Exchanges re-writing the form book

As a vast majority of my 'Horse Racing' time is spent on the laborious task of form analysis, any opportunity to speed up the process is always embraced with open arms. And, when the process delivers in terms of being labour saving and improved integrity it is 'manna from heaven'.

One of my biggest challenges is when reading the 'in running' comments written by the course correspondent where there is a degree of his or her personal interpretation and comments can frequently be ambiguous, even misleading, leaving me having to watch the race over.

The short cut I have now introduced in to my arsenal is using the exchanges BSP and 'In running low' as a measure of how competitive a horse has been over a given distance.

The obvious advantage this gives is that I am now looking at an interpretation of competitiveness as viewed by hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow punters and not an individual with an apathetic view.

As with all methodical methods of horse racing analysis it is not an exact science and is best used in conjunction with race penalty values or total prize money i.e. being competitive over 6f in a £2,500 race and being competitive over 6f in a £10,000 race are poles apart.

If you are interested in adopting this method the information is available for free on the Timeform website HERE and by following the 'Cards and Result' link. Each horse is hyper linked giving its trading history.

It may be wise to tabulate the information in a spreadsheet for races of interest, initially just watching until you are comfortable in recognizing those golden opportunities.

Have fun with it!