Cheltenham's November Meeting opens on Friday with six races on Good ground: big-field handicap hurdles to open and close the card, a Listed novices' chase over three miles and a furlong, the Grade 2 Shloer Chase with a dual winner of the race back again, a veterans' handicap chase, and the Grade 2 Hyde Novices' Hurdle.
This guide reads all six through our model. It is written for newcomers as much as regulars: every figure is explained the first time it appears, and each race is used to show one way of working with the data, from a handicap the model cannot split to a novice race full of horses it has barely seen. The framing of every race is open to everyone, a free account unlocks the complete analysis, and members get the live racecard underneath. The second race is also our free race of the day, open in full on the website.
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TPR (Total Performance Rating) is EquiAnalytix's machine-learning rating. It turns everything we hold on a horse into its percentage chance of winning, and the chances in a race always add up to 100. It was tested on 836,398 runners rated before their races across GB and Irish racing from 2019 to 2026: the top-rated horse won 28.8% of the time and the top four included 72.7% of winners.
Our rating engine re-reads every horse's career after every run. Ability is the level a horse has proved it can run to. Oper, short for Operating, is the level it is ready to run to today. Both sit on the same scale as the official handicap mark, in pounds.
The gap between Oper and Ability, in pounds. A plus figure means a horse is running above its own proven level; a minus figure means it is running below it.
The gap between our Ability figure and the horse's official handicap mark. A plus figure means our numbers rate the horse higher than the handicapper does.
The engine will not show a confident figure until it has seen a horse three times over jumps. Until then the racecard marks its numbers Unproven.
Every run earns a figure built from the time of the race and adjusted for its class, so runs at different tracks and in different grades can be compared.
The level a horse has run to on ground like today's, at today's track and at around today's trip. A blank means it has never raced under those conditions.
The spread of a horse's recent figures. A low number means it runs to a similar level every time.
The sire type figure is the average performance figure of a sire's runners in today's kind of race, such as chases. The dam produce figure is the average for all the dam's runners.
We read each runner's usual early position from its recent races and score the likely gallop from 1 (slow) to 9 (very fast).
The average performance figure of a yard's runners over the last month, shown beside its figure for the year, along with its strike rate.
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Twenty runners, a conditional jockey on every one of them, and the first thing our model says is that nobody stands out. TPR, our Total Performance Rating, turns everything we hold on a horse into its percentage chance of winning, and the chances in a race always add up to 100. Here the highest is 9: GLANCING JACK 9, OUTMASTER 9, THATS IT PADDY 8, KENO BLACK 8, HIGH FIBRE 7, CHUTZPAL 7. When the top of a race is that flat, the rating is telling you to look underneath it, and that is what the rest of the racecard is for. Tested on 836,398 runners rated before their races, the top four on TPR have included the winner 72.7 per cent of the time, so the shortlist is usually right even when the order is tight.
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Seven novice chasers over three miles and a furlong, all carrying 11st 4lb, and a rare chance to see our numbers argue with the official ones in plain sight. If the official ratings were the whole story, DERRYHASSEN PADDY, rated 142, would beat the rest at level weights and KINGSTON NARCISSUS, rated 130, would be making up the numbers. TPR sees it almost exactly the other way round: KINGSTON NARCISSUS 20, KINGS BUCKS 18, BILL JOYCE 17, FOLLOW YOUR LUCK 13, INTOSOMETHINGGOOD 13, DERRYHASSEN PADDY 12, D ART D ART 7. The reason is the difference between a reputation and a current level. Several of these earned their marks over hurdles a year or more ago. The Oper figure asks a narrower question, what is this horse ready to run to today, and over fences only two of the seven have answered it convincingly. This is also our free race of the day, so the full racecard, with every number below and many more, is open to everyone on our free race page.
Four runners, two miles, and one of them has won this race twice. Small fields are where a rating like ours is easiest to read, because the chances have so few places to go: JONBON 44, GIDLEIGH PARK 26, SAINT SEGAL 19, MIGHTY BANDIT 11. A figure of 44 says the model thinks its top-rated horse wins this a little less than half the time, a useful corrective when a horse looks unbeatable on paper. All four like to race on or near the lead. Our pace forecast scores the race 3 out of 9, because there is no out-and-out tearaway among them, but three of the four have made the running in recent races and somebody has to give way.
Veterans' chases are for horses aged ten and older. Most have been rated far higher than they are now, and the question is never how good a horse was but how much of it is left. That is exactly the split our engine was built to make, between Ability, what a horse has proved, and Oper, what it is ready to run to today, and this race has a clear example of each going wrong. First the model's view: THUNDER ROCK 26, GA LAW 15, OUTLAW PETER 15, TRIPLE TRADE 15, GLENGOULY 11, MAHONS GLORY 8, COPPERHEAD 7, TIME TO BITE 3. One horse eleven points clear of three who cannot be separated. The pace forecast is 4 out of 9, with GLENGOULY and TIME TO BITE the two who like to lead.
A Grade 2 for novice hurdlers over two miles five, where the most useful thing a rating can do is admit what it does not know. Six of the ten have run over hurdles only once. Our engine will not print a confident figure until it has seen a horse three times over jumps, so on the racecard WOODSTOCK OCTO, PETERSHAM PLACE, FEROCIMO and DALLAS STAR all carry the word Unproven beside their numbers. Treat their figures as a first sketch. TPR still gives every runner a chance: LOCK STOCK 21, HITINTHEHEADLINES 14, DIVINE DIVA 12, WOODSTOCK OCTO 10, PETERSHAM PLACE 9, LION ROSE SIVOLA 8, FEROCIMO 8, DALLAS STAR 7, RED ACRES GEORGIE 7, LUCK BETWEEN US 3. The pace forecast is 7 out of 9, the strongest of the day, with LOCK STOCK and the mare RED ACRES GEORGIE both confirmed front-runners.
The day ends as it began, with a big-field handicap hurdle the model cannot split: SYTADEL 13, WAY OF STARS 13, LEXINGTON WOOD 9, CROOKED PATH 8, TUPPENCE 8, ADE BOY 8. Eighteen novices over the minimum trip, and a pace forecast of only 3 out of 9, slow for a field this size, because the three confirmed front-runners, BABYKEN, FIRST ASCENT and BAYMOUNT, all sit in the bottom half of the model. Two horses share the top TPR and they could hardly be more different, which makes this a good race for showing how to use the racecard to choose between them.
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18+ | Please gamble responsibly | GamCare 0808 8020 133. All figures are EquiAnalytix proprietary ratings derived from our database of every UK and Irish race since 2009; they are analysis, not betting advice.