Okay,
I've attached a spreadsheet called 7apr_working which has the race cards I will describe, I've also uploaded a CSV version anyone who wants to follow this but can't open Excel files for whatever reason, it will be harder to read the CSV as the formatting won't be as planned.
Anyhow - I'm going to explain the main points of some of the races in the spreadsheet, there's nothing over clever here or mystic/magical, hopefully you'll see there's a bit of logic involved. You can do the same yourself, if you can't grab data too easily and end up having to input the numbers yourself it's still doable - you just have to limit your efforts to a few races, and need to pick races that are most likely to give you something to work with.... which is my first point:
1) Finding races to work on:
If you run down the listed races you'll see some have lots of highlighting on them, some have little, some have none at all - the highlights show figures we are interested in, so if there is a race with no highlighting we are going to ignore it. The very first race (Kempton 1.30) is one such race - look down the form column, 4 of the 10 runners have a single form figure, 6 runners are previously unraced. Unless you know something the rest of us don't then we'll skip races like this - unexposed horses could do anything, and frequently will!
- So the 1410 at Navan, and the 1430 Uttoxeter are also going - there are too many relatively unexposed runners in each, and we don't NEED to do these races so why take the chance that one of the unraced or lightly raced runners will pop up and win?
2) Find all the runners that have placed 1,2,3 or 4 in either their last race or the one before that.
Simply run down the 'form' column and highlight any horse with a 1,2,3 or 4 in the last or 2nd last time out position. (Note - VDW suggests that if a horse fell, or suffered a similar mishap, you should skip that and go to the next placing - ie a horse reading 561F7 is considered to be a 5617, ignore the F... the idea here is that it may fall, unseat, or whatever through no fault of its own so should be given a bye. My personal opinion is I will do that for occasional falls etc, but if I see a form line reading FFPU6RF I'll still consider it to be failing my check - a horse like that is probably incapable of jumping!)
- I left you a practise race to try out, you can see how I marked up races 2 and 3, but 4 is blank still - have a go at it, answers below!
Race 4 then, you should have marked them all of course.
***The 'Last 3' column totals the last 3 form placings (placed 0 = 10) and is not currently being used - I'll cover this and the Ability column, which is also not being used, later as I finish off.
3) Check the ratings
The SPD column shows the best speed rating (my own ratings) from the last 4 runs for each runner. the RPR column shows the best RPR recorded from the last 4 runs.The 'Added' column is the one we are going to use here. The speed rating alone has about an 18% strike rate, if we stick with top on speed or maybe the top 3 we will probably throw winners out too often. The RPR column however is almost the opposite, RPRs quite often show little between runners, so taking the top rated and those within a point or two will often leave 3/4 of the field there, so we combine the two to get a figure we can use to set a cutoff value -
to save working it out, the added value is the best of last 4 speed figures added to the best of last 4 RPR's AFTER that RPR has been multiplied by 0.85 - ie 85% of the best RPR is added to 100% of the best soeed rating.
A cutoff is calculated - the cutoff is simply 85% of the highest combined rating, rounded down - so in race 2 the highest added rating is 109, 109 x 0.85 = 92.65, round it down and our cutoff value is therefore 92.
- Highlight all of the combined ratings that are equal to or greater than the cutoff for the race.
4) Check class
Look at the race information, the prize money for the race is listed there - for race 2 it is £8837,. for race 4 it is £15562, and so on.The class of the race (for want of a better term) is the race prize value divided by 100 (rounded) - so 8837 is class 88, 15562 is class 155, and so on.
The class column shows the highest 'class' race that each runner has won in the past year - again this is from my program, but can be found from the horse information on the Racing Post and others.
We highlight slightly differently here - using two colours - the usual yellow shows a horse has a class rating equal to or better than that of today's race, I use the orange highlight to show the horse has a win but at a lower class.... I think any winning form needs to be considered, we don't want to ignore possible improvers after all,. but the yellow shows us who has already cleared the bar.
5) Now look at it and make your mind up
I'll go over a couple, then let you have a go, then finish off....
Race 2 - everything is highlighted, no help at all then! You can look at this 2 ways, 1 is that everything is pretty exposed and you should check the form to see if one of them is improving - after all none of them has matched the class of the race as yet, or 2 you can say they are too closely matched and skip the race. There IS one obvious point, Teddy Tee's rating of 198 compares to the rest of them who are all on 174 or 175 - that's a big difference in ratings, so I would say the idea here would be to check Teddy out, if he has the form that suggests he could win and no obvious negatives then he may be the bet.
Race 3 Now then, what we want is the runners that have highlights in all the columns, so we'll not be looking for Dartagnan Le Dun to win this despite his rating - we hope - failing that "form of 1-4 in either of last 2 races" check is not something we expect the best chances to do. Hartside is through on all checks so goes into our list, Akula and Flanagan's Field miss on class but have good ratings, and would go on the list as potentially able to take this. When I note these down I use a dash to denote a runner that doesn't quite hit all the marks, so I know to double check him.
