Alydar,

Did you know that you and Jerry have called various people "idiots" or their posts "idiotic" at least 13 times in the last three weeks. You seem a bit stuck in a rut, there. Tell you what, I'll send you a Thesaurus with some of my winnings from Saturday.

Also I find it interesting that you use the term "we" when referring to you and Jerry. Do you work for him?

To your point above -- Of course every horse's number in that race will be off. How does this affect the argument? Time for another math lesson I guess.

Assume 80% general agreement of numbers (or any percent, it does not matter for this particular example). Looking at it my way (horse by horse) and a horse with 40 races will have 8 numbers that are off by more than 1 point. Total percent of 'wrong' numbers: 20%. Likelihood of this horse running 5 'wrong numbers' in a row -- 32 in 100,000. Total number of horses with 3 wrong numbers in a row in a universe of 40,000 horses -- 12.8.

Now, let's look at all horses in a race, say it's 10: Total number of races -- 400. Total number of wrong numbers -- 80. Percent of numbers that are wrong -- 20%. Likelihood of any one horse running 5 'wrong numbers' in a row -- 32 in 100,000. Total number of horses with 5 wrong numbers in a row in a universe of 40,000 horses -- 12.8. So the story is the same regardless.

To the larger point about the "loosening" of cycles and your apparent argument that a horse's pattern will get progressively looser over time if the numbers are occasionally wrong:

Whether you are doing it intentionally because you know I'm right or unintentionally because you don't understand the argument, you keep taking my specific points on numbers accuracy and restating them in the broadest (and, as a result, wrong) terms, ascribing sweeping claims which I have never made, in order to try to win a debating point instead of engaging on a specific issue of interest.

My claim is and has been that a certain percent of TG's numbers -- which I have estimated in the range of 10-20% -- are probably wrong because Brown has had to do some gyrations with his variant in order to maintain his tight cycles.

There is a huge difference between the claim you are ascribing to me ("inaccurate" numbers) and the claim I am actually making (a few inaccurate numbers) and their ramifications for what a horse's sheet will look like, so you need to stop oversimplifying the argument.

My claim is that for the cycles to look too "loose," (to use your terminology) it would take a more than 4-8 races in 40 where the number was not exactly in line (+ or - 1 point) with a horses pattern. The meat of the issue, which you keep ducking, is how many races and by what degree would they need to be off before you could actually say that any particular number on that sheet was wrong.

And it is also not true that being wrong in one race will cause a horse's sheet (or all of the horses in a particular race) to get progressively looser. Where did you come up with that? One race is one race -- unless of course, you are committed tying your numbers for the next race to the last race without regard to any of the prior races. Does Brown really do that? If so I can't imagine why anyone would buy TG sheets since he would be guaranteeing the invalidity of his product simply by missing the variant for one race.

An illustration of your oversimplification and how your argument collapses as a result of not addressing my points -- this quote from you:

"Let's say there is NO circuit changing. If you start out with artificially tight cycles (inaccurate numbers, in other words), horses to whom you gave 5s will frequently lose to horses to whom you gave 7s. When this happens, your cycles will automatically get looser."

Your claim only holds up if Brown is wrong on his numbers a great deal of the time, which is a claim that nobody here has made. A horse running 7s will sometimes beat a horse running 5s, regardless of the accuracy of the numbers. It will happen occasionally, partly because horses bounce and move forward -- a horse who has been running 7s can beat a horse who ran a 5 on any given day; but it will only happen as often as your numbers are innacurate and/or as often as horses run unpredicatbly. If JB is right on 80-90% of his numbers (as I have claimed), then the 7s won't be beating the 5s "frequently" will they? At least not frequently because of inaccurate numbers. And when the 7 horse wins, how do we know it was because of an inaccurate number instead of a legitimate bounce/jump up?

Another question -- If that does occasionally happens on your sheets (7s beating 5s), who would be the wiser as to the reason? Two reasons why it would be hard to know why:

1) Horses are dynamic animals who rarely run the exact same number over time. Right? Example: The Belmont, where Sarava, running 6s and 7s on Rag. sheets, beat a number of horses who had run a 0, a 1, some 2s, a 3, a 4 some 5s, and a bunch of 6s; What do we make of that? Were both TG and Ragozin wrong on their past numbers? Of course not. It happens sometimes.

