CH--

I agree that the Beyer figures are decent at representing what they aim to (meaning they don't take ground and weight into account), and they don't do some of the dogmatic, unscientific things Ragozin does. I was sitting 3 feet from Andy at the expo when he announced his track-to-track computer program to the world, and it sounded so good that we're going to do our own, as soon as we get done with a couple of other projects. That notwithstanding, they have some problems (as does Ragozin), and the relationship between the EP figures and Saratoga is one. At first glance it is also reflected in the figures assigned for the winners on KY Cup day-- I haven't done the day yet, but I'm guessing I'll be giving out better figures. You make the figures based on the earlier figures.

The funny thing about turf figures is, although on the surface they appear to be tough to make (not as many races), and some are almost impossible to make (lightly raced horses running on days there are no other grass races, or weather makes it wrong to tie the race to others), on balance they are much easier to make, and easier to get right, if

1-- You go by the horses. Grass horses are unbelievably consistent, running in very tight ranges. And before anyone says I just give them what I want, remember that the relationships between horses in a race we are looking at are fixed-- I can't pair the winner to his 7 and the second horse to his 9 and the third to his 10 1/2 unless the winner beats the second horse by 2, and the third by another 1 1/2 points.

2-- You use weight and ground. Because they run fewer grass races, and grass horses do run in tight ranges, getting the figures really accurate makes all the difference when you use them to do variants later. In simple terms, if horse A gets a rail trip around 2 turns and horse B is 3 wide both turns, the difference is about 2 points, which will not show up on Beyer (it would be 6-7 of his points). But it makes an enormous difference both in hanficapping these closely matched races and in making figures using the figures. Likewise weight.

3-- You don't do anything else that can screw things up. By this I mean, take the time of the race too literally, as crazy as that sounds. Pace has a huge effect on final time in grass races because on average it is considerably slower than in dirt races, despite grass courses being on average much faster (especially nowadays, with all the sand in the tracks)-- and sometimes the pace is REALLY slow. If you take the time too literally, or try to use some formula to adjust for slow paces (as Friedman indicated on the Ragozin site they did) you can seriously mess things up, and make it harder going forward to use those figures to make other figures (Jim's point from a couple of days ago). Trust your figures, go by the horses, and don't screw with the relationships within the races, and you'll be fine after you get your data base in shape, which takes time.

By the way, this is what TimeForm and other serious figure makers do. When you deal with short race meets, hilly courses over about distances, and races not only with slow paces but no fractional times, there is no other way to do it.



TGJB