Methodology<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Once again, the main thing to understand before we get into the actual numbers is what data is being used.\u00a0 To look at the speed figures (referred to in this article as \u201cSP<\/span><\/b>\u201d) needed to win various races, the Sim data was narrowed to only 2017 races.\u00a0 Although there are multiple reasons for narrowing the races to just 2017 (and you can refer to the previous article for more of them), the main reason here is that speed figures have significantly increased over the past couple of years.\u00a0 This was noted previously, but from 2005-2015, there were 66<\/i> Speed Figures over 120 in the Sim.\u00a0 In 2017 ALONE, there were 103 Speed Figures over 120 in the Sim.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0 So considering races before 2017 wouldn\u2019t be a very good guide for what it takes to win a race now; it doesn\u2019t matter what it took to win a race in 2008, and that data would only lead to inaccurately lower results than what it takes to win in 2018.<\/p>\n Within the 2017 data, the next question was how to narrow down the information.\u00a0 The first thing to do was eliminate data that would be less useful.\u00a0 The following deletions were made to the 2017 data:<\/p>\n (1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All 2yo races were removed<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All Polytrack races were removed<\/p>\n (3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All Hot Races were removed<\/p>\n (4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All Local Races were removed<\/p>\n Polytrack races were removed as there are far fewer of them, so the data is far less reliable.\u00a0 The CPU does not card polytrack races, and with the additional breakdowns (described below), the data would have been only marginally useful.\u00a0 Similarly, Hot Races were removed, as they suffer from the same issues as polytrack races, as well as a much wider variance due to the smaller field sizes (a byproduct of having races carded and run within 10 minutes).\u00a0 Local Races were removed for similar reasons.<\/p>\n The most controversial of these is likely the removal of 2 year old races.\u00a0 I can certainly understand why this would be useful to know (and in fact, waremblem5<\/i> had suggested looking at 2yo races as well).\u00a0 The biggest concern with 2 year old data, however, is the volatility of the results (there is a similar issue with Polytrack\/Hot\/Local races).\u00a0 The rate of improvement of 2yos during the 2yo season is far greater than the rate of improvement of 3yos or older horse over the course of a year.\u00a0 So while it would be great to know what an average SP would be to win a 2yo allowance race, the number would be largely meaningless.\u00a0 A 65 SP might win an allowance in April, and a 70 SP might win a stakes.\u00a0 Meanwhile, by the end of the year, it may require a 95 SP to win the same race.\u00a0 Furthermore, 2yos debut throughout the course of the year in far greater numbers than 3yos or older horses.\u00a0 This depresses speed figures and makes the average numbers far less reliable. As you will see below, even some of the data displayed below is not the most reliable, but as a whole there is far more data backing up the 3yo and Older races than there is the 2yo level.\u00a0 Maybe looking at 2yo speed figures by month and\/or by number of career races would result in better information, and that might be the topic of a future article.\u00a0 For now, we will focus on the non-2yos in the Sim.<\/p>\n Once the complete data set is determined, the next step was to figure out what would be the most useful information to provide.\u00a0 Looking at overall speed figures needed doesn\u2019t do much good; it takes a much higher speed figure to win a Graded Stakes than it does to win a Maiden Claimer.\u00a0 Likewise, speed figures across surfaces, distances, ages, and genders are different.\u00a0 Therefore, we broke down races into a number of categories:<\/p>\n (1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Age (Based on race restriction, not the winning horse\u2019s actual age):<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gender (Based on race restrictions, not the winning horse\u2019s actual gender):<\/p>\n (3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Surface:<\/p>\n (4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Distance:<\/p>\n For the purposes of the data analysis below, these individual categories were combined into two sets: Age\/Sex Combination (e.g., 3yo Filly, Older Open), and Surface\/Distance Combination (e.g., Dirt Sprint, Turf Route).<\/p>\n Once those categories were established, the last question was how to break down different race classes.\u00a0 As you will see below, there were actually two different calculations made: one on a \u201cgeneral\u201d set of race classes, and one on a \u201cspecific\u201d set of race classes.