2) You would only be able to put the pieces together and and see that slower horses were "frequently" beating faster horses (and remember, this only would happen if you were wrong on a large percentage of your numbers) if you happened to buy the sheets for every horse running for the purpose of going back to compare how each horse did against other horses in past races. Who would do this?

When you combine general accuracy (80-90%)with the ficklness of equine performance, there is no way that all of your horses' sheets are going to spiral out of control.

For an illustration, let's take that horse running 5s at CT and 10s to 12s on Ragozin. I agree that accuracy of the numbers is what counts. That's what I have been advocating all along -- Ragozin is more likely to be accurate than TG.

Now, I think that both Jerry and Len would agree that they have this horse running basically the same, except that Jerry would say "Len, your variant for CT is off by about 2-3 points" and Len would say nothing, but if he did say something, he would say "No, Jerry, your number is off by 2-3 points". Since this horse is running consistently the same numbers within her circuit, we do not appear to have a situation where either Friedman or Brown would claim that the other one was wrong on a particular variant for a particular race. It would be an issue of the circuit having the wrong variant, at least as far as this horse's numbers go.

If this horse then ran in NY, where the TG and Rag. variants appear to be closer, what would happen? Assuming that this horse ran her normal effort, she would run about a 7 or 8 on the TG sheet and a 10-12 on the Rag. Sheet. Agreed? Have we proven anything yet? I don't think so. It's just one race. Maybe the horse bounced (TG). Let's say she stays at a NY track. If she continued to run exactly the same effort every time, she would continue to run 7s and 8s on TG an 10s and 12s on Ragozin. And then you might, might, if you had enough examples of this, be able to say that, 'aha' TG was wrong with their CT variant.

But reality is different. First, it is very rare for horses to switch circuits permanently. It's rare, except at the highest levels, that they run any appreciable number of races away from their circuit. Second, horses are not static. They run good and bad. They get better as they get older, and then worse. Sometimes they kill themselves with one big effort and never get back to it. So detecting an error in a variant becomes extremely tricky. That's why your 4444444, 5555555, 6666666, 7777777 example is so useless. Not only have I not suggested that Brown would be wrong on every number in those series, but it is counter-reality to assume that horses run like that. Sure, if horses ran like that every time, it would be easier to pinpoint TG's mistakes. But since horses don't run like that, it's harder to see which numbers might have been wrong. All one sees is an overall pattern of tighter numbers than Rag. because Jerry makes the necessary up or down adjustment in about 10-20% of his races (again, JB can tell me what percent of his races he has the variant switching degree or direction) to reflect his belief that horses are more consistent than Rag. believes.

And this is why demonstrating conclusively that Rag. or TG is right or wrong is impossible. You can point to this race or that race but there will always be a defense by the maker of the sheet for that race. I can't prove that the Pimlico track didn't suddenly reverse direction and get 8 points slower right after the Preakness, can I? And Jerry can't prove that it did.

But once I know why Jerry's horses run so consistently and I don't get anything out of him on why he moves his variant except that he did because that's the way the he knows horses run, then I'm skeptical. And the response Jerry, you, and others on this board have given, which is essentially 'you can't prove it didn't move' is not enough for me. I think there has been enough data over time to establish some ground rules for the effects of various maintenance, weather, etc. on the variant (see many of my previous posts) so if someone is going to make a claim that a variant moved significantly, I want to see some historcal data to support it.

And if Jerry is indeed correct that his tight cycles prove that his numbers are accurate, why hasn't the betting world realized this and dumped Rag. for TG??

That's why one needs to decide which product they trust and go with it, not worrying about whether a particular race was necessarily right or wrong. Because Friedman will blow some and so will Brown. I just think that Brown blows more of them because he is obsessed with the tight cycles.

Finally, I don't know why you are so obsessed with my educational background, but if you really cared you could always call the alumni office or get a copy of the yearbooks.