little fun to enhance the afternoon I have found three but I feel one could be a shocker.
Wolverhampton
2.55 SILVER QUAY at 7/2 looks interesting. 2nd
4.30 BALLISTA at 8/1 can only be an each way choice
Lingfield
2.40 ROYAL MARSKELL would I am be the shock of the day available at 80/1. lostThanks again to GeorgeJ and hope he comes back with something good.
Enjoy your Easter.
Billy's Outback Shack
Billion
I do indeed use ratings (my own, not proprietory ones such as those in the Post), tailored to my objective, which is to identify horses with all the characteristics necessary to win the race in question, ie the second of the two objectives referred to in the early part of my previous post. I think this is probably easier than trying to construct a sophisticated rating system for the other purpose, because at the first indication (on say form) that a horse lacks a vital characteristic one discards him or her.
More or less contemporaneous with Clive Holt was a chap who wrote under the pseudonymn Che Van der Wheil, about whom much has been written and little understood. This is not the place to go into all that, but the sentence in all of VDW’s work which I have found most useful is the following:
“Readers who fully understood my previous letters will know it is the balance between class, form and the other factors which shows the good things”
and his writings show that by “other factors” he meant a bundle of things which he elsewhere included under the umbrella term capability (such matters as the suitability of the course, the trip and the going, the weight to be carried and, I imagine, in a very few cases on the Flat, the draw).
For a horse to have all the characteristics necessary to win a race, ie to qualify as what VDW termed “a winner in the race”, it must measure up under all three headings – class, form and capability – and my rating method starts with form, then addresses class and finally capability, with horses being eliminated at each stage because they fail to rate adequately. I am only interested in those horses which either get through the method without any failing, or maybe have one questionmark which one decides to accept.
Obviously this three stage approach is just one of many ways one could work, but it makes reasonable sense to me, and as it is the one I use it is the only one I can discuss in detail.
For each stage one needs operational ways of rating, and again there are often several options.
Starting with form, I simply use a yes/no rating – is the horse what VDW referred to as a “form” horse or not? The complexity here, such as it is, arises in how one operationalises that yes/no judgement. I do it the following way, using an Excel book into which the card is copied. Once the card is loaded, the operation of a macro generates a sheet with what I believe to be the essential details of the last six runs of each horse. (I only analyse handicaps but even with them some horses haven’t yet had six runs so one works with what there is, and of course sometimes the earlier runs are so long ago as to be of doubtful relevance, but in general I consider six runs.) I then appraise the six and reach a judgement as to whether the horse can currently be regarded as a “form” horse. I suppose that with a 16 runner handicap this takes about five minutes because part of it is done automatically though coding.
I then move on to class and each horse is rated, again on a simple yes/no basis, on whether or not it has shown it has the necessary class to win the race being analysed or has run well enough, bearing in mind its age, to suggest that with reasonable improvement it will show it has the necessary class.
So by this stage the only horses requiring further consideration are those with “yes” ratings on both form and class – sometimes quite a high proportion of the field, sometimes just one or two. How one assesses class is very much down to individual choice – some use official race classifications – ie class 4, class 3, class 2 etc. Personally I use two numerics, one to consider the class of the race (where I use the VDW rating based on penalty value to the winner) and one to consider the class of the fields within which a horse has run (I use average OR for this, others use some variation such as average OR of first three home, or something quite different such as VDW’s favoured method).
Finally comes the assessment of capability factors. I assess against four always – course, distance, going and weight, and in some Flat races a fifth, adding in the draw. Again for each it is a simple yes/no rating, but in different circumstances factors become more or less important. For example, if the race is on a tough, undulating course, such as Cheltenham, being proven on the course or a broadly comparable one is in my view vital, and a “yes” is essential. But if a race is on good going I am not at all concerned (99.9% of the time) if a Flat horse has not yet run well on such going, though if the race is on heavy going then the absence of evidence that the horse can handle it is of much greater concern. This of course militates against a very simple approach, but in practice the categories are not endless. For example, I divide Flat courses into five categories and NH ones into just three, so one is dealing with manageable numbers of options easily handled with appropriate coding.
To illustrate, the only race I analysed today was the 2.55 Wolverhampton, which I looked at after the non runner was declared so there were 12 horses to consider.
Of the 12, five were rated “yes” as “form” horses – Angel Gabrial, Gabrial The Duke, Gang Warfare, Silver Quay and Two Jabs (and with the possible exception of the first named I think you’ll have no difficulty seeing why they were “form” horses and why the other seven were not).
Of the five that were rated “yes” on form, only one (Angel Gabrial) had so far shown it was capable of winning a race of the class of today’s 2.55 (win prize money £32,000, average OR of field 91.4). The other four were all today running in markedly more valuable races, with markedly better fields (as measured by average OR of field) than they had ever contested before.
