Form Points/Figures

[xfile]

This was brought up under a class rating thread but I thought it deserves its own discussion. Tom Hambleton's form points are the only legitimate form figure that I have ever seen. I don't agree with 100% of his formula but his basics are dead on. Has anyone seen a better or more detailed 'form figure'?? There are a hundred brand of speed and pace figures. What you don't see is FORM FIGURES.

[mhrussell]

xfile-

For those of us who are not familiar with Tom's Form Points, could you post the formula or at least what the factors are that go into it?

I would be interested!

Thanks,

[EQUIPACE]

xfile-

For those of us who are not familiar with Tom's Form Points, could you post the formula or at least what the factors are that go into it?

I would be interested!

Thanks,

mhrussell & xfile
Hope you dont mind if I chime in on this...
I purchased the manual a couple of years ago off ebay.
It makes for some interesting reading on the subject of form for sure.
I cant post the formula's or angles that create the ratings because of copyright law. And besides that, it is quite long winded. I dont know if its even still in print, But the original price was $50 for the 120+ page manual.

I think xfile is on the money here. There doesnt seem to be much out there on the subject, and this one does have alot of merit. However, I gave this a try and created a couple of spreadsheets that I could at first manually input the data, then eventually have it pull it over from the Bris data file.
It got to be very complicated, so I just gave up. I eventually used the manual data input spreadsheet to test it out. And the truth is I didnt show any profit from it by itself. Of course I probably didnt give it a hard enough test over enough races and tracks. I just lost the patience to input the data by hand.

I can tell you that it starts off with a basic point rating for every horse in the race... After that, points are added or subtracted for about a dozen or more different factors. Then bonus points were added for a few others. The horse with the highest fig in the end I believe was the play.

I remember my favorite part of the manual was a section on Improving horses.
It was extremely helpful in spotting things I didnt normally look at.
It is part of my handicapping today.

An excellent read for sure. As a system by itself... Not sure. Maybe a good supplemental tool to what ever your own method is.

John
~¿o

[Tom]

CJ's performance figures ( free for selected tracks) show you a graphical window into form through adjusted figures, similar to the sheets or Thorograph.

HTR has a similar screen, and it has a form cycle rating that I just flew 5,000 miles and braved 117 degree heat to get. I am not disappointed.

One thing you must remeber about form is that a horse can throw in a clunker are two and still be in shape, just the victim on a bad pace, racing luck, surface, etc. I used Form Points for a while ack in the day, but no I prefer to look a horse's whole racing record and try to get a sense where he is going from that.

[EQUIPACE]

One thing you must remeber about form is that a horse can throw in a clunker are two and still be in shape, just the victim on a bad pace, racing luck, surface, etc.

Tom,
I dont know if your looking at delmar today... But the next race the 8th has such a horse I believe. #7 Musique Toujours & He's 20-1 ML.

I swear Im am trying to justify/convince my wife to let me go for the downloads at HDW so I can get HTR...

John
~¿o

[Bulldogge]

HSH has a proprietary form rating and form cycle graphing capability called SLT's (Sheet Like Things). HSH allows you to easily graph EP, FT, PWR (HSH power number), FW and SP.

I ran a query in HSH looking at the #1 Cramer PSR horse cross-tabbed with HSH form in all the 2005 Dirt Claiming races I have in my database.

Top PSR horse

rPSR
----
WIN BETS
Field1 Field2 Starts Pays Pct $Net IV PIV
--------------------------------------------------------
1 14,630 4,098 28.0 $1.76 2.18 1.05

Total 14,630 4,098 28.0 $1.76 2.18 1.05

Top 2 HSH Form horses

rcForm
------
WIN BETS
Field1 Field2 Starts Pays Pct $Net IV PIV
--------------------------------------------------------
1 22,299 3,720 16.7 $1.67 1.30 1.02
2 14,370 2,166 15.1 $1.59 1.19 0.98

Total 36,669 5,886 16.1 $1.64 1.26 1.00

Top PSR and ranked in top 2 HSH form.

rPSR+rcForm
-----------
WIN BETS
Field1 Field2 Starts Pays Pct $Net IV PIV
--------------------------------------------------------
1 1 4,244 1,313 30.9 $1.83 2.34 1.09
1 2 2,512 797 31.7 $1.93 2.42 1.12

Total 6,756 2,110 31.2 $1.87 2.37 1.10

You can see the power of HSH form when combined with Cramers PSR.

[EQUIPACE]

Lets see, He sat behind the leaders till the 3/4 pole and just fell apart to the point that he had to be vanned off the field... Hmmmm?

[xfile]

mhrussell & xfile
Hope you dont mind if I chime in on this...
I purchased the manual a couple of years ago off ebay.
It makes for some interesting reading on the subject of form for sure.
I cant post the formula's or angles that create the ratings because of copyright law. And besides that, it is quite long winded. I dont know if its even still in print, But the original price was $50 for the 120+ page manual.

I think xfile is on the money here. There doesnt seem to be much out there on the subject, and this one does have alot of merit. However, I gave this a try and created a couple of spreadsheets that I could at first manually input the data, then eventually have it pull it over from the Bris data file.
It got to be very complicated, so I just gave up. I eventually used the manual data input spreadsheet to test it out. And the truth is I didnt show any profit from it by itself. Of course I probably didnt give it a hard enough test over enough races and tracks. I just lost the patience to input the data by hand.

I can tell you that it starts off with a basic point rating for every horse in the race... After that, points are added or subtracted for about a dozen or more different factors. Then bonus points were added for a few others. The horse with the highest fig in the end I believe was the play.

I remember my favorite part of the manual was a section on Improving horses.
It was extremely helpful in spotting things I didnt normally look at.
It is part of my handicapping today.

An excellent read for sure. As a system by itself... Not sure. Maybe a good supplemental tool to what ever your own method is.

John
~¿o

I don't believe in one dimensional handicapping however if I like a horse at good odds and the form figure is high.....well you get the idea.