The eternal question! I think it's average prizemoney won in the horses last three months RACING (exclude spells), with it's biggest payday deducted from the calculation.This tells you in one hit that the horse has been doing better than the others RECENTLY(or up until it spelled) and the numbers are not distorted by some fluke "big one". If that day was not a fluke then there were others to bolster the average.
The only proviso is that today's race must be a "suitable" distance and ......"suitable" prizemoney (ie at least it's average win amount). The reason for this is that we don't expect Makybe Diva to win at 1400 despite having an average far superior to the others. Likewise I don't expect a horse to be really "sent" to win a $25000 first prize when it's been cleaning up in million dollar races. That looks too much like "practice" to me and I'll wait 'til the trainer is serious.Cheers

rightly or wrongly i rarely use prizemoney as a definitive guide when trying to establish the class of a field or a runner, perhaps this is so because the majority of my punting is on the provincial meets & then usually on the weaker events, the lowly class 1 to 4's, with the odd maiden or 2 thrown in for fun.

so is there a difference in class between a $8k c3 on a tuesday at kyneton and a $7k c3 at hamilton on a sunday? yes, usually & no, not always. do i need to know the prizemoney values to work this out? no.

as i have mentioned a few times before anyone tackling these types of races firstly needs to understand how racing is conducted within each state that the punter wants to bet on, watch the movement of horses & jockeys within that region, look for the improvers coming thru & the trainer that can actually do his job, that being to place his horses in the correct company.

so what is CLASS? i duno, perhaps it is a mostly unknowable element of racing that we as punters rely on others to identify for us - the "others" being the trainer who knows what he is doing & the handicapper who isnt to harsh.

Class is the prizemoney won taking the average of the race field.

Example:

10 runners
Add up the api of all runners and divide by 10
The horse that wins ths race gets that figure - not the advertised prizemoney.

This should give you a better guide and allows you to allocate your own prizemoney figure based on placing all the way down to the last runner!

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When someone says "so-and-so is the class horse in this race", they usually mean one of two things; (1) the horse has proven outstanding physical ability (recently displayed or not) which sets the horse apart from the others, or (2) the horse is the only one in the field that is dropping back in grade from its most recent start.

Interesting idea, CP, but doesn't that only give you a figure for the winner of the race? What about the placegetters, or what about a horse that ran 2 lengths 6th in a Group1 event contesting an open hcp next start?

Hi shoto, it allows you to allocate your own prizemoney on whatever scale you choose according to the placings right up to last placing if you wish.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 413,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 31/01/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg