Awarding Points

Here is another method that forms the basis of many peoples strategy. It can be made as simple or sophisticated as you like. This can be quite time consuming but when you do find a method that works it can be very rewarding.

The theory behind this strategy is that you award points to each horse in a number of different categories of your choosing and whichever horse scores the most points is the horse you put your money on.

Say for example you decide to award each horse points in 5 different categories, which are jockey, form, conditions, weight and starting position. You can use any amount of categories you want, its up to you but we'll just use these five in this example.

So for each category each horse will be given points depending on how you rate each horses particular circumstances.

First of all you give a points score for the jockey. You then give a points score of one to five for each. If the horse is being ridden by a top jockey the horse gets five points and if it is an unknown or bad jockey it gets 1 point.

Then you give a score for the form of the horse, if you think form is much more important than the which jockey the horse has you could give points on a scale of fifteen to one. The more you important you think a category is when assessing a horses chances of winning the higher number of points is awarded for it.

For the conditions you would work out how good you think the horse is depending on how wet or dry the ground is. Then award points depending how much weight the horse is carrying and the points for which position in the stalls the horse is.

Once you have worked out a score for each horse in each category you arrive at a points total for each horse. Then whichever horse gets the highest points total is the horse you place you bet on.

Here's an example of how you would work out the score for two horses in a race.

Categories:

Jockey - Award points from 1-5
Form - Award points from 1-15
Conditions - Award points from 1-10
Weight - Award points from 1-5
Starting Position - Award points from 1-5

Points scored for Horse 1

Jockey = 4 (Is being ridden by a good jockey who has won some big races but is not an elite jockey)
Form = 6 (Has not won in a couple of races but did race well earlier in the season.)
Conditions = 8 (Most of his best races have been in these conditions)
Weight = 1 (Has top weight)
Starting Postion = 4 (Is near the inside of the track which on this track is beneficial)
Total Points Scored = 23

Points scored for Horse 2

Jockey = 2 ( Is being ridden by a jockey in their second season and has not ridden many winners)
Form = 12 ( Won it's last two outings in races slightly inferior to this one)
Conditions = 3 (Has not run in these conditions before)
Weight = 1 (Is also carrying top weight)
Starting Position = 2 (Is near the outside of the track)
Points Total = 20

So in this situation you would prefer the chances of Horse 1 as they scored more points. This system needs a lot trial and error before you find a winning method. Judging which categories to choose and how many points to award can be quite tricky but if you persevere and do plenty of testing you should be able to find one that works for you.