Last runs against one another can provide much needed info. For example say your horse ran a 3 or 4 length fourth behind Lotteria last start, over similar distance. Assuming Lotteria is not running today would it be safe to assume a similar performance today? Well i don't know it may depend on the indivual horse, but it certainly doesn't hurt your horses chances. I'd say "well that was a good run" and assuming no other major superstar horses are running today then it would be worth considering.

Really at the end of the day your trying to narrow it down to make your final selection. Quite often i will look for reasons why i think it won't win as well as reasons it will. Believe me their are millions of reasons to include and/or exclude your selection. Could be you weren't impressed with it's last run, the way it hit the line (finished the race), todays track and/or conditions or it could just be that another horse is on fire at the moment and you prefer it. Heck you may have your analysis perfect and some idiot jockey makes a ***** of the whole thing. Their are millions of reasons and/or things that can happen and at best we're all trying to figure them out. As i said earlier quite often we're wrong.

A personal preference of mine and quite a few others is to watch replays of the horses last couple of runs, particularly if i do not know the horse or did not see it's last run. This often tells me whether i think it has a good chance of beating the others in today's race and is really more of a judgement, personal preference or experience thing. I might add it is no certainty either. Some guys on here like to use speed maps and the like in order to figure out the early pace and form some kind of opinion on how the race will pan out. Someone like maverick1993 would be the man to ask 'cos i don't know a lot about it, but i do like to know whether my horse is a frontrunner or backmarker and so forth. However i am not overly skilled or knowledgable on this method/analysis. Speedmaps and such are more along the lines of form study as opposed mechanical systems and i'm not sure which one you're after.

You might want to check out TRB's website, as i recall they have several articles about doing form and things to consider etc. Anyway, even after all that i'm still wrong plenty of time (too many for my liking, LOL) and I'm starting to ramble now so i'll shut up.

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