In the daily racing form every horse in today’s race will have statistics to some degree including first time starters. Whether the horse ran races or had only workouts and no races the statistics will be shown in both cases. On the right hand side of the daily racing form the last thing you’ll see is the field sizes the horses ran in their past races. Any particular horse being studied that had a past race or races will have their field size or sizes shown. Each horse datos carreras americanas hoy finished in the race at a certain position and when the race is over there’ll be an order of finish list on the tote board.
This order of finish shows the position where each horse in the race crossed the wire. Two horses can finish in the same position because of a ‘dead heat’ which is rare. Horses are matched for a race in many different combinations based on specific rules. These rules creates specific complexities based on field sizes. The field size produces specific types of problems for the jockeys and horses in the form of maneuvering. Which produces slowing down, speeding up, trying to get around the horse and jockeys in front, turn time going around to the stretch, bumping into each other, dangerous spills where the jockey and/or horse falls, etc.
The field size have 5-6 important things about it and this is 2 of them: (1)what order the horses will run among each other will be and (2) the size of the payout based on the field size. Horses are communal and pack animals and there’s an order to them in the sense that some horses are front-runners or leaders, some are closers or they’ll take the leader position when called on, some are middle of the pack runners and will come in 2nd, 3rd, 4th most of the time but rarely ever first regardless of field size.
One look at the horse’s past finished positions gives an idea where that horse feels comfortable at. Every horse that didn’t win the race wasn’t a loser but they were uncomfortable specifically being the front or lead runner. This is one of the reasons why a horse with 10/1, 20/1, 50/1 or a 150/1 odds will come in behind a winning horse with 1/5, 2/1, 3/1 or 7/2 odds and could have won the race. This horse has leader potential. This isn’t frequent but happens often enough. Field size is important and must be considered each time you handicap.
Horse racing is made of two major divisions: Profitcapping and Handicapping. Field size is one of the most important elements of the ‘structure’ of both of them and a major foundation of the game in a special way. This must be emphasized. Profitcapping deals with the total money side of racing and has nothing to do with picking horses. Handicapping deals with the selecting of horses side of racing and has nothing to do with money. Everything in racing is important but field size is extra-important for both of them. Great deals of materials have been written on racing and the size of the field is down played when in fact it’s in the top 3 of the most important elements of structure in racing. This is how to understand the importance of field size in racing.