In fact, the first one I discarded was Angel Gabriel, essentially following a review of his form. He passed the initial form rating because of his good penultimate run and the fact that his last run was in a very much higher class race than today’s. But looking at his profile, despite the relatively tempting prize money I didn’t believe for one moment he was there to win today and would be ready to run to anything like his best form. Rather, as a horse who generally seems to take a few runs to come to peak form I think he was there as part of his preparation for trying to win a much bigger prize, possibly the Chester Cup but perhaps more likely the Northumberland Plate.
So that left four, all of whom had won last time out and none of whom had ever performed well in a race approaching the class of today’s and none of them had to my mind yet provided clear enough evidence that they were ready to win such a race. So that ended the analysis as far as a possible bet in the race was concerned. That is, on careful rating of both form and class no runner qualified unambiguously on both.
But by way of illustration, suppose the four had shown enough to rate them “yes” on class, how would oen have rated them on capability>
Wolverhampton I classify as a “tight” course, along with others such as Chelmsford and Chester. All four had shown they could win or run well on such courses, so all would have got a “yes” rating.
The trip was 14f. Gabrial The Duke had won over 14f and Gang Warfare had won over both 12f and 16f, so both would have rated “yes”. But neither Silver Quay nor Two Jabs had good form over more than 12f, so they would rate “no”.
The going was what I count as “aw”, a category I use for all all weather surfaces except the fibre sand at Southwell. Both the remaining two, Gabrial The Duke and Gang Warfare has won at Wolverhampton and thus rated “yes” on going.
Weight. My working assumption for the Flat is that any horse can carry up to 9.09, so both rated “yes”. (If a horse is set to carry more than 9.10 I look for evidence that it can.)
Draw. The draw over 5f at Wolverhampton is important, but my figures suggest it is not relevant over 14, so no need to rate on draw. (If this had been a 5f race, Gang Warfare from stall 1 would have rated “yes” and Gabrial The Duke from, effectively, stall 10 would have rated “no”.)
I stress that in practice I was no longer interested once the situation re class became clear. But the last few paras illustrate how, had the four horses still been possibles on class, I’d have sought to rate them on capability factors. And just on these, Gabrial The Duke and Gang Warfare were fine, but neither Silver Quay nor Two Jabs had form one could rely upon re distance.
The point of all this, which probably looks complicated at first sight, is simply to say that it is practicable to break the analysis of a race down into manageable components – on my approach form, class and capability (and in the case of capability sub-components) – each of which can be rated. I use the most simple rating of all – yes/no – because I am not looking for the most likely winner but for horses with ALL the necessary characteristics to win and thus one “no” (usually) eliminates. But one could rate each component/sub component on a numeric scale and sum across all of them if one wanted. I doubt taking the highest rated doing that would be nearly as successful as waiting for everything to line up, though.
Fortunately these days personal computers mean we can do things that were unavialble to the likes of VDW and Clive Holt, and once one is reasonably clear about the categories one wants to rate and how to operationalise them, most of it can be coded to happen automatically. This saves enormously in time. By way of illustration, getting to the point at which I knew there was no bet for me in the 2.55 today took about ten minutes, including loading the card. To complete the analysis by rating the “final four” for capability issues took another ten minutes or so.
Simply a fantastic post GeorgeJ and I think any reader her will applaud you for sharing and taking the time to do so.
I always thoroughly enjoy reading how others go about finding selections and it is always good to remember none of us are too old not to learn.
Not everything will ever be to our own style or choice but it is always possible to isolate small gems here and there and again I am sure with another read I will turn up something of great value.
Today Saturday I have taken the Perfect Points to the best two races at Kempton: –
2.15 OUR CHANNEL (147 +5) at 11/4 bet365, in keeping with an early watching brief i am splitting my £1 each way. Won
2.50 BARSANTI (129 +2) 4/1 bet365, again 50p each way Won
Once more a huge thanks to GeorgeJ for his involvement.
Billy's Outback Shack
That is a really brilliant post GeorgeJ
Plenty of food for thought and extremely helpfulGaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
Quite superb and thought provoking posts, GeorgeJ. I know I will benefit from your observations and hopefully others will do, too.
My own approach (much less sophisticated than your own) is to use Patternform as the starting point for analysis of any handicap and I wonder whether you would recommend it in the absence of a ratings based method. Any observations you may have would be much appreciated and my thanks for devoting so much of your time and experience to the benefit of the forum.Billion
I do indeed use ratings (my own, not proprietory ones such as those in the Post), tailored to my objective, which is to identify horses with all the characteristics necessary to win the race in question, ie the second of the two objectives referred to in the early part of my previous post. I think this is probably easier than trying to construct a sophisticated rating system for the other purpose, because at the first indication (on say form) that a horse lacks a vital characteristic one discards him or her.
