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The 8 Point Plan

By Richard Hartley Jnr.

 

One angle that I've been working on for a long time addresses the problem of analysing horses which race in the city after winning or being placed on country or provincial tracks.

It was many years ago when I first began noticing just how many nice-priced winners, which had been winning and placing on minor tracks, lobbed in the city.

How, I wondered, could I find the RIGHT ones on which to place my hard-earned brass? For one reason or another, I was never able to look adequately at the problem. Until recently, that is.

I set out to devise a set of ratings that would tell us if a horse was likely to be competitive in city races.

THE KEY IS FIFTY

After many hours of research, I came up with 8 key points to be considered. If a horse cannot reach 50 points, it has to be considered a risk in the city. However, at 50 points and more, then it becomes a definite city prospect.

I started out on the premise that a country or provincial horse had to be CONSISTENT in those aspects; otherwise its city prospects would be somewhat dim; in most instances, anyway.

Also required are good form, recent form, good trainer, good jockey, and so on. Much of the oomph in the 8 Point Plan relies on these important factors; especially form, with an emphasis on winning form.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FORM

Let's say you are looking at a city race. There are, say, four runners which are coming into the race with a series of performances behind them on country or provincial tracks. Your task as a form assessor is to decide if they can be competitive.

The only way of doing this is to study their PAST to determine their FUTURE. My thinking is that if they can't run well on minor tracks then why should we expect them to do any better on a city track?

My first requirement is a good win strike rate, nothing less than 25 per cent. That's a one-in-four strike rate. The higher the win strike, the better. (That win percentage can, of course, include city and non-city wins.)

Winning form is the next requirement. The more wins the better, of course, and if they were last-start and second-last-start wins, then even better still.

HOW FAR THEY ARE GOING TODAY AND HOW FIT THEY ARE TO MANAGE IT?

The distance factor is another requirement. We should always demand that any horse we back should have winning form over the distance of a race to be contested; otherwise we are shooting in the dark and trying to predict the horse will do something it's never done before. Fitness is a key point in any approach, be it a system or plain form analysis with a ratings application. Unfit horses don't win. Fit horses win.

That doesn't mean a horse isn't fit if it resumes, say, from a break of up to two months. Horses freshened like this return fighting fit to the racetrack. It's when the break goes beyond 60 days that fitness becomes a worry. Ratings figures in my approach are given for trainer and jockey. This is a subjective part of the process, but most of us know whether a trainer can be rated good, bad or indifferent and the same goes with jockeys and apprentices.

Your view may be different from mine, but in the long term I would expect most of us to come up with much the same 'strike rate' for allotting the ratings numbers for trainers and jockeys. It evens out.

Follow the ratings rules I have set out and I'm sure you will be able to quickly find which horses from the non-city areas are worth supporting in city races.

THE 8 POINT RULES

To be considered, a horse's last run must have been on a non-city track, and the horse must have had at least 3 such starts in its last 5 races.

(1) A contender must have a strike rate of 25 per cent or more.

(a) 25 to 35 per cent 15 points
(b) 36 per cent upwards 20 points

(2) For each country or provincial win in the last 5 starts, allot 5 points.

(3) For a last-start country or provincial win, allot 10 points and an extra 5 points if the win was in the last 14 days.

(4) Days since last start:

Apply the following points:

(a) Last start within the last 14 days 15 points
(b) Last start between 15 and 21 days 10 points
(c) Last start between 22 and 60 days 5 points

(5) Ability at the distance: Allot the following points:

(a) 2 or more wins at distance of current race 10 points
(b) 1 win at the distance of the current race 5 points

(6) Good trainer 10 points

(7) Good jockey 10 points

(8) Pre-post betting market. If the horse is:

(a) Favourite or 2nd favourite 10 points
(b) Or, 8/1 or under in betting 8 points.

 

Practical Punting - January 2001

 

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