First-uppers bamboozle me as well. I ********** a bit and go to the Wizard formguide to try to see if their previous first-up run is relevant. In the case of Close Encounter, Wizard rated his previous first-up run (beaten 0.4 lengths over 1200 on a good track at Kilmore) at 46.0. The best run of that preparation was his Flemington win 5th-up (56.0). If 56.0, plus a bit of age improvement, was his "expected peak" for this campaign, then his first-up run was going to be some 10kg worse than that. For the "weight ratings experiment", I penalised him 9kg and left him out. Looking back through the other results, I see that the first-up winner Super Elegant (Rubiton Stks) had at his previous preparation received his best rating first-up. If we ignore that preparation (because all 3 runs were on heavy/slow) and look at the previous one, his first-up rating was only 3kg below his best achieved for the preparation. So I wouldn't have docked him very much at all. I don't do weight ratings any more (except for the "experiment"-lots of fun and thanks to all concerned!) but on first glance it looks to me like Super Elegant would have been miles in front. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.