Ubetucan Ubetido.

sweet with me sportz.

Where not playing for sheep stations are we. If Duritz wants in it is fine with me.

Good Punting.

Seeing the first week was done on such short notice and there was some confusion, maybe we should call that a trial and start over this week, and give a chance to a few late comers. Easy for me to say considering how I performed, but it's up to you guys.

Yep, it would be hard on someone like Brave Chief or The Mug, but not a bad idea I reckon.

No problem here peoples, its all a bit of fun for us all really...

but geez i was happy being 2nd.. hahaha

I am fine with any way at all. Quick post about first uppers - they are a nightmare. Better if we had the information like hong kong do, ie all trials and gallops and all work all published, as well as horse weights so you know if they've come back carrying too much weight. As it is, we're fumbling in the dark in Oz with 1st uppers. Some "proven" 1st uppers flop, and others who have stats like 5-0-0-0 1st up suddenly salute. The lack of certainty with them is why I generally avoid 1000m races, they are usually full of them, and why I always do better at the 1400-1600 races. Exposed form, you know where they're at.

Sorry not to be of more help, if anyone has the answer to the riddle I'd also love to hear it.

Duritz

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.

Yes that's true. I didn't penalize Super at all, he's a great horse who almost always performs, he carries weight and he was always going to be trying to win that race. I returned him his peak on my figs and that made him top pick. He prob didn't run to his best but close was good enough. Again, they are really a case by case thing I reckon. Using their last first up rating means you back a lot of losers, let me assure you of that, as they most certainly do NOT necessarily repeat again. One of Mark Read's comments in this respect is "out well, in well" and that does hold. (ie if they went out to a spell in bad form they come back in bad form, if they went out in good form, they come back in good form).

I'll let you ponder that one, grasshopper.

Duritz.

Well, what I've been doing is taking an average rating from the horse's last start and the horse's last first-up start, but I wasn't confident that was the right way to go. Going by what you reckon Mark Read said, perhaps it may have some merit?