Browse by Tags
Back on the 1st of June 2009, as part of our study on the TrueNicks ratings and how they are calculated each year we ran the complete 2007 crops on a number of proven stallions - Giant's Causeway, Stormy Atlantic, Maria's Mon and Johannesburg, along with some then unproven sires with their first runners in Afleet Alex, Eurosilver and Roman Ruler. The goal of...
Read More...
One of the key parts of the TrueNicks calculation is that it does not calculate a nick based on stakes winners being produced out of the same mare. As good a mare that Cee's Song is, her results are effectively counted as one effort on the calculation of Relaunch with Seattle Song mares for example. However, Truenicks does calculate ratings where from two different...
Read More...
A few weeks back, we presented a fun paper called Top 10 Myths About Nicks in Thoroughbred Breeding . Today at 2 p.m., Alan Porter and Byron Rogers will host a half-hour video on the topic. Alan and Byron will also be available to take questions after the presentation. The Webinar is FREE and easy to access. Just register here .
Read More...
While Medaglia d'Oro's sale to Darley may have temporarily averted the spotlight towards the son of El Prado (IRE) ( TrueNicks , SRO ) , young Gainesway stallion Tapit ( TrueNicks , SRO ) continues to duke it out with him in the production of stakes winners. Malibu Beach became stakes winner number six for Tapit June 5 when she won the Alyssum Stakes at Belmont...
Read More...
As a prelude to the stallion study -- which is currently "under construction" as we determine the best way to track all the horses that we have rated by each sire throughout the world -- we thought that it was worthwhile going back and taking a look at the 2008 OBS March sale of 2-year-olds to examine the horses that rated well with TrueNicks from that sale....
Read More...
Before being made available to the public, TrueNicks was tested on a group of more than 100,000 horses. That study firmly established a correlation between a high nick rating and success at stakes level: in fact, while only 13% of the population earned a variant rating high enough to qualify for a rating of A or better, 37% of stakes winners achieved that rating...
Read More...
With the first Northern Hemisphere 2-year-old races set to get underway shortly, we thought that this year we would do something that allowed us to follow TrueNicks as a predictor of racetrack success . We debated a couple of ways we could do this, with the primary goals of offering a statistically sound study and one that is trackable in 2009. An ideal solution...
Read More...
Question from Ryan : My question is why do I get a B rating nick but when you look at the cross and it has produced G1 stakes winners? Then the opposite happens when I get a A++ nick but there may not even be a graded stakes winner produced? Alan's reply : Hi Ryan. Thank you for the question. The reason that the you might get a B rating (not that bad in itself...
Read More...
Feedback from TrueNicks users and other readers of this blog comes in various formats -- some by email, some by comments to our article posts. Most are printable, a few are not. An email just arrived from a subscriber to both TrueNicks and a rival service. We figured that while the comment was not meant to be complimentary, we would publish it and get your feedback...
Read More...
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para...
Read More...
If you're not completely familiar with the basic premise of sire-line nicking, here it is in a nutshell: Specific affinities of stallions of one male line for mares from other sire lines -- called nicks -- have made a profound impact on the development of the Thoroughbred. Today's powerful data-processing computers have now made it possible to measure and rate...
Read More...
We had yet another example of the imporatance of considering opportunity when creating nick ratings with the August 1 victory of Luck Money in the Majestic Light Stakes at Saratoga. Irish-bred Luck Money was scoring his first stakes victory, although he'd been third to superstar Henrythenavigator in the Coventry Stakes (gr. II) and captured the Goffs Million...
Read More...
Some recent articles by propents of rival nicking systems have floated the idea that somehow programs that don't use a database of worldwide stakes winners, and don't consider true opportunity - in fact they admit they don't use opportunity at all - can be more accurate than the TrueNicks program that considers true opportunity, and utilizes the comprehensive...
Read More...
