Breeding Rankings?

Breeding
1

Hi all,

I’ve been trying to come up with some sort of “breeding ranking” sort of thing (besides chef-de-race and reines-de-course, since they’re obviously the “elite” already)…something that would tell you, at-a-glance, roughly how decent a producer a horse is (i.e. have they thrown SWs, MSWs, or have all their foals run backwards out of the gate).

However, I’m a bit stumped as far as:

  • what to call the rankings
  • how to rank horses (by % of SW foals, average foal earnings, etc.)

I think I will set it up so that it is just a “record”, like the track record (MSW, SW, multi-millionaire, etc)…that way, horses won’t be wandering around as ___ WCh. Horse if they happen to be good at racing and breeding.  However, that still leaves the dilemma of how to classify the rankings, and what to call them.  :wink:

Any ideas?

2

My suggestion for stats would be number of off spring to race, #MSW’s, #SW’s, #Winners, total earnings, average earnings. Kind of like The Stallion Directory at Thoroughbredtimes. Just dreaming but best broodmare sires would be cool also :wink:

3

This is different from statistics, though.  I’m planning on revamping the sire statistics page to show everything the Bloodhorse does, and allow searching by specialty (dirt/turf/sc sire), age (2yo sire, 3yo sire, etc), broodmare sires, etc.

This is for the horse’s individual page, so that, for example, it could list:
Track Record: Mult. Stakes Winner, Mult. Stakes Placed, Multi-Millionaire
Sire/Mare Ranking: _______ (Not sure if it makes sense to do a “theme”, such as gemstone/rare minerals, or use something like Champion/Grand Champion/etc, or what…something to indicate what sort of offspring they have without getting into the nitty-gritty of X MSW foals, Y SW foals, etc)

4

Gemstones could work…

Maybe set up the ranks based on Avg points/race for the foals (so foals have a total of 1000 points and have a total of 100 races so the sire/dam would have 10 points/race as their ranking)?  That’d give you an idea of hte quality of races the foals tend to run in and how they do in them.  A horse who’s got almost nothing but horses who win/place in stakes each time out would end up with… I dunno, 30 points per race on average while a horse who’s offspring are just alright in allowances might have like an average of 9-10 points per race?

Hard to come up with something where the 2yo’s don’t drag it down (so like couldn’t just do an average of points/horse b/c not all the horses have raced same amount).

5

A "theme’ would be good. I thought about just numbering them but there are so many in tangables that it didn’t seem adequate. As far as how to rank them that’s a sun-of-a-gun, but the total number of races run should be a part of it. 2 yo inconsistencies not with standing. We had a lot of opinions when the Chefs de Race were set. up. I would imagine there’s just as many about this :wink: ;D Love the idea though.

6

This is complicated but I would use something like this to rate. 1st, 2ND, 3rd would be assigned points for stakes, allowances, others. The point value of each race would be the value of a 1st place finish. Total point value for all races run compared to point value of finishes(%). Whatever spread the % fits is the rating.(I said it was complicated :stuck_out_tongue: )

7

How about Grades. like Grade A, Grade B or even like stakes races themselves

G1 producer, G2 producer

Then on a seperate page, like you do with titles, define what criterion are needed to advance.

EG. Riceburner :Allowance Producer would be one that produces winners or placers

Grade III is a stallion that produces Stakes Placers or Ungraded winners

Grade II is a stallion that produces MSW but not stud qualified MSW’s

Grade 1 would be a stallion of stallions.

8

The problem with that is if you have fluke foals.  Some mares (and studs as well) are really crappy overall, but they have 1 (or a few, for studs) nice foals.  So they’d be ranked as, say, Grade II, even though they had one nice foal and the rest sucky foals.

9

What about a simple scale of 1-100?  They could have different breakdowns, then an “average number” would be assigned to the stallion in the end.  It could be a simple box plot with outliers and quartiles.  That would be a good way to find the right range for the stallions average production rates, and it would eliminate the harsh effects of the outliers- for example, a stallion throwing one amazing MSW in mediocre 40 foals, or throwing one dud in 40 where his foals are normally good runners.

so the math would look something like…

0-----------------25% quartile----------------Median—75% quartile---------100

The median here is closer to the 75th quartile, so lets say that 68% of his foals turn out to be winners or better.

They could have different number breakdowns such as-

2y/o sire
3y/o sire
4y/o sire
5+y/o sire
Broodmare sire
Stud-Qualifyers
MSW
SW
SP
Win
Place
Turf
Dirt
Steeplechase
Distance
Sprint
etc…

So for example-

Stallion A has 20 foals.  He has produced two MSWs and most of them are winners by the age of 3.  So there could be a point system devised based on how all the foals performed, and also based on using the plot box to eliminate any “uncharacteristic” superstars or  duds that horse produced…

You might get numbers like this?  I don’t know how you would get an average number, but it might be worth looking into.

2y/o sire- 60
3y/o sire-83
4y/o sire-65
5+y/o sire-30
Broodmare sire-56
Stud-Qualifyers-05
MSW- 10
SW- 33
SP- 45
Win-91
Place- 95
Turf- 62
Dirt- 48
Steeplechase- 26
Distance- 28
Mid-range runner- 46
Sprint- 24

So looking at these numbers, I could probably assume the following (the #s were completely made up, not based on any horse living or in the game)-

Obviously, this is a stallion who has the capacity to produce lower level winners and stakes quality runners, but isn’t likely to produce your next superstar.  His foals perfer the 7-9 or 10 furlong range, and run better on the turf.  His foals generally mature into their prime as three year olds, but don’t rule out a good two year old or aged runner.  He seems to be a solid sire overall, perhaps nothing spectacular, but paired with the right mare, he has the capacity to produce some really nice foals. 

