How it Works
Welcome
Welcome to TrackMate, probably the most powerful racing concept in the world! TrackMate is a tool designed to help you read races more easily and pick horses with added confidence. There is a lot of detail contained within this page and it may be a little overwhelming if you've not taken the opportunity to sign up and get a feel of the racecards. If you are not familiar with the racecards then we have included screen-shots to help improve your understanding. We recommend that you use this page as a reference guide while you are learning the system; reading this guide as well as the race cards will help you start picking winners in no time.
Meet the Team
TrackMate is a combination of two different approaches to rating a race, which we've called Boris and Ruf (don't ask us why; we just did!).
Boris is a time-based approach that attributes values to going, distance, weight, lengths, the draw (flat) and jumping ability (National Hunt). All horses are calculated to a common denominator which we use to adjust the runners for today's races to the prevailing conditions.
Ruf assesses the quality and relevance of all races run this season and the relative performance of all horses that have run in them. Thus Ruf builds a league table headed by the high quality performers down to the horses that punters would rather forget about.
Our Approach
Unlike other systems we do not publish endless and often confusing tables of numbers. We believe that our easy to understand colour coded ratings and graphs afford our users an instant, easy visual impression of each race. In no time at all you will learn to look at a card and immediately home in on the likely contenders.
Please note although we display all races we do not normally look at certain races such as Sellers, Claiming, Auction, Apprentice, Amateur Riders, Lady Riders, Banded, and Nursery because the horses' form and/or the jockeys' abilities are not sufficiently established. Different people have different opinions on the race types that they believe are worth betting in; establish your own opinion before jumping in on lower-class races.
Common sense and experience tell us that the ratings become more reliable the more outings the runners have had in the last six months. Typically, we would look for at least 2 runs. You can tell from dots in the trend how many completed runs a horse has had in that timeframe. (For example, in the racecard below, Kipchak has had 13 runs and Royal Dignitary has had 5).
Race card explained
| No | Race Card No, with the draw in brackets for flat races |
| Silks | The jockey's silk colours |
| Name | The runner's name. Hover the mouse pointer over the name to show a pop up containing more details on the runner and giving the option to put the runner into your notebook. |
| Form | The most recent placings for the runner |
| DU (Days Unraced) | The number of days the horse has had off since it last ran |
| SP | the official starting price for the horse. If you are viewing one of today's races then you will see the current Betfair price instead. There will be an example of this later on |
| Colours | The Boris and Ruf colour ratings for the runner. Jump to colours section |
| Stack | The range of performances of the runner over the last 6 months. Jump to stack section |
| Trend | The performance trend of the runner over the last 6 months.Jump to trend section |
| Position | The finishing position of the runner in the race. Obviously this is only present on past races |
| FL (Form Lines) | A quick indicator of direct form against the other runners today. The number represents the card number of the runner previously run against. If the number is green then it means that this runner beat the competitor, if the number is red then it lost. Hovering over the number will give details of where and when the race was and what the race conditions and finishing positions were. |
| Tip | If a small TrackMate logo appears on the racecard then it means that it has been tipped by one or more of our tipsters. Hover over the icon to get the details of who tipped the horse and for what price at what stake. |
The Colours |  |
The colours express how well TrackMate rates a runner in a number of categories. From left to right, the categories are:
| First block of 3 | Boris ratings for 6, 4 & 2 months |
| Middle block of 4 | Boris ratings for average time, average standard, fastest time & fastest standard. Note that these are advanced ratings that are used to support the main three Boris ratings only. |
| Last block of 3 | Ruf ratings for 6, 4 & 2 months |
The meanings of the different colours are:
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Clear Top | This category thinks the horse is well ahead of the field. |
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Top | The horse is ahead of the field, but not by a large margin. |
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Second | The horse is the second best in the relevant category. |
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Third | The horse is the third best in the relevant category. |
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Bottom | This category has the horse rated behind the rest of the field |
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Unranked | This horse is not rated in the top three in the race but neither is it bottom rated. |
If the rating colour is white then it means that the horse is unrated in that category; this is usually because it hasn't raced in the UK within the relevant timeframe.
