It seems to me that getting a weight advantage gives a horse too much of an advantage. If you enter a 105 in a 80-110 handicap, you have virtually no chance. You rarely see anything over 100 winning handicaps. You are giving up about 8 lengths to the 82 handicapped horse. I guess that is actually the goal of handicaps, but it seems extreme in the league.

I got my first G1 win in a G1 handicap this week. She was rated low, and got a 16 pound weight break from top weight. She didn't even run to her best style, but had such a weight advantage over the few good horses entered that she got it done.

It would seem more fair if there was only a 15 pound spread in a 70-100 handicap race, instead of 30. The lowest rated horses with ANY ability always fire big and top weight has to be Group quality to have a chance. Also, running maidens on dirt caused lots of good horses to get way too low of a starting rating due to bad posts.

We don't run many handicaps in the states here, so weight is rarely a factor, so I could be way off base.

Maiden field sizes are under review.

You make a good point re weight - something to debate possibly.

Steve

This is a good suggestion, I have taken that race as an example and reset the ratings of all the runners then run them all 5 times at various courses and ground conditions and the game suggested the spread was 13lbs. When I then ran the G1 Hcp conditions the top two in the weights did much better (in fact they came 1 and 2 which suggest they were not weighted high enough).

Reducing the spread would increase the number of races though and probably reduce the number of runners so it's a difficult situation.

There are just so many factors that go into handicaps, I am considering reducing some of these factors by limiting 5-8f runners to one distance, 9-12f to 2 distances, 13-20f to three distances.

too few maidens i had to stick my adverage horses in group company to get a run and now rated 95 to 107 no chance of them winning

i think there should be a pre season of 2 weeks with every race a maiden so you get every chance to get all your horses a mark that would give them a chance

dont get me wrong lads i think the people who run the lge do an amazing job considering its all voluntary work just a few tweaks needed instead on donate and draft maybe a pre season would help

Maiden race set up will definitely change so that ratings are more accurate and all horses have a chance to enter one.

The distance proposal suggested by Rich above is an excellent idea and would make for a more level playing field all round. Definitely in favour of that change.

i would defo like an extra week maidens added to the schedule so every distance has at least 2 races in first 3 weeks. This is a must if horse distances are going to be restricted

Agree with this and also maidens on straight courses or more galloping tracks. Some horses winning handicaps are so well in due to wide draws in their maidens. Mine included

Have a week of maidens at somewhere like Newmarket where there is hardly any draw bias

Might be better to split existing races if field sizes are above a certain number, keeping it to two weeks, but players able to enter more than one runner in any race.

All race distances are already catered for over the two weeks.

Races run at Newmarket on good ground might be good idea also.