Betsy,

Carrying on from my earlier post....

The thing about ratings is there is no right or wrong way to do it. If it works, then that's the important thing.

With the weight rating method that I showed you, the difficult part is finding the 'base' rating run that you use to work out the horse's rating in today's race. In the example I showed you, I just used the horses' last runs. That's by far the simplest method and it worked in the example I showed you, but there are many other ways of doing it. You could take the best rating from the horse's last 2 or 3 runs. Or an average of the best 2 ratings from the last 3 runs. Or the best rating recent run over this distance. Or the best rating the horse has achieved over this distance in the last 12 months. Or the best rating at this track and distance. There are any number of alternative runs that you could use as the 'base' rating.

Now, some people will then also add small bonuses and penalties to that base rating figure based on things like: Jockey, Barrier, Days since last start, Record at Track/Distance, Consistency etc etc. It's up to you if you want to do that or not. As I said before, whatever works is best. Anyway, once you have your base rating, then as I said in my earlier post, you simply subtract the weight the horse is going to carry over the minimum weight in today's race (remembering to take apprentice claims into account).

As far as pricing the runners go, I've actually gone into this a few times recently, but I'll mention it again if you wish. This is the method I use. I have a table which I use to convert each horse's rating to a score out of 100 based on how many kgs I have them behind the top rated horse. Here's the table I'm using:

Top rated horse = 100 points
0.5 kgs behind = 87 points
1.0 kgs behind = 75 points
1.5 kgs behind = 65 points
2.0 kgs behind = 57 points
2.5 kgs behind = 50 points
3.0 kgs behind = 45 points
3.5 kgs behind = 40 points
4.0 kgs behind = 36 points
4.5 kgs behind = 32 points
5.0 kgs behind = 28 points
5.5 kgs behind = 24 points
6.0 kgs behind = 20 points
6.5 kgs behind = 17 points
7.0 kgs behind = 14 points
7.5 kgs behind = 12 points
8.0 kgs behind = 10 points
8.5 kgs behind = 9 points
9.0 kgs behind = 8 points
9.5 kgs behind = 7 points
10+ kgs behind = 6 points
11+ kgs behind = 5 points
12+ kgs behind = 4 points
13+ kgs behind = 3 points
15+ kgs behind = 2 points
20+ kgs behind = 1 point

Now, using that example of Race 5 at Donald which I showed in my earlier post, here's what you'd do. First allot each horse points.

1 Rtg 59 = 0 kgs behind = 100 points
2 Rtg 59 = 0 kgs behind = 100 points
3 Rtg 48 = 11 kgs behind = 5 points
4 Rtg 43.5 = 15.5 kgs behind = 2 points
5 Rtg 34.5 = 24.5 kgs behind = 1 point
6 Rtg 53 = 6 kgs behind = 20 points
8 Rtg 46 = 13 kgs behind = 3 points
9 Rtg 45 = 14 kgs behind = 3 points
10 Rtg 54 = 5 kgs behind = 28 points
11 Rtg 31 = 28 kgs behind = 1 point

Now, you add up the points of all the runners and you get a total of 263. Next, divide 263 by each horse's score and do a bit of rounding up or down and you've got your price for each horse:

1 263/100 = $2.65
2 263/100 = $2.65
3 263/5 = $52.60
4 263/2 = $131.50
5 263/1 = $263.00
6 263/20 = $13.15
8 263/3 = $87.65
9 263/3 = $87.65
10 263/28 = $9.40
11 263/1 = $263.00

There you go. Hope all that helps in some small way.