Lesson Number 12
The Essentials Of Handicapping A Race

 

Now that you know what handicapping is, and how the British Horse Racing Board handicap, it is time to take the next step and learn the basics of handicapping a race for yourself. The method for rating a race is a basic form of handicapping a race, and from now on will be the perfect preliminary to handicapping fully, especially if time is short. Never try to handicap a race quickly. If you only have time to do two or three races stop at that, rather than trying to do a whole meeting in a rush. When you rush you will miss important key points. Later on you can use the ratings and systems to find strong contenders, and then handicap these horses to get your pick quickly if you are short of time.

Initially, when choosing a race to handicap, I would suggest starting with a level weights race. This means that there are fewer variables to take into account. Look for race types that generally fulfill the expectations of form, with the first few in the betting market taking the win, you will usually find that these are the better class races. Finally, start your handicapping on races with twelve runners or less. It will be less daunting and you are less likely to get frustrated.

At the beginning, you want to make sure that you know the races entry conditions. You may already know these as, following on from last week’s lesson; you may only be looking at certain races. But, if you don’t, then make sure to find out what they are. When you handicap make sure you have plenty of paper to hand, and make notes for each race, because there will be a lot of information going around, and if you haven’t made notes then by the end you will be struggling to remember which the first pieces of information you found where! Take note of the going, and any changes to it that have taken place since it was officially reported. You can get updates on the Racing Post website. It is also a good idea to get a weather report for the day so that you can see if the weather on the track you are handicapping is likely to change. If it is then the going may change, and the possibilities of the horses may change. Notes next to a horse such as ‘if going becomes Good to Heavy then could be a leader’ can be very useful during the day when you are betting.

Once you know the conditions of the race and track we then move on to assessing the form of the horses. There are many ways to do this but the most common are:

• Assessing each horse individually and then comparing the runners to see which is most favourable;

• Looking at the type of horses that normally win this race type, and assessing which of the horses running most closely fits this profile;

• In a handicapped race, looking at the official ratings and seeing which horses have a desirable or undesirable weight.

It is completely individual as to which will work for you, but they all start the same way and the following approach can be used on any of them. If you have the time, you could of course handicap all three ways, see which horses come out most favourably from each, and make you assessment based on this. I will demonstrate a combination of the various methods.

To start we want to remove horses that are unlikely to win the race. The best way to do this is using the ratings method that you learnt in lesson 1. Once you have rated the horses, see which horses are likely to be able to make an attempt at winning the race, and put a mark next to them. Having already done some research you will know the type of horses that normally win this type of race. Are these type of races always won with horses that can run at a certain speed?  Is there a trainer, who regularly wins these races, with one of his horses in the race? Etc., etc..

Ideally, you want to be left with no more than three contenders for the race. If you have more than three contenders then it is up to you whether you carry on handicapping the race, and put a mark on it to remind you that it is going to be particularly competitive, or whether you move on. Doing this is a very good way to use your time to its maximum efficiency if you don’t have much of it, as you will only be looking in detail at races that have three serious contenders. Races will sometimes be won by horses that are not in your contender list. This will happen for all sorts of reasons, but what we are looking for are strong contenders. If a horse outside of these contenders wins, then you were not to know, as there was nothing in its history that demonstrated it could have been a winner, but of course there will be next time.

Now that we have our contenders, we need to start looking at the form in more detail. The first thing to assess is whether any of our contenders are regular winners. Look at the past form and see if any of them have been winning regularly and make notes. If a horse has been coming in second or third a lot, but not quite winning, then open up some of its past races. Read the in-running commentary to see if it was bad luck, or if the horse is just not capable of making it into first position. When looking at past results, it is important to take note of the distances, tracks and going, to give you a full picture of what the horse is likely to prefer.

Take a note of how many days it has been since the horse last raced, and then go through its form to see how many days it usually has off before coming back to win a race. Also take note of what position it normally comes in at, when coming back from a rest that is similar to today’s.

Look at the horse’s ratings, different ratings will impact differently depending on the race. For example; a speed rating could be very helpful in a sprint race to tell you if the horse is going to make the pace. If it is, then a quick look through the form will show whether or not it gets to the front in sprints, and if both are true then we may have a strong contender. However, speed figures are going to be less important in race of 2m+, because if the horse doesn’t have the stamina, then it doesn’t matter how fast it is going to run.

When you have done an overall assessment of the contenders’ past races, it is time to look at whether the horse has blinkers on for the first time, or if it doesn’t have them on, but normally only wins when it does. It is also a good idea to have cursory glance at how far the horse has travelled. If the trainer has come from a long distance with only one horse, then there will be a reason. It does not necessarily mean that he thinks it will win, he may think that it will be a good race to get the horse into condition, but investigate it a little bit more to try and decide what has made the distance travelled worthwhile.

Lastly, you want to have a look at the trainers and jockeys. How good are their records with this horse and track?  Take into consideration which races the trainer and jockey seem to be better at winning. For example, a jockey with a good record at this track is likely to ride the track well. A good strike rate for a trainer would be anything at 16% or above.

Having completed all of these investigations, you should have narrowed down your three contenders to one. If there is still close competition, then you can consider dutching your selections or leaving the race alone.

This gives you a basic overview of the process involved in handicapping and how to use ratings to initially narrow the field. Over the coming weeks, I will be going into the individual aspects of form in detail to allow you to build upon your knowledge.

 

This Week’s Assignment

This week I would like you to go back to paper trading. I would like you to handicap one track a day, or six races that fit the conditions of race type that you are concentrating on. If you don’t have the time to do this, then do as many as your time will allow. Keep track of your profits and losses as well as strike rate. Then, if you were not able to watch the races, go to the Racing Post and look at the in-running commentary to see how the horses ran. Make a note of how closely they ran to how you thought they would. For any significant differences go back to the race card and see if you can find anything in the horse’s form that you missed that could have pointed out the way it ran. Ideally, if you have the time, play back the video of the race from the Racing Post website. We will continue to do this over the coming weeks, but with the added detailed knowledge of the different areas of form, you will be able to slowly build on your accuracy.