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Where Pattern Classes Are Won and Lost
The maneuvers that separate the top three from the rest of the class, and the penalties that cost the most
A pattern class comes down to a handful of maneuvers. I wanted to know which ones separate the top three from everyone else, and which ones cost riders the class through penalties.
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Do Judges Favor Certain Horses?
Mostly no. Across 68,059 judge and horse pairings, strong bias shows up in about one in a thousand.
Judges mostly agree with each other. I wanted to know whether some judges place specific horses consistently better or worse than everyone else does, so I compared each judge’s placings for a horse with how that horse placed under all judges.
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The Deepest Classes and Average Field Sizes
Where a placing means beating the most horses, and how big each discipline's classes really are
Placing in a 5-horse class isn’t the same as placing in a 224-horse class. The biggest class in my database was scheduled for 226 entries. Across 72,316 classes with placings, 426,597 placings in all, the average class size by discipline runs from the seventies down to three.
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Does the Draw Order Decide Horse Show Placings?
A little. Late draws do slightly better, and mostly in the biggest classes.
Anyone who has shown a horse knows the feeling of drawing late in a big class and wondering if the judge already has the class pinned. I have enough results in my equine-data database now to check, and as of this update I have the published draw sheets themselves, so...
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Judges Scorecard
Judge the class from the stands — learn AQHA scoring on your own terms
I’m not a judge. I’m a spectator who sits in the stands and watches AQHA horse shows — Reining, Ranch Riding, Trail, Western Riding — and always wondered how they arrive at those numbers. What’s the difference between a +1 and a +1.5? Why does that horse get a 5...