Open Disscussion Moving Forward with the Flat Problem ?

Every season we have a diiscussion about the flat Never about the NH where everything is rosie and nice and its comes to Top 5 trainers the bottom end and the middle group we have always tried to move forward offering everyone a chance of getting winners so lets openly discuss the way forward.

Please try and be helpful don't moan about this seasons League its done and dusted and we got what we got this is about Next Seasons League your thougts or ideas are welcomed doesn't mean it will be implemented.

Tom is new and we can implement more options with the new website.

1. Listed Races ( More Listed races with Conditions No Group 1 Winners Can run in and a Min and Max rated Limited to runners)
2. After Week 2 Group 1 Races Min Rate 90 Group 2 Min 85 Group 3 Min 80 This will help trainers to aim horses at Handicaps plus if your horse after week 2 is say rated 84 you will aim it at a handicap to get to that rating to qualify for group races and not ruin the horse for the season by getting a high rating.
3. Condition races having branded races like Condition race Branded 80-90 or 100-110 etc.

These are some ideas give your opinion or ideas


Gray

There is no easy fix for this the National Hunt is so good because there are so many handicaps
and they are generally open to everyone and are a great leveler

On the flat we have Handicaps with rating limits leaving you with small fields

the only suggestion i have is to split the league after the halfway point in 3 or before the transfer window

tier one top trainers
tier two midfileders
tier 3 bottom section of trainers

Each tier has 10 races per week they are not allowed to enter the other 20 which will be dedicated to the other tiers

tier one would have Group races
tier two would have listed & conditions races and major handicaps
tier three would have the all weather championship series

then for the final week everyone comes back together for a full schedule of G1 handicaps

I agree the above sounds a bit radical but as i say there is no easy fix and i think this could work
doing it any other way would just add more races to your already busy workload of weekly races

One problem I see Paul if like you are a top Trainer and after the spilt you got 20 horses how you going to get them a run and 10 races to spilt 2yo, 3yo and 3up over different distances like you said I think that's radical lol.

Gray

I don't think there is a big problem to overcome.
I am definitely a low tier trainer, just at the first week results. My best flat finish was a 7th place. I did manage 2 4ths and a 5th over the jumps but 2 of them were with gamebreds.
I had very similar results in the last season yet I still won a stack of races (I think it was 29) and all bar 1 was a handicap.
The single most important factor is sensible placing of horses, run them in a maiden and go straight to handicaps ignoring all non-handicap races and there are plenty available.
There is an issue with the compression of the handicap. I think we need to look at allowing more pounds per length as the ratings are too compressed after the initial maidens. It can often take a few runs to get a horse down to a winning mark. The early handicaps and the group 1 handicaps were the domain of the top weights last season. This is also apparent in the game and has been a subtle change from SO5.
For example: If horse A finishes 5 lengths in front of horse B in a maiden, horse A will likely be rated 10lbs higher than horse B. I would almost guarantee that the difference in ability is far greater than 10lbs. The SO6 engine appears to place less emphasis on the actual weight carried.
Once all the handicaps start the handicapping becomes easier, I believe we just need to tweak those initial maiden ratings.
Apologies for rambling, now going off to plot my next Tony Martinesq coup.
Darren

Pommards makes some good points.

I think that the initial handicaps given out after the first two weeks maidens needs to be looked at more closely, with a wider spread of handicaps being awarded. Perhaps it could be 5lbs a length and not 1lb per length so that a winner gets 130 rating and 10 lengths back gets an 80 rating but maybe set a bottom limit of say 65 no matter how far back a horse finishes. After week 2 go back to 1lb or 2lb per length.

The other point I agree with Pommard on is that some trainers, both experienced and inexperienced, enter their horses in too high a level of race. Maybe G1 races should have a bottom limit of 120, G2 a bottom limit of 110 and G3 a bottom limit of 100. My one problem lower limits is that if there are no G1 or G2 races in a week, the G3 races and up being full of G1 horses.

I found that last season I had trouble placing horses in races as a lot of my horses ended up with ratings of 112, too high for handicaps and they were not good enough for group races. We maybe need listed races with handicap limits of say 105 - 115.

I think the listed - banded races are the way to go. They would be for the horses not good enough for group races and to high in the h'cap. Then the people in the middle can chose to either go for them or run in the group races. I'd still like the top trainers banned from running in them.

