What 5 or 6 things do you look at when you handicap?
Do you always look at these in the same order?

If it's not an intrusion into the secretum secretorum of your effort, enquiring minds would like to know.

In a state-bred race the first trick is to see who has shown life in open company.

Class

Form/Cycles

Workouts

Pace

Connections

Equipment Changes

Not always in this order, depends on what kind of race it is....

a huge key is trends..Horses cycle..spotting one's cycle is a key...Pars vs performance applied to the cycle offers compelling evidence of the horse's potential perfomance. Once you have doumented this all the other angles become part of the case..including class connections and equipment..and especially TRIPS.

Using RAGS.Tgraphs or even Beyers provides you the evidence..It is pretty easy at first blush to eliminate a group of entries each race..Finding the winner is of course much harder.

Workouts are tough to gauge. Some critters just don't want to lift a hoof in the morning and go well in the afternoon. They're most helpful to me for firsters and layoff horses. You want to see those gaps in the run lines filled with steady works for conditioning, times be damned. Looking for a nifty speed tab on a cutback can be a good clue but workouts in general don't tell you much for a horse who is racing regularly.

AGREED! The late Marty the Clocker was a whiz at workouts although the times he caught vs the times DRF published were sometimes inconsistent! Only thing important about works would be where and when..Nicely spaced no breaks and TT vs Main sometimes tip you towards a runner especially with smaller outfits and firsters.

Gate works are tricky. Wish they would provide a comment with it. I watch a lot of gate works that are fast, but I also noticed some that stumbled, ducked in, take a right hand turn etc, and then ran up to grab a 36, or 37 at 3fl. Most are in company with stablemates who pass them in the gallop out.

Angle I like is out side post positions in these turf sprints. Especially when they are going 2-3 races off the layoff with prior inside trip troubles.

Yeah, and gate works are timed from a standing start and breezes click off on the gallop. We could have a thread on works alone that would go on for 100 posts and then we'd all still be scratching our heads. I like to see a nice gate work for a firster. At least then I know the s.o.b. is capable of leaving the apparatus.