Today I am posting a written version of the monthly feature video. Following a discussion happening in the forum, I created a spreadsheet that rates a horse based on the prize money available in previous races and how far they came behind the winner. You can download this spreadsheet here.
The idea was to create a simple method of calculating the class level of the races that a horse has been running in and their level within that class. We are going to be assuming for this rating that the prize money relates to the ability of runners within a race as larger prizes attract better runners.
How do we use the spreadsheet?
When you first open it you will see the below screen.
This screen shows the final results of your rating. The controls that you are interested in are the sheets at the bottom that I have circled in red above. There is the space to enter information for up to 3 races per runner but you can simply copy any of the Race sheets into a new one if you would like to rate more races per runner.
To start you would go to the Race 1 sheet which will open the page shown below.
As you can see I have numbered all of the main areas of the spreadsheet that you need to understand in order to be able to use it.
1) The percentage of money that you want to go to the contenders in the race. The default is 80% which means that out of £10,000 prize money you would give £8,000 to the contenders.
2) The number of lengths behind the winner that we consider a contender to be. This is just to remind you and is set to 2 lengths as default. i.e. any horse that finished within two lengths of the winner in their previous race is considered a contender.
3) The horse’s name goes here.
4) The prize money of the winner in each runner’s last race is entered here. You only need to worry about the prize money that is given to the winner. Don’t worry about trying to calculate the percentage for contenders as this is done for you automatically.
5) Enter the finish position of the horse in their previous race. ‘Winner’ for winner and then either ‘Cont 1’ ‘Cont 2’ etc… ‘Cont 1’ would be the horse finishing second in the race.
6) In this cell you need to put the number of lengths behind the winner that the horse finished in their last race. Sometimes online results information is given based on how far behind a horse was from the next runner rather than the winner, when this is the case you will need to add up the distance behind all the runners in order to calculate this figure. If you are not sure about how far behind a ‘nk’ or other abbreviation is then you can look at number (9) on the spreadsheet to find out.
7) Here is where you put the distance behind the winner of the first runner that is not in our contenders range (2 lengths behind winner by default).
8) You do not need to worry about any figures further along here as they are working out the calculations but I left them visible so that you can see what is going on and easily make any adjustments that you may want to.
For any horse that wasn’t a contender in its previous race you can just leave all the fields blank. I strongly suggest that you use more than one previous race for each runner in order not to get a biased view.
The first page shows all the previous races ratings added together. If you add extra pages then you need to make sure you update the formula on this page to add those ratings in as well.
A further development that may well be useful is to put a graph on the first page that graphs each horse over their last 3 races. This would enable you to see quickly at a glance whether a runner is moving up, staying level or moving down.
For a more detailed explanation and the process that I went through to create the spreadsheet please watch the video and if you make any adjustments I would certainly be interested in hearing how they go.
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