FAQ # 13
ALL-Ways^TM Support

How do you use Quirin Race Shapes to handicap a race?

One of the most important of Bill Quirin’s many contributions to handicapping is his original concept of Race Shapes. It is simple in concept, but incredibly powerful in its application.

Quirin Race Shapes use a short hand notation to describe how fast the early pace of a past performance race was run to the second call (4 furlongs in sprints and 6 furlongs in routes) and how fast the complete past performance race was run (final time). Bill Quirin used a "slow-average-fast" notation scheme. ALL-Ways software uses a "slow-average-par-fast" notation scheme as shown below.

This scheme give you sixteen possible Race Shapes.

To arrive at these Race Shape designations requires very complex calculations. You must have pace and final time pars for every past performance track. You must calculate daily track variants for each race day for each of these tracks. You must know the second call time of the lead horse and the final time of the winner. You must then compare these times against the pars after the times have been adjusted by the daily track variants. For very obvious reasons, very few handicappers have access to accurate Race Shapes. Fortunately, ALL-Ways software automatically makes all these calculations and, thus, arms you with this powerful handicapping factor.

There are two fundamental ways to use Race Shapes in your handicapping:

1. As a "Key Race" indicator

2. To evaluate a horse’s ability to handle different pace scenarios

You have probably heard the term "Key Race". The theory is, if two or more horses that raced each other in a past race go on to win their next races, then the past race is designated as a Key Race. Other horses that ran in the Key Race can reasonably be expected to do better in their next effort. This is a powerful concept that does indeed work. The problem with this approach, however, is that two or three horses must have won their subsequent races before their earlier race is designated as a Key Race. The "cat is out of the bag" so to speak. Ideally, you would like to bet on these subsequent winners when they run their next races, not after they have already won them. The power of Quirin Race Shapes is that Key Races are spotted before the horses run subsequent races.

You can consider any race with a "FF" designation as a Key Race. Some people may also want to consider "FP" and "PF" races as Key Races. The winner of a key race has a very strong chance to win its next race. However, the public may well bet the horse down just based on the win, making the horse unplayable. A powerful handicapping angle is to look for horses exiting these Key Races that did "reasonably well" in the Key Race. We define "reasonably well" as not winning the race but finishing in-the-money or within a reasonable number of lengths of the winner (perhaps 3 to 6 lengths in sprints or 5 to 8 lengths in routes). It is not at all uncommon for a horse to finish 8 lengths back in a Key Race route only to come back and win their next effort, almost always at a big price. The public shuns horses that finish that far back. But, the public hasn’t the foggiest idea of the Key Race angle.

The second way to use Quirin Race Shapes is to evaluate how well horses are likely to perform against the probable pace of today’s race. ALL-Ways software helps you project the pace of today’s race in a couple of ways. First, ALL-Ways software shows you the probable ESP shape of the race based on the preferred ESP running styles of the entrants (See the October 1996 newsletter). Projected ESP shapes of "EEE" and "EE" will generally be run very fast to the second call. ESP shapes of "PP", "P", "PS" and "SS" will generally be run very slow. Second, the Hall early pace figures can be compared to the Race Rating of today’s race to determine if the horse has demonstrated the ability to run to or exceed the pace par times for the race. If the top Hall early pace figures are 3 to 5 points above the Race Rating (such as a Hall EP figure of 116 in a race rated at 112), the race very likely will eventually receive a fast Quirin Race Shape designation for early pace, particularly if there are two or more Early or Early Presser ESP running types in the race.

Once you know the probable pace of today’s race, you can use the Quirin Race Shape information on the ALL-Ways Past Performance report to evaluate each horse’s ability to handle the pace. First, you can probably toss out any horse that didn’t run well in a "SS", "SA", "SP", "AS" or "AA" race. Chances are, such horses won’t do well today regardless of the probable pace of today’s race. You will also spot horses that do very well in slow, average or even par early pace shape races but that fall apart if they have to run against a fast early pace. Toss them out if today’s race sets up for a fast early pace. The opposite often holds true as well. There are horses that do very well against a fast early pace but do poorly if the pace of the race is too slow. Generally such horses are late runners that need a fast pace up front to set the race up for their closing run.

You can find the Quirin Race Shapes in all ALL-Ways software handicapping reports that show past performance races. You can also find them on the Contender Summary in the last race summary line directly under the horse’s last race speed figure. It looks something like this:

DR/FT/FF/4

This shows that the horse’s last race was a dirt route run on a fast track with a Quirin Race Shape designation of "FF" and that the horse finished fourth. Anyone want to bet that this horse is a prime contender today?

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