Season Starts Here!

[Spook]

Yeah.... interesting one that, and it's vexed me a couple of times.

The theory says that you're assessing the standard of the race not the horses in order to establish variance, but then the standard of the race is represented by the horses competing in it.

I've tended to use the race description as there's always the possibility that there is a concealed performer in there lurking off a lower weight who the handicapper hasn't caught up with. And I'm too lazy to flick down a field. The handicap mark is only one persons opinion based on a career snapshot, and a top weight winning for instance would probably be put up 4 or 5Ibs for his effort anyway and be a de-facto 103 or 104 by the time he crosses the line (even if it takes 5 days to confirm this).

It's up to you I'd suggest, but as is always the case, try where ever possible to standardise your approach so that you're applying the same formula to all your ratings. If you do too much pick n mix then you'll potentially start to damage their ability to transfer. Consistency is probably more important

[michael]

Spook
with ref to race or in my mind any race, would'nt it be sorted by what time the winner clocked to figure out what rating it deserved, which would mean going back to all previous races, and not what the handicapper thought it warranted, or have i got the wrong end of the stick.

Michael.

[Retroneous]

Originally Posted by michael

Spook with ref to race or in my mind any race, would'nt it be sorted by what time the winner clocked to figure out what rating it deserved, which would mean going back to all previous races, and not what the handicapper thought it warranted, or have i got the wrong end of the stick.

As the Spookmeister is away... - Spook is talking about the "Class Par" here rather than the outright rating. The class par is an adjustment to standard time based on how much quicker/slower than standard that particular group of horses SHOULD be racing.

So, if the standard is 57.80 seconds, and we tighten that up for 0-105 races (because we know they have a faster average or standard) by -0.20 seconds, our comparison time for that race will actually be 57.60. Whereas a 0-75 race may only require an allowance of -0.10 (as, by definition, they are slower horses), making the comparison 57.70.

Personally, I'd be taking a different tack to Spook and judging it based on the top-rated horse in the race, rather than the official race description or conditions. The simple reason being that consistency says that I'm not taking into account the "potential" finishing rating or other mitigating factors affecting the rating of a horse when calculating my numbers if he's running off 105 and topweight in a 0-105 race, so I (personally) don't think I should be when he's rated 98 and topweight in a 0-105 race, regardless of if he gets bumped a few pounds after winning by a distance.

I would base the ratings off a 0-100 par here as thats as close as I can get to basing it off his 98 rating. The difference won't be massive either way, truth be told, but that's how I'd do it and these are the things that produce the interesting little differences (whether positive or negative) in everybody's ratings

[The Duke]

As long as you keep your methods the same then it doesn't really matter which class par you allot, just as long as you are consistent in what you do allot in which case for Ken, he'd go on the rating of the top weight in the race...if you stuck to doing it this way and kept your methods the same for each race you'd get the same hierarchy we do just slightly different rating wise.