Class help required

[Fourth Again]

Good Morning,

New to the forum here and in need of a bit of help.

I'm going thru the form of some country races in VIC and trying to do some basic ratings of the fields.

Have hit a bit of a stumbling block when I come across scenarios such as these,

Class 3 race, $11K 1400 meters country track.
Horse A last start in a 3YF HCP $50K city track on a SAT
Horse B last start in a Class 4 $9K country track
What exactly is the class diff between these two horses, I'm guessing that horse A is dropping in class, but is there any value or weighting method that can be applied as to "how much" the horse is dropping in class.

Another example and prob a more despairing one is this,
Open HCP, $ 15K 1800 meters country track.
Horse A last start in a 1MW-LY $20K City track
Horse B last start in a Hcp $70K City track
Horse C last start in a Class 6 $20K Prov track
I'd really like to rate my races, but cant really get stuck into it until I can get my head around horses going up and down in class and assigning values to such.

Any help would be appreciated greatly.

[jfc]

http://www.rsb.net.au/publishing/RBH/frmdefault.htm

Victoria now officially rates horses which suggests you no longer have to mess about with matching classes yourself.

Obviously you then have to make your own adjustments to these handicaps. For example a runner resuming still will be handicapped according to its official rating, so you might penalise it if 1st up ain't its strong suit.

[Silver_and_sand]

G'day mate,

Maybe my views are a bit backwards, but I usually ignore a race's class classification and look instead at the prizemoney on offer compared to a horse's last race to determine if it will be racing against a better or worse field than last time. Taking that into account, I would say in your 1st scenario that Horse A is taking a big drop in class, and will most likely be up in weight considerably given that it will theoretically be racing against a much poorer field compared to its' last race. I would interpret Horse B to be either up in class or the same, given that its' race is offering $2,000 more compared it's last race (which is fairly slight really) and as a result of racing against a similar to slightly better quality of horses this time round, I'd expect it to either have be carrying the same weight as last time, or have a slight drop in weight.

In the 2nd scenario, I interpret Horses A and C to either be down in class or the same, and consequently they should be carrying either the same weight as last start or slightly up in weight as they're racing against a similar to slightly poorer quality field than last time. Horse B is definately down in class and should be considerably up in weight given that it's racing a much poorer field this time.

So as a rule of thumb:

Drop in prizemoney on offer compared to last race = drop in class = rise in weight to compensate for the advantage of racing a theoretically poorer field
and
Rise in prizemoney on offer compared to last race = up in class = drop in weight to compensate for the disadvantage of racing a theoretically stronger field.

I can't help you with rating, or trying to work out how to value drops or rises in class. It's just not what I do. Others on the forum can likely give you some pointers there. I would suggest avoiding horses that are considerably up in weight; nothing more than say 2kg up from last start. I hope all that makes sense. Good luck, and happy racing.

Silver