The string and its codes

The form string is the oldest figure on a race card and the one a reader meets first: six characters, most recent run first, one per run, with a dash for a break and letters for anything that is not a finishing position. It answers one question completely and four questions not at all.

Open the partner account What a figure cannot say

Sample spec

Runs in the string: six
Carries the position: 48 of 48
Carries the margin: 0 of 48
Cards defining the letters: 31 of 40

the stringThe finishing position of the last six runs, newest first. On the samples it carries 48 of 48 positions and 0 of 48 margins, distances, grounds or field sizes.

the markThe official rating, set so a field of similar marks finishes close together on paper. On the samples it moved on four of six runs, for a net change of 8 lb.

the allowanceThe correction applied to a standard time for the ground. On the samples the going allowance is worth 19.2 points at six furlongs, against 2.4 points for the whole weight spread.

Direct answerA form string is the finishing position of a competitor's 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 letters mark the runs that did not finish normally: F for a fall, P for a pull-up, U for an unseated rider, R for a refusal and D for a disqualification. It carries no distance, no ground, no field size and no margin.

The string is worth reading properly because it is the one figure on the card that is complete in what it claims. The mark is relative, the speed figure is corrected, but a position is a position. What the string does not carry is everything that made the position mean something.

How one string is written

Sample A's fourth runner has run six times. Reading the sample's own string from left to right - newest first - gives the following. The chips below are the string as the card prints it, with the letters kept distinct from the positions.

421F5–32

read left to right: 4th, 2nd, won, fell, 5th, a break of 60 days or more, then 3rd and 2nd from the earlier season

Three of the eight positions in the sample's longer string are inside the first three and two are letters. That is a good record on its face. The string cannot say that the win came in a field of six over a distance the runner had never tried, or that the fall happened at the last obstacle when it was still going well. Both of those are in the sample's notes and neither is in the string.

Sample A - the string against what it is read as evidence ofeight invented runners x six runs = 48 runs the string answers, on every one of the 48 did it finish, and where 48 of 48 was the run normal (letter or not) 48 of 48 the string is silent, on every one of the 48 over what distance 0 of 48 on what ground 0 of 48 against how many others 0 of 48 by what margin 0 of 48 so 48 runs are described by 1 kind of input and 4 inputs that decide what the position meant are absent 48 times

The codes, one at a time

Sample A - the characters the sample's cards use, and what each one records
Character	Means	Is a position?	Carries a margin?
1-9	finished in that position	yes	no
0	finished outside the first nine	partly	no
F	fell	no	no
P	pulled up	no	no
U	unseated rider	no	no
R	refused	no	no
D	disqualified	no	no
–	a break of more than 60 days	n/a	no
Eight characters	one records a position in the order of finish	1 of 8	0 of 8

Two consequences follow from that table. The first is that a letter is not a worse result than a low position, it is a different kind of result: the runner was in the race and did not complete it. The second is that a letter breaks the arithmetic a reader instinctively does with a string. Averaging positions across six runs when two of them are letters is averaging over four numbers, not six.

Six characters, and the seventh run that falls off

The string is a fixed width. In the sample it holds six runs, which means the seventh most recent run is gone from the card the day it happens. A runner with twenty runs behind it is represented by six - 30% of its record - and a runner with six runs behind it is represented by all of it. Two strings of equal length therefore carry very different amounts of information, and neither the string nor the card says which is which.

Read the string left to right and count the runs, not the characters: a dash is a gap, not a run.
Separate the positions from the letters before averaging anything, and say how many positions you averaged.
Ask what the string cannot answer: the distance, the ground, the field size and the margin are all outside it.
Check whether the card defines its own letters. In sample G, 31 of 40 cards define them and 9 do not.
Treat an unreasonably perfect string as a question about the fields it was recorded in, not as a measurement.

The card's half of the job. In sample G the form string is printed on 40 of 40 invented cards, and 9 of those 40 print it without saying what the letters mean, which makes the string readable only to a reader who already knows the convention. The industry convention is what this page describes; the count is the sample's.

Where to go next

The mark and how it moveswhat the handicapper does with the same six runs How a speed figure is computedthe same runs, measured by time instead The ground the time was run onwhy the same position can mean two things