Suitable Race Conditions Wins The Races

Or should that be: Do suitable race conditions win the races?

There are, oh I don’t know, thousands of different ways to find a winner and thousands of criteria you could look at as well to help you but what does it all boil down to in end?Amongst many other things, for me I think it is mainly:Do the conditions of the race suit the horse – most importantly the going?Can the horse be competitive in todays class?Will the pace of the race benefit the horse?Does the speed rating fit in with the par for the race type, age group etc;?Racing is a puzzle and that is what I love about it and the fact that you get a whole new set of puzzles to try and crack, every day! It isn’t about betting for a living or making thousands of pounds every year – not for me anyway. It’s about finding the winner and watching it cross the line in first place.Kaleidescope Eyes Won 20/1 at Ffos Las yesterdayI can’t say I found this 20/1 winner yesterday, or highlighted its chances to anyone but Kaleidescope Eyes was the only horse in blue in the 5.35 race. The only horse in blue, what does that mean?Okay, I have been posting some new types of cards on site for subscribers – just go to the Downloads link on the menu once logged in – and for the moment I am calling these ‘Prediction Cards’.

Any horse with a Total score of 6 or higher is highlighted in blue and Kaleidescope Eyes was the only one in that race. Despite only having posted a few days of races so far, that in itself is quite rare and Lord Melbourne also won yesterday at 9/1 with the top score in its race of 8.Take a look at yesterdays cards (1st October) to see what I am trying to do.What I am trying to do, is find out when a horse is suited by the conditions and highlight these a little bit easier than having to spend hours going through a hundered websites and pages of form.

We do of course already have some great methods at Inform Racing already, with the pop up form boxes on the race cards, the advanced search feature, system builder and more.I just thought I would try and find something a bit more visually appealing, and that is what I hope these cards can become – and it is very much a work in progress idea at the moment. At present it takes a little bit of manual effort on my part along with some neat automations to create these in about 20 minutes and I am only doing races for older horses in handicaps, with between 7 and 14 runners. These are being posted usually later in the morning but before the racing gets under way at least.

Additional update added 02/10/2025

Since my first post I have added some more info to the cards and have some insights into what seems to be worth looking for.

Below is an example card from today, all cards are posted onto Google Sheets. You can click the image to enlarge it.

You have saddlecloth number, horse name, draw. Then I have added the number of previous runs for each horse and the difference between todays Official Rating (OR) and the last winning OR for each horse, in the same race code, so Flat turf, AW, Chase or Hurdle.

This followed by the suitability ratings and labels to show if a horse has no issues (2pts), is probably ok (1pt), uncertain (0.5pts) or probably not (-1). Most horses with few runs either in total or for each category will show as uncertain.

Total scores are added up and highlighted if the score is 6 or higher.

It is difficult not to look at race card with scores and ratings and not want to only back those with good ratings. The idea for these cards was to try and make it visually easy to see if a horse is suited by todays conditions or not and if you also take into account the number of previous runs and OR difference, you don’t have to ignore a horse with a low score.

Of course I am not telling you what to do at all and you can use the info however you want to.

Some things that seem to be worth noting

I have  only been posting these cards for about a week, so there is absolutely minimal evidence to go on here, but it seems that looking at horses that have all blue scores, so either all no issues, probably ok or a mix of the two, could be a positive.

Bearing in mind all races are handicaps and only for older horses only, so 3YO+ minimum, it seems that the number of previous runs may be important. There are certainly unexposed horses that can come along, that have not had many races and their form of preferences are unknown and maybe in races where the other runners form is average, these are worth a check.

However, just yesterday there were 21 horses that were ‘all in blue’ with 4 of them winning, so a 19% strike rate. The number of previous runs that the four winners had were, 59, 47, 33 and 24. Of the losing ‘all blue’ horses, 11 had previously run less than 15 times before and 6 less than 10 times before.

If you ignored those with less than 10 runs – bearing in mind we are trying to find horses that suit todays conditions and it is difficult to know this when there is little evidence to go on – that would give a 27% strike rate. 

If you raised the minimum to 15, then that would give a 40% strike rate.

The 4 winning horses and sp’s were: Parisiac Won 20/1, 5 previous runs and +1 higher than last winning mark.Ahamoment Won 6/1, 33 previous runs and -1 lower than last winning mark.Elemental Eye, Won 3/1, 24 previous runs and ​on exactly the same mark as its last win.Bollin Neil Won 2/1, 47 previous runs and +5 to last winning mark.

Was it a one off good day following these horses? Very, very likely indeed, but they were all clearly suited by the conditions, had enough previous form in the book to rate them by and three of them were within just 1 of their last winning handicap mark.

By all means try these out for yourself but see if you can find any other situations where something is winning more than usual and try to find the reason why.

I have also noted that horses with ‘probably not’ in pink under the Form group, that are one of the first few in the betting forecast, haven’t been running well. And whilst I have colour coded these in betting exchange blue and pink, it is only to highlight a positive or a negative, not a ‘definite back or lay’.

Coming soon

My next job on these is to add a course and distance specific draw rating/label, which may take a little while.

As well as a rating for jockeys, as whilst the previous rides for a jockey on todays horse is counted within the General group calculations already, I think that a jockeys worth is well worth knowing.This came even more to light a couple of days ago when I was watching one of my daily selections, Pol Roger, finish second at 9/1 at Ayr. See the results here >>

So I know we place our bet and must just let be what will be and of course it isn’t worth moaning at the jockey if you think they didn’t give it everything. But we all do ​at sometime, especially when it looks like the other jockey in the head to head towards the line, is really trying harder than it looks like your is!

So I opened the system builder and did a quick look at the two jockeys in question. Lauren Young who got her horse home first and Rhys Elliott who was riding Pol Roger.

I have gone back over the past 12 months for these by dates but you could lokk at just the previous 6 months but you do need some amount of data to look at.First off you can see the stats for Lauren Young, with an excellent strike rate of 17%, where an average one would be around 10% or 11%. However, it is the A/E Actual to Expected figure that stands out at a huge 2.02, when most would be around 1.0 at best and anything above 1.0 is considered good.This A/E number takes all of the runs and calculates the percentage chance of the odds of the horses and this 2.02 shows that Lauren Young has performed twice as well as would have been expected on her rides.

I just ran Oisin Murphy ovre the past year and he has an A/E number of 1.2, so 20% better than expected, on about 9 times as many rides as Lauren Young.

Anyway, back to the stats for Rhys Eliott and his A/E is 0.66, which means he has performed quite a bit worse than would be expected given the odds of the runners he has ridden. 

Added to the less than 6% strike rate and you wonder if it would be worth looking deeper into the jockey and especially the A/E number, so that is what I aim to do as part of the on going plan.You can take a look at any jockey just using the two simple rules shown above and choose your own time period, just make sure you have enough previous bets to to go on.

​Summary

Hopefully these cards will provide another angle that you can use successfully and to access them just login to Inform Racing as a subscriber and follow the Downloads link on the menu.