Racing Post Easyview: what's the science behind the new-look racecard?

Racing Post Easyview takes the secrets of the traditional racecard and makes them accessible to all. Endless jargon and abbreviations are turned into a series of scored and colour-coded attributes, so that punters of all levels of experience can make informed decisions in record time.

While the layout is simplified, there is no compromise on data. The engine that produces Easyview attributes considers everything that a winning bettor would, before condensing it into an intuitive and objective assessment of every horse.

Punters tend to be curious individuals, so many have already asked what exactly goes into scoring horses on the Easyview attributes. This piece serves to indicate some of the logic that goes into these deceptively intelligent bars.

Ability

Whether it is over 100 yards or a mile, in a park or on a beach, a whippet will always run faster than a crab. In any athletic pursuit, ability tends to be the number one consideration and this is observed in horseracing more than just about any other sport. The nuanced science of handicapping has evolved precisely to measure equine ability.

Easyview's ability score is based primarily on a horse's weight-adjusted Racing Post Rating, so both the horse's ability and the weight it carries is factored in. A horse's form, which is generally its most recent expression of ability, is also considered so in-form and progressive horses will score higher.

In the overall Easyview score, ability tends to be the most heavily weighted of the six attributes, although the exact weighting changes slightly depending on the type of race.

Trainer

With the arrival of modern training methods, the person in charge of getting a horse fit and well is more important than ever. The Easyview trainer score therefore has the most complicated list of criteria out of all the attributes.

The main two factors are the size and the quality of a trainer's string of horses, the latter being inferred from the Racing Post Ratings achieved by their runners over the last 12 months compared with the overall racehorse population. After that a trainer's recent form, course record and record in this race's code is factored in, before more subtle considerations like their record in certain race types are brought into the final score.

Jockey

From the bookies' shop floor to the ITV studio, no measure in horseracing is more subjective or more often discussed than the standard of jockeyship. The Easyview jockey score attempts to give an objective measure of a rider's likely performance.

A jockey's strike-rate is one thing, but so is the quality of their mounts and both of these are considered in the score. Recent form is a way to spot which jockeys are likely to be riding full of confidence, as is the case at a course where they have a particularly good record. The score also considers their record on this particular horse and for the horse's trainer in the last 12 months. For this reason, just because one jockey scores more highly than another does not mean they are deemed better. It is just that the particular set of conditions in this race could be more likely to suit.

Distance

A horse's strike-rate at today's distance is just one of the measures to determine how it will be suited by this particular test. Horses with more experience over the distance will score well, as will those who might not have won at the trip but who have run some of their best races at the distance, as judged by Racing Post Ratings.

For those that have not been able to prove themselves at the trip, pedigrees are factored in. A horse by a stamina-laden sire who is moving up in distance will have this reflected in their score.

Course

Horses for courses: sometimes it is easy to spot, sometimes it isn't. The Easyview course score gives slightly more weight to the ratings achieved at a course over pure strike-rates, because you would give the edge to a horse that has finished second in a Group 1 at the track over one that won a maiden there two years ago.

But what if a horse has never run at the track? Instead of scoring zero, the system looks for tracks with similar characteristics and makes an estimate as to how likely the horse is to suit this course. So a horse that has run all of its best races at sharp, right-handed Wincanton will get a reasonable score when they run at sharp, right-handed Taunton.

Ground

Many commentators will say that if a horse has won on ground described a certain way, then it acts on it. Horsemen will say that means nothing and it is all about how a horse feels on the ground. We go somewhere in the middle: handsome is as handsome does.

Horses that have won on going like today's will score fairly well, but not as well as a horse whose best performances- wins or otherwise- have come on the surface. For those untested under the specific conditions, the record of their sire's other progeny is taken into account, as is its record on similar ground.

Jumping

This might be the cleverest bit of all. Using machine learning, taking in faller stats for horse, trainer, course, going, sire, field size, race distance and jockey (both experience and performance), the system builds up a picture of how likely or not a horse is to put in a clear round of jumping in this race.

On top of this, the system scans the Racing Post comments-in-running to pick up good or bad jumping habits. Horses with 'jumped well' in their in-running comment get a boost, while 'mistakes' and 'blunders' count against them.

Draw

Uses statistical impact values and other logic to determine the impact of the draw to give a score for each runner. Taken into account are today’s draw, course stats, race distance, field size, going and track configuration.

Overall

As all bars are just visual representations of a score out of 100, the Easyview score is just a weighted average of the six attributes shown. The weighting changes according to race type, with ability almost always the biggest single contributor.

As Easyview becomes a more dynamic product, users who want it will be able to interact with the individual scores to see what might be driving them, or tailor the weighting to their tastes. For now, based on research which suggested that more than six attributes made the card too busy, the system decides on the six most pertinent attributes for each individual race and shows only the stats that matter. As with everything else in Easyview, this process is impartial, intuitive and driven only by intelligent interrogation of the Racing Post's unrivalled database.

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