Lesson Number 8
Understanding The Racing Post

 

The Racing Post is the UK’s leading racing paper. It is very important that you understand all aspects of both the printed, and the online versions, in order to make best use of it to assist you with your betting. In this lesson, I am going to concentrate on the Racing Post Online which you can get to by visiting www.racingpost.co.uk

I will guide you through all the information and how to access it there on the race cards.

You will initially be presented with this screen:

All of the major racing headlines are in the main window. On the top of the screen you have access to the cards, results and tipsters. Choosing Cards will give you a choice of races for the day. You can select a different date from the top if you require.

All of the data regarding the course can be found from the links shown in the red circle. These are very useful screens and you can use them as your first point of call when handicapping a race.

As you can see, under the name of the course and the date we have the information for the going. The going here is GOOD, next to this in brackets is the GoingStick rating. This is seldom referred to, but is actually what it says – a measurement taken by a stick that is pushed into the ground and then pulled backwards at an angle. This replicates a horse’s hoof going into the ground, and, together with observation, should be a much more accurate measure of the going. The next piece of information is the day’s weather report. This is critical to read as it is going to inform you of the likelihood of how much the going may change.

Then there are details of the course, followed by a list of the races happening there on the day in question. You can also click on the map of the course. The map shows us the course in detail.

There is a link called Statistics and this shows the Top Trainers and Top Jockeys.

These are quite self explanatory and give you a list of the best trainers and jockeys, their win rate, compared to races run at the course, strike rate and profit. This is further separated in to 2yo, 3yo and 4yo+.

The next button is Favourites, and this shows the strike rates for favourites at the track. This can be adjusted to flat and jumps and for different time periods. The results are again separated into 2yo, 3yo and 4yo+.

Signposts is next and this one can also give some excellent pointers. The first list that you get is the distance that trainers have travelled to get to the course. This is shown next to the horse that is racing and what time it is racing. You will also be able to see which horses have first time blinkers, and which have won a race in the last seven days. If time is short, it is sometimes possible to be able to focus in on a couple of horses here and then have a closer look at them on the cards.

Standard Times will give you information on the course record winning times at different distances, as well as giving you the Racing Post Standard winning times to allow you to compare.

If you find it easier to look at paper rather than a computer screen, but don’t want to buy the Racing Post paper then you can download and print out sections of it by clicking on PDF at the far right.

These pages are seldom looked at for long, but contain a wealth of information and should be your first stop. Write down any useful information such as long distances travelled, first time blinkers, winning favourites, top trainers and jockeys etc….. These can then be used when looking at the races in more detail.

Having looked at all of this information we then head to the main race card by clicking on the race that we are interested in.

The main race card page looks like this:

The above two screenshots show you the race card window. I have missed out some of the runners so that you can see the top and bottom halves of the screen.

You will see at the top where it says At-A-Glance-Card the type of card we are currently looking at. There are different views and I suggest that you look at all of them to find the one you prefer, the one displayed is my preference.

To the right of the card we have the ratings for the race. We again have the course, date, time and race name at the top followed by the Class. This is a Class 5 race and this data helps us to find any horses that are previous winners in this class or have raised or dropped class.

Next we are told that the race is a handicap hurdle for 4yo and older that is rated 0-95. This weight comes from a centralized handicap that is numerical.

The information goes on to tell us that the winner will receive £1,714, which gives us an idea of the level of Class 5 race that this particular one is. The header is followed lastly by a reminder of the distance and going (at the time of writing the card).

Last on the list is the number of runners taking part in the race. You should also note that if the race is going to be broadcast then the channel will be displayed here next to the prize money. These are RUK (Racing UK), ATR (At The Races) and CH4 (Channel Four).

Under the race card we have a selection of buttons:

The information provided by following these links requires that you have a membership to The Racing Post.

The Selections button brings up a list of all the tips and who gave them. Stats will bring up the trainer and jockey stats for all of the horses running in a particular race. My Notes is a very useful feature which allows you to make your own notes on the runners in the race, give them your own rating, SP and mark if it is a selection for you or not. This information will be stored and can be accessed when the horse next runs.

Underneath that we get the Diomed and Spotlight Verdict. This is a couple of sentences explaining what they think the race will be like, and highlighting their selection as well as dangers to the selection. You will only be able to see the Spotlight Verdict if you are a subscriber.

We now move on to the main information in the race card.

