KTB Rating

What it measures

KTB Rating says how good a horse is, in pounds, from what it has done against other horses: the weight it carried, how far it was beaten, and how good the race was. Higher is better. It is on the same pounds scale as the official rating, so a horse rated 80 is meant to be as good as an official 80 — but the figure is earned from the archive, not copied from the handicapper.

Each run gets its own figure, shown on the form line as what the horse "ran to". The rating on a racecard is a recent-weighted average of those figures, so it moves after every run.

How it is made

1. Every run, in pounds

   run = weight carried − distance beaten in pounds

   Lengths are turned into pounds on a scale measured from our own archive: at 6 furlongs a length is worth 3.75 lb, falling to 1.13 lb beyond two miles. Beaten distances count up to 15 lengths on the flat and 30 over jumps: a horse beaten 40 lengths was not trying to finish closer, and is not 40 lengths worse. The full distance stays on the form line.

2. The level of every race, worked out together

   How good a race was depends on the horses in it, and how good those horses are depends on the races they ran in. We solve both together across the whole archive from 1 January 2008, in 8 alternating passes, flat and jumps separately. That is collateral form: a race a horse was not in can move its rating, because it moves the level of a race it was in.

3. The ran-to figure

   ran to = run − level of the race + one constant per code

   The constant puts the figures on the official rating's pounds scale. It is the same for every horse on that code and is measured from handicap runs; it is the only place the official rating enters, as a unit, never as a horse's starting point.

4. The rating before a race

   A recent-weighted average of the horse's last 6 ran-to figures before the race, each older figure counting 0.7 times as much as the one after it. An average rather than the best day, because the best day predicted the next run worse when we tested it.

What it isn't

• Not the official rating. It shares the scale, so the two can be read side by side, but no KTB Rating is worked out from a horse's mark.
• Not a copy of anyone else's ratings. No third-party rating and no betting price is an input. It comes from results alone.
• Not a forecast. It measures past form. It does not say who will win, and a high rating on a short-priced horse is the market agreeing, not an edge.
• Not adjusted for everything. It does not allow for trouble in running, and this version has no weight-for-age allowance — the data could not pin one down, so a young horse is rated on what it did, not on what its age should have allowed.

How it holds up

Tested on 25,884 GB and Irish races in 2024–25: where KTB Rating and the official rating disagreed on which of two horses was better, KTB's choice finished in front 60% of the time in handicaps and 55% in non-handicaps. KTB Rating figures for those races were calculated afterwards from our full archive; we are re-running the test on races run since October 2026 and will update this line. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Two things to read beside that. In handicaps the weights horses carry are set from their official ratings, so the two measures share an input there; the non-handicap figure is the cleaner test. And in non-handicaps the gaps between KTB Ratings have tended to be wider than the distances horses finished apart — by roughly 15 to 30 per cent — while in handicaps they matched closely. In a non-handicap, read the order more than the size of the gap.

Reading the grades

The grade beside a ran-to figure says how many horses of known ability were in the race to judge it by — not how good the run was.

• A — at least 6 horses of known ability in the race, and the horse beaten within the cap.
• B — at least 3 horses of known ability, beaten within the cap.
• C — everything else with a figure: thin form to judge by, beaten beyond the cap, or a run from 2005–2007, which is shown for reference and did not feed the calculation.

The letter beside a pre-race rating is still being calibrated. Until we say otherwise, read the number of figures behind it rather than the letter.

Flat and jumps

Flat and jumps are rated separately and never blended or compared. The two codes are aligned to the official scale by different constants, so a flat 90 and a jumps 90 are not the same horse. A horse that runs in both has two KTB Ratings.

Where you will see it

Every past run's ran-to figure is shown free on race results and horse pages. Before racing, every runner's figures are shown free in one race a day — the Open Race, chosen by a fixed rule before racing: the day's highest-class race in which at least 80% of the runners have a KTB Rating, or, if no race reaches that, the race with the largest share of its field rated. Whether figures exist decides it, never what they say. Figures we show free stay free.

The KTB Fit score still uses the official rating for ability; KTB Rating and KTB Speed are being tested on live races before either is used in it.

This version

Definitions

KTB Rating

KTB Rating is KickTheBookies' own measure of how good a racehorse is, in pounds, built only from what horses have done against each other in its results archive: weight carried, distances beaten and the level of each race. It is put on the official rating's scale but never uses the official rating as a starting point, and never uses betting prices.

Ran-to figure

A ran-to figure is what a horse ran to in one race on the KTB Rating scale: the weight it carried, less the distance it was beaten converted to pounds, measured against the level of that race. It is settled with hindsight and shown on the form line.

Pre-race KTB Rating

The pre-race KTB Rating is a recent-weighted average of a horse's last 6 ran-to figures before the race, the latest counting most. It is what KTB knew before the race, and it is shown on the racecard.

Collateral form

Collateral form is the reading of a horse through the horses it has met: the level of each race is worked out from every horse in it, including what those horses did before and after, so a race a horse was not in can still move its rating.

Ran-to grade

The grade beside a ran-to figure (A, B or C) says how many horses of known ability were in the race to judge it against, not how good the run was.