\u00a0 The different classes are as follows, which shows the \u201cgeneral\u201d race class and then the \u201cspecific\u201d race classes that fall within the general category:<\/p>\n (1) Maiden Claimer<\/p>\n (2) Maiden Special Weight<\/p>\n (3) Claimer<\/p>\n (4) Starter Allowance<\/p>\n (5) Allowance<\/p>\n (6) Stakes (Non-Graded)<\/p>\n (7) Graded Stakes<\/p>\n All of the variables were then combined to create the data below.\u00a0 In total, when it comes to \u201cspecific\u201d race classes, there were 456 different combinations (114 for each Age\/Sex combination), some of which has very few (or no) races.\u00a0 Therefore, we also look at the \u201cgeneral\u201d categories, of which there were a total of 168 different combinations (42 for each Age\/Sex combination).\u00a0 Some of the data presented below was determined by which set would be easier to show (for example, the box plots for the \u201cspecific\u201d race classes were far too wide to fit on a single screen; so instead, you only get box plots for the \u201cgeneral\u201d classes.<\/p>\n So with that out of the way, it\u2019s time to take a look at some data and explanations.<\/p>\n Results and Analysis<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Average Winning SP \u2013 Specific<\/b><\/p>\n (click images to enlarge)<\/span><\/p>\n Explanation<\/span>: The first set of data to look at is the Average Winning SP for specific<\/i> race classes.\u00a0 The numbers above that you\u2019re looking at are pretty straightforward, but it\u2019s worth a brief explainer to avoid confusion and understand exactly what data is being presented.\u00a0 What you are looking at above is the AVERAGE WINNING SP for each race class, distance\/surface combo, and age\/sex combo (as described above).\u00a0 As a reminder, the age\/sex combination is based on the race itself, and not the age or gender of the winning horse (in other words, the winning horse in an \u201cOlder Open\u201d race could actually be a 3yo filly, assuming the race was open to 3yo+ horses).\u00a0 You can refer to the definitions of each race class and combination above under \u201cMethodology<\/i>\u201d.\u00a0 To give an example of how to read the chart above, if you wanted to know what the Average Winning SP is for a 4yo+ Open Allowance at 8 furlongs at the dirt, you would look at the \u201cOlder Open\u201d chart, find the \u201cOpen Allowance\u201d row and look in the \u201cDirt Route\u201d column to find that the Average Winning SP is a 110.88 SP.\u00a0 Similarly, if you wanted to know what the Average Winning SP is for a 3yo Filly $2,000 Maiden Claimer at 6 furlongs on the turf, you would look at the \u201c3yo Fillies\u201d chart, find the \u201cMaiden Claimer Low\u201d row and look in the \u201cTurf Sprint\u201d column to find that the Average Winning SP is a 70.24 SP.<\/p>\n But the number itself is not the only thing that the chart above shows.\u00a0 You may have noticed that, in general, the colors in each of the columns are lighter at the top and darker at the bottom, and wondered \u201cwhy is that?\u201d\u00a0 The colors are meant to be a quick reference for you to compare the speeds for each race class.\u00a0 The lighter the square, the slower the Average Winning SP is for that race class compared to other race classes at that same surface\/distance combination.\u00a0 The darker the square, the faster the Average Winning SP is for that race class compared to other race classes at that same surface\/distance combination.\u00a0 So for example, looking at the Older Fillies and Mares chart, when it comes to Dirt Long races, the Maiden Claimer Low race class has a particularly low Average Winning SP (49.07 SP) compared to the Grade 1 Average Winning SP (109.17 SP), which is apparent by the very light color in the Maiden Claimer Low box and a very dark color in the Grade 1 box.\u00a0 This may seem rather obvious to you; of course <\/i>a cheap maiden claimer will require a lower SP to win than a G1!\u00a0 And you\u2019re right; it is.\u00a0 But what the colors can help with is differentiating across the different ages and genders, or across different distances and surfaces.\u00a0 For example, if you want to win a 3yo filly race, you\u2019re probably going to need something close to the lowest Average Winning SP, which we can tell by the colors is an SP somewhere in the low-to-mid 70s (the lightest colors are generally in that range).\u00a0 Meanwhile, for Older Fillies and Mares, you can win certain races with SPs as low as the 40s-60s.\u00a0 Similarly, if you have a 3yo colt that can run a 100 SP regardless of distance or surface, the colors in the chart show you that in Turf Sprints, you have a Graded Stakes caliber horse (since the color around the 100 SP is relatively dark), whereas in Dirt Routes, it\u2019s more middle-of-the-pack (since the 100 SP color is not as dark).\u00a0 You can also see how much of a range there is in certain surface\/distance combinations.