Kev:

I appreciate your efforts to understand and utilize the Thoro Patterns, and have scrutinized them over the months, much as you have, looking for the connection between a strong looking pattern and a high win percentage. And by a winning effort, I mean a first place finish, not a new top.

Unfortunately, as TGAB pointed out to me in his post of 6/8/05, there are 24,576 possible patterns. I do not have the resources (money/hardware/software/ time) to follow the success rates of all of these patterns.

One pattern I follow with interest is the Pair/Pair/Pair pattern irregardless/ regardless of age or time of year (this is not a pattern I think you would expect to see frequently with older horses).

If you do a search and go back to my post of 6/9/05, you will see my discussion of the strengths of the Pair/ Pair/Pair pattern. Without being able to research it scientifically, I found that P/P/P usually produces a 20+% chance of a new top, and less than a 40% chance (combined) of an "off" or the dreaded "X". Of course, speaking generally, the P/P/P pattern usually is very predictive of the animal producing ... what a surprise... another pair.

At one point or another, TG should be able to identify certain patterns which are strongly predictive of victory. I do not know if it will become part of the TG product (think run based and fig based trainer stats). The conspiracy theorist within me believes that the tie between certain patterns and winning efforts has been developed, but will probably not be disseminated to occasional TG users such as myself.