UK Horse Racing's Ratings

Case Study: 3rd August, 2015 - Extracts from my logs

Introduction

The following are the tidied up notes from my log book for the day.

I now write everything in a Moleskein style notebook with pen and ink. Even though I am IT-savvie I find that if I use a proper fountain pen with proper ink in a decent notebook then I retain information than in a spreadsheet. This is only a personal choice but the act of writing information down in longhand I start to see patterns better than before.

To follow the notes for today the Summary Ratings will need to be downloaded from the Archives.

Please download the Summary Ratings for the 3rd of August, 2015.

The Method

As mentioned in the previous Case Study method is rather straightforward. All I do is to look at each race and see which horses stand out in terms of their scores in each of the fields. So I am looking at the underscored fields in the race and compare the underscored value with the emboldened, i.e. ranked, fields.

If a race doesn't offer anything which stands out or, worse, offers too many horses that do stand out, I step over that race.

At the moment I am concentrating on handicaps and the top rated horses, though I will consider some stakes races and I will look outside of the top rated if the opportunity presents itself.

Carlisle 6.15 - Tin Pan Alley

This meeting was going to be hard as every race was a Pro-Am Ladies Rider race and when we get meetings like this (the major example of such a metting being the day at Sandown before the Eclipse Meeting which is full of 'galloping majors') but, as we shall see, some opportunities do arise.

Tin Pan Alley was second rated and the first thing I noted was that it had seven underscores. If one takes into consideration the fact that Cadmium was a non-runner (which I didn't) then the HCP value would have made an eighth underscore.

The Lst underscore of 13.1 was of interest as the next best Lst was 8.1. Not a great gap but with seven (or eight) underscores I felt that this was strong enough to back.

Unforunately even though it kept with the leaders until the last furlong and, in fact, lead between the third and second furlong markers from home, it faded and came in 6th at 11/4.

Carlisle 6.45 - Red Invader

Top rated Red Invader was easy enough to spot. At the right hand edge the HCP value was 48 against the next best HCP in the race of 14. The Regression Distance value of 2.8 was good enough to add strength to the selection.

In the race two other horses were nearly strong enough to knock this selection out but not quite strong enough to do so. Boris Grigoriev had the best Cls of 15.7 but as the next best was 12.4 this wasn't a clear selection. Boris Grigoriev had the best WinF of 10.8, which is a little low, and since Red Invader had the second best of 8.9 this was also not considered strong enough to be a counter selection. The same applies for Gaelic Wizard with a decent enough Spd rating of 10.3 against one of 6.8 but this wasn't quite strong enough to counter Red Invader.

In the end Red Invader was clear in the last furlong but even though it idled towards the post it stayed on to beat Gaelic Wizard at 6/1.

Cork 3.05 - Gold Bullet

This was a small field hurdle non-handicap with just six runners. The top rated Gold Bullet looked strong enough here even though this was not a handicap.

Gold Bullet was rated twenty one pounds clear and had a good Conn comparison with 16.0 against the next best of 2.6.

The selection came in third at 11/8 by a fair distance.

Naas 4.25 - Greek Cannyon

Another stakes race, The Kildare Post Rated Race, in which Greek Canyon was fourteen pounds clear. A few underscores and also a number of emboldened type for this one and the field of interest was Spd which was 16.0 as compared to the next best 3.0.

Greek Canyon was forecast to go off at around 10/1 but with two decent non-runners (the second and third rated, as it happens) the price was significantly reduced. However it didn't stop Greek Canyon coming a decent second to the favourite at 4/1.

Even though the selection lost I was still happy enough with the selection.

Nottingham 4.30 - Straight Arrow

This top rated horse had a good Spd rating of 23.4 as opposed to the second best rating of 0.1: a clear selection.

Alas, even though he went second three furlongs out he faded in the last furlong to finish down the order at 3/1. Even though Straight Arrow didn't have enough to win this race there wasn't much wrong with the selection.

Ripon 4.15 - Imityaaz

This top rated horse wasn't hard to spot. Seven underscores of which the HCP was a strong 30 as opposed to next best 21.

Even though the 'gap' between these two figures was rather narrow and the value of thirty in itself is a little low, the fact that it had plenty of underscores and no other horses in the races offered little this had to be selection.

Not a great priced winner at 5/4 but winner it was all the same.

Ripon 5.15 - Stormin' Tom

Not the top rated this time, but second rated. The Spd rating of 17.1 versus the top rated's 9.3 made this a definite selection, especially as nothing else within the race looked of interest.

Stormin' Tom drove home in the last to beat Tropical Batchelor at 9/4.

Windsor 7.00 - American Artist

Once moer top rated. Six underscores and, again, the HCP field comes into play with a strong score of 47 over the next best's 18.

There is one horse which offered a strong opposition and that was Sonnetation with an excellent Lst score of 20.4 against the next best of 9.4. If this were higher rated then this would have been a second selection for me. But with only one strong opposing horse American Artist is still a valid selection (if there were more than one such opposing horse then it would been missed out) and I am pleased that it led strongly at one furlong out and stayed on to win at 5/4.

Windsor 7.30 - Hope And Faith & Aldayha

This is a little less straightforward but equally valid. The top rated Hope And Faith has five underscores and the one that I noted in particular was the HCP having an excellent score of 50. The next best is 38 which belongs to the second rated Aldaya and then there was a gap down to 13.

Aldayha had a posive Conn of 13.4 over the nearest 5.7 (which belonged to Hope And Faith) and, more importantly, the Lst value of 13.0 was significantly higher than the next best's 5.1.

Looking at the ratings for this race it was clear that both the top two rated were strong enough for a dual selection and that there wasn't anything else standing out to make a third strong candidate. Furthermore, it seemed that both of these had to be selected rather than one one of these.

That was the theory. Hope And Faith went off at a decent 5/1 and came in fifth whist the second rated Aldayha was the evens favourite she came in third less than a length behind the winner. As before, nothing wrong with these selections.

The Outcome

On the day I had ten selections of which four won. The prices were 6/1, 5/4, 9/4 and 5/4 returning just 3.75 points profit at Industry SP.

The investigation of non-handicap races seem, at this point, to be valid if the data is good enough but one aspect that I am starting to have second thoughts about is the Conn field and this may, in future, be dropped from the selection process. As ever, notes will be made in my log book until I am happy with the overall picture.

I do hope that this overview was useful and of interest.