\u00a0 If you look at Older Open races, there is a stark difference between the Maiden Claimer and MSW Average Winning SPs and the other classes, indicating that there is a significant<\/i> difference in what it takes to win those classes; meanwhile, if you look at the 3yo Open races, the colors are more evenly spread out (and if you look at the Dirt Sprint category, you can see that there is a significant outlier at the G1 level, which had a significantly higher Average Winning SP in 2017 than all of the other classes, and thus the red is generally lighter across the board in that column other than at the G1 spot).\u00a0 Also, as a note, the reason the numbers tend to be lighter at the top and darker at the bottom is because the order of race classes, as presented here, generally begin with the slowest races (Maiden Claimers) at the top, and progress down to the fastest races (Grade 1s), though that is not always true (for example, a High Open Claimer will probably have a faster SP than a Low Starter Allowance).<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not the only data included in the above charts.\u00a0 If you noticed, to the right of each Average Winning SP, there is a horizontal bar.\u00a0 Some are long (Conditional Allowance, pretty much across the board), and some are very short (most of the Graded Stakes ones are miniscule and very hard to see).\u00a0 This bar indicates the number of each Race Class for that Age\/Sex and Surface\/Distance combo in 2017<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 The bars are all relative; the longest bar is the same length regardless of exactly how many races were run in the most common Race Class, regardless of which Surface\/Distance or age\/sex combination you\u2019re looking at.\u00a0 But these bars are meant to give you an idea of how much data backs each Average Winning SP.\u00a0 Conditional Allowances tend to be the most common race in the SIm, and thus the bar is the longest for that Race Class at each surface\/distance and age\/sex combination.\u00a0 But you can also see that, at the 3yo levels, there are a large number of MSWs as well (more than Open Allowances generally) that make up a larger percentage of races; whereas in the Older divisions, the number of Claimers and Open Allowances tend to outweigh the MSWs.\u00a0 Again, this is not a surprise, but it\u2019s a necessary piece of information when looking at Average Winning SPs, because if an Average Winning SP is based on 1 or 2 races, the data is far less useful than if the Average Winning SP is based on 1,000 or 2,000 races. \u00a0The raw number of races, however, led to a messy chart with some data overload, so the horizontal bars were the cleanest way to present the data in a way that was useful without adding even more confusion.\u00a0 These data bars also work towards demonstrating one of the most common Sim complaints: \u201cWhy aren\u2019t there enough [RACE CLASS] type of races for [AGE\/SEX COMBINATION] at [SURFACE\/DISTANCE]!\u201d\u00a0 Look at how small the bars are for 3yo Fillies in Turf Routes that aren\u2019t Conditional Allowances or MSWs.\u00a0 It turns out, there just aren\u2019t that many races for those other classes (for example, in 2017, there were 13<\/span><\/b> Open Claimers with a tag of $50K or higher for 3yo fillies in Turf Routes, and 10 of those were run in Victoria-AUS).<\/p>\n So now that you understand what you\u2019re looking at, let\u2019s take a look at some specifics in the above charts.\u00a0 One thing you\u2019ll notice, in both 3yo charts, are some \u201cN\/A\u201d spaces (mostly in the Dirt Long and Turf Sprint columns).\u00a0 The reason, if you weren\u2019t sure, is because there were no races in that group in 2017.\u00a0 So there were no G2 or G1 Turf Sprints for 3yo Fillies (in fact, there were no G1 Turf Sprints for 3yos at all).\u00a0 Likewise, there are a number of race classes that were not run in the Dirt Long distances in 2017.\u00a0 This is probably because the Sim has a distance limit for purchased races earlier in the year, and since dirt races longer than 10 furlongs are not that common, no one was purchasing, and the CPU wasn\u2019t carding, certain claimers or starter allowances at those distances (there are also apparently no G2 races for 3yos in Dirt Long races).<\/p>\n Another thing you may notice is that the Average Winning SP for Maiden Claimers and MSWs is significantly lower for Older horses than for 3yo horses.\u00a0 Your initial thought may be \u201cwhy would this be, when older horses are almost uniformly faster than 3yos?\u201d\u00a0 But there is a pretty simple answer: Most horses that are still maidens by the time they are 4yos are the slowest of the slow.\u00a0 Other than the few horses who debuted as a 4yo (or late in the 3yo year), these races are filled by horses that haven\u2019t been good enough to break their maiden as either 2yos or 3yos.\u00a0 So they happen to be particularly slow (based on the above, if your horse could crack a 75 SP as a 3yo, in all likelihood the horse was able to break its maiden).\u00a0 In addition, the race sizes for older maiden races are significantly smaller, since again, most horses have already broken their maiden.