Jerry,

It's your company and your board and I have to respect your agenda since you have succeeded for over 2 decades in a very tough business. However, I think TG's online sales are way up because more people are learning that they are available, your pricing policy and your additional statistics. I was a diehard user of TG in NY but stopped using them (and stopped betting the ponies) when I moved to Vegas because I could not buy them locally. Once I found out they were available online I became a very regular user as you well know.

I have to admit that sometimes these arguments have made me curious about purchasing Rags to see if their numbers are superior. This probably works both ways and since Rags has more customers (due to being first in the market)it probably benefits TG more when there are dual crossover sales. Your addition of statistics, legible format and more logical arguments for figure making have kept me with the TG product. The arguments have allowed me to understand that figure making while basically logical when done correctly is also somewhat subjective. I have always questioned races where 3 or 4 horses in a cheap to mid-level claimer have all jumped to 3 to 5 point tops and now I understand that it is not necessarily correct and may have occurred to make a race fit with a changing variable for races around it. I have adjusted my handicapping accordingly.

However, I am confused by those such as David (sometimes G) Patent that claim that you force horses into smooth patterns. Statistics tells us that patterns within 2 standard deviations are the most common. Rags would seem to make the statistical anomalies that are outside this 2 standard deviation range more common which logically does not make sense. The asymptote figures becomes almost as common as the 1 standard deviation figures and this defies logic. Also, assuming that you could ignore your convincing argument that horses in forced tight patterns would be exposed due to horses travelling from track to track, how do the detractors explain instances such as War Emblem or Proud Citizen where you have the horses exploding to new tops? I cashed War Emblem in the Derby because of the big top to the one (I figured that fair odds on the horse were about 6-1 based on a possible bounce or another horse running a new top)and he then ran another 2 races that were very tight with that number. How can the Rag agenda boys argue that you are forcing the tight cycles no matter what the evidence when there are daily examples to the contrary.