This is a fascinating subject and here I hope to accumulate the combined wisdom of the forum. To start off the topic here are some useful links; The British Horse Racing (Handicapping) and WFA Understanding Handicapping (another perspective) - includes purchasable guide True Handicapping. Does anyone know of this guide? Handicapping Flatstats - Very interesting Goldophin Pricipals of Handicapping Simon Rowlands (Timeform's Head of Research and Development): How to use sectional times for profitable betting Betting Strategy: Simon Rowlands on time analysis Hopefully some useful debate and additional knowledge will follow.
The Handicapping Flatstats one is interesting as i do think that a horse going up the weights is less likely to win because of the weight rise... But i do think that its a matter of has the horse now got to a weight that will stop him/her from winning... Take Hunt Ball - i know its a NH horse but its the only one that comes to mind... - the weight kept going on and on and on and it kept winning and winning.. Its just a matter of do you think that its reached its maximum weight to stop it following on its upgrade... Eventually all horses will reach a handicap mark that will be prohibitive but its getting value from that horse until it dos... There are too many variables in horse racing to put it down simply to how much weight is on a particular horse but in my mind its is one of the factors in making my mind up as to bet or not... Be interesting to see what the wiser forumites say on this, as im not one of em...!!! Good thread this one Ron...
Just for arguments sake, we have 2 horses, horse A and horse B. If horse A beats B by 5 lengths, with both horses carrying 11 stone, does that mean if you put 12 stone on both horses, that A would still win by 5 lengths?* For me it doesn't, horse B might be a stronger horse than A, so he may cope with the extra weight better.* It's like Usain Bolt having a 100 metres race against the worlds strongest man. If they both were carrying a stone on there back Usain Bolt would win easy, but the more you increase the weight the closer the worlds strongest man will get to Bolt, until eventually he would beat him.* That's why I feel handicapping horses by weight is inaccurate. I would personally cut down on the amount of handicap races there are, there are far to many, they should just have classified races for each grade were all horses carry the same weight.**I do however agree with weight penalties, to stop previous winners, continually running and winning in the same grade without moving up in class*
