_____________________________________________ Data for 391 UK Horse Races Donated by Raymond Batkin, April 8th, 2002 *** ______________________________________________ Hi Doug Further to your message: Please find, attached, FlatFile.txt which is a file holding horses that have run over 7.5 to 8.5 furlongs (110 yards either side of a mile). This file was produced by a program of my own (HORSES) written in Delphi and using a Paradox table (raw data). HORSES has places specific conditions on the filtered data (that ends up in FlatFile.txt) and this data covers 1. Only races run on GOOD going 2. Only the first 5 finishers 3. Only horses finishing within 3 lengths of the winner 4. Only horses that are in the first 6 of the betting 5. Races between 7.5 and 8.5 furlongs 6. Handicap races only The fields that are downloaded are as follows: 1. HORSE horse name 2. RACETYPE race type (i.e. handicap) 3. DIST distance of race (furlongs) 4. GOING going conditions (GOOD in this case) 5. VALUE prize money (GB£) to winner 6. GRADE grade of highest rated horse in race 7. CLSRF highest performance rating produced in this race 8. PLACE finishing position 9. WGHT weight carried (in lbs) 10. WTPSN position of horse in weights table (1 = top weighted, 4 = 4th top weighted etc.) 11. WTDIFF weight difference compared to last race (i.e WGHT - WGHT_1) so if WGHT=130 and WGHT_1=123, WTDIFF=7.0 12. BTN distance behind winner (if PLACE=1 then BTN=0) 13. DPRICE decimal equivalent of starting price (i.e. if horse was 9/2 then DPRICE=4.5) 14. BETPSN position in betting (BETPSN=1 means horse was favourite) 15. JC the official Jockey Club rating that the horse ran off in this race 16. to 41. items 3 - 15 repeated twice to cover the previous 2 races of the horse. hence DIST_1 and DIST_2 refer to the distance run in previous races etc. This particular file has 391 horses in the sample so with the shareware I 'trim'it (randomly) to 250 records. Clearly in the conditions set down by the HORSE program, long priced winners (outsiders) are missed - you can see this in some cases where the first horse listed in a particular race has PLACE=2 which effectively means the winner was OUTSIDE the first six in the betting. I hope you get the drift..... HORSES is very flexible. I can select what I like so I could say 'first 50 in the betting' which would then trap long priced winners (there are rarely more than 30 horses in a race on the Flat - and this is an exception). My reasoning here is that approx 80 percent of winners come from the first 5/6 in the betting. In handicaps the prices are often better than 5/1 for the favourite - on the big handicaps like The Stewards Cup over 6f at Goodwood they can be 10/1 even - not for nothing is the 'Glorious' Goodwood meeting called 'the bookie's benefit'! So if we set the target field to PLACE then we get a tree setting out all the conditions for PLACE =1, 2 and 3 etc. I just wondered if you had ever considered allowing TWO (or even 3) fields to make up the target. In the BEAGLE program it was possible to say, for example, (PLACE=1 & WTPOSN=1) which meant 'locate all top weighted winners' - but Beagle was an extremely finicky program to analyse the rules with and misconceptions were possible whereas VisiRex provides clear indications every time. However the (PLACE=1 & WTPOSN=1) case is a good one to look at because my betting is geared to looking for horses that are DROPPING in class which means they will carry MORE weight - often they are top weighted. Handicaps offer the best value as a rule but one needs to try and get into the trainer's mind as he will probably run a horse in the wrong sort of race over the wrong distance and on a track that is not suitable and on going that the horse has not given evidence of form. You probably know all this but in the UK it is much more complicated as the tracks are all so different...it probably explains why very few non-UK trained horses ever win the Derby - the 12 furlongs at Epsom climbs 110 feet in the first 5 furlongs - takes a U-turn and then involves a downhill/cambered stretch with a short climb to the finish. Not for nothing are the Derby Trials run at Lingfield (a similar layout) and horses that run at Brighton often run well at Epsom and vice versa. I think I have covered most points here. Let me know if there are any queries. If there is a way of merging two fields to make the target expression I'd be interested to know..as it opens up the data better. Regards Ray Batkin