Wow, that was a lot for me, since I’m terrible with math, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at.  I’m not sure how it would all work out, but if anyone can decipher it, Shanthi can!

10

Thanks for that, Taylon, but that’s going to be incorporated more into my sire stats page.  The breeding rankings is more a “snapshot” of how good the sire is overall, regardless of age of foals, surface preference, etc.  For instance, Highland Rogue and Rainbow Quest are both excellent sires, but Rogue tends to throw SCers and RQ tends to throw flat racers.  The Breeding Ranking wouldn’t care, it’d just classify them both as _____ (whatever title “superstud” would get :wink:).

The more in-depth look at their sire analysis and such (which is a planned feature) would break them down by how well their foals do at various ages/surfaces/race grades/etc.

11

Eh, I tried  :slight_smile:.  I hope you can use it for something, anyways. 

Looking at it more, you could do grades, like in school…  Kindergarten- Foals have placed but no winners. Say, a 1st Grade sire has produced at least one winner, but no stakes placed horses.  Second grade, multiple winners but no stakes placed horses.  Third grade, at least one stakes placed horse but no MSPs.  4th Grade- MSPs but no SWs.  5th grade- At least one SW, but no MSWs.  6th grade- Multiple SWs, no MSW.  7th grade- At least one MSW, but not multiple MSWs.  8th grade, two MSWs.  9th grade, 3-4 MSWs.  10th grade- 5-6 MSWs.  11th grade- 7+ MSWs, none stud qualified.  12th Grade- 7+ MSWs, at least one stud qualified. 

Or however else you wanted to construct it.  It gives more options, and a stallion won’t be held back for one bad foal, and similarly, won’t get a great ranking for one really awesome foal.  The would have to be at least semi-consistant to move up in rank.

Maybe?  I don’t know, probably not a great idea either, but it’s worth a throwing out for you to take a look at.  I’m actually in a “thinking and motivated mood” today, and those usually don’t both hit at once  :wink:. 

12

Well, again the problem ends up being the outliers.  If a stud has 20 non-winning foals and 1 MSW, he’d get counted as 7th grade, even though realistically, he’s probably only Kindergarden/1st Grade.

13

You could always use a box plot and a median to determine which grade he falls into.  It would eliminate the outliers, but the problem may be that very few stallions would make it into higher grades…

14

Well, and mares don’t typically have enough foals to do very good statistical analysis on… Imagine Shanthi’d like one system that could work for mares and stallions to make life easier on us all.  :slight_smile:

15

Yeah, would like mares and studs to be ranked equally, so having flat minimums for #s of foals at ___ level doesn’t work so well for mares.  (Nor does doing %s, since mares have 10-15 foals, so requiring 10% SWs for ___ ranking = 1 good foal, which doesn’t work as well as 10% of a stud’s 150 foals.)

16

Sounds cool! I like the idea of minerals or gems…

Say Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze (like credit cards or airpoint programs :wink:). Or maybe Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire. :slight_smile:

17

;D and I thought what I suggested was complicated ;D ;D At least my way was more even for mares if not slightly skewed toward great mares. I don’t envy you figuring this one out Shanthi :wink:

18

I’m definitely no breeding expert but I have been thinking about it a bit…

I’m all for keeping the number of rankings small. A precious metals theme (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) would be best because it’s easy to differentiate at a glance whtat the value of the ranking is. Then, perhaps, to assign studs to those ranks, a point system could be used, like:
10 points for every MSW foal
5 points for every SW foal
3 points for every SP foal
1 point for every winning foal

And then to attain a certain rank, a stud would have to have so many points, like:
Platinum Stud: 100+ points
Gold Stud: 75-100 points
Silver Stud: 50-75 points
Bronze Stud: 15-50 points

The same system could be used for mares, only with lesser points to qualify for the ranks (since they produce fewer foals), so, say:
Platinum Dam: 75+ points
Gold Dam: 50-75 points
Silver Dam: 25-50 points
Bronze Dam: 10-25 points

Then to break it down into various categories, like dirt, turf, SC, 2 yo, 3 yo, 4 yo+, the database could just look and see how many wins, SP, SW a horse has had in those years or on those surfaces, and assign points for each category. So you might be able to look at a stud and see that he’s at Platinum rank overall, is Gold for flat runners, Silver for SCers, and only Bronze for 2 yo runners…so you could see that his foals tend to mature late but tend to be pretty nice flat runners overall.

That’s a really rough and dirty way to hash it out, I realize. And not all studs/dams are going to qualify for a ranking…but not all should, right? Because the rankings are a way of seeing which horses are the best at producing certain qualities.

Hopefully I’m not shooting too far off the mark here…The idea just occurred to me so I figured I’d write it down. :slight_smile:

19

I dunno… the points/foal seems good, but seems like you’d have to average it to some sort of average number of points per foal… Seems like a mare who’s produced nothing but MSW’s, even if it’s just 4 MSWs, should rank higher than a horse who might’ve produced like 12 allowance winners.  I like your system, but it’d be hard to fairly apply to horses still actively being bred…

20

I like the Precious Metals/Gems idea.  Perhaps I could have a mare that was so sad she was Fool’s Gold.  Or perhaps some fake cheap version of a diamond.