How to use the Race Analysis Report

The latest recruit to the geegeez stable is a form-based overview tool, designed to help you see which horses might be best suited to today’s conditions. It’s likely to work best in decent-sized handicap fields, just the sort of races where we’ll get paid at a price if we’re smart enough to spot the winner!

The Race Analysis Report (RAR) can be found on the ‘Race Analysis’ tab within a race, selected from the ‘Racecards’ menu item:

Choose your race…

OK, good, now you’ve got the RAR open (by clicking the ‘Race Analysis’ tab), what on earth does it all mean?!

As you can see, the RAR has lots of red, amber, green, and grey boxes. Let’s first cover off the actual report content, and then discuss the meaning of the colour coding.

The report shows, at a glance, the past performance (since 2009) of each runner against today’s conditions: going, class, course, distance, and field size. It also shows today’s official rating and how that compares to the horse’s last winning rating (assuming he’s won a race).

The class, course and distance will never change and therefore those columns are fixed. However, the going and field size can change, depending on weather and non-runners, so there are drop down boxes to allow you to update those columns accordingly.

You will also notice a radio button top left: this defaults to win, and shows the information related to the horses’ winning form. There is also a ‘place’ button which, when selected, displays the horses’ win and placed form against today’s conditions.

The colour coding is as follows:

Grey – horse has run no races against this condition. For instance, has never run in this class or has never run on this going.

Red – horse has a win record of 0-15% on the win tab, or a place record of 0-25% on the place tab

Amber – horse has a win record of 16-32% on the win tab, or a place record of 26-50% on the place tab

Green – horse has a win record of 33% or more on the win tab, or a place record of 51% or more on the place tab

In the above example, ignoring going, we can see from the course column that only two horses have run at this course, and one of them, Gold Beau, failed to win his sole start; while Salvatore Fury has won one of his two runs at the track.

We can also see – pretty much straight away – that no horse has an especially compelling win profile for the race, with a sea of red and grey, and just a few spots of green. Let’s try the place tab:

This time there’s a lot more amber, implying horses have a middling place profile when their form since 2009 is compared against today’s race conditions. Both Salvatore Fury and Gold Beau now look more interesting. In truth though, this might not be a great race to be getting involved with, with so many having some ticks in boxes but nothing standing out.

Let’s have a look at the result anyway:

Hmm, 1st and 2nd. Perhaps not so bad after all..!

As you can see, Gold Beau beat Salvatore Fury, which is great. To be honest, though, that was not really a race in which I’d have been tempted to bet on the balance of the data, as nothing really stood out.

Here’s an example where there’s a much more interesting proposition:

Rocket Rob looks good here

We can see in this example that Rocket Rob looks a very strong place contender, with a phenomenal place record at the track (Sandown) and a very good record in this grade. He’s also managed to place in 15 of 31 runs at this five furlong distance, and had placed in a third of his eighteen runs on today’s going. Despite a slight reservation about the field size, he has a very robust chance on the figures.

Here’s the result of that race:

Another winners for RAR

Rocket Rob bagged the spoils at odds of 5/1.

Now, of course, the RAR is not meant to be the ‘be all and end all’ of your form study. No, whilst you can use it as a short cut to find a likely runner if you’re pushed for time, it’s real value is in highlighting horses which – all other things being equal – have a solid chance today.

These shortlisted nags can then be further reviewed using both the ‘Full Horse Form’ tab and the Pace Analysis tab (coming soon).