3 Main factors in horse racing?

[racingnovice]

Just a question to find out what people think are the 3 main factors in any given race.

[Top Rank]

I presume you mean the three factors in finding winners.

Who said there are only three?

I find picking the winners is something I have going OK, it is the staking and ultimately bottom line that I am trying to work out.

[racingnovice]

yeah 3 main factors in winners. I know its going to be different for every person. There could be 100 factors but 3 is a start :).

[kenchar]

FOR ME IT"S

ODDS ODDS ODDS:rolleyes:

[BJ]

The horse you backed.
The odds you got.
How much you had on it.

[Chuck]

class
form
fitness

[La Mer]

class
form
fitness

Spot on Chuck, the three most important factors by a long way.

[racingnovice]

oh thanks chuck first person to actually be serious. ;)

[BJ]

I was being serious. I don't look at class, form or fitness.....

[kenchar]

SO was I

[BJ]

SO was I

I don't doubt it for a second..... Odds are the most important thing... Without them, who cares about some old nags running around the paddock....

[kiwi]

class
form
fitness

Ok that's a good start.How do you evaluate them?

With odds they either match expectations or they don't.

[iamcool]

What about TAB number? (Sorry only being smart)

What about Jockey?

http://forums.ozmium.com.au/images/icons/icon6.gif

[kenchar]

Tab no's don't care.

Jockey, I have to be honest that's the only form I look at (if you can call it that ).
If I see a senior dwarf on a horse that has been ridden by the lower class dwarf in a mid week meeting the nose twitches a little bit and I look harder.

[kiwi]

Agree Kenchar, especialy if the senior jock has had some success with the horse previously

[La Mer]

Tab no's don't care.

Jockey, I have to be honest that's the only form I look at (if you can call it that ).
If I see a senior dwarf on a horse that has been ridden by the lower class dwarf in a mid week meeting the nose twitches a little bit and I look harder.

Why do you have to belittle others Kenchar? Using the the term of 'dwarfs' to descriibe jockeys just shows what an unintelligent and perverse person you are. If you can't respect those that a are major player in horse racing what the hell are you on about?

[kenchar]

Sorry La Mer,

Didn't mean to offend, but I just wonder why you haven't picked up this before as it has been said many times on this and other forums by many different posters.
I also promise not to refer to horses as nags in future as the mules might get upset.
Apart from all that isn't this forum great, the only thing that spoils it are people always knocking other people, and people not wanting to have a bit of fun and a laugh.
Life is to short to be serious all the time.
Have a punt.
Hopefully win.
BUT the most important thing is have a sense of humour, without that all is lost.
You might think I am sometimes crude and post some crazy things but that is my way and I have a great life and am very happy.
Again I apologize for calling Jockeys dwarfs as they are not, they are about 6 inches taller, so I am totally wrong.

Have a great night.:rolleyes:

PS I forgot to mention I do know a couple of Jocks and have called them a dwarf to their face and they haven't been offended.
The other thing is how do you know I am not 4ft 6inches tall and just slinging off like the irish do to themselves.

[iamcool]

Kenchar,

I am glad to hear you're happy and enjoying life, i am certainly enjoying these little skirmishes that you keep finding yourself involved in this evening. After all if you can't have fun in these forums than we may as well give it all away. As for being "perverse" as suggested by La Mer well you should know better, the correct term is midget and not dwarf - come on now you should know that much!

http://forums.ozmium.com.au/images/icons/icon6.gif

[shoto]

Kenchar,
I'm offended that you call nags mules. Hang on, it's calling the mules nags I don't like. (I think).

Seriously, about jockeys. There are good ones who might not have a high profile, or be regarded as "senior".

A good measure is to look at the jockey's average beaten margin over recent times - maybe the last 6 months, counting horses that ran say within 10 lengths (can't blame the jockey if the mule was a donkey). You can identify the jockeys that have skill and judgement without relying on their profile.

[iamcool]

So at the end of the day what are we left with re: three main factors in horse racing?

1. Nags
2. Dwarfs or midgets
3. {To be decided}

Happy punting to those involved tommorrow
http://forums.ozmium.com.au/images/icons/icon6.gif

[kenchar]

Not me, saturday is the day off, pools too big and too much mug money to follow what's going on.:confused: :confused:

[Chrome Prince]

How about Toowoomba, Kembla Grange and Kyneton ;)

[kenchar]

CP, I have tried Toowoomba and Belmont with not much success, same as Warrnambool, I have never had much luck there so always give it a miss.
Sat has shown to be my worst day, so have a break and usually go out with missus and kids. Today they are going out with friends so will just follow something, which is still a break as no pressure on me.

[davez]

the previous comment about senior jockeys riding out bush carries plenty of weight, i often spy one g. childs make a trip out to the country for 1 or 2 rides when theres a decent meeting on, & he usualy does the right thing often at good odds, from memory the last was in a cups race @ $6's, how it started at this price has still got me scratching me noggin.

as for 3 main factors, there far many more than that but i offer -

1. understand your class systems & how the nags, woops, horses move up & down thru them.

2. dont spend too much time worrying about weight.

3. look at your results & see which tracks, trainers & pygmies are working for you - you can often find an angle but establishing your own stable of "smart" trainers & jocks.

anyway these are but a few of the things i look at which regularily throw up good priced winners

[kiwi]

hey Davez i like the stable idea, can you give us some more of your wisdom?

