G'day Steven,

Have noticed for quite a while now something about ratings for horses on real bush/goat tracks.

By real bush tracks I mean ones like Thangl and Emerld in Qld and other real obscure tracks in other states.

Sometimes a horse will end up toprated at a country meeting due to one high rating from a goat track somewhere.
Invariably they perform like the dogs they really are.

Every day I manually check the form of all the horses I call my selections.
If I have a selection at a country meeting and it is top rated due to a good goat track I ignore it
I have never regretted it once in the months since I noted what was happening. Sometimes the discrepancy is laughable. They can get one 55 rating from a goat track somewhere when there best ever rating from a TAB country track is 44 or 45.

The times from these tracks are obviously suspect. They probably use the grandstand clock, if they have a grandstand.

In my humble opinion it would be better to not even include the form from these non TAB meetings when the times are so misleading.

Oh yeah, while I am at it I have noticed you are giving a lot of hefty bonuses to horses from your review of trials.
A lot of 4s and 5s. I would have thought a 5 would be for something like dead cert beaten by luck or something.
Trials are just trials. Trainers can do anything in a trial. A 5 bonus on this basis seems to me to be a true shot in the dark.

The above are observations, not criticisms. I know you have you own point of view so take this as feedback.
I get around what I see as the above problems by manual adjustment.

My results lately have been pretty good. Have never been so confident in the BS/PPFA ratings using my methods.

Still on holiday so have had a bit of time to do stuff.
When I retire (soon) I will have the time to really devote myself to the job of beating the bookies.  




_________________
Bren250

Hi Bren

The "goat" tracks form is usually seen at tracks like Yeppoon, Townsville etc and its relevent to that type of form, these runs dont hold up when they race in better meetings soi its a non issue, many have won at big prices coming from Emerald, Thangool etc at meetings where that form is obvioulsy applied to most of the runners, you will rarely find anything with Thangool form rating at Doomben etc,  The times are applied evenly, are there some strange runs and ratings, absolutely, but overall, far more on the + side then the - side (last 2 weeks has seen 10-15 winners in the RMWD box at over 40/1 and some of these have been in the poorer type races discussed above)
The Trials have provided many winners over the last few months, what I give them is based on what i see, they may run last in the Trial but it was the best run, it is also needs to be taken into account that just because they are give 4 or 5 it doesnt mean that they will figure in the ratings anyway.
The value applied in the Trial has different significance than when applied to race run  eg  5 in a Trial will not have the same impact as 5 applied the a run especially when the runner is returning from a spell, it has had a big penalty applied for not having had a run therefore the Trial bonus only absorbs part of that penalty, if the runner then has 1st up form then additional bonus is applied which hopefully will bring the runner into calculations but this is not always the case. (EG Buttido was given 4.8 for winning a trial by 5L in fast time, didnt rate in top 4 , close up and a lot closer than without the 4.8, that is the main objective, get the runners in hopefully the best possible order, trials and trackwork are a part of all that)
Trackwork has similar application although many of these runners are race fit and if I spot something that is working above average I am happy to apply a bonus which is generally between 3.5-4.5   eg if something runs better than 36 for its last 600m at the end of a workout this generally indicated that this runner is in fine fettle and ready to run a good race, agin this may no necisarily bring this runner into the ratings but the information is available and those that get the databases have this and can use it how they see fiit.  There have been several cases where I have backed runners that dont rate but the comment indicates its ready to run a good race, if the odds are available happy to jump on  ( EG The Scumpa a few weeks back, rated 5th but gave it a wrap in BB and at massive odds, happy to speculate on it)
I rarely do anything just for a "shot in the dark"  we punt with these ratings therefore I never take anything lightly especially if it could cost me an opportunity to get a big result.
all the best and thanks for the feedback

steve