The questions, in full
The twelve questions a reader asks most often about the numbers printed beside a competitor, each answered from the mechanism rather than from a market opinion. Every visible answer below is rendered from the same array as the structured data on this page.
- Questions
- 12
- Answers rendered from
- one array
- Selections offered
- none
- Real products named
- none
Six characters, one per run, most recent first. A dash is a break of more than 60 days and a letter means the run did not finish normally.
A relative number inside a band, set so that a field carrying marks finishes close together on paper. It moves after almost every run.
A time compared with a standard time, corrected for the ground and the weight, scaled onto points by the publisher.
Usually six runs. In this desk's sample one runner's own six figures span 16.9 points.
Reading the three figures together
The three figures answer three different questions and are not substitutes for each other. The string says what happened in order. The mark says where a competitor sits inside its own band. The figure says how fast a run was once the conditions are stripped out. A card that prints all three is giving a reader one record, one relative position and one normalised measurement, and the useful reading is where the three disagree.
- Read the string for order, the mark for position in a band, the figure for speed - and never for a prediction.
- Ask which input each figure was computed from, and whether the card publishes it.
- Treat every one of the twelve answers below as a description of a mechanism, not as advice about a competitor.
Where to go next
The questions, in full
What does a form string mean?
It is the finishing position of the last six runs, written with the most recent run first. A number is the position, 0 means outside the first nine, a dash marks a break of more than 60 days, and a letter marks a run that did not finish normally. It carries no distance, no ground, no field size and no margin.
What do the letters in a form string mean?
F is a fall, P a pulled up, U an unseated rider, R a refusal and D a disqualification. A letter is not a worse finishing position, it is a different kind of result, so it should be set aside before any average is taken. In this desk's audit of 40 invented cards, 31 defined their letters and 9 did not.
What is an official rating?
A relative mark, on a scale an authority fixes, that a handicapper moves after each run so that runners carrying similar marks finish close together on paper. It is not an amount of speed: the same mark means different things in a 0-100 band and a 0-80 band.
Why does a rating change after a win?
Because a win is evidence that the previous mark was too low. In this desk's sample, one runner's mark moved on four of six runs, and a single win moved it 6 lb, which is three quarters of the whole six-run change of 8 lb. An unplaced run usually moves a mark less.
How is a speed figure calculated?
A run's time is compared with a standard time for the distance, an allowance is added for how slow the ground was, a credit is applied for the weight carried, and the result is scaled onto points. In the sample: a 6f standard of 70.00 s, an allowance of +0.32 s a furlong, an adjusted standard of 71.92 s, and a scale of 10 points a second from a base of 80.
What is a going allowance?
The number of seconds added to a standard time to account for how much slower the ground made the meeting's races. In the sample it runs from +0.08 s a furlong on good ground to +0.32 s a furlong on soft, which is a swing of 14.4 points over six furlongs and the largest single correction applied to a figure.
What is a standard time?
The time the publisher expects a race of that distance to take in average conditions on good ground. It is a table, not a measurement, and it differs from publisher to publisher. In this desk's audit of 40 invented cards the standard time was published on none of them.
How many pounds are in a stone?
Fourteen. Racing weights are written in stones and pounds, so 9-12 is 9 x 14 + 12 = 138 lb and 9-00 is 126 lb. The 12 lb between them is 5.44 kg, and at six furlongs on the sample's scale it is worth 2.4 points.
What does a 7 lb claim mean?
It means the rider is allowed to take 7 lb off the weight the horse would otherwise carry. The card weight is unchanged as the rating weight; what the horse actually carries is 7 lb less. On the sample's six-furlong scale that is 1.4 points - less than a tenth of what the going correction is worth in the same race.
What does a 0-90 handicap mean?
It means the race is open to runners with an official rating of 90 or below, and that the weights are set from the highest-rated declared runner, who carries the top weight. In the sample race, 40 entries produced 20 runners, and the ballot eliminated the rest at a margin of one pound of mark.
Why do two ratings for the same run differ?
Because the standard time, the ground allowance and the points scale are all chosen by the publisher. Two publishers using the same measured time honestly produce two figures that rank the runners the same way and disagree about every number. The same is true of two rating systems with different update weights.
Can a figure tell me who will win?
No, and this desk does not try. A figure compresses runs that are over. In its own invented sample the highest-rated runner finished third while the winner was rated fourth of eight, and the top-rated runner won 3 of 8 races, or 37.5%. Nothing here is a selection, a ranking of a field, a tip or a prediction.