Points scoring for handicap race

Hi all, just wanted to pick your colelctive brains.

I am conducting our clubs (new) handicap race...and got some great feedback about 'how to' on an earlier thread....1st event was on Tuesday and generally went pretty well.

I am wondering though which scoring approach would be best - not having much experience in this area I just wnated some comments about the merits of high scoring for the winner, vs low scoring for the winner.

I assume most people will know what I mean with regard to this?....(low score = 1 point for winner, 2 for 2nd....etc all the way to the last finisher; high score = a set high score (in our case 12 for 1st, 10 for 2nd 9 for 3rd....all the way to 1 point...which all finsihers would get)

We will not have a consistent number of people running the race series....

If this is multiple races and you use low scores then you'll have to give everybody who didn't compete a maximum score each time for it to make sense i.e. someone wins 5 times and has 5 points, another runs once, finishes 5th, also has 5 points unless you give a maximum score for the 4 missed races. By giving high scores simply the person with the highest scores wins and no confusion regarding the number of runs. You also have the option of giving more points if more people turn up, so someone beating a field of 40 can get  more points than someone beating 20.

AH yes, it is multiple races BOTF, (4 races), but you have to compete in at least three, with your best results counting towards your overall score (best of the 4 races assuming you do all four)

Hmm the way I see it - we have 3 options,

Low scoring 1 upto however many runners there are.
High scoring, descending from number of runners,
High Scoring from a set figure (possibly greater than anticipated number of runners)

We had 36 runners at the 1st race.....so might expect numbers to rise a little. Perhaps scoring from 50 if the last of these options.....