Speed Ratings

Posted by ginag2 on Nov 11, 2012 in Blog | 10 comments

Speed ratings – class ratings – par times, and the various combinations, permutaions, and comparisons of these cause a lot of confusion in the game today.

Each time we offer a method that has as one of its factors the comparison of horses’ speed ratings, or Beyer figures, or Racing Post numbers – there have been questions.

And those questions are valid.

There has been a proliferation of companies who offer their own version of a “rating” for each race in a horses’ history. Players, once committed to a particular one of these services, are reticent to switch, and do the tough job of re-researching how their handicapping decisions might have been different (for better or worse) if one of the ‘other’ outfit’s ratings had been used.

I’m not going to profess to know all the subtle differences, or try to establish a pecking order for the various services (it’s very likely I am not even aware of some of the ratings services out there). Neither will I explain the mechanics behind getting the figures. Books have been written on this, and if you want to pursue it – it is a fascinating subject.

In this post I will simply give a few thoughts on this issue, and also provide a chart I found online that will help those of you who have asked ratings-related questions of us recently. This is in particular response to those who asked those questions in regards to the new freebie method we gave out – “Marquee Race Method.”