Only horses who have not won in a group /listed race in a listed race is easy to implement
Restricting top 5 trainers from handicaps easy to implement

Splitting into different groups is a non event ( Sorry Paul but this adds complexity that will slow site down etc )

I will just add comments on what can or can't be done so people can come to a decision that can be implemented

I am not sure about banning top 5 trainers from certain races. I will almost certainly never be a top 5 trainer, but if I was and had a horse with a handicap of 100 it would probably never get a run. It would not be competetive in group races so I would have a horse just taking up space in the stable. Maybe top trainers do not have any mediocre type horses.

If these middle type races are not available for the top 5, maybe they should not be available for the bottom 5. I think I would not like that as a lesser trainer.

The standard of horses in the league is getting better, so what happens if the 5th place person has 20 x group wins and the 6th place person has 19 x group wins. Why should one be included and the other excluded?

I like the idea of putting a top and bottom handicap on these middle type races so that they are available to horses of a specific ability no matter who the trainer is. Surely if a horse from a top trainer is rated 100, it should be of a similar ability to a horse from a lesser trainer that is rated 100, giving both an equal chance of winnng.

I think that if we get the handicapping system fixed for the the maidens in the first two weeks, it will go a long way to establishing handicaps that are fair to all trainers.

yes sounds good.

If you have listed races or condition races that are open to all horses who have not won a group or listed race it may solve the problem of the badly handicapped horses and allow top trainers to enter this race as well

U should only be allowed to win a listed race once otherwise u could have the same horse winning all the races. Lets say he finishes 2nd in a maiden and then 2nd in the derby he would probably mop up all the listed races if u let him win more than 1.

yes that's what I said all horses who have not won a group or listed race. Once they have won a listed race by definition they will no longer qualify

I do agree with Darren that as a lower tier trainer it is about horse placement - it is easy to get caught up in the buzz and placing horses into the big races when really the lower quality race on the same card would have been the best bet for a win or placing.

Also at this stage I am not a fan of splitting trainers into groups. I understand the thinking but what if a top 5 trainer has a horse that doesn't perform, say a 90 rated horse - he/she is then barred from racing that horse in Hcps! Not fair in my book! And on the other hand - I'd be spitting chips if my one freak horse couldn't compete at Group level because the rest of my team were rated 100 or below.
This also has a "Class System" vibe to it which I am not comfortable about. I think an open and level playing field is best - I know where I stand - I don't need to be officially rated and boxed lol

As I banged on last season - we need and have races that lower rated horses can compete in and that would include all trainers but in particular new trainers and casual players who don't have the time to dedicate to training/breeding or who play a slower breeding game. ALSO as we now see we need to look after the middle rated horses and trainers with Listed races and maybe higher rated Hcp races!

At this early stage I am leaning towards getting Listed Races up and running and tweaking the Hcp Ratings until we find a good system.

Splitting trainers into groups is a terrible idea. So much for David and Goliath.
It makes the wins even sweeter when you win a big race against the try hard's.

I am new here and don't actually train any horses I just got involved with doing some commentary so feel totally free to take no notice of me whatsoever if I am talking nonsense.

The most obvious thing to do would be to have more races but I guess this may create too much work for the people who do the behind the scenes stuff. If there was scope to do this you could increase the days racing from 10 races to 12 (equates nicely to 2 x 6 race cards). Looking at the schedule I notice that after the first week there are only a few maiden races. The two extra races each day could be a series of Maiden Handicaps 2 over a sprint trip 2 middle distance and 2 staying. You could even restrict one of the races per week to not only maidens but maidens who hadn't run in a group/listed race or even make it a non handicap maiden. In reality maiden races are run all season and as only 30 or so horses can win each week there are going to be maiden horses right throughout the season.

Another option could be to introduce a really low grade race every week like a seller or claimer restricted to lowly rated horses which would give the 'lesser' trainer the opportunity to enjoy the thrill of having a winner.

Quite often a card will start with a maiden and end with a seller or maiden so it could fit nicely into the flow of things.

Can i just ask, is there a rating problem in race 16 and 17 on the flat next week? i thought it said 0-90? if thats the case there are a few that are higher