Part I: Understanding Beyers & Picking horses from the spreadsheet

This will be one of a series of articles i will be posting on how to pick horses based on the rating sheet that i generate. Please note these articles may contain excerpts from Andrew Beyer's books, with all due credits to the handicapping legend.

Part I:

Horse racing is a very complex game, and all of us should accept it for the same. We should understand that the horse's figure will be affected by an infinite variety of events that occur during a race & we do not have the comfort of translating those events into a figure. However, is if we look at the circumstances & ask, how the horse earned his figure? Did it have some favorable circumstances that allowed it to run a superior figure? Is the speed figure a true reflection of its ability? Did it encounter adversity which depressed its number? These are some circumstances which will help us determine whether the figure was genuinely earned or not. To further elaborate, pace, track biases, trouble are a few factors which will help us understand how horses earn their speed figures making the beyer numbers more potent as a handicapping tool.

Generally:
1) The optimal way for a horse to run is to get clear , to set a pace well within his capacity, to conserve his energy & release it in the final stages of the race. The best of the speed figures are earned this way.

2) A solitary front runner can use his energy in the best way in stark contrast to a horse which has to expend his energy who is in a head to head duel to keep his rival from pulling away.

Now, a few questions that may arise if one were to look at the past Beyers of horses are:

a) How was the figure earned?
b) Does it reflect the true ability of the horse?
c) Was he aided by some sort of bias?
d) If the number is indeed genuine, is he likely to repeat it again?
e) How is he gonna run today?

PACE:
When a handicapper looks at any horse's past performances, he should note whether the horse is coming out of a race with an unusually fast pace or whether he is coming out a race dominated by a sole front-runner or characterized by a very slow pace, which could have had a big influence on the speed figure of the horse.

A solitary front runner who sets a slow pace will be able to deliver his maximum performance in the final stages of the race. This could be one of the reasons why most front runners cause big upsets for the simple fact that stretch runners would not be able to catch up with the final pace of the race due their pattern of running. I have written this earlier in my spreadsheet explanation, front runners are the most likely candidates for big upsets in racing, be it Noble Eagle or a Diabolical, for instance.

A classic example of this is Race # 264, Hyderabad winter 10-11, on the 14th Feb 2011, where Royal Shaan won a mile race at 75 to 1. The sheet can be accessed here. Royal Shaan had numbers as good as Blazing Asian, if not better, but he had never gone over a mile in his career. He set a very moderate pace & was able to hold to his energy from the late finishing Blazing Asian. Another one could be Ansonia, even at a centre like Mysore, on the 23 Feb, 2011, race # 130.

On the contrary, races where the pace is too fast will hurt the actual speed of the horses. It is possible that a superior horse might expend his energy fighting a head-to-head for lead & wind up, where you will find the horses in "box seat" do very well. So it is imperative to determine whether the horse's previous figures were influenced by pace or not. And also to determine the way the race might shape up by looking at the number of runners & their patterns in today's races.

TRACK BIAS:
Again, it is very important to determine if the number earned was due to some track bias on that particular day. On a day, if horses showing intial speed did good numbers & so did the horses who came from behind, more often than not, there is no bias & the track was normal. If there was a day where out of 8 events, 5 were won by front runners & these have upset short priced favorites, there is a likely hood that there may have been a bias on that day. Especially, on days when the going is soft or heavier. Arabian Knight won atleast won 3 races this way, when the going was heavy. It is not necessary that the going has to be softer side, there may be a bias in the track itself like the one at Pune, which generally favours front runners. The next question is, how do we determine if there is gonna be a bias on today's track? Well, if the bias existed yesterday, or if there is consistent influence of bias on the figures, then it would make sense to handicap horses based on the same bias. Otherwise, handicap the races as the way we normally do.

Trouble:
If a horse encountered severe interference in his last run, or he was blocked, this could also have an impact on the figure of the horse. It would make sense to make notes of these incidents & determine whether his figure was affected to the extent that this interference or blockage happened.

Will be continued in Part II, which will be posted in the next few days......

Feedback would be appreciated. Comments & questions are welcome.