Qualifiers only: today's runners without the history

Sometimes you don't want a system's record, you just want to know which horses qualify today. Qualifiers only skips the back history and lists them.

Normally ProStats answers a question about the past: set your filters and it searches the whole database, builds every run that has ever matched and shows you how that system has performed. That is the point of it, and it takes a moment because there is a lot to work through.

Qualifiers only answers a different question: never mind the history, which horses qualify right now? Turn it on and ProStats stops building the record and simply lists today's and tomorrow's runners that match your filters. It is a Professional feature.

A worked example: top rated and 6.0 or bigger

Say you want every horse running today that is our top rated in its race and is currently trading at 6.0 or bigger on the exchange, which is 5/1 in fractional odds. Two filters and a toggle.

1. Set RTR Rank to 1 to 1

In the Data Filters panel, put 1 in both the minimum and maximum boxes of RTR Rank. That is our top rated horse in the race, and nothing else.

2. Set Exchange SP to a minimum of 6

Find Exchange SP in the same panel and put 6 in the Min. box, leaving Max. empty.

Now the bit that catches people out. Typing a number does not apply it. Hover over the filter row and a green + appears on the right hand side: that is the button that adds the filter.

Click it and the filter appears as a chip in the Data Filters line at the top, reading Exchange SP: >= 6. Each chip has a small x if you want it gone again.

3. Turn on Qualifiers only

The Qualifiers only chip sits just above the results, with a line of text beside it telling you what it is doing.

4. Read the list

That is it. On the afternoon this article was written, those two filters gave 19 qualifiers today and 1 tomorrow.

The Today and Tomorrow chips switch between the two days, and each row gives you the race and time, the horse, its RTR rank, the current Odds, the jockey and the trainer. Click a race and it opens in a new tab, so you keep your list.

Tomorrow, before the market has formed

The Tomorrow tab is only ever as good as the market behind it, and tomorrow's market has barely opened. That is why the example above found 19 runners today and only 1 tomorrow, and it is not because tomorrow is short of big-priced horses.

Look at the same two days without the price filter, top rated only. Today, 40 runners, 18 of them trading at 6.0 or bigger and not one at 1.50 or shorter. Tomorrow, 23 runners, and 21 of the 23 showing 1.50 or shorter: prices like 1.01, 1.10 and 1.32. Those are not real prices, they are what sits on an exchange market before any money has arrived.

So a price filter on tomorrow will quietly leave out horses whose market has not opened yet, not because they are too short but because there is nothing to judge them on. It is worth knowing rather than worrying about: run the same system again in the morning, once the market has formed, and the numbers will be completely different.

Things worth knowing

• The odds are live, not the Starting Price. On the day, a price filter reads the exchange price as it is trading at that moment, not the SP. So Exchange SP: >= 6 here means currently 6.0 or bigger.
• The list only covers races still to run. Once a race goes off, its runner drops out of the list.
• The list moves with the market. A horse that shortens through 6.0 leaves it, and a drifter can join it, so refresh before you act on it.
• The same count is not always the same horses. We looked twice, six minutes apart, and both times it said 19. It was not the same 19: the 14:10 runner had gone once its race went off, another horse had drifted into range to replace it, and one price had moved from 6.80 to 7.20 in between.
• Turning it off gives you the history back. The same filters, the full record, exactly as before. Nothing is lost by flicking between the two.
• Every filter works, not just price and rank. Anything you can filter on in ProStats can be used to find the day's qualifiers.

How this differs from Today's Qualifiers

Today's Qualifiers is the dashboard card and the three daily emails, and it works from the systems you have saved. Qualifiers only is for the filters you have in front of you right now, saved or not, which makes it the quicker way to test an idea: set a couple of filters, flick it on, see who comes up.