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...

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...

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...

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 [...]

That under-appreciated Nijinsky II-line stallion Hernando (by Niniski) is having an excellent run with his current crop of 3-year-olds, which include the English Oaks (gr. I) victress Look Here (A+ TrueNicks); Casual Conquest ((A+ TrueNicks), winner of Derrinstown Derby Trial (gr. II) and third in...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...