How good is my horse?

Building on the previous post of understanding true horse performance, today we are going to expand on understanding horse performance via their finishing time which I have banded into percentiles (100 1% bands) for each combination of distance, surface and conditions. So each performance is relative to the range of times run in the unique conditions of a race (ignoring extra weight carried for now).

A question many of us ask is how good is my horse relative to its competition? We play a game of trying to find profitable conditions to run a horse under before sinking too much DERBY into trying every combination of distance and weather. We also now know that we should be running our horses on preference where possible (unless we have some smart angle we are playing).

Winning in horse racing is relative not absolute. We want to enter our horses in the highest possible quality race where we have a good chance of ending up in the money. If we can optimise this, there is long term profit in both DERBY and CROWN. The marketplace and juvenile claimers are full of horses with WPS records like 8(0-0-1) and 6(0-1-0). Frustrated by the lack of early success, many owners give up on these horses before ideal conditions are confirmed and suitable quality of races are calibrated. Try not to give up until you have tested as many conditions as possible and have given your horse a chance at different levels of competition. We will go into what it takes to win different types of races in a future post - using the same percentile figures in this post.

How can I tell if my horse is any good?

We are trying to create some benchmarks for good performance at every grade. Remember the grade is just an average of the six attributes. Those attributes could be a favourable mix (high start & speed for example) or they could be unfavourable. They attributes can average out above or below the grade. For example an S horse might have attributes of S/S/S+/S+/S/S - which would make it +2 subgrades over the overall grade of S which is good, and a combination of high stamina and finish (the third and fourth letters) would make it a good long distance runner. Obviously we don't know these attributes until a horse retires, which is all part of the fun.

So the first thing we need to do is chart horse performance, split by grade against our percentiles. When we do this we get the following chart:

What the hell am I looking at you may ask? I call it the onion. Let's break it down. On the vertical y-axis we have the cumulative number of horse runs for each grade. On the x-axis we have the percentiles (remember 1% bands of finish time by every combination of distance, surface, direction and condition).

The way to read it is, lookup up from the number 10 at the bottom:

• 3% of A+ horse runs are in the top 10% (of all runs across all grades)

• 12% of S- runs are in the top 10%

• 40% of S runs are in the top 10%

• 74% of S+ runs are in the top 10%

So what does this tell us? Well if your prized S horse isn't recording times in the top 10%, then it's in the bottom 60% of all S graded horses. If your S+ can't break into the top 10% its in the bottom 26% of horses. Another way to read this chart is to cut across say the 50% line on the y-axis - which is the average run for each grade:

• the average S+ run is top 3 percentile

• the average S run is top 14 percentile

• the average S- run is top 34 percentile

The overlapping distributions show why an A+ can beat an S, because 40% of S runs are outside the top 20 percentiles (20%), and 11% of A+ runs are within the top 20 percentiles. Let's image the two horses, chosen at random from the populations of S and A+ grades. They can only run to one of two outcomes, either a top 20 percentile time or not. The probability that A+ beats S is (.11 x .4 = .044) 4.4%. I know this is rather simplistic but I am trying to illustrate that whilst the probability is low (less than 1 in 20), there is still a chance that a horse 2 grades lower can win. Which we all see every day in races. This may feel like you are back in school, for which I apologise. Math was important after all. In reality if an A+ and an S were in the same race it would probably be a good/great A+ and a below average S. Also, the A+ doesn't need to beat one S+ to win the race, it might need to beat 3 of them. The odds of that are (.11x.4^3 = 0.00704) 0.7% in our simplified example of a minimum 4 horse race.

This analysis could have been run on the best time each horse has made rather than all the times. The graphs look almost identical - the main pattern still exists so no need to duplicate here. Also remember these are populations of all horses, so the patterns/lines look really smooth because the sample size is big. When evaulating your own horses your sample sizes will always be small. Therefore I would focus on your own horse's best times per distance and figure out where your horse comes out. Looking at averages is less valuable because you want to see signs of potential. A horse with high potential / variance has the ability to win some bigger races. A consistently average horse is unlikely to beat 11 other horses on a given day.

For those that are interested the fastest (relative to distance, surface and conditions) A+ horses are:

1. Dixie Moon (profile) - a mere 87 FF rating for his epic run (very much an outlier), 8 stars

2. Deep Cover (profile) - 2 subgrades above his overall grade, 9 stars

3. CrownShaun (profile) - 4 subgrades above his overall grade, 9 stars

4. King William (profile) - 3 subgrades above his overall grade, 7.5 stars

5. Lunar (profile) - 1 subgrade below his overall grade, 9 stars

In the preferences blog post we found out that stars are important and this is another example. With the new breeding window opening soon, the above might be some interesting options for those trying to create a lower grade powerhouse (not all have retired at time of writing).

Benchmarking your horses' performance

If you want to start figuring out how good your horses are, I would start using the various excellent community platforms that are out there that add tremendous value to the PFL ecosystem:

• Photofinishedge: https://photofinishedge.com/

• Gap Data: https://gapdata.racing/

• MJ Informatics: https://www.mjinformatics.com/

For those that just want some benchmarks, below is a table of the 10th percentile time for each distance/surface/conditions combination. You can use the first graph and these figures to determine how far off your horses are from being in the top 10% of all runs. I would say that finish times should be a more reliable indicator that FF rating because as we have previously discussed (here) FF rating is adjusted for finish position and race type (claimers give higher FF ratings for slower times).

I believe that keeping track of your horse's times, is the shortest path to figuring out their ideal conditions and distance. You want your horse to overperform relative to those combinations not in absolute terms. The table above is just the top 10% cutoff time. It might not be meaningful to you if you have a stable of A- horses - you just want to be in the top 10-20% of A- horses - which you can figure out from the first chart in this post. A great A- horse (only 3%) have run a top 30 percentile time.

Also remember that a good A+ can beat a poor S grade on its day. Grades are not segregated in their performance - there are overlaps. This is a hint to the fact that horses don't just run consistently in line with their talent (attributes); there are other factors (obviously heart and temper but others too) that create variance, or randomness so your horse's performance will always be talent +/- what roll you get on the day. In some horse racing games, that randomness is linked to randomly assigned jockeys, or randomly drawn posts, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. The game is afoot Watson...

Join the fun and put these insights into practice at PhotoFinish.Live and if you are considering starting your own stable please consider using my referral code: PADDOCK or just click on this link: https://signup.photofinish.live/?referralCode=8EUMC4P2

Please remember this is a web3 game where your spend your own money. Nothing I write about should be considered financial or investment advice.