A good card to practice on.
This was race 2; race one only had 4 runner.
For this exercise I will use best of last three races and explain if I did not do that. There are very few exceptions. Here is the winner. The card is relatively early in the Woodbine meet so many horses took the winter off, but best of last three works just fine.
Here are the horses before evaluations and demotions from the L/P screen:
Before I get too far into the race I make sure that the running style is correct. An early horse is any horse that has lost ground at all calls or has never passed another horse. Even the slightest gain of either should classify the horse as EP. I look at all the horses races to see if can press even a little or if the race pace makes it an E type.
Many times, but not always, you can eliminate a horse that gets no Rx3 points. You can always do it from the Segments screen as well. For my handicapping I eliminate down to 5 horses so in this race I need to demote two horses.
The 5 is the first to go. then I go to Segments and sort in the RS column from early to late for a first look.
Each RS will be sorted by highest speed bias points. the higher the point total the closer the horse could/should run to the pace of race.
Ideally, you want to see the contenders as the best horses who either lead without much loss to the finish or who gain from 1F/SC/FIN.
The higher the number of speed points means that the horse should be closer to the lead than a horse with fewer points. So for this reason only slight losses of ground should be allowed. As the number of points in each RS classification decreases you want to see a greater number of lengths gained or lesser number of lengths lost.
Sustained horses NEED to, at best, maintain position to SC and then MUST gain to the finish and then not have the worst FIN values as shown on the segments chart (left side of screen)
So the 2 and the 7 are candidates to demote. The 2 gains to SC, but loses ground to the finish; the 7 had the most speed points, lost ground to SC and does not do enough to the finish.
The Sustained horse gains in both calls and could be a place or show horse no matter what the pace, especially if the early horses get in a dual. I kept the 2 because it had both PL and BPP top five ranks.
The L/P screen shows the winner top 2 Rx3 and the place horse as the best rx3.
Sometimes in the decision making process it helps to sort the Segments screen by either the 1F info or the SC info (whoever has the SC 0/0 value. With this info in mind you can look at the velocity screen and see 3F values to help decide whether to keep or demote a horse.
Not a big winner, but a winner.