If you see multiple horses with the same colour in the same column for a given race then it means that those values are too close to call one as being better than the other; in these cases it's better to indicate them as being the same than superficially rank one as higher than the other.
In the colours above, for example, Boris rates the horse top over the last 2 months, with Ruf rating the horse top over 6 months and two months and clear top over 4 months.
The Stack |  |
The two different coloured lines on the stack represent the relevant values for Boris and Ruf. The horizontal line represents the range of the horse's performances this season from worst (left) to best (right), with the bold vertical line signifying the average performance. The small downward arrows mark the horse's performance on their last outing. The longer the line the greater the difference between the runner's worst and best performances. The stacks of all the runners in the race are aligned so that you can easily see a like-for-like comparison on one horse's performance compared to another.
Hovering over the stack will draw a vertical ruler across all runners to aid comparison and clicking on the stack will cause the stack to zoom in so that you can see the differences between different runners more easily. Clicking on the stack for a second time will return the zoom level to normal. If you click and drag the stack then you can position the viewable area left or right as you want.
The Trend |  |
The two different coloured lines on the trend represent the relevant values for Boris and Ruf. Each of the horse's runs over the last 6 months are plotted on the trend with the horizontal axis representing time (left-hand side is 6 months ago, right-hand side is today) and the vertical axis representing performance (top is the best run, bottom is the worst run). The vertical lines split the trend into 2-month segments, with the first vertical line being 4 months ago and the second vertical line being 2 months ago.
The trend is used to show how many times a runner has been rated (the coloured dots) and whether a horse is running consistently (a flat line), is improving (a rising line) or is deteriorating (a falling line).
A Sample Race
Looking at the above racecard we can see that one of the five horses is greyed out; this represents that the runner has been withdrawn from the race, leaving just 4 horses (the header of the racecard also tells us this). Out of the remaining four runners we can see that Layali Al Andalus is unrated; the DU (days unraced) column tells us that he has had a whopping 243 days off since his last rated race. It is down to personal opinion what to do in races with unrated runners - in this case hovering over the horse name would tell us that it's a Saeed bin Suroor horse being ridden by Frankie Dettori and we can see that it is 1.75 to win and 1.27 to place in the Betfair market. In this case it is likely that it is the combination of jockey and trainer that makes the horse fancied, as it has no form to speak of in the last year in the UK.
Looking at the remaining runners we get a very clear picture of the order that the system expects them to finish. Corsica is rated clear top in the 6 major ratings and is ranked top in 3 of the 4 supplementary ratings. Looking at the trend we can see that Corsica has had two runs in the last two months, with the stack and trend showing that the second run was an improvement on the first. The stack shows that the horse is significantly ahead of the next best horse and the form shows that it won both of its two runs this season.
Admission is clearly the second best of the rated horses in this race, being rated second in all 6 major ratings and 3 of the 4 supplementary ratings, with the fourth showing as clear top. The stack shows Admission as being some way behind the best horse, but also some way clear of the third best.
In a race like this one it is entirely down to personal preference and how high a risk you are willing to take with regards to the unrated favourite as to whether or not you would want to select one of the horses. At 7.4 to win and 2.6 to place, Corsica certainly seems a very good value bet in this market.
The finishing positions of the horses in this race were:
- Corsica
- Admission
- Take It To The Max
- Layali Al Andalus
The Menu Bar
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Takes you to your notebook, where you can see and edit any selections you've made for today as well as any horses you flagged for the future after a previous run that caught your eye. |
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Pops up the live William Hill radio commentary for you to listen to the races as they happen. |
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Takes you to the Sporting Life results page for you to check how many winners you've picked today. |
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Loads a printer-friendly view of the page. |
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Brings up a help page to remind you what everything does if you get stuck. |
If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the forum or email us at support@track-mate.info and we'll be happy to help as best we can.
