The Essentials of Studying Form — Part 3 | 12 From Angles

By Practical Punting

Australian horse racing form study often ends the same way: an hour on the form guide, half the field circled, and still no idea which one to back. Writing in Practical Punting Magazine, Richard Hartley Jnr set out 12 angles on form under three headings — Class, Ability and Form — devised, in his own words, with the view in mind to cutting some corners. You can use all of them or some of them, and the last three do not come out of the form guide at all: they come off the betting market, the tipsters' poll and the jockey list.

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What you'll learn:

The 12 angles and the three headings they sit under, and why the last of them — Factor D — is three separate tests rather than one
Class: good performances in the class of race now being contested; average earnings, and highlighting the top 5 in the rankings (or each horse's total earnings divided by its number of starts, if the rankings are not to hand); and added thought for a runner that has recently won in the same class, recent meaning within the past 28 days
Ability: what a last-start win does and does not buy a horse — it makes a contender, but the win still needs to be tested — plus the two beaten runs that count anyway: 2nd, 3rd or 4th within 3.5 lengths of the winner at its latest start in the past 28 days, or 5th to 8th and less than 5 lengths from the winner when the horse was unfancied
Form: a win strike in excess of 40 per cent for the entire career, over 10 runs or more; between 25 and 39 per cent from 10 starts or more as the grade below it; 2 wins and 2 placings from the last 5 starts, the most recent within the previous 21 days — and then Factor D's three checks, off the pre-post betting market (top 3 lines of betting), the tipsters' poll (top 3 most favoured) and the jockey list (top 10 in the city where the race is being run)