G'day all,

Been AWOL for a while,find this thread interesting and can't help but throw my hat in the ring here.
Baghwan,not nitpicking here but The Power of Ten was by Malcom Knowles,not Gary R.
Can't agree with the general concensus about weight being an irrelevant form factor.
Comparing examples with humans and trains is a futile exercise and has no relevance to the sport of kings.
Someone said there wqas no need for handicapping at all,let's see who the best horse is pound for pound.
That's why there is a handicapper,so the lower class animals can be competetive,class being the key word.
So looking at handicap races only,if a horse is going up in weight by 2kg or more,then the handicapper is obviously telling us it is down in class.
Obversely,if a horse is going down in weight by 2kg or more,he is telling us it is up in class.
So you have to ask the question about the one going up in weight,has it won or placed with this weight(or close to it)in the past?
With the other one,do you think it can handle the class rise?
Have to agree with Chrome,horses going up in weight win more races than those going down.
Also agree with XPT,a lot of them are duds and overbet,especially if last start winners.
As to the key word,CLASS,here is a method I have used with considerable success to determine the class runners in handicap races.
You will need a copy of the Sportsman to do this.
1)Go to the Zipform section
2)Handicap races only
3)Field size 10/14
4)Delete the lowest 3 horses in the average prizemoney column
5)Calculate a sum AVP total of the rest of the field
6)Divide this by the number of runners you have left(after deletions)
7)Once you have this figure,eliminate any runners in the AVP column that don't match or surpass it
8)Eliminate any runner that surpasses it by 1 fluke win in a good race
It,s not infallible,but once you have the class runners,you can do your form study from there.
I tend to focus on the top 5(if there is 5).
My filters are fairly stringent,maybe I'll post the actual method in it's entirety one day.
cheers