Trotter

I try to mitigate the problem by only taking my going allowance from handicap races where I know the rough level of ability of the horses in the race. I work out in advance what rating horses of this class should achieve, compare this to what they actually achieve, strike out the fastest and slowest and use the average of the others as my going allowance
Although I'm not going to bother with UK Turf Racing (too much!) I did rate Donny on Saturday 
I had the expected figure for the 4 handicaps in time order, the actual figure and the difference
91- 42 - slow 49
99 - 54 - slow 45
85 - 28 - slow 57
85 - 31 - slow 54
these are all within the same ballpark which suggests they might be reasonable !
I strike out the 45 and the 57 and average the other 2 to give my final figure of Slow 52
So the Lincoln winner gets 54 plus 52 = 106
 
 
 

winning double - today + 1.00
month + 373.86

Doncaster 1.20
CHARYN 27/10
£20 win BETMGM 20% price boost
Won. SP 2/1
Daily profit £ 54
Monthly profit £ 280.52

winning double - today + 1.00
month + 373.86

winning double - today + 1.00
month + 373.86

Liberty Lane is drifting in the market. Pretty sure it was 4/1 last night but now out to 13/2 in places and is still on my short list with seemingly everything in it's favour - CD winner, won on soft, goes well after a break, yard in tremendous form, lightly raced 4 year old
EW shots ...... 
Thunderball 12/1
The Gatekeeper 14/1
I see that Chazzesmee is the new favourite having won the Irish Lincoln 5 days ago but at 9/4 he's not for me !. The time of the Irish race was not good and 5 days isn't much time to recover from a competitive handicap on heavy ground, plus the travelling ...... I'd be happy to take him on (and watch him scoot home by 5 lengths !). His price has collapsed overnight so somebody fancies him !
Win - Liberty Lane
EW - Thunderball, The Gatekeeper
Lay  - Chazzesmee

Liberty Lane is drifting in the market. Pretty sure it was 4/1 last night but now out to 13/2 in places and is still on my short list with seemingly everything in it's favour - CD winner, won on soft, goes well after a break, yard in tremendous form, lightly raced 4 year old
EW shots ...... 
Thunderball 12/1
The Gatekeeper 14/1
I see that Chazzesmee is the new favourite having won the Irish Lincoln 5 days ago but at 9/4 he's not for me !. The time of the Irish race was not good and 5 days isn't much time to recover from a competitive handicap on heavy ground, plus the travelling ...... I'd be happy to take him on (and watch him scoot home by 5 lengths !). His price has collapsed overnight so somebody fancies him !
Win - Liberty Lane
EW - Thunderball, The Gatekeeper
Lay  - Chazzesmee

Liberty Lane is drifting in the market. Pretty sure it was 4/1 last night but now out to 13/2 in places and is still on my short list with seemingly everything in it's favour - CD winner, won on soft, goes well after a break, yard in tremendous form, lightly raced 4 year old
EW shots ...... 
Thunderball 12/1
The Gatekeeper 14/1
I see that Chazzesmee is the new favourite having won the Irish Lincoln 5 days ago but at 9/4 he's not for me !. The time of the Irish race was not good and 5 days isn't much time to recover from a competitive handicap on heavy ground, plus the travelling ...... I'd be happy to take him on (and watch him scoot home by 5 lengths !). His price has collapsed overnight so somebody fancies him !
Win - Liberty Lane
EW - Thunderball, The Gatekeeper
Lay  - Chazzesmee

+372.86
Might try and use the rest of this month in an attempt to get 3 winners in a Trixie, regardless of odds !
2.30 Bang - Montgomery 10/11
2.40 Newb - Heltenham 6/5
7.00 Newc - Ziggy's Missile 4/9
prices skybet
£5 Trixie

Liberty Lane is drifting in the market. Pretty sure it was 4/1 last night but now out to 13/2 in places and is still on my short list with seemingly everything in it's favour - CD winner, won on soft, goes well after a break, yard in tremendous form, lightly raced 4 year old
EW shots ...... 
Thunderball 12/1
The Gatekeeper 14/1
I see that Chazzesmee is the new favourite having won the Irish Lincoln 5 days ago but at 9/4 he's not for me !. The time of the Irish race was not good and 5 days isn't much time to recover from a competitive handicap on heavy ground, plus the travelling ...... I'd be happy to take him on (and watch him scoot home by 5 lengths !). His price has collapsed overnight so somebody fancies him !
Win - Liberty Lane
EW - Thunderball, The Gatekeeper
Lay  - Chazzesmee

I see that Chazzesmee is declared for the Lincoln on Saturday
He won the Irish Lincoln a few days ago and I did that day's ratings and had him with a figure of 90 which I think is pretty low for a top handicap winner. I intend to rate the Donny card on Saturday .... be interesting to see what he does.

To be fair, I am into my 70s ........  the old brain is a bit too addled to start doing complicated things with computers, particularly as I never learned to use them apart from what I taught myself
I'm happy enough to study the form in the old fashioned way and just form the ratings and keep them on a Word document ....... I don't keep a record for each horse just jot down the winners rating then I can quickly look up a horses last 2 or 3 figures by reference to the race winner of the races he ran in
I've never really been attracted to systems or data analysis ........ I'm interested in the horses that are running today and I'm happy enough studying today's race without reference to what other horses have done in the past. I've got the form of today's runners and that's all I need !

I see that Chazzesmee is declared for the Lincoln on Saturday
He won the Irish Lincoln a few days ago and I did that day's ratings and had him with a figure of 90 which I think is pretty low for a top handicap winner. I intend to rate the Donny card on Saturday .... be interesting to see what he does.