Question : My question is whether there a much greater risk factor when considering between two stallions that differ in the fact that one has many proven mares and was a very good performer himself, while the other is a young stallion that is well-bred but has never raced because of an injury, and doesn't yet have a large number of offspring? The two stallions...
Read More...
Q: I was looking for nicks with a mare by Abaginone. Your reports show an A++ for a Seeking the Gold/Halo crossing but all the stakes winners listed are by one sire, Mutakddim, out of Southern Halo mares bred in Argentina. Is this a statistical quirk or a valid basis for generalizing about a Seeking the Gold/Halo nick? A: Thank you for the question. The calculation...
Read More...
That under-appreciated Nijinsky II line stallion, Hernando (by Niniski), is having an excellent run with his current crop of three-year-olds, which include the English Oaks (gr. 1) victress Look Here ( A+ TrueNick Rating ); Casual Conquest ( A+ ), winner of Derrinstown Derby Trial (gr. II) and third in the English Derby (gr. 1); and most recently, on June 24...
Read More...
We are often asked the question on nick ratings - "do they work across multiple generations?" The answer ironically depends on the genuine strength of the affinity between the sire lines in question. Examples of nicks that seem to span generations and withstand the scrutiny of time include Fappiano over In Reality-line mares and Seattle Slew over Mr. Prospector...
Read More...
Looking through some recent results, we noticed that another nicking program had rated Elite Squadron - who took the May 3 Churchill Downs Stakes (gr. II) - as an A++ nick. A cross check with TrueNicks revealed that Elite Squadron is rated D . Naturally, we wondered what could have caused such a discrepancy. A little research revealed that Elite Squadron is the...
Read More...
That remarkable California sire, Unusual Heat, was represented by another graded stakes winner when his daughter, Lightmyfirebaby, won the Las Cienegas Handicap (gr. III) last week, her first victory in a race at that level. Lightmyfirebaby is the fifth graded winner by Unusual Heat, following 2008 grade I winner Golden Doc A, Tucked Away, Unusual Suspect, and...
Read More...
We were recently forwarded an e-mail containing an advertisement from another pedigree consultancy that mentioned "... other pedigree information services that attempt to dazzle you with vast database resources without discriminating the information that matters from the information that doesn't ...." It also asserts that it chooses not to include the results...
Read More...
The mega-nick of A.P. Indy over Mr Prospector mares continues to shine with the Ashland Stakes (gr. I) winner Little Belle the most recent example. Once again, it proves that where you found gold once, if it is a rich vein you will find it again. With the same mating pattern found in last weekend's graded stakes winner Adriano, we find that this cross scores...
Read More...
It has been a little over two months, ten weeks to be precise, since we launched TrueNicks into the marketplace and the response has been nothing short of overwhelming. With a large roster of stallions subscribed to the complimentary subscription service that allows users to generate their own ratings via either this Web site or www.StallionRegister.com, we have...
Read More...
When Langfuhr retired to stud, he looked a very logical horse to try with Mr. Prospector-line mares. Not only was he a son of Danzig, a line that has done well with Mr. Prospector, but he also carried Fleet Nasrullah, a close relative to the dam of Mr. Prospector. Not surprisingly, Langfuhr has been tried extensively with Mr. Prospector-line mares, and the cross...
Read More...
We were recently investigating the pedigree of the up-and-coming juvenile Vincent Mangano (NZ), who is by No Excuse Needed (GB) (by Machiavellian) out of a mare by Housebuster. Based on the Machiavellian/Blushing Groom (FR) cross, this resulted in a TrueNicks rating of D . Out of curiosity, we looked at the mating on another nicking system and found that Vincent...
Read More...
We had an interesting inquiry from a reader who used TrueNicks to look at a Carson City mare with both Dynaformer ( TrueNicks , SRO ) and his newly-retired grade I winning son, Purim ( TrueNicks , SRO ) ( Three Chimneys , which stands Dynaformer, and Richland Hills , which stands Purim, provide complimentary hypothetical matings for these stallions.) The reader...
Read More...
More Posts
Next page »