\u00a0 So even if your new 4yo is capable of running a 100 SP, if it\u2019s running against 3 other horses that can\u2019t crack a 50 SP, your horse isn\u2019t going to run very fast because it doesn\u2019t need to in order to win by daylight.<\/p>\n So what are some conclusions that we can draw from the above charts?\u00a0 Looking at older horses, it looks like Open (non-conditioned) races (both Claimers and Allowances) are generally about 2-3 SP faster than the Conditional equivalent, though for females, Open Claimers seem to be closer to 5-6 SP faster than Conditional Claimers.\u00a0 For 3yos, meanwhile, there is little, if any, difference between a Conditional race and an Open (non-conditioned) race.\u00a0 This is not all that surprising, as 3yos typically have fewer races under their belt and are still in the \u201cmaturing\u201d phase of their development, so conditions are not always as important.<\/p>\n Another thing we can see is that generally, for Route races the Average Winning SP is roughly 8 SP faster for Older open races than for 3yo open races, and approximately 6 SP faster for Older filly and mare races than for 3yo filly races.\u00a0 Likewise, for Sprint races the Average Winning SP is roughly 9 SP faster for Older open races than for 3yo open races, and approximately 8 SP faster for Older filly and mare races than for 3yo filly races.\u00a0 This is a rough estimate for the increases shown in the chart above (some jump more, some jump less, and it excludes the maiden levels).\u00a0 But based on those estimates, if you want your 3yo to be competitive at the next level, you will want to see your horse\u2019s SP increasing by roughly 6-9 SP in the jump from 3yo to 4yo year.\u00a0 It also means that, if your 3yo has shown an SP increase of 6-9 SP in the second half of the year, it may already be ready to compete against older horses, instead of needing to stay in 3yo only company throughout the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t go into too much more analysis for this data, because it\u2019s pretty self-explanatory.\u00a0 You can take a look at the charts and make your own determinations.\u00a0 For what it\u2019s worth, I have decided to show this data first because, frankly, this will probably be the most widely used portion of this article.\u00a0 So feel free to save these images so that you can refer to them whenever you want.\u00a0 Or just keep coming back to this article to refer to them.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that these are the most useful numbers (that\u2019s coming up next), but it\u2019s the easiest to digest and it works pretty well.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Winning SP Range \u2013 Specific<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n (click images to enlarge)<\/span><\/p>\n Explanation<\/span>:\u00a0 The next set of data being presented here is a certain range of Winning SPs for each race class.\u00a0 \u00a0This chart shows roughly the middle 68% of Winning SPs in each race class.\u00a0 For example, when looking at Older Open races, 68% of Open Allowances in Dirt Sprints were won with SPs between 98.73 SP and 110.32 SP.\u00a0 This is meant to give you an idea of when your horse is running in the correct race class.\u00a0 Just because your horse puts up an SP that\u2019s below average, that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re placing it incorrectly, because that SP may still be enough to win a decent number of races at that class.\u00a0 Looking at that same Older Open division, the Average Winning SP in Dirt Sprint Open Allowances was a 104.52; but this range shows you that you don\u2019t have to have a horse that breaks a 100 SP in order to have a decent chance of winning such a race, because the low end of the 68% range is a 98.73 SP.\u00a0 This provides important context for the averages listed in the first set of charts: if there are 3 races run, whether the 3 winning SPs are 99, 100, and 101 or 90, 100 and 110, the average in both cases would be a 100 SP, but the 90-100-110 example means that you have a much greater chance of winning a race with a lower SP than the 99-100-101 example.<\/p>\n Quick statistics sidebar, to help explain the ranges above1<\/sup>: Speed Figures in the sim have what\u2019s known as a \u201cnormal distribution\u201d.\u00a0 Essentially, this means that there are a lot of winning SPs around the Average Winning SP, and then as you move farther away from the average (both higher and lower), there are fewer and fewer Winning SPs.\u00a0 To understand how wide that \u201cmiddle\u201d section is, we look at what\u2019s known as Standard Deviation.\u00a0 Standard Deviation tells us how much the data as a whole differs from the average.\u00a0 A low standard deviation means that all of the results are pretty close to average.\u00a0 A high standard deviation means that the data can vary somewhat wildly. But standard deviation has another benefit here.\u00a0 There is a rule in statistics known as the 68-95-99.7 rule. This rule says that that if you look 1 standard deviation in each direction from the average, that range will encompass 68% of the results (2 standard deviations would show 95% of the results, and 3 standard deviations would show 99.7% of the results).