To be fair, I am into my 70s ........  the old brain is a bit too addled to start doing complicated things with computers, particularly as I never learned to use them apart from what I taught myself
I'm happy enough to study the form in the old fashioned way and just form the ratings and keep them on a Word document ....... I don't keep a record for each horse just jot down the winners rating then I can quickly look up a horses last 2 or 3 figures by reference to the race winner of the races he ran in
I've never really been attracted to systems or data analysis ........ I'm interested in the horses that are running today and I'm happy enough studying today's race without reference to what other horses have done in the past. I've got the form of today's runners and that's all I need !

To be fair, I am into my 70s ........  the old brain is a bit too addled to start doing complicated things with computers, particularly as I never learned to use them apart from what I taught myself
I'm happy enough to study the form in the old fashioned way and just form the ratings and keep them on a Word document ....... I don't keep a record for each horse just jot down the winners rating then I can quickly look up a horses last 2 or 3 figures by reference to the race winner of the races he ran in
I've never really been attracted to systems or data analysis ........ I'm interested in the horses that are running today and I'm happy enough studying today's race without reference to what other horses have done in the past. I've got the form of today's runners and that's all I need !

one winning double ......
today +0.25 (25p is better than losing !)
month +412.86

I used to have a card index file for 3 mile chasers but even with such a specific group of horses it pretty quickly got out of hand. The problem in the olden days was that the Weekender or Sporting Life, later The Post, would only give you up to 3 previous runs in the form. If you wanted to know more than that you had to collect the weekly results pull out from the Raceform Weekly ?
I became self employed in 1996 so gave up betting and racing for the next 12 years ........ when I came back to it I couldn't believe the amount of stuff available on the internet as regards form. Everything was so much easier and complete
Unfortunately though I was never computer literate enough to get into all the data management ..... I'd never used a computer at all until I was about 4 years into self-employment when I thought I'd better take the plunge or I'd soon be Un-employed rather than self-employed. So I only learned how to do what I needed to do for work
I'm still a pen and paper chap for keeping records of speed figures etc 
 

I used to have a card index file for 3 mile chasers but even with such a specific group of horses it pretty quickly got out of hand. The problem in the olden days was that the Weekender or Sporting Life, later The Post, would only give you up to 3 previous runs in the form. If you wanted to know more than that you had to collect the weekly results pull out from the Raceform Weekly ?
I became self employed in 1996 so gave up betting and racing for the next 12 years ........ when I came back to it I couldn't believe the amount of stuff available on the internet as regards form. Everything was so much easier and complete
Unfortunately though I was never computer literate enough to get into all the data management ..... I'd never used a computer at all until I was about 4 years into self-employment when I thought I'd better take the plunge or I'd soon be Un-employed rather than self-employed. So I only learned how to do what I needed to do for work
I'm still a pen and paper chap for keeping records of speed figures etc 
 

Good luck with that @MCLARKE 
To be honest I've never considered compiling my own race times. Being very much a 'pen and paper' guy it would just take me too much time. 
I think it would be fairly easy for me to become 'someone who compiles speed ratings' rather than 'someone who uses speed ratings to help find winners' ! ......... so I'm quite happy sticking to the winter AW and having the summer off !
I'm still toying with the idea of rating the top race days ......... maybe days with Group Races on the card but I'll see how that goes
 

I think most people would say that the enjoyment is in finding winners, studying the form, having opinions, trying to get value, 
It's like doing crossword puzzles ...... the fun is in working out the clues and finishing it (the equivalent of finding the winner)
If someone just read out the answers to the crossword and you filled the squares in, you'd soon get bored with that !

one winning double ......
today +0.25 (25p is better than losing !)
month +412.86

I think most people would say that the enjoyment is in finding winners, studying the form, having opinions, trying to get value, 
It's like doing crossword puzzles ...... the fun is in working out the clues and finishing it (the equivalent of finding the winner)
If someone just read out the answers to the crossword and you filled the squares in, you'd soon get bored with that !

one winning double ......
today +0.25 (25p is better than losing !)
month +412.86

Thanks @AzertyuiopFan for taking the time and effort to put your thoughts to paper in such a comprehensive set of posts !
If we were to consider radical ideas for the Festival I'd be looking at dropping most of the handicaps. They could be spread out over Feb, March, April at the weekends at other tracks .... why not Sundays ?. Have a big top level handicap at Sunday meetings. Certainly I'd be dropping the novice and juvenile handicaps. 
The exception could be the Mares races, I agree with your thoughts on  making them handicaps. The fact that we tend to get horses who win the race 3, 4, 5 times in a row suggests something needs to be done to make them more competitive ,...... and to encourage top Mares into the Champion Hurdle
I quite like the idea of the penalty structure for the intermediate distances but if you make the races for specialists at those trips you might as well keep them as grade ones ?. I suppose the powers that be would argue that grade one races should be level weights though which might scupper the idea of keeping them as grade one races but with penalties related to distance. So making them Grade 2 races looks like a good compromise. 
Definitely dump the Cross Country ...... I never watch it anyway
The National Hunt Chase is, I guess, what Cheltenham used to be about ....... a gathering of the Country Folk and Landed Aristocracy and the main event would be their sons riding their horses against each other. 
I suppose the main factor though is 4 days ........ shame we can't go back to 3 days but obviously it's now impossible
 

+412.61
MR 2.00 - Zara's Universe 5/2
MR 3.30 - Flintara 11/4
Hay 3.50 - Ali Star Bert 9/2
MR 4.05 - Woodie Flash 3/1
MR 5.15 - Double Powerful 5/4
prices skybet
10 x £2 doubles