FAQ
The questions everyone asks
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What is Mr. World Pool?
Mr. World Pool is a premium horse racing analytics platform. We provide full-form racecards with performance ratings built over 20 years, machine learning predictions, and detailed trainer, jockey and sire profiles — with ratings that are consistent across countries, so you can compare runners across borders with confidence. We aim to be the best form product in every market we compete in.
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What countries do you cover?
Our home base is Hong Kong, and around it we publish the racedays worth travelling for: the feature meetings across Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, the Middle East, Scandinavia and Australia. The idea is simple — one place, one scale, for all the racing worth following. We're deliberately picky: rather than publishing everything, we cover the days we'd want to play ourselves, and we keep expanding where the racing justifies it.
Learn to read our form on one country and you already know how to read it everywhere else. That's the whole point.
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What are the ratings?
An official rating measures a horse's ability — one number per horse, nudged up and down over time by the handicapper. Our ratings do something else: they give every single start an objective, numeric measure of the quality of that performance, adjusted for track speed and weight carried.
That difference matters, because a row of performance figures in the past performances lets you spot patterns a single ability number can't show. Is the horse improving? Which ground and distance produce its best numbers? Does it prefer left-handed tracks, or dirt over turf? Is it tailing off and due a break? Those are the questions the ratings are built to answer — whether you're a punter, an owner, or a trainer.
The system uses a projection method — calibrating each race from the horses' established form instead of relying on the clock alone, which is more often misleading than helpful. We keep the method as free as possible of assumptions and subjective craft, so the numbers stay comparable: a 130 means the same thing wherever on earth it was run. The full methodology is published on the Learn page — one article telling the story of how the ratings came to be, and a deeper technical piece for those who want the detail.
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I know OR (or formtall, or benchmarks) — how do I read your scale?
You don't have to learn it. Official scales are a mess when you cross a border: Britain and Ireland use OR, Hong Kong has its own OR that is not the same, Australia uses Benchmark ratings, Germany has GAG, Scandinavia has formtall — and France expresses the whole thing in kilograms and calls it Valeur, just as they call the Quarter Pounder a Royale with Cheese.
So we built a translator from many years of rated racing in all of these countries. Pick the scale you know once, under the ⓘ next to any rating. From then on, hover any rating and we translate it: what a horse running to that level regularly is typically rated, both on the local scale of the track it ran at and on your chosen scale. You'll also see where the run ranks among all runs in that country, and — when it's high enough — what the level means in that country's biggest races.
It isn't perfect, no translation is — but it's more than good enough to give you a real sense of a number's worth from day one. And after a while you won't need it, because a 130 is a 130 wherever it was run.
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How much does it cost?
Racecards are priced per race at £1.50 per race, capped at £12 per card — you never pay more than that, whatever the size of the day. You always buy the full racecard for a meeting, and the price adjusts to the size of the card so you're never overpaying for a short day.
Most European cards bill four to six races, so £6 to £9. Sha Tin sometimes runs eleven with none of them free. At £1.50 that would be £16.50; the cap holds it at £12.
Free races. If a race is mostly newcomers or has too few horses with proven form, the analytical edge we sell isn't really there — so we don't charge you for it. The system flags a race as free automatically when:
- there are 4 or more horses without prior starts, or
- fewer than 3 horses have at least 3 rated previous starts
Our editors can also mark races free at their discretion. Free races still appear on the card and you can view them like any other — they carry a green FREE tag in the race header, and the card price is calculated only on the races that count. Example: a 7-race meeting with 2 free races is priced as if it had 5 races (£7.50 instead of £10.50).
Volume discounts. The rate drops as you read more within a rolling 24 hours. It counts the billable races you have already paid for in the last 24 hours, and sets one rate for your whole next card: 0 to 7 races bought gives £1.50 a race, 8 to 15 gives £1.25, and 16 or more gives £1.00. Credits and passes do not count; the window is rolling, so a card bought 25 hours ago has dropped out.
Example: with 6 races bought earlier today, a new 6-race card costs £9, all six at £1.50. The £1.25 rate starts with the card after you pass 8 races.
| Billable races on this card | 0–7 bought in the last 24h (£1.50) | 8–15 bought (£1.25, –17%) | 16+ bought (£1.00, –33%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | £6.00 | £5.00 | £4.00 |
| 5 | £7.50 | £6.25 | £5.00 |
| 6 | £9.00 | £7.50 | £6.00 |
| 8 | £12.00 | £10.00 | £7.50 |
| 11 | £12.00 | £10.00 | £7.50 |
Caps per card: £12 · £10 · £7.50. Counting races rather than cards means a short day moves you proportionally — a 3-race card takes you 3 of the way to the next rate instead of burning a whole step. The rate you are on shows on the buy button as a small tag, so you can always see why the price dropped.
Every new account receives 3 free credits on signup — enough to try the product on three separate racecard days with no obligation.
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Do you offer a subscription?