\u00a0 The data in the chart above is designed to show where 68% of the results lie.\u00a0 In other words, statistically, 2\/3 of all of the Winning SPs fall into the range shown in the chart above.\u00a0 So if your horse\u2019s Speed Figures fall within that range, sure, you might not win; but at least you know that your horse belongs.<\/p>\n 1<\/sup> Note \u2013 I am not a statistician.\u00a0 These are really<\/em> basic explanations to try and make the chart easier to understand.\u00a0 Don\u2019t use this as a cheat sheet for your stats exam.<\/span><\/p>\n One other thing you may notice in the above charts is that, in the 3yo charts, there are some \u201cN\/As\u201d in the data.\u00a0 This is a little less statistically sound, but the reason is due to a lack of data.\u00a0 Obviously, if there were no races for that Race Class at that Surface\/Distance combination, there\u2019s no Standard Deviation.\u00a0 But I went a little further.\u00a0 A few of the combinations had 1 race run.\u00a0 Technically, for those, the standard deviation is 0.\u00a0 But for purposes of determining what it takes to win at that race class, a range showing just the 1 race run in 2017 is not very useful.\u00a0 So I decided to turn combinations that only had 1 race in 2017 into N\/As.\u00a0 But that wasn\u2019t all.\u00a0 If there were 2 races at the race class, there is a legitimate Standard Deviation.\u00a0 But the way I did the calculations looked at the standard deviation assuming that I had the full population of all races, instead of just a sample of the races (technically, all of 2017 is just a sample\u2026but since speed figures have risen over time and earlier SPs may not be as compatible, it felt more accurate to treat the 2017 races as if it was a full population of all races).\u00a0 So looking at the range produced for combinations that had 2 races run in 2017 would just be the slowest Winning SP to the fastest Winning SP.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t seem to be too helpful either (especially if one was particularly low or particularly high).\u00a0 So I made those N\/A as well.\u00a0 Once you get to at least 3 races, I kept the data in the chart.\u00a0 But it is important to note that when there are low numbers of total races, the data has the potential to be far less accurate (standard deviations when there are 1000 races will give you a better idea going forward than standard deviations when there are 3 races, because of the likelihood of outliers affecting the data).\u00a0 So be wary of data around Graded Stakes (of which there is a lower number of races), and particularly the 3yo Long races (Turf Long and Dirt Long); other than Conditional Allowances, the number of Long distance races for 3yos is very small.<\/p>\n Once you understand the above, the data itself is, once again, self-explanatory, so there isn\u2019t a lot of analysis to actually do with the data.\u00a0 As you can see if you compare charts against each other, the overall ranges between Fillies & Mares and Open races cover roughly the same size, but the Filly & Mare ranges are typically shifted 2-4 SP lower than the Open ranges.\u00a0 That applies to both Older races and 3yo races.\u00a0 In addition, the Dirt SP ranges appear to be roughly 2-3 SP higher than the Turf SP ranges, which indicates that SPs on the turf are slower than SPs on the dirt.\u00a0 So if you have a horse that can run a 90 SP at 8 furlongs on both the turf and dirt, you may want to keep them on the turf; that speed figure is more likely to win on the Turf than the Dirt.<\/p>\n One troubling thing to see in the above charts, however, is how high the low-end of some of the ranges actually is.\u00a0 If you have an Older male horse, to even win a cheap Conditional Claimer, you likely need to be running at least a 90 SP (unless you\u2019re running at Long distances).\u00a0 If you can\u2019t find a Conditional Claimer and need to run in an Open Claimer, even at the cheapest levels, a win in the Route range basically requires a 95 SP or above.\u00a0 This seems a little ridiculous.\u00a0 If you look at the ranges for High Open Claimers, regardless of the Age\/Sex of the race, you need roughly the same SP as you would need to win an Open Allowance.\u00a0 Why is that the case?\u00a0 One would think that if you have a horse running SPs that are good enough to win Open Allowances somewhat regularly, they would be running at that level instead of the claiming level.\u00a0 The result of these high ranges is that horses that have lost a step, or were never that fast to begin with, have no place in the Sim outside of Hot (or maybe Local) races.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Winning SPs \u2013 General<\/b><\/p>\n\n
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![\"OlderOpenSpecific\"](\"http:\/\/blacktypebugler.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/OlderOpenSpecific.jpg\")
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