From race 3 I have Hartside, -Akula, -Flanagan's Field
(Akula is russian for some type of shark by the way...., also the name of a Russian submarine class)
Race 4: The 1-4 filter does nothing to help, we have 4 obvious possibles, as they match the rating cutoff check and the class check - three of them would need to improve and have orange highlighted class, so I'll mark them as -
Possibles: Tomily, -Tarboosh, -George Dryden, - Dynamo Walt
One more for luck -
we skip race 5 as noted early on,
Race 6: Gregarious (all highlighted), Walsingham Grange (all ok), Ardmayle (all ok), Excellent Team (all ok)
In this race we have 4 full qualifiers, Ashkoul's class is orange and rating is not high enough, Capitoul's rating is okay but has no class rating and the form 1-4 check failed also. I would look at these 4 for the winner, which still leaves half the field of course.
If anyone wants any of the other races covered, or has questions about the ones I've done, then just post a query and I'll try to cover it.
Remember the plan is for the possibles to include the winner 50% of the time, if the winner is in there more often then great - if less often then we keep trying to hone this down until it does work reliably.
*** I said I'd explain last 3 and Ability - if you take the form figures and add the last three together you get a sum that can vary from 3 (111) to 30 (000) - places down to 9 are added as they are, anything 10th or worse is a 10, and you ignore falls etc. If you have only 2 runs then you add the last run on again, ie a 14 is treated as a 144. The idea of this sum is to take advantage of the way that horses with the last three form figures showing as 111, 112, 121 and the like (basically in the first 3 each of the last 3 runs) tend to win a very high percentage of races. Lately they haven't been as great a pointer as they should, so I;m watching this rather than using it right now.
Ability I explained before, but I'll repeat it quickly - Ability is the win prize money (do not include place money) won by a horse, in hundreds of pounds, divided by the number of times it has won. So if a horse won 5 times and the prize money for those 5 wins added up to £96000, th sum would be 9600/5 = 1920 . I am not convinced that this rating is as useful as suggested, a horse that won twice three years ago and hasn't even placed since is not, in my view, the horse it was - ability is, to my view, not sufficiently focussed on good form to be used with confidence. Of course I reserve the right to think differently at the drop of a hat....
Okay, that's it, the next job would be to look over the possibles lists, pick the races that look like the filtering might have produced something worth using, and look up each of the horses in your list to decide which of them you like most - if you cannot make a case for one of them move on to the next race. Don't ignore the other runners - you still want to have an idea of how they will run, as that will affect your pick - but you are not looking to build a solid winners case for them.
What I look at for my short l,ist:
Trainer - 14 day win rate, AE ratio, also do I know they are good/poor at this track (easily found in RP)
Jockey - 14 day win rate and AE ratio. Also, has he/she ridden the horse before - if so did they place or win on it? If ridden before did the horse run well for them compared to when other jockeys rode it?
Distance - Distance wins and places, preferably without negative comments, I want to see that they were able to challenge at the end of the races they ran over this distance.
Going - similar to distance really, win or place form on the going
C/D wins - nice to see
track - check the formlines, is there anything blazingly obvious there, such as the horse clearly only goes on Left or Right hand tracks.... don't forget the shorter sprints tend to be straights mind!
Draw - use a stalls check if you can to check that runners are well/badly drawn - not an issue over 2 miles of course, but important for sprints at least.
Comments - you don't want anything overtly negative, 'reluctant to race' is not a good sign. Just a simple check - if you are good at putting the picture together for a race then great, but you can at least check that the horse appears to race fairly willingly.
Pace info (AW racing only) - for sprints and up to about 8f I want to know where the early pace is coming from, a sprint ought to have at least one obvious early leader but by the time you get to 7 or 8f you can find that nobody wants to go on - an 8f race where they dawdle for 2f because they all want to be covered up is a 6f sprint with a lengthy preamble! As distances increase I look more at the AP ratings. If a sprint and a bend is involved before the final run in then I like to check speed around the turn - all these figures are in the AWcard each day for AW races.
The list is not absolutely complete, you may have all sorts of ideas too, but this is what I look at - you'll hopefully have noticed that I do not simply look at my ratings and call it a day. Racing is a very complex puzzle that constantly changes, you have to work hard at it to get anywhere. (Or be very very lucky).
One other thing - assuming I have now got the race sorted and picked my main choice for the race and possibly a backup for if the number one choice doesn't run, or perhaps I want more than one in the race for some reason, only then do I check the forecast price and compare it to the idea I will have of what I think are fair odds.... I will bet on a horse if I think the odds are a bit tight, or if I think the horse is better than the odds, but I won't back a horse if I think the odds are noticeably shorter than they should be and I hardly ever bet odds on.
If anyone has questions, ask
Dave
I forgot to mention OR - especailly in handicaps it's useful to see if a horse is going up or down in the ratings - as horses move from class of race to class their alloted weight will change, but the OR will tell you if they have been penalised or given an easier time of it - ie it isn't the weight that matters (other than lump a piano on it's back and it isn't going to jump too well) but what the OR is doing. It is often useful to compare its OR today to its OR the last time it won.