Horse Racing Fantasy League

I have recently alluded to an idea I have for a Horse Racing based fantasy league. I know there are other games out there like Star Stable, which is fine, but it has a couple of flaws, it is budget based, so you select horses you like, you can buy and sell like a stock market and generate value with win's etc. The two flaws are, you make initial selections and anything can change because you don't know who will qualify for what and who will target what races, the second is that it is based on the horse (for the most part), as most horses don't race every week you can be left with not much action each week.

The other fun thing about fantasy sports is the draft, getting together and making selections round after round, mocking your buddies selections, and searching for sleepers. Also it means that every 'player' can only be owned once which brings skill and strategy into place.

My fantasy game suggestion.

• An eight or ten team league (only eight or ten for a reason which will soon become clear)
• You draft in Snake fashion (pick 1-8 in round one 8-1 in round two etc)
  
• You each select five jockeys, and select four trainers (or training combos per the premiership)
  
• You can either do a separate trainer and jockey draft or combine them (which will force you to figure out who is more valuable). 

You will have drafted 40 jockeys and 32 trainers (eight team league). If you look at last years premierships the 32nd ranked trainer (combo) was Graeme and Mark Sanders, the 40th ranked Jockey was Trudy Thornton.

Trudy Thornton rode 517 horses last year, there are plenty of other jockeys remaining so it is possible to take another ten (ten team league) from that pool and still leave a good sized free agent pool. Graeme and Mark Sanders trained 202 runners last season, again there are plenty of other trainers with similar numbers so it is possible to draft another eight (ten team league) and keep a free agent pool.


Starters

Each week you will pick from your team

• three Jockeys
• two trainers
• one wild card (either a jockey or trainer)

These are your starters for that week they are the only six players who contribute to your team score for that week, once this is locked in you cannot make changes for that week, this brings strategy into play.

You can drop and pick up 'free agents' (unselected jockeys/trainers), you can also make trades with other players however your total team size should not exceed nine players. To score points you must start players as described above.

The season
There is flexibility here, your league can choose to only play Saturdays or weekends or play full weeks. As there is racing 52 weeks of the year you can either play a full year, or just play seasons maybe spring/summer/winter (ie. saying the season will start from 1st August and conclude on the 30th of November).

For the purposes of a week I suggest that team line ups are locked on Wednesday night, and scoring runs from Thursday through to the following Wednesday races. The reason for this is that most of the big scoring races will take place on Saturdays and you will have access to nominations for these by Wednesday night.

There is flexibility again on how you arrange your league, but there are two basic models
The match-up model

• Either split into two divisions or just one large league table
• Work out weekly match ups of two teams (maybe each team plays each other twice, or each team plays it's own division twice and the other division once) whatever you decide it just best just to make it even. 
• Have a win/loss/draw ladder
• Top four teams make the playoffs with two weeks to determine a winner, or two division winners make the playoffs and then the two teams with the best overall record, again this is flexible. 

The overall model (in theory can be used for any odd number of teams)

• simply tally points each week and most points at seasons end wins
• or tally points each week, assign a value for where you finish each week (ie.1st = 10, 2nd =8, 3rd = 6, 4th =5, 5th = 4, 6th= 3, 7th =2, 8th = 1) tally these each week and most points at year ends wins.

(I would tend to favour the match up model as you are directly competing against one of your competitors) 

Scoring
This is definitely a work in progress which can be tinkered with over time to get a good balance. Obviously can be adapted for your region, I am going to focus on New Zealand racing. I will put my rational in brackets where explanation may be required.

Starter = -1 point (by subtracting points for a starter it rewards strike rate)
Winner = 10 points
2nd = 7 points
3rd = 5 points
4th = 3 points
5th = 2 points
6th = 1 point
7th - nth 0 points

Pretty simple, more points for winning races. However there should be a reward for winning more important races.
Race at listed level 125% of points
Race at Group 3 level 150% of points
Race at Group 2 level 200% of points
Race at Group 1 level 300% of points

Now there is another issue, in New Zealand often our horses head across to Australia to race when the big carnivals are approaching. The solution, if you start a jockey or trainer who is taking a horse to Australia you will score double points (after the Group multiplier, so winning an Aussie Group 1 is worth 60 points). Often jockeys will only have one or two rides that day rather than the six or seven they may have got in New Zealand so this is more of a measure to even things up

There need to be a distinction between jockeys who have moved overseas and ones who are just over for a day, so if a jockey rides exclusively in Australia for two consecutive weeks they are ineligible for future weeks unless they have a start in New Zealand. The best recent example might be someone like Jason Collett, if he was to have another stint in Sydney, the first two weeks after his last New Zealand start will score points, but he will not score future points until he has had another start in New Zealand. 

Trainers again should score for taking a horse across for a big Aussie race, but not if that horse is exclusively raced from an Aussie base (otherwise things get too complicated), so maybe allow five consecutive starts overseas of one horse before that horse is ruled out of counting for that trainer.
The other alternative is simply not to include Aussie points, but it makes a nice wrinkle if you draft a jockey or trainer with an association with a potential big race winner you deserve a nice reward.


I would suggest similar rules for taking horses to other destinations, but Aussie is by far the most common.

We should also reward jockeys and trainers who have big days.
3 winners = 15 bonus points
4 winners = 30 bonus points
5 winners = 50 bonus points
6+ Winners = 80 bonus points
Training a winning Quinella = 15 bonus points
Training a winning Trifecta = 30 bonus points
Training a winning First four = 50 bonus points

All total scores will be rounded to a whole number.

Now to test these numbers we need to do a quick calculation to see how this would have worked, I will base this on Saturday's Christchurch meeting.

As you can see there are a few high scores amongst the jockeys, no surprises to see the leaders are clearly highly rated jockeys, but also they are consistent and had success in the big races on the day. The negative scores are not too bad and it is most likely that jockeys with very few rides would not have been started anyway (depending on what other rides they might have in a given week).

There are clearly more trainers than jockeys, however most of these represent smaller trainers who probably would not be started unless they had a Group One contender. Points here compare quite well with the jockeys. Only 15 bonus points were awarded on the day, but generally top scorers represent larger and more consistent stables, and success in big races. Obviously a trainer can be in two places at once in this game so some North Island trainers would have also scored at Tauranga on the day, and both jockeys and trainers would have scored throughout the week.

These spreadsheets took a bit to put together, I would suggest that either your league designates a scorer and it rotates for each week, each individual match-up is scored by someone in that match-up or both players, people score for themselves and an honour system is adhered to. Clearly if you are scoring you don't have to worry about every trainer and jockey, only the ones playing that week which should save a lot of time.

The Prize

Well that is up to you, have fun, make a trophy, throw in a certain amount of money each and enjoy.

Obviously this can be tweaked to fit your league however you want. Maybe someone will make an automated online game to save time and effort, maybe one already exists, I couldn't find one from having a search around the net. Fantasy sports are big business and an excellent way for people to get added enjoyment out of a sport, it could definitely work for racing, so get together with your mates and give it a go.