Beau--

1-- Yes, people don't usually realize how evenly matched these races are.

2-- Part of the reason people think we pair up a lot is the layout of our product-- we don't graph as much laterally as the other guy.

3-- But yes, horses do run in a tighter range on TG than on other figures. As those who have made figures themselves know, that is a sign of accuracy-- the way we all make figures is by trying to match up what they do today with figures they have run in the past. If you have lots of horses in a race running close to what they have in the past, it's a sign both the past and present figures are correct. This is something you can't do artificially-- the relationship (in figure terms) between horses in a race is fixed by their beaten lengths, weight, and ground loss. This means that you can start out by pairing up one horse, but then the others won't fall in line unless you have it right.