Future Race Entry Selection

How should future race entries be selected?

  • Time entered
  • Race earnings
  • Race points
  • Race wins
  • Randomly
  • Time since last race
  • Other (suggest below)

0 voters

So I’m working on the code to allow people to enter races before entries open.  These entries will be stored in the database, and will automatically be processed when entries open.

The question is…say 30 horses are entered (in advance) for a given race.  Obviously only 14 can be entered, so how should those horses be picked?

The options I’ve thought of are:
Time of entry - so if I enter a horse for February today, and everyone else enters for the Feb race in 3 weeks, my horse gets picked first
Race earnings - horses with the most earnings get in first
Race points - horses with the most points get in first
Race wins - horses with the most wins get in first
[In the above case, if earnings/points/wins are the same, it would be determined randomly]
Time since last race - if my horse hasn’t raced for 6 weeks and all the others have raced in the last 4, my horse gets in first
Random - purely random selection

Please vote, and if you have other ideas, post below.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

Hm, it’s hard to pick just one! Personally I would say time since last race, though I also think a simple time of entry would work as well.

Personally, I would say that wins/points/earnings would only be really fair if applied to Stakes races…since you can see horses with lots of points or earnings in allowances at times.

Personally I hate time of entry, but that and last racing date have to the easiest to program. If we had more races(I’m not advocating more) than a more complicated system might be in order. I must admit a combination of earnings, points and wins intrigues me for stakes races.

Just a note - I don’t think randomly would work well with shipping as it is.

Shipping will be changing, too.  When you select to enter a race in the future, you will have the option to select a custom shipping date, as well as whether to ship if the horse does not get entered.

It’s not a big deal to have 2 systems, as well…one for stakes races and one for non-stakes races.

I like time entered or time since last race best. I voted for one, but wanted to point out I liked both.

I also like both time entered and time last raced. Just as my quarter cent. :slight_smile:

I said “Random” because those of us who always end up–A) procrastinating or B) not having time to get online to check as often as they would like and so usually BARELY make it to entering deadlines as it IS or C) not having a clue how our horses are going to be energy-wise before a race and wanting to wait to be fairly certain about their energy before a race–would not end up with less of a chance because of entering later, etc. (my humble opinion on the subject)

Personal thoughts here and if it’s to complicated that’s fine to!
    Why don’t we go to a system of real allowances especially in the “Allowance” category. Most of horse racing goes on non winners of xxxx dollars in the last xxxx races. An example might be Non winners of $50,000 last 6 races or Non winners of 8 races life and earnings less than $50,000. The ways to configure this are endless and you could even add weight allowances for lesser earnings or races won/not won. My feeling is that this would help new allowance horses to get some more experience before meeting the race hardened veterans with 2.5 million in earnings.
    Once the template for this is made that you would apply it to all tracks to give some continuity to the system. If you add the above along with a claiming race per track per day you would have a system that mimics most of what the world is running on right now.

That would be cool, if FF had as many races as the US does in real life (or the UK, or Australia) and if Shanthi had time to sit there and make the race schedule by hand to hand pick races so that there’d be an even distribution of race qualifications.  Since, unless she found some sort of time warp and isn’t sharing it with me, she doesn’t, the idea of trying to randomly distribute races with that system using PHP’s awful random number generator are mind boggling.

I voted for “Random”, but I’m a fan of having 2 systems, one for non-Stakes and one for Stakes.  The random would be for non-stakes, and then the stakes races could work off of an earnings system.  That would help provide some of the quality control in stakes that I know Shanthi’s interested in having.  It could even be set up so that it only counts earnings in last year so that horses past their prime aren’t the ones who get into the big races because of their previous earning history.  I was going to suggest that FF could pick a list of 14 entries plus 4 alternates in case of scratches, but I guess entry selection would be done the day before the race, so anyone who wanted to scratch for energy purposes would do so before the post-position draw the day before?

The original 10 would be selected the day entries open.

