David,

If you're not a lawyer you should be. What exasperates me with you is the way you can stand things on their head. You are clearly an astute person - and you clearly have the right approach to handicapping. But you also have a unique talent for doing one thing and saying another, and for criticising other people for things you do yourself.

I have tried to debate with you on points of issue. You have ignored all of them. In my last post I asked you to say what was intrinsically wrong with my posts, why my relationship with Jerry devalued my arguments, what was your opinion on some of the more grotesque aