Overview of the Past Performance
Level: Beginner
By Dana Byerly, Hello Race Fans Co-founder
The past performance, or pp as it’s sometimes called, is your key to unlocking the puzzle of the race. It comes in many shapes and sizes, displaying varying types and amounts of data, laid out with a variety of subtle differences, but at the end of the day it’s giving you the data you need about the conditions of the race and the horses running in it.
In my contribution to the Letter to a New Horseplayer series, I tried to stress that there is a giant amount of data available to you as a handicapper, and you should NOT feel obligated to use all of it… especially when you’re starting out. Cozy up to a few data points and expand to new ones as you become familiar and comfortable. You’ll figure out which data you like to use most, what angles are most appealing… think journey, not destination.
Each vendor’s past performances has its own appeal and band of loyal followers. There have been several improvement and an entirely new past performance product since our original publishing of this post in 2010, here’s an updated overview of the various past performance products on the market, listed alphabetically.
Brisnet
Brisnet, sponsor of our Derby Prep Alert, offers a variety of options including Condensed, Premium and Ultimate past performances. You can grab a free sample of each at their site.
Each type of Brisnet past performance includes proprietary speed figures and their top-of-the-line Ultimate version includes field rankings by class ratings, speed last race, best speed at the distance and their prime power number. Another excellent feature of Brisnet is that they allow you to create your own card (must be logged-in to access). For example, if you wanted to play three races at Aqueduct, two at Fair Grounds and four at Gulfstream Park you could compile those races into a single card, versus buying three cards as long as the races are all on the same day.
Explanation of the data points in the Brisnet Ultimate Past Performance here (pdf)
Daily Racing Form
The pdf version of the Daily Racing Form’s past performance has not changed over the last five years, and in some respects is still the gold standard by which all other past performance products are judged. But the web-based version, Formulator, has made a number of improvements in the last five years and has been steadily gaining in popularity.
In addition to the standard information found in all past performances, one of DRF’s main features are the Beyer Speed Figures, which still seam to be the most preferred fig on the market. The web-based Formulator app allows for a certain level of customization and several useful features such as trainer pattern tools, TicketMaker for multi-race exotic tickets as well as unlimited replays.
There’s a handy tutorial on “How to Read the Form” that will come in handy when trying to figure how to handicap/get a handle on all the data. Simply click on an area of the past performance it loads in explanation of all the data points.
View an example of the of the pdf version
Try Formulator with the Race of the Day
Equibase
Frequently found in programs, Equibase offers a basic and a premium past performance. Over the last five years they’ve also added a more visual approach to handicapping in their Entries Plus product that displays basic information as color bars, bar graphs and line graphs.
You can use a pared down version of Entries for free that includes information on earnings, wins per starts, starts, win% and wins or purchase a premium version that includes more data. They also offer free samples and a handy “How to Read an Equibase Past Performance” for both the basic and premium version.
Other products from Equibase include Tablet Handicapper and Pocket Handicapper, that allow you use Equibase products on your tablet or phone (both iOS and Android). There’s also an iPad app called iPP.
Equibase also has a handy tutorial where you can mouse over sections and get an explanation of the data points.
More about Equibase Premium Past Performances
View Entries Plus
TimeformUS
Launched in 2012, the team at TimeformUS has a built an entirely new, web-based past performance product from the ground up. “Playing the Races: Modernized, Faster and More Fun” is their tagline, and to that end they’ve made some bold choices about what key pieces of information to make readily available. But, rest assured, all the usual data points are still available within a click and they’ve added some nice features such as proprietary speed figures, a pace projector and color coding for track biases as well several other differentiators.
A recent enhancement has given TFUS the performance boost needed to make clicking each of the entries almost seamless. They’ve made impressive gains out of the gate and are an interesting and well considered product.
You can try them out for free by registering and learn more about their product in these blog posts:
How TimeformUS us is different
How to use TimeformUS
Welcome to the TimeformUS blog
Each provider offers subscriptions, bundled packages and additional products beyond the past performance. For example, you also can purchase lifetime past performances for individual horses at Brisnet, Daily Racing Form and Equibase, among other things.
While all the products vary slightly, listed below is generally what you’ll find in any past performance (with the exception of the track program). This list is based on the Daily Racing Form past performance model. Instead of providing an explanation of each item, I’ll direct you to the aforementioned DRF Past Performance tutorial.