More or less contemporaneous with Clive Holt was a chap who wrote under the pseudonymn Che Van der Wheil, about whom much has been written and little understood. This is not the place to go into all that, but the sentence in all of VDW’s work which I have found most useful is the following:
“Readers who fully understood my previous letters will know it is the balance between class, form and the other factors which shows the good things”
and his writings show that by “other factors” he meant a bundle of things which he elsewhere included under the umbrella term capability (such matters as the suitability of the course, the trip and the going, the weight to be carried and, I imagine, in a very few cases on the Flat, the draw).
For a horse to have all the characteristics necessary to win a race, ie to qualify as what VDW termed “a winner in the race”, it must measure up under all three headings – class, form and capability – and my rating method starts with form, then addresses class and finally capability, with horses being eliminated at each stage because they fail to rate adequately. I am only interested in those horses which either get through the method without any failing, or maybe have one questionmark which one decides to accept.
Obviously this three stage approach is just one of many ways one could work, but it makes reasonable sense to me, and as it is the one I use it is the only one I can discuss in detail.
For each stage one needs operational ways of rating, and again there are often several options.
Starting with form, I simply use a yes/no rating – is the horse what VDW referred to as a “form” horse or not? The complexity here, such as it is, arises in how one operationalises that yes/no judgement. I do it the following way, using an Excel book into which the card is copied. Once the card is loaded, the operation of a macro generates a sheet with what I believe to be the essential details of the last six runs of each horse. (I only analyse handicaps but even with them some horses haven’t yet had six runs so one works with what there is, and of course sometimes the earlier runs are so long ago as to be of doubtful relevance, but in general I consider six runs.) I then appraise the six and reach a judgement as to whether the horse can currently be regarded as a “form” horse. I suppose that with a 16 runner handicap this takes about five minutes because part of it is done automatically though coding.
I then move on to class and each horse is rated, again on a simple yes/no basis, on whether or not it has shown it has the necessary class to win the race being analysed or has run well enough, bearing in mind its age, to suggest that with reasonable improvement it will show it has the necessary class.
So by this stage the only horses requiring further consideration are those with “yes” ratings on both form and class – sometimes quite a high proportion of the field, sometimes just one or two. How one assesses class is very much down to individual choice – some use official race classifications – ie class 4, class 3, class 2 etc. Personally I use two numerics, one to consider the class of the race (where I use the VDW rating based on penalty value to the winner) and one to consider the class of the fields within which a horse has run (I use average OR for this, others use some variation such as average OR of first three home, or something quite different such as VDW’s favoured method).
Finally comes the assessment of capability factors. I assess against four always – course, distance, going and weight, and in some Flat races a fifth, adding in the draw. Again for each it is a simple yes/no rating, but in different circumstances factors become more or less important. For example, if the race is on a tough, undulating course, such as Cheltenham, being proven on the course or a broadly comparable one is in my view vital, and a “yes” is essential. But if a race is on good going I am not at all concerned (99.9% of the time) if a Flat horse has not yet run well on such going, though if the race is on heavy going then the absence of evidence that the horse can handle it is of much greater concern. This of course militates against a very simple approach, but in practice the categories are not endless. For example, I divide Flat courses into five categories and NH ones into just three, so one is dealing with manageable numbers of options easily handled with appropriate coding.
To illustrate, the only race I analysed today was the 2.55 Wolverhampton, which I looked at after the non runner was declared so there were 12 horses to consider.
Of the 12, five were rated “yes” as “form” horses – Angel Gabrial, Gabrial The Duke, Gang Warfare, Silver Quay and Two Jabs (and with the possible exception of the first named I think you’ll have no difficulty seeing why they were “form” horses and why the other seven were not).
Of the five that were rated “yes” on form, only one (Angel Gabrial) had so far shown it was capable of winning a race of the class of today’s 2.55 (win prize money £32,000, average OR of field 91.4). The other four were all today running in markedly more valuable races, with markedly better fields (as measured by average OR of field) than they had ever contested before.
In fact, the first one I discarded was Angel Gabriel, essentially following a review of his form. He passed the initial form rating because of his good penultimate run and the fact that his last run was in a very much higher class race than today’s. But looking at his profile, despite the relatively tempting prize money I didn’t believe for one moment he was there to win today and would be ready to run to anything like his best form. Rather, as a horse who generally seems to take a few runs to come to peak form I think he was there as part of his preparation for trying to win a much bigger prize, possibly the Chester Cup but perhaps more likely the Northumberland Plate.
