msola1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I appreciate the reply, but it doesn't bring me
> much closer.
>
> Of course I know that a starting point might be to
> divide the percentages equally. Obviously no-one
> believes they all have an equal chance. How about
> a next step?
>
> How do you define your particular tiers? And where
> do you go from there?
>
> I suppose in some bottom tier you might think none
> had a better than 5% chance. But taken with the
> rest of the percentages, everything must add up to
> 100. It's all the rest that present me with the
> conundrum.

You might find it hard to believe, but there are plenty of times where I find lots of the horses having equal chances. Remember, the races, by condition book, are designed to bring together as evenly matched horses as possible.....so there should be a cluster of horses around par in any given race. That should be the norm, but there should still usually be a set of outliers in either direction too.

Let's take my example a little further and exaggerate for illustration. Imagine a 12 horse race, but there are three rank outsiders with very little chance and three horses who stand above the field with the last six clustered around par. I assume the person has enough handicapping judgment to be able to suss this out.

In this example, I would first give every horse 1% chance because anything can happen. The three outsiders will be left stuck at 1% (note, these are horses whose projected figures are so far off par that race dynamics or a collapse of the race are not enough to help them. Also, they don't even have any back figure to run back to or a reason to think they will do something new (barn change, equipment change, surface, config, distance change)).

Okay, so now you have assigned 12% of the 100% you need to assign. You have 88% left to assign to the three good horses and the 6 par horses. The winner is fairly likely to come from the top three, but if all three are trip compromised, or dont fire, or one of the par horses jumps up big, then a par horse will get it. Let's say it is a 15% chance that a par horse will get it. That means you assign the top three an extra 24% chance to win, so the top three horses are at 25% each. You then split the 15% 6 ways for the par horses. So, in the end, you have three horses at 25% each chance of winning, 6 horses with 3.5% chance of winning, and then three horses with 1.0% chance of winning.

So that would be a first cut. Then I look again at my handicapping and I decide if i have over or under valued something. If I do find I have, then I adjust by moving some percentage from one horse to another until I get a solution I am happy with compared to my racing judgement. I do not sweat small differences, just looking to get order of magnitude and right relations....nothing is hard and fast or black and white....you just want to get some quantification that can match up with your judgments. In this example, maybe I decide I am undervaluing the chance that one of the par horses jumps up. So, I take some off of the top horses and redistribute to the par horses....Lets say I make the top three at 20% each and the par horses at 6% each with the rank outsiders at 1% each.

One way to do it is to write out the horses in the order you think there chances are with the percentages you assign...see how close or far away each horse is from another and see if you think that is right or wrong. A lot of this requires making a diagram and comparing the diagram to your racing judgment. Also, I like to group horses because in reality a lot of horses are pretty close (as i said, the races are designed to draw horses of comparable ability -- that is what makes them attractive for betting purposes).

There is obviously a lot more complexity to the game than this, but this is the basic architecture of how I like to go about it. Nobody has to do it this way. I do it, but there is no right or wrong way to go about doing this -- to each his or her own.

Apologies if I have misunderstood your question.