About Mr. World Pool
The problem we solve, what we built, and why it exists
About me
Hi, I'm Aksel N. Edvardsen, from Norway. I've been rating racehorses since I was eighteen — starting in Scandinavia, then Dubai, Hong Kong, the UK, and beyond. It's been about twenty years now, and I still haven't found a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
My day job was in tech — seven years as a product leader, people & culture manager, team lead, and talent developer, usually all at the same time. I have a master's in organisational psychology. I started an AI group at work in 2019 and have been following the field closely ever since. But in the back of my mind, every single year, was the same thought: I want to build the form product I've always wished existed.
At the end of 2024, I realised the technology had finally caught up with the ambition. So I quit my job and went all in. Best Christmas present I ever gave myself. Terrifying, obviously. But here we are — and I built absolutely everything myself, from the database to the machine learning models to the website you're looking at. If this whole venture doesn't work out, I quietly hope some potential employer somewhere takes note of that and lets me back in from the cold. But let's not think about that just yet.
About the problem
Finding quality form for one racing jurisdiction is hard enough. Learning to read it well takes even longer. But I wanted to follow the best race days in the world — Sha Tin one week, Royal Ascot the next, Dubai World Cup Carnival over winter, Arc de Triomphe weekend in Paris, the Deutsche Derby in Hamburg, Breeders' Cup in the autumn, Melbourne Cup, Tokyo. Each country has its own sources, its own quirks, its own learning curve. It adds up quickly.
The HKJC World Pool initiative — which I love and champion, though I'm not officially affiliated — has been a big part of making international racing more accessible, and it was watching that calendar grow that first planted the seed. I kept thinking: what if there was one stop and one process for all of this — in a package that's genuinely better than what you can find locally?
In many jurisdictions, quality form is genuinely hard to find. The data quality varies wildly. Ratings you can trust are rare. And even where decent sources exist, they don't resemble each other — every country has its own product, its own system, its own conventions. Following racing internationally means juggling multiple subscriptions, multiple processes, and multiple interfaces. None of which use the same scale. It's exhausting.
Most form products were born as newspapers a hundred years ago. They still look like it.
To do this properly, I need full coverage from every country involved — not just the headline meetings, but the full racing programme that gives the data its depth and the ratings their accuracy.
About the product
Mr. World Pool is one stop for every racing market worth pursuing.
Performance ratings developed over 20 years across millions of race starts. Adjusted for track speed and weight carried. Consistent across countries — comparable regardless of where the race was run.
ML predictions from a model trained on over 500 features per runner. Your starting point — who should be competitive today?
The Handicapper — projected margins in lengths at today's race distance, adjusted for weight. Study the form, estimate what each horse will run, and see instantly whether it's good enough to win.
Complete trainer and jockey profiles with edge calculations across every category, accessible on holdover. Sire profiles with breeding data. Gate and track bias statistics. The focus throughout has been on presenting all of this as intuitively and cleanly as possible — you can size up a race in two minutes, or analyse it for hours and keep finding new angles. Both are the point.
Everything loads instantly. Chock-full of data, but you never wait.
Countries: Hong Kong, UK, Ireland, UAE — live. Germany, France, Scandinavia — selectively published. Australia and Japan — coming soon.
Pricing: from £2.50 per race (max £25 a card), with automatic volume discounts that step down every 8 races you buy in a day. Three free credits on signup. Competitive with other premium form products.
About the TippingComp
A few years back, I had the honour of running the #DWCCTippingComp on Twitter alongside the Dubai World Cup Carnival. It was a small thing — just bragging rights, no real stakes — but it brought out something genuinely lovely in people. The banter was superb. Strangers became rivals became friends. It felt like the soul of the sport distilled into a Twitter thread. The pathetic prizes I occasionally promised may or may not have actually arrived — I honestly can't say for certain. One winner still has a standing invitation for a fully paid dinner courtesy of my unsuspecting brother, if he can just get himself to Norway from South America. It would still be very nice.
When I found myself with a proper platform and roughly 3,000 kilograms of new technical muscle since those Twitter days, I knew I had to do this again — but this time the way I could only dream of back then, both from a participant's perspective and as an organiser.
The result is #mwpTippingComp — free tipping competitions for major racing events worldwide. Royal Ascot, Dubai World Cup, Breeders' Cup, Hong Kong International Races, and more. Different formats, live leaderboards, a Hall of Fame, and the same spirit as before. No purchase required — and there's often a free form credit waiting for those who sign up.
About the ratings
The ratings are built on the projection method — calibrating each race from the horses' established form rather than relying on the clock. The thinking behind it is laid out in plain language. All our articles are carefully rated on the Scoville scale for intellectual heat — so you know what you're getting into before you click:
- 🌶🌶🌶 Habanero — Understanding the Rating: the story of the ratings, the philosophy, and how to use the Handicapper
The mission
Build the best form product in every market I compete in. Lower the barrier for becoming a great handicapper and form student in 2026.