So that left four, all of whom had won last time out and none of whom had ever performed well in a race approaching the class of today’s and none of them had to my mind yet provided clear enough evidence that they were ready to win such a race. So that ended the analysis as far as a possible bet in the race was concerned. That is, on careful rating of both form and class no runner qualified unambiguously on both.
But by way of illustration, suppose the four had shown enough to rate them “yes” on class, how would oen have rated them on capability>
Wolverhampton I classify as a “tight” course, along with others such as Chelmsford and Chester. All four had shown they could win or run well on such courses, so all would have got a “yes” rating.
The trip was 14f. Gabrial The Duke had won over 14f and Gang Warfare had won over both 12f and 16f, so both would have rated “yes”. But neither Silver Quay nor Two Jabs had good form over more than 12f, so they would rate “no”.
The going was what I count as “aw”, a category I use for all all weather surfaces except the fibre sand at Southwell. Both the remaining two, Gabrial The Duke and Gang Warfare has won at Wolverhampton and thus rated “yes” on going.
Weight. My working assumption for the Flat is that any horse can carry up to 9.09, so both rated “yes”. (If a horse is set to carry more than 9.10 I look for evidence that it can.)
Draw. The draw over 5f at Wolverhampton is important, but my figures suggest it is not relevant over 14, so no need to rate on draw. (If this had been a 5f race, Gang Warfare from stall 1 would have rated “yes” and Gabrial The Duke from, effectively, stall 10 would have rated “no”.)
I stress that in practice I was no longer interested once the situation re class became clear. But the last few paras illustrate how, had the four horses still been possibles on class, I’d have sought to rate them on capability factors. And just on these, Gabrial The Duke and Gang Warfare were fine, but neither Silver Quay nor Two Jabs had form one could rely upon re distance.
The point of all this, which probably looks complicated at first sight, is simply to say that it is practicable to break the analysis of a race down into manageable components – on my approach form, class and capability (and in the case of capability sub-components) – each of which can be rated. I use the most simple rating of all – yes/no – because I am not looking for the most likely winner but for horses with ALL the necessary characteristics to win and thus one “no” (usually) eliminates. But one could rate each component/sub component on a numeric scale and sum across all of them if one wanted. I doubt taking the highest rated doing that would be nearly as successful as waiting for everything to line up, though.
Fortunately these days personal computers mean we can do things that were unavialble to the likes of VDW and Clive Holt, and once one is reasonably clear about the categories one wants to rate and how to operationalise them, most of it can be coded to happen automatically. This saves enormously in time. By way of illustration, getting to the point at which I knew there was no bet for me in the 2.55 today took about ten minutes, including loading the card. To complete the analysis by rating the “final four” for capability issues took another ten minutes or so.
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NH
Thanks.
Billion
I only analyse handicaps so have only looked at one of your two, the Rosebery.
Judging by Betfair, your selection Barsanti is being well supported. He doesn’t make my final list though, on class. The Rosebery is a £28,000 race with a field of average OR 89.1. Barsanti has only contested one handicap so far, winning very easily, but it was only a £5,000 race of average OR 68.4. As an early season 4yo it would be unusual if he proved not to be progressive so I certainly expect to see a very considerable increase in his performance rating for the race. But on that particular aspect of my approach he will need to improve his rating from the 25 February race (143.4) to at least 174.1 to win today. Horses do show that level of improvement, especially young, lightly raced ones like Barsanti, but the margin needed (30.7) is significantly more than that I allow for “normal” potential improvement in the absence of clear indicators (which are not present in Barsanti’s case). So while it will be no surprise to me if Barsanti wins, the improvement needed on performances to date is too great for me to want to back him today.
From my perspective none of the other runners has all the “winner in the race” characteristics so, like the 2.55 yesterday, it is a no bet race for me.
Good luck with your bets.
Elcartero
Thanks. But I am afraid I have no knowledge of Patternform so can offer no comment.
Billion
As we’ve both had a look at the Rosebery, you might be interested to see my working sheet for the “form” consideration. As you’ll see, where a horse has had at least six previous runs data for each is included, and the “form” yes/no judgement is in column P in the row which includes the horse’s name. So in the case of Barsanti, for example, it is cell P14.
All the data in this case, and the entries in column P, are generated by the operation of a macro, but I check through each horse and in some cases make a change manually in column P. (No such manual amendments were necessary in this race.)
The horses I consider to be “form” horses are those with green cells in the lowest row of column P of their data, and that data is carried into the next sheet when class and, later still, capability issues are added.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71840306/2.50%20Kemp%20-%20form%20sheet.xlsm
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