Information about the horse, it’s connections and overall record:
Name of the horse
Number of the horse
Name of the jockey
Name of the owner
Jockey’s record at the track/on the year
Description of the silks
Color of the horse
Age of the horse
Sire
Stud fee
Dam
Dam’s sire
Breeder
Trainer
Trainer’s record at the track/on the year
Medication
Equipment
Weight
Lifetime record
Current year record
Total Earnings
Last year’s record
Dirt fast track record
Dirt wet track record
Turf record
Synthetic record
Information about past races on a per race basis:
Date of the race
Race number
Track
Track condition
Race distance
Surface
Fractional times
Final time
Race type
Speed Figure
Post position
Position at points of call
Finish position
Jockey
Medication
Weight carried
Blinkers
Final odds
Track variants
First three finishers of the race
Comment line
Number of starters
Information about work outs and trainer stats:
Workouts
Trainer stats
Jockey/trainer stats
As with everything else, try a few different products and see what you like. And remember, sometimes less is more! For good overview of how to read the past performance, check out this video from Night School.
what is the difference betweem nw2 and nw2+
Good question, what race/day/track? I’ll have a look. sometimes the finer distinctions are spelled out on the past performance. And even then they can be pretty cryptic!
We also have a post an overview specifically of racing conditions, which goes into more detail about types of races.
I know this question might not be important, but I’m just very curious. I have the feeling that Hello Race Fans! prefers either Daily Racing Form or BRISnet over Equibase. I was looking over your Hello Race Fans! contributors and it seems that every contributer’s favorite PP provider is either BRISnet or the Daily Racing Form. Nobody likes Equibase. Another thing is that whenever you use a horse’s past performances to demonstrate a topic such as class, pace, speed, etc., you use PPs from either DRF or BRIS but never Equibase. Why do you contributors prefer BRIS or DRF than Equibase? Is it because DRF and BRIS have more data to help someone’s handicapping?
Hi Ryan, I can only speak for myself when I say that my preference for DRF/BRIS has more to do with familiarity than anything else. When I first start capping these were really the two easiest PPs to find, at least for me.
And about using PPs in our examples, since 2012 Brisnet has been our sponsor so we’ve exclusively used their products as examples. Prior to that we were using DRF largely because the majority of the people writing the articles that required examples also used DRF. We also had permission from DRF on those occasions. We would have needed permission from Equibase to use their PPs as examples.
We’ll be updating this post in the near future to note some new offerings: Equibase iPPs and TimeformUS, an entirely new product all together.
Hope this answers your question!
It mostly answers my question, and thank you for the answer. But why didn’t you get permission from Equibase?
P. S. I personally use Daily Racing Form.
This question might be a little ridiculous, but I just wanna know. When people see a horse that they like in the past performances and they want to wager on him/her, they circle him/her. Is that correct?
My guess is that varies from person to person. I highlight the name of the horse or horses that I want to play (different colors for different degrees of confidence) but I’m sure some people circle them. And, there are probably other ways that people note which horses they want to play. Hope that helps!
is comma delimited variant for brisnet, the same as variant in drf form?
Hi Charles, I’ve referred your question to Brisnet Marketing Director Ed DeRosa, who will reply here with an answer for you. Thanks for stopping by!
Interested in HKG/ Australia / Singapore races
I don’t know if you even monitor this site anymore. If you do, I am a beginner struggling to read the racing form past performances. Every place I have looked and read explanations, tend to gloss over some of the columns. I would like to know about the post position information on a past performance. What I have read is that it is after the speed rating. Glancing through my copy of the Daily Racing Form I do not see a single number as in the American Pharoh 102 1 or 105 15 or 105 6. In my DRF I see 82 2/4 or 85 5/5 or 24 3/8. What does that fraction looking number indicate?
Hi Robbin, we do still monitor the site, albeit not as frequently as before :)
The second number in the fraction is the field size, so in your examples it would be post 2 in a 4 horse field, post 5 in a 5 horse field and post 3 in an 8 horse field. No doubt this article and the examples could use an update.
Hi Patrick, we don’t know much about past performances for Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore but DRF and Brisnet both have free international PPs.
DRF
https://www.drf.com/news/free-international-racing-past-performances-and-analysis
Brisnet
https://www.brisnet.com/product/past-performances/OSA
Brisnet used to have a PDF explanation of their international PPs, but the link is broken (http://www.brisnet.com/library/osaexpl.pdf), you could contact them to see if they can make it available.
Thank you both for stopping by, and good luck!