XPT,

These are the general rules we're going by:
Preferably Handicap races for open or older horses, preferably fields of about 10 -14 and preferably between 1200 & 2000m. They're not hard and fast rules, but that's generally what we'll be rating. Dr Ron also had a preference for Melbourne races when he came up with the idea, so I'll give a slight preference to Melbourne too when choosing the races each week. We will definitely be rating Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide down the track though.

Oh, another thing I like to look for is simplicity for people doing the ratings. For example, some might have thought that we could have chosen the Satellite Stks at Rosehill. One of the reasons I didn't was because there were two horses in the race which were dual acceptors and this could lead to confusion with scratchings etc. Same thing happened last week when I didn't choose R7 in Melbourne. That was because one of the main chances in the race was an emergency. It was duly scratched and I'm sure many would have had it high up in their ratings had we used that race.