Here's the form of 7 horses from a past meeting.

Tab no.--Form

1--------x532
2--------x01x
3--------2613
4--------15x1
5---------122
6--------9x52
7--------x341

What can be concluded about the form of these horses? How do i compare each one against each other. What should I look for. Looking at the form the one's that i should be looking are the 4 and 7 and compare there past form over such as distance weifght and barrier.

Any thoughts.

Mad Gambler

Geez MG, how long is the proverbial piece of string. Their really are no hard and fast rules to this game. What works in one instance may or may not be transferable and replicated over and over. The inevitable falling over or break down over the long term of mechanical selection sytems is testament to this fact. However that is just my thinking and others will vehemently disagree.

Furthermore, (using your example) to say that horse 4 and 7 won last start and therefore should be the focal points of your efforts is also incorrect, again JMO. Ultimately form guides will tell you about past performance. It is then up to you to try and use this information to assess todays race in the hope of correctly ascertaining the winner. Sometimes you are correct and unfortunately sometimes not. But just because the horse won its last start does not mean it is going to beat Makybe Diva at a mile and a half today. Even if it is better off in the weights and has drawn a nice barrier. Obviously distance is more of a factor (IMO) as i would not expect Takeover Target to beat Makybe Diva in the Melbourne Cup. Extreme example but this is just to illustrate a point.

You should try and approach each race individually and evaluate each horse on its merits in conjunction with the factors you have mentioned and then some. As many as you think are applicable and experience plays a big part here too. And after all that you know what, you can and will find that you still made the wrong selection, but that's racing. But you'll learn quickly should you make a concerted effort. Then again i must admit i am a form student and not a system type guy. Either way i don't believe their are any shortcuts in this game, on that point i think we'll all agree. I'm sorry if this is not the answer you are looking for but i hope i have made some sense and this helps.

Best of luck.

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I like Bing Lee.

Thanks Mad. It has been most enlightening. I will seehow I go this weekend with my study.

By the way what other factors should i consider. I thought of using each horses form when they last raced each other as a yard stick, but i could be wrong about this, but i give it a try anyway.

Mad Gambler

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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I like Bing Lee.

You might like to consider class? The worst formline might be from a horse who was running against stiffer competition. Also No. 2 might have an 80% first up strike rate regardles of the fact that the form reads x01x [the 0 first up might have been on a slow track and the horse only perprms well on good..

A big thing to consider is average earnings [a good average class indicator] before then looking at all the other things like distance, track and conditions form etc. Weight is also important. Is the topy a weight carrier? Will the bottom weights go any faster due to a light weight [not necessarily] ?

Formline by itself means jack.

Hi Crash,

I was wondering if you could tell me how do you use a horses Average earnings as part of your form analysis.

Occasionally you hear stats about the top three ranked on Average earnings giving you a large percentage of winners or similar type things. Do you use it in this way.

Thanks

If this helps....

Let's assume that all horses are similar class horses for a moment and are running over 1600m with performance at that distance (win or placing).
Those issues have to be left aside to give you any advice. (Also I'm assuming it's a good track.

The #4 and #7 are most likely to win, but will be very poor value.

The #2 is risky given it's last first up dismal failure.

The #1 and #6 are improvers so would be worth a look at odds.

The #5 is consistent and should be better odds given the two other last start winners.

Given the "all things being equal scenario" I'd be backing all three horses at value (1,5,6) and leaving the poorer value alone.

Unfortunately, it's never an "all things being equal" scenario also I do not know the odds offered, so can only give a historical trend impression.

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G'day Mad, You make much sense.
Strata

Chrome,
Under the circumstances you have laid out, I would pretty much agree with your assessment. but not with backing 3 runners unless at good odds which would be extremely unlikely if the circumstances you laid out were correct.





The first thing I do is write down the average earning for runners in a race [I bet on very few races so no big problem] from 1, the top earner down in order. I move on from there to recent form and class [up or down], weight carrying ability from the horses history for the topies. I'm looking here for wins at current weight in the class [or near it] now running in, but not necessarily at the distance. I then look for any training patterns which is often not so obvious [most of my bets are in 4yr. old and up races], Jockey's used, what was the horse doing this time last year and take especially note of recent over-spelling or freshening [2 or 3 runs then spell or freshen] which often indicate injuries.

From there on it's fairly straight forward handicapping but the average earnings really start to come into play when things are looking too equal elsewhere in the process. I hedge toward the better earner, especially if there is a noticeable difference. With a little dose of artistic divining for the particular circumstances of each race I'm handicapping and then working out an approx. 80% price-line for the main chances. Everyone has their own variation of my handicapping theme.

I sometimes get it right and can get reasonable odds but often I don't considering the variability of outcome in many races. If I can't get reasonable odds because my main selection is going to start favorite. I often then ignore the race if I consider the price too low for the field size or comp. involved and more often than not is is too low. Most of my bets are not on favorites but 2nd. to 5th. favorites as that is the area a fair price is more easily obtained :-)

Crash there are sites out there that give you this information without having tio work it out. So it should take you about 1 min to load and do this step so it shouldn't ever be a problem.