'Calls' in horse race? As long as they are racing on a totting track or greyhound track [set-up for it], no problem. At a lot of tracks you are flat out getting an '800m' call. Where they were at the 'turn' is as good at it gets on most tracks except the major metro's and where they were at the turn is everything to do with class of race, jockey's ability and/or luck in a race, track layout, conditions, distance, running style, and barrier draw to suit it [or not].

More sobering is to have a look at the form lines of many winners for their last 4 runs. There is often a lot of 5,6,7,8,9,0 in them due to many, many variables as previously mentioned in some posts here, that often have nothing to do with ability. I'd be more wary of 2 straight wins [a big rating figure for most stat. methods] in the last 2 starts than 2 unplaced runs. Like glue-on shoes, very few horses win with either attached to their names at their next start :-))

I think if a lot of punters put a 1/10th of their energy into learning how to handicap as they put into gathering 'stats' and trying to come up with winning rating systems [often over a LOT of years], they would already be ahead of this game. Sure, messing with numbers will bag you some winners [so will my aunt Molly throwing darts], but common ****** sense and a bit of reasoning, will come up with a lot more.

The stats mean diddly unless you KNOW the running style of the horse.

As always, it's what you do with the stats, how you apply them and more importantly how you understand them which leads to success or failure.

The problem is that the majority of punters base any findings on limited stats and misinterpret the findings.

Just have a look at some of the systems bandied round based on one or two longpriced winners or not enough data.

I would hazard to guess that less than 5% of the punters that do gather stats, know how misleading stats can be, UNLESS based on logic, large data samples and interrogated correctly.

200 races is not even close to providing accurate reflections, unless you have identified a trend which makes up more than 10% of the profit. (I say trend, not profit - meaning 10% of the runners are overlays).

There are ways to ensure that the system or stats is likely to be a hiccup or an ebbing/flowing short term result, or a longterm money spinner.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 420,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 30/06/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg

If you are looking for in running positions the Queensland racing website has a great pdf format racebook which gives 4 positions in running, also a handy head to head account of previous matchups.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 420,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 30/06/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg

Thanx to all the replies.


At the end of the day, I am just trying to get a rating of 1 to 10 on each horse's finish in a particular race. I'm not using this as a system to bet on, but more as a standard to grade each horses finish.

So for example:

800m 400m Margin Place
12 3 0.5 2

You could look at that horse and say: well thats a finish of an 8/10

then another horse will be:

800m 400m Margin Place
2 9 7.5 15

and you'd say: that horse had a finish of 3/10

Not sure if that makes sense or not, but it's that rating out of ten that i want to be able to find a fomula for so that it's a standard across the board??

If you'd like more information, my email address is: redfloyd1@hotmail.com

Cheers
Red

The formating is out, can't help that, so if you want email me, please do?