handicappers

Stableford is a scoring system used in the sport of golf. It involves scoring points based on results at each hole. Unlike traditionally scored golf, where the object is to have the lowest score, in Stableford rules, the objective is to have the highest score.
The system was developed by Dr. Frank Barney Gordon Stableford (1870–1959). It was first used informally at the Glamorganshire Golf Club, Penarth, Wales, in 1898, and first used in competition at Wallasey, England, in 1932.
Before play starts, players should adjust the pars on the course to their handicap. For example, a player with a handicap of 18, would increase the par on every hole by one. In the UK, the par is adjusted per the stroke index (SI) of the hole. As 1 is the hardest and 18 is the easiest hole, shots are allocated in order of difficulty. Here a few examples: A six handicap golfer would adjust the par (add one) to holes with SI 1-6. A 28 handicap golfer would receive 2 shots on SI 1-10, and 1 shot for SI 11-18. A plus 2 handicap golfer would lose two shots on SI 17-18 (as these are the easiest holes). Stableford is a popular form of the game, especially at club level. It tends to benefit higher handicappers, as they are not punished as harshly for bad holes (i.e., minimum score is 0) and better players are not rewarded for their relative consistency.
The points scoring method is not a cumulative number that indicates how you fared relative to par. Instead, you gather a certain number of points on every hole. That number is determined by your score. There are different forms of Stableford that use different point levels, so here are the points as specified by the United States Golf Association:
0 points - 2 strokes or more over your adjusted par 1 point - 1 stroke over your adjusted par 2 points - Your adjusted par 3 points - 1 stroke under your adjusted par 4 points - 2 strokes under your adjusted par 5 points - 3 strokes under your adjusted par 6 points - 4 strokes under your adjusted par If you reach 2 strokes over your adjusted par, you may pick up your ball as you cannot do any better or worse and resume play on the next hole. At the end of the round, all points scored are added for each nine holes and totaled for the eighteen. The player with the most points is declared the winner.
The stableford competition has one major advantage: it means you can have one or two bad holes, and compensate for them during the other holes. This is because you would achieve no points on these holes, rather than gaining many strokes as you would playing stroke play.
The only PGA Tour event that used the Stableford system of scoring was The International, but the event was canceled in February 2007, after 21 years as part of the tour. It used a modified scoring system adapted for the skill levels of the professionals. Two Champions Tour events also used the modified Stableford system briefly: the Royal Caribbean Classic in 2000 and 2001 and the Uniting Fore Care Classic in 2002.
+8 points - double eagle (3 strokes under par for a hole) +5 points - eagle (2 strokes) +2 points - birdie (1 stroke) 0 points - par -1 point - bogey (1 stroke over) -3 points - any score worse than bogey (2 strokes over or worse) Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which the advantage is calculated. In principle, a more experienced player is disadvantaged in order to make it possible for a less experienced player to participate in the game or sport whilst maintaining fairness. Handicapping also refers to the various methods by which spectators can predict and quantify the results of a sporting match.
The term handicap derives from hand-in-cap, a popular 17th-century lottery game, where players placed their bets in a cap.[citation needed] Handicapping is used in scoring many games and competitive sports, including Go, chess, golf, bowling, polo, basketball, and track and field events. It also serves to foster wagering on horse racing events. Often races, contests or tournaments where this practice is competitively employed are known as Handicaps.
The term is also applied to the practice of predicting the result of a competition, such as for purposes of betting against the point spread. A favored team that wins by less than the point spread still wins the game, but bets on that team loseThoroughbred handicapping is the art of predicting horses who have the greatest chance of winning a race, and profiting from these predictions at the horse races. The Daily Racing Form (DRF), a newspaper-style publication, is an important tool of the handicapper or horseplayer. The DRF details statistical information about each horse entered in a race, including detailed past performance results, lifetime records, amount of money earned, odds for the particular horse in each past race, and a myriad of other information available for casual or serious study.
The handicapping process can be simple or complex but usually includes the following elements prior to the race:
1) Study of the Daily Racing Form
2) Observing the horses’ body language and behaviour in the paddock and/or post parade, in particular, its ears and tail. Ears should work together and look forward or backward. The tail should be "quiet." A swishing tail indicates something is bothering the horse.
3) Watching the tote board for the changing odds of each horse and thus for clues about how the betting public views a horse’s chances of winning the upcoming race
“Trip Handicapping” takes place during the race and involves watching the horses (usually with binoculars) and noting relevant information about how a horse runs during that race.
Handicapping theory is possibly one of the most enigmatic theories in all of sports.[citation needed] Horseplayers consider the following elements when handicapping a horse race:
Speed Those horses who run the fastest, win the most races. The DRF lists times at certain call points of each race, and the lengths back from the lead at each call point. Speed handicappers compare race times to help ascertain which horses will most likely win the race. The DRF now contains a numerical summation of the speed that each horse ran in every race, called a Beyer speed figure. This number is generated through a method developed by Andrew Beyer, and described in his 1975 book Picking Winners. The Beyer speed figures takes into account the individual class of a race as well as how the racetrack was playing on a particular day to create an aggregate number for each horse. The basic error behind this approach is that the sample size each day which is used to create the track variant for the speed figure is very small, and hence subject to massive errors in standard deviation. For example, there may be only one turf (grass) race on a given day, and the Beyer system has to extract a variant for that race from a sample of one.
Pace Pace is probably the single most important factor in determining the outcome of a race. Pace handicappers classify each horse’s running style (i.e. front runner, stalker, presser, closer) and then find contenders based on the predicted pace of today’s race. The difficulty is that the jockey has control over where a horse is placed in a race and how fast that race goes in the early stages. This takes the prediction of pace for a given race out of the realm of mathematics and into the realm of mere speculation.
Pace Handicapping
In horseracing, until 1995, for pace handicapping purposes, the time generally allotted by pace handicappers for a horse to run a length (approximately 11 feet) during the course of a race was long thought to be a fifth of a second. This long held misconception was turned on its head by the works of Gonzalo Sandoval via his research into the internal fractions of thousands of Thoroughbred horse races. The resultant formulas and algorithms are what comprise his subsequent empirical pace handicapping work called REXPOINTE Pace Handicapping. This method of pace handicapping is used by many fans of the Sport of Kings.
Form Those horses who looked “sharp” in their past race or past few races, win the most races.[citation needed] A sharp horse could have finished strongly, stayed among the leaders, finished “in the money” (1st, 2nd or 3rd) or recovered from a bad racing trip. Likewise, a horse showed dull form if it gave up, looked sluggish or chased the pack. Horses with sharp form have the lowest odds and hence return the least money per bet. Also, often horses will race off a "layoff." A layoff is a rest varying in length from usually two months to a year or more. In this case, workouts, horse appearance, and trainer patterns are the best guides to whether the horse is ready to run after a rest.
Class Horse races occur at different levels of competition. Generally, high caliber horses are entered in races with other high caliber horses and slower horses are entered in races with other slower horses. But a horse can move up or down in class, depending on where the trainer decided to enter the horse based on the results of its last race. Note that the strength of the same class of race, such as a Maiden Special Weight race, will vary greatly from track to track, as well as from race to race at the same track, making this too an inexact determinant of class.
Post Position The horse nearer the inside of a race track will have a shorter distance to run than a horse on the outside track, although it is also more vulnerable to being cut off by horses that start off faster and head to the inside rail.
Other Factors Other factors affecting the outcome of a race are track condition, weather, weight that the horses have to carry, daily bias of the racing surface, and many more factors that the handicapper cannot know.