The form is read from left to right. We have horse with saddle cloth 1; next we have the form for the horses’ most recent runs. The form is the placing of a horse in the race, with the most recent race being on the far right. In our example, Knight Valliant fell in its last race, 0 in the race before that etc….

The form is followed by the horse’s name, which is followed by the amount of days since the horse last run. In this example, Knight Valliant’s last race was 84 days ago. Next, is the possibility of letters each containing a letter C, D, CD, BF (there are no horses with this in our example). These mean:

C   =   Course Winner

D   =  Distance Winner

CD =  Course and Distance Winner

BF =  Beaten Favourite (Last time the horse ran)

Carrying on across, next comes the age of the horse. Here, we have a 7 year old as we had already found out that this is a race for 4yo+ only. This is followed by the weight that the horse will be carrying, which for Knight Valliant will be 11 stone and 12 pounds.

We then have the trainers name followed by a figure called RTF%. This is the Racing Trainer Form Percentage. This figure shows you the percentage of a trainer’s runners that have run to form, based on the actual and the expected ratings in each race. It is the best guideline we have as to how well a trainer is performing. As you can see, Knight Valliant has no RTF figure but Samizdat has 50%.

Lastly we have the jockey’s name and in brackets the amount they are claiming. In Knight Valliant’s case the jockey is claiming 9 pounds which means that the horse will actually be carrying 11 stone and 3 pounds.

You can see there is a huge amount of information fitted into one line and it is important to take note and understand all of it. The more you read the form, the quicker you will be, and the more adept you will get at spotting things that do not seem quite right.

Sometimes you will also have information at the bottom of the card called the Long Handicap. You will not get this for every race. Because this race has a minimum weight restriction, some of the horses are over-weighted and this shows what their weight should be. This is very important to look at, and as you can see, Miss Sunshine is hugely over-weighted.

We are then informed of any extra information regarding the performance of the horse in its last race. This takes the form of a couple of sentences under the horses name.

Lastly, at the bottom of the race card we have the Racing Post’s Betting Forecast which shows what they think the opening odds will be in the market. This is not a forecast of who they think will win, but what the opening odds will be, and this is a difference that it is very important to know.

You can click on any horse on this race card in order to bring up a detailed history of that horse’s runs in a pop-up window. Knight Valliant, as an example, is shown below:

All of the information on the trainer, owner, breeder, age and history can be found. By clicking the names of jockeys, trainers, courses dates etc… you can access even more details with regard to statistics, entries, wins sales, charts and relatives.

Depending on your subscription level you can watch video replays of each of the runs of the horse. You can see the results of each race by clicking on the date. The notes link is available for you to see and add any notes you would like to. This facility is also available for the trainer and the jockey of each horse by clicking on their names in the race card.

This is an explanation of how to access the most important information that is shown on The Racing Post website race cards, you can get more than enough information without having to subscribe to the website.

I believe it is also important to know how they create their ratings. Ratings can be useful as we have already seen but, if you don’t know how they are created, then there is no way to apply them effectively. I have put below the descriptions of how the Racing Post Ratings, TopSpeed and Official Ratings are compiled. This description is taken from The Racing Post.

Racing Post Ratings (RPR) are merit ratings produced by a team at the Racing Post and are based on collateral form i.e. if horse A beats horse B carrying the same weight, then it will be awarded a higher rating. The ratings are expressed in pounds (lb) so a horse rated 140 is regarded as 10lb better than one rated 130. There is a more or less accepted sliding scale for converting lb to distance where 3lb = 1 length over 5f and 1lb = 1 length over 2m and upwards.

Official ratings use the same principles as Racing Post Ratings, but are compiled by a team working for the British Horseracing Board (BHB), and are used to determine the weights horses will carry in handicap ratings. In contrast to RPR, the BHB rating found for horses in the results reflect the horses’ ratings going into the race, and not what they achieved in the race.

Topspeed Ratings are based on race times, so horses recording faster times will achieve higher ratings. The ratings are measured in pounds like RPR, and aim to remove the effect of different going and weather conditions on the race times.

 

This Week’s Assignment

There is a lot to take in and understand in this week’s lesson. For the assignment, I would like you to go through a few race cards each day, and make sure you understand everything that is being said about the horses. Refer to this guide, and by the end of the week it should be almost second nature to you. If it is not, then you will need to keep practicing until it is. Once it has become second nature to you, then you will be able to start looking at the best way to use this information.