Then a week for the 4 other spots to fill.

Once entries close, the day before races run, the other 4 slots would be filled.

And I echo Andrea’s entire first paragraph.  :wink:

I haven’t voted using the “ballot” buttons, but I also think the 2 tiered system would be best - Random for Maidens, Claiming and Allowances, and Earnings for Stakes races.

I also like Andrea’s suggestion about only including earnings in the last year for Stakes races but had a question for her.  Do you mean the last 12 months or the last calendar year?  For example, we are now at Dec 19th, 2011.  Would you only include earnings:-
(1) Since Dec 19th, 2010
(2) Since Jan 1st, 2011 (if so, when would you start including earnings for a race in January 2012?)
(3) Since Jan 1st, 2010

My preference would be for (1), but I don’t know how easy it would be for Shanthi to automate.  I know that if you look at the Racing Form for a days races, it shows a horses race records/earnings for 2010 & 2011 separately.  Could the program be easily changed to also show “Last 12 months”?  What do you think, Shanthi?

Sorry guys you missed the point. Let the classifications do it for you. Tie wins and earnings together and then you won’t have a stakes winning horse running against lesser horses. Yes you get the odd horse that will fluke a stake win and then not win another race but them are the breaks. I think you need to tie them together in order to get a more level running field. That is the idea of allowances is to get every horses nose at the wire at the same time.
I understand that there are discrepancies within the purse structures at the various tracks and that may be a concern. You “could” have a structure for each track but that would be very time consuming on the front end. The upside is that you have a better feeling as to how good your horse is at a particular track. You could then send your horse to a lesser track purses wise but take a hit by having to run against better horses or vice versa.
To simplify things a bit just make a generic set of conditions to apply to all tracks. Do the straight Nw’s up to 3 as we have it. Do Nw’s up to 6 or 7 races and tie dollar earnings to it. Then have your allowance structure based on the earnings of the last 6 races. I think the Stakes should be dealt with separate from this structure.

I’m also all about the two tiered system, one for stakes and one non stakes. For the stakes I voted for points since I think points are a better indicator of the horse’s quality than earnings which could be hugely affected by a win in one big race…even if the horse has never won any other stakes(I know this from experience as I have several who fit this category and if it was sorted by earnings they would get chosen first over horses who have actually accomplished more than their one big win :wink: )

So the general consensus seems to be for non-stakes system of some sort, and a stakes system.

For the stakes system, I propose ranking based on average points per start for the past 365 days.  That way, if your horse has only raced twice but has won 2 G1s, he gets picked over a horse who has raced 15 times and managed a bunch of 3rds/4ths.

For non-stakes races, it looks like the winners are date of entry, time since last race, and random.  We could combine these…so it sorts by date of last entry (in weeks since last race), time entered (by day), and as a final tie-breaker, random pick.

How does that sound?

Sounds perfect to me :slight_smile:

Sounds good. :smiley:

Sounds good ;D

lol… I guess I’ll be the lone voice in the wilderness here. While you’ve addressed the inequity in the Stakes category I think you will still see the same problems with the allowance horses you’ve been seeing. I do agree with the first come first served entries idea, but that should come after the horses either meet or don’t meet the allowance requirements. From what I’ve seen we have very few requirements to separate out a horse that will win by 109 lengths as we’ve seen on occasion. But as usual I’ll go with the status quo!!!

The problem with adding more restrictions is that it’s hard enough as it is to find a race your horse qualifies for and can get to (shipping-wise).  Adding more qualifiers will exacerbate this problem.

Not to mention…allowances are supposed to be tough. :wink:  Hence allowance winners ending up in the Kentucky Derby (in real life)…it’s rare, but happens.

Works for me.  :slight_smile:  To clarify, I was also talking about the previous 365 days so we’re on the same page.  I agree points is probably more fair than earnings.  Also makes it easier to break into stakes races by being successful in allowances, which i wasn’t sure how that’d work.