Jerry,

O.K., here we go.

1) I didn't think that MW looked likely in the Preakness. Per my post on the Rag. boards, he was a toss unless he was 100:1 or higher. There were too many other explosive or faster horses in the race. Guess I was wrong. But you can't hit 'em all.

2) The first race. Again, that filly's numbers were x's and it does not matter whether she won or not. Horses don't get bonus points for winning. She clearly enjoys sprinting more than routing. I didn't bet the race because I didn't see any value but I have seen fillies do what she did (run within 2 points of a top off of a declining line where the last race was way off the top) many many times.

3) This is a very important race to discuss, because it's on the turf. Unlike dirt, where you can come up with any number of explanations for the surface getting faster, there are only a few things you can say about a turf course over the span of 2-3 hours: a) They mowed it; b) They compressed it; c) Evaporation dried it out; d) the action of the horses running over the grass made it faster.

Now, I know they didn't mow the grass. I know that the actions of horses running two races on the turf doesn't make the grass 6 points faster (otherwise we would see big jumpups in time every time there were multiple turf races in the same day). There obviously was some evaporation but on a cloudy day over 2-3 hours, the equation shouldn't be too hard to figure out. With all of the experience you have with grass races over the years, there is a simple math model you should be able to apply to figure out the evaporation effect on the ground. Given my experience with lawns, however, I would fall out of my chair if 2-3 hours of evaporation on a 60 degree day could possibly increase the speed of the course by 6 points. Lastly, I don't know whether they compressed the grass. Do you? If not, then it's not a factor. If they did go over the course with rollers, again, calculating the impact on the course should be easy calculation based on years of experience and lots of data point.

But that's not what you did, I'll bet. You figured that the race would be won with a '6' and so you gave the winner a '6' regardless of the time and then just backed into the variant. You do that all the time because your method relies on preconceived notions of what the horses will do instead of empirical observation. Same comment for the 7th race.

4) The field in the Schafer was, for the most part, a bunch of crippled allowance horses. Who cares if it's a graded stake? The horses don't know that. If you look at the Rag. sheets, almost every single horse in there figured to run worse than in his last race. The winning number was almost exactly what I figured Tenpins would run (a 6-9). The only horse who surprised me was the horse that ran second. I had him running a 4-6. But I'm not going to let one horses 'x' tell me that the whole race is wrong. There was not 'group' craziness in that race. Every horse ran to his predicted number except one.

5) My point on WE, and just about every horse on the TG sheets is this: When you have most horses with a pretty line, you will almost always be able to say 'He looked good on my sheet'. But the losers will also look good on the sheet. That's the problem I had with your product the couple times I bought it -- there is very little mechanism for separating horses that have bad patterns and tossing them. That to me is the true value of the Sheets -- tossing losers. It's very rare that I cash because I nailed a horse ready to run a big top. It's almost always from eliminating noncontenders. So, if the product makes most horses look likely to pair up or move forward, as TG does, then I have no use for it.

I have not suggested that you fudge numbers after the fact. What you do, though, usually, is determine before hand what you think the number is and if the time does not come back what you thought it should be you will often (not always, but often) change the variant to make the number fit your beliefs. To me, someone better have a darn good reason that has a proven statistical basis before they do that. And saying that 'they watered the track' or 'it was two turns' does not cut it, unless you have done soil tests or multiple races at the same distance to back it up.

It's very easy to pull a handful of races from one card and jump all over somebody. I could do the same, leading off with the 6th race -- Sarava was an absolute lock on the Rag. sheets and I put more money to win on that horse than I have in the last 10 years. On the TG sheets, he was just one of 3 or 4 contenders.

My final comment is this: The Rag. sheets are more expensive and are used by the majority of the people who earn a living by betting horses. That says a lot. If TG were better, I suspect that the top bettors would migrate over here. But they don't. What does that tell you?