Not for racecards, and we're in no hurry to. Buying a card at a time means you only pay for the days you actually work, and nothing renews behind your back.
The Weekend Pass is the one bundle we do. £25 for every card we publish with a race date between Friday and Sunday: Britain and Hong Kong, plus whatever feature racing elsewhere is worth publishing. Saturday is the heart of it. On Sundays, with most of the weekend already run, it becomes a Sunday Pass at £15 for that day.
It exists because of a complaint we kept getting, and it's a fair one: you pay for a card, work through it properly, and find nothing you want to back. Per-card pricing charges you for being selective, and the selective punters are the ones still here in five years. With the pass, deciding against a race costs you nothing.
It still isn't a subscription. Nothing renews. You buy a weekend when you want that weekend, and if you bought the Weekend Pass on Friday you won't be shown the Sunday Pass, because Sunday is already yours.
My Horses is the one real subscription we run, for owners and trainers tracking their own horses month to month.
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What happens when I create an account?
Exactly this, in order:
- You sign up with an email address. We do not ask for card details.
- Three free credits are added to the account automatically. Each one unlocks a full racecard day of your choice.
- That is it. Nothing is charged unless you actively buy a racecard, and racecard purchases are one-off — there is no subscription to forget to cancel. (The optional My Horses service for owners and trainers is the one subscription we offer, and it is clearly labelled as one.)
Two more things worth knowing. Every email we send has a working one-click unsubscribe. And if you ever want to leave completely, there is a delete-account button on your profile page that removes your login and personal data — no emailing support, no retention offers.
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I'm not interested in betting — I own or train horses. Is there anything for me?
Yes — that's exactly what My Horses is for. You subscribe per horse, and every start it makes gets an independent performance rating and a written analysis of what actually happened, delivered to your inbox as one complete e-mail. From the moment your horse is declared, the full racecard unlocks for you, so you can see the whole field's form the way a professional would.
A row of objective performance figures answers the questions that matter for managing a career: is the horse improving, which ground and trip suit it best, is there a track or a direction it clearly prefers, and is it perhaps time for a break. It's an honest second opinion next to the official mark — and a way to enjoy following your horse more closely, whether or not you ever place a bet.
Read more at My Horses — trainers can put the whole yard on it and share each horse's page with its owner.
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Do you give tips?
We're not a tipping service. We sell tools — ratings, form, statistics, predictions — and what you do with them is your edge. That said, we occasionally publish analyses on our Learn page and on X to demonstrate how we read the form and use the product ourselves. We keep statistics on all of those, because we believe in transparency. But the real point is to make it easy for you to do these analyses yourself. That's the only way to create real racing fans.
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What's the ML Expected Rating?
The Expected Rating comes from a machine learning model trained on over 500 features per horse — recent form, surface preferences, going aptitude, trainer and jockey statistics, gate position, and more. It gives you a strong analytical starting point: the most likely performance for each horse today. It reduces the field to realistic contenders in seconds. The real handicapping question — and where the edge lives — is figuring out who will beat their expected number. That's your judgement.
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What is the MWP TippingComp?
A free tipping competition platform where you compete against other horseplayers during major racing events. Different formats for different events — NAP/NB competitions or fixed-stake formats. Compete against friends or strangers, follow the live leaderboard, and fight for bragging rights and a place in the Hall of Fame. Events include Dubai World Cup, Royal Ascot, Breeders' Cup, Hong Kong International Races, and more. You don't need to use our form products to participate, but there are often free form credits available when you register — so there's always a chance to try the full product at no cost.
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How do your ratings compare to other products?
We share the same goal as other rating providers — quantifying racehorse performance — but our method is different. Most systems rely on benchmark times or par-based track variants. We use a projection method that calibrates races from the horses' own histories rather than the clock. This makes the ratings more stable across different conditions. Our coverage across multiple countries on a unified scale is something no other single product currently offers. And unlike most, our full methodology is published — transparency that lets you judge for yourself.
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I only follow one country. Is this still useful?
Absolutely. We aim to be the best form product in every market we cover — not just for international racing. Even within a single country, MWP offers complete racecards, ratings, ML predictions, full trainer and jockey profiles with edge calculations, and a modern interface where everything loads in seconds. The international coverage becomes a bonus when horses move between countries — raiders at Royal Ascot, Hong Kong imports, the Dubai season — but the product stands on its own in any single market.
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I'm new to horse racing. Is this for me?
Yes — more than you might think. One of the biggest problems in horse racing is the barrier to entry. Most people start by picking horses based on names or backing whichever jockey everyone's talking about — and most form products assume you already know everything. MWP is different: the ML model gives you an intelligent starting point, the Handicapper makes the ratings intuitive and visual, and the interface is designed to be easy to pick up while offering depth you can explore for years. And if you're not ready to pay, our free tipping competitions are a great way to start engaging with racing and discovering whether this is your kind of puzzle.
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Have a question not covered here? Email hello@mrworldpool.com