[kenchar]

Not betting today just following ( very happy I'm not the way nswtab site has been dropping out again ) but something showed up in my normal method in syd6 and I would like to explain so maybe some of can get the idea what to look for. No9 Rockin Roller opened IAS at$61 backed into $31 On sportodds was $51 win $8.5 place fixed odds on qldtab was $37 win $7 place, nswtab$16win and $3 place, NOW THAT GETS THE NOSE TWITCHING, the only horse backed on IAS and why so short in the home state, couldn't help myself and had a small bet
It can be done and done well, but is very tedious as sometimes long time no bet.

Cheers

[xptdriver]

How about Toowoomba, Kembla Grange and Kyneton ;)

Gday Chrome

I hope you aint havin a go at these illustrious meetings... :) They seem to be where I make my money on a Saturday... Kembla and Newcastle... look for Waterhouse O'shea and company to sneak the odd horse to these meetings then get in the que...I have just backed an $8 winner at Toowoomba, and bugger me, they paid me with the same currency they paid me for the $4.80 Group winner at Morphetville..or the $7.30 they gave for Amex or the $9.70 for Sanfranfrisco... I always say A winner is a winner no matter where ya find it..

I think it is great that we now have a Country NSW TAB meeting of a Saturday... went ok there too today.. Metro winners are way too hard to find on a Sat for my liking... altho I went ok at the coast today.. hang on metro meeting... prov track... gotta be something in that...

[xptdriver]

hey Davez i like the stable idea, can you give us some more of your wisdom?

Gday kiwi...

I like the idea of following some trainers... I like ones that do not have huge numbers of runners, I think you would go broke backing ALL Waterhouse or Hawkes runners in the long term or for that matter any of the big stables..... no doubt someone will throw some light on that... There are a couple of trainers worth looking at the the moment.. In Victoria DK Weir is going great guns as is M Kent.. You could do way worse than to have a look at these blokes runners... Freedman sneaks plenty of maidens out to the provs for an easy kill on a regular basis and is pretty successful..... In NSW Mark Mason and Craig Martin are very impressive and are definetly worth a look.. There is a bit of a drawback with these guys they quite often compete against each other, which can make it interesting..

Earlier in the thread a contributor mentioned not worrying too much about weight... I am not so sure about that... To my mind any thing over 57.5 or 58 kg is starting to get a bit risky.. but each to their own...

[davez]

hey Davez i like the stable idea, can you give us some more of your wisdom?

not to sure if i can impart too much wisdom here kiwi as i find it to be a very rare commodity when it comes to racing, but all i TRY to do is look for a trainer placing his horses in the right company, something that i think only a handful in each state manage to do consistently well, probably due in some part to the owner(s) thinking the nag is better than it is - "of course he's up to sat class", unfortunately for them not in this lifetime.

& as mentioned forget about the giants such as waterhouse, hawkes, etc, not too sure if their contribution to racing is in the long run a positive one, just look at the state of sydney racing.

trainers i am watching at the moment esp with an eye on the brisy carnival -

gerald ryan
robbie laing
george reid
garry newham

[Chrome Prince]

Trainers do have unique ways of doing things, and by going back over hundereds of horses, a pattern does emerge. Most trainers do it pretty similar, but one or two have unique patterns.

Bart Cummings for example, will send his horses out, even if they're not performing, just to get the miles into their legs and strip fitter. He will often give them a giant rise in class and then drop them back in class the next run and again the next.

A classic case is El Mirada.

El Mirada went from the G1 AAMI Stradbroke where he did nothing, to 14 days later the Group 111 Mercedes-Benz where he won, and again he was dropped in class to a Listed another 14 days later where he won again. Then he stayed at G3 level but never won that preparation again.

This is not an anomoly with the horse, Bart does this a lot. And you can get great value if you can pick it.

[La Mer]

hey Davez i like the stable idea, can you give us some more of your wisdom?

Just as a follow on to Davez's response, not so sure that the stable idea is the ideal why of doing things. Following trainers like Waterhouse and Hawkes is fraught with danger, plenty of winners but plenty of runners as well, sometimes multiple runners in the one race and given the runners these stables have, so easy to miss one or two and we know that it's the ones missed that are probably the ones that win.

A better idea with trainers is perhaps to second-guess their intentions. I do this by watching which horses are being entered for what type of races, in particular horses that are scratched on a regular basis. You would be surprised how many winners can be found by tracking these type or horses.

Two examples today of this were in race 4 @ Geelong and race 3 @ Echuca.

In race 4 @ Geelong, the winner Nambia came from leading Flemington based trainer Brian Mayfield-Smith. It was having only its second race start having finished second in its only other race @ Bendigo back on 15 April. However since 8 April it had been entered in five races and scratched from three, including a race at Kilmore nine days ago. In all of the three races in which it had been scratched the track conditions were rated as good, so for whatever reason, it hadn’t been scratched because of track conditions.

For mine, the trainer was trying to find the ‘right’ race for the horse and he found it today at Geelong.

The winner of race 3 @ Echuca was Paridisally, trained by Grant Dalziel at Cranbourne, a four year old mare having her first race start.

You’ve got to wonder why a Cranbourne based trainer would go all the way to Echuca on a Sunday to give a four year old mare its first race start, more so, given that he has scratched her on three previous occasions in last fortnight.

Again, for mine, another trainer trying to find the ‘right’ race for his horse.

[kiwi]

Thanks guys that is all useful info for an NZer betting on Auzzie racing.

Some of the trainers you have mentioned I havn't considered before.

I think the classes are simpler to follow in N.Z.It is quite easy to measure a drop or improvement in opposition.You also find there is not a great difference between provincial and city racing.

Reading the trainers intentions is an art form I will need to develop as i gain an understanding of which are provincial and country courses.
Paddy posted a useful thread on that subject