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To create an element of unpredictability in races a Random Factor is applied to every horse in every race. The rationale behind this is to ensure that races are not routinely won by the horse with the best Time Trials, a rationale that I feel only the most blinkered of owners would not agree is necessary to some extent or another.
According to Member Support (although it has to be said that all too often their responses tend more to represent the first thing that came into their head than actual facts) there are a number of factors that contribute to the outcome of any particular race (in no particular order):
• Fitness
• Innate ability
• Tack
• Distance
• Going
• Weight
• Draw
• Random Factor
Note that there is no mention of the Track being a factor, it has been officially stated in the past that racing on different Turf Tracks forms no part in the race outcome and likewise for the different Dirt Tracks. Whether this information was based on fact is open to debate but it has to be taken at face value for analysis purposes until proven otherwise.
Fitness, Tack, Distance, Going and Weight are all under the control of the individual owners and, via Time Trials, owners can get a feel for how little or much these factors may affect each horse in their stable.
Innate ability is simply how well each horse performs in Time Trials and is very much tied to Fitness, Distance and Going so they are the same thing really. Innate ability also includes a variable concerning whether the individual horse likes to race (has heart) or not. This can only be determined by racing and analysing results but is thought to be constant throughout the lifetime of the horse.
That leaves only two factors outside of owners control - the Draw and the Random Factor.
The Draw
At no point have I ever seen an official statement detailing either the effect of this factor or whether it has a consistent effect over different courses, distances or goings. As the draw for each race is allocated randomly I personally think of the draw as being a part of the larger entity commonly referred to as the Random Factor.
The Jockey Factor
In the good old days there was no indicator of the possible influence that the Random Factor had on any particular horse in a race, that has changed since the introduction of virtual jockeys on April 4th 2006. As stated above I include the Draw as part of the Random Factor so I will refer to the virtual jockeys as the Jockey Factor from this point. This Jockey Factor makes up the other part of the Random Factor.
There are 34 jockeys in total and a table is maintained so that some idea of the influence each jockey may have had on a race can be determined. To do this each jockey in the race needs to be ranked in relation to their position in the table. The highest ranked jockey in any race represents the best Random Factor used in the race down to the lowest ranked jockey in the table which represents the worst Jockey Factor used in the race. It is important to understand that the same Jockey Factors are not used for each race, in fact there has never been any conclusive official statement as to exactly how many different values for the Jockey Factor actually exist. It is also unclear as to whether it is possible for two or more horses in the same race to receive the exact same value for the Jockey Factor.
A common mistake a number of newer players make, and some of those more experienced players as well, is to assign a relationship between the ranking of each jockey to the weight of the random factor received in the race. For example in a four horse race if the first three home have Saxon, Girard and Doyle in the saddle the same random was applied to the fourth horse irrespective of whether Bailey or Sullivan was assigned as being on it's back. The order of jockey rankings purely depicts the order of randoms in the race, it has absolutely no relationship to the effect of those randoms. In the given example it is equally true that Bailey may have represented a much worse random than the others as it is that Sullivan may have represented a random only marginally worse than the third best random in the race.
So what, if anything, can be determined from looking at the Jockey Factor in any particular race ?
In some instances the Jockey Factor can be quite revealing as to whether a horse may be innately better than some of the opposition. When a horse with a worse Jockey Factor (a lower ranked jockey) in the race finishes ahead of another horse carrying the same weight with a better Jockey Factor (a higher ranked jockey) in the race it is usually indicative that the former horse may have a greater innate ability than the latter over that particular race specification (Distance and Going). Obviously Tack items for the race need to be looked at to ensure that the latter horse was running with its perceived optimum Tack to help shore up this possible conclusion. Also, unless you are privy to the fitness at which both horses in question raced, it may need other meetings between the same two horses over the same race specification before any conclusion can be reached to any degree of certainty.
Conversely, if your horse is fully fit and has the optimum Tack yet finishes behind another in the same race with a worse Jockey Factor this more conclusively indicates that the other horse may have a greater innate ability over that particular race specification.
When drawing conclusions by interpreting the Jockey Factor it has to be remembered that as yet we have no firm information regarding the Draw.
It has also been stated that the Jockey Factor ranges from a maximum positive value to a maximum negative value and that the official reasoning for requiring a Jockey Factor on the site is to mimic real-life horse-racing whereby a horse may have an 'off' day or lose ground at the start and so on. As such I fail to understand why there is a need for the Jockey Factor to include any positive affect as surely the types of situation the Jockey Factor is intended to represent are primarily negative ones.
Opinions appear to be perennially divided on the site as to whether the Jockey Factor has an overly large impact on race outcomes. I am firmly in the 'it is too high' camp with regards to top-level Grade 2 racing and also query why every horse in every race should be subject to the Jockey Factor, a question which always seems to be ignored by the site staff.
The Random Factor
Although it has repeatedly been officially stated that the 'Random Factor' (Jockey Factor) and the Draw both play only a small part in the outcome of any race, it is logical that the closer in innate ability the race field are the larger the combined effect of these factors becomes. This increased effect of the Jockey Factor in certain races caused some owners to highlight that in their opinion the Random Factor had too much influence on these races and, following a vote, it was decided to reduce the Random Factor in all Gr1 races by limiting the jockeys used to the top half of the table only. The adopted method for this reduction in the Random Factor leads one to believe that there may be some correlation between the jockeys and the values of the Random Factor, however I am not convinced that this is the case and I believe this 'reduction' may not be all that it is perceived to be.
To further confuse any in-depth investigation into the influence of the Random Factor, finishing distances between horses are artificially manipulated to enable positions to be more clearly defined on the Race Viewer. The Race Generator may produce a result where one horse has beaten another by the minimum of margins (the shortest of short-heads) yet the finishing distance between the two horses will be exaggerated when the result is manipulated to facilitate the Race Viewer.