David Patent wrote:
>
> 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?

TG--1. You weren’t wrong—given the data you were using, you came to exactly the right conclusion. That’s the point.

2. Its not about bonus points. She won by open lengths at the routes—she only “clearly enjoys sprinting” if you believe the Ragozin numbers. The question is whether it’s REASONABLE to believe she won those races running total X’s, since the others behind her ran worse.

3. 6 points = less than 2% difference in final time. Are you saying that a turf course that was soaked with rain earlier can’t have gotten 2% faster as it dried over a couple of hours? Incidentally, the grass actually got less than 4 points faster.

4. I answered this on your other post. Call me next time, and we’ll bet.

5. Uh, David—they don’t all look good on TG. In the Derby, I took a stand by throwing out the favorites—one of whom was Friedman’s pick—and crushed the race.

What is true is that the horses run in a tighter range, and if you knew more about making figures you would know what this means. All those horses on Preakness day are coming from all over the place—different races, different tracks, different distances. That Quixotes Hope gets a sprint number at Pim that ties in with her route numbers at Pha confirms both figures, etc., etc. You can’t make a whole race fit (give lots of horses figures in the range they usually run) unless either:

a. you screw around WITHIN a race, adjusting the relationship between horses dramatically (which the Ragozin office would have pointed out long ago—while we use greatly different approaches to variants, our formulas within the race are similar). We don’t.
OR
b. the figures are accurate—both the ones you make, and the ones you use to make them.

6. We charge less in order to expand the market, and boy, is it working (this is the same theory Ragozin uses in charging horsemen less than 10% of what we do, despite which they have only had a tiny fraction of the success). LOTS of top bettors have migrated over here.

7. I didn’t “pull a handful of races from one card”. Friedman almost never posts a whole card—when he does, like the Breeders’ Cup, and there are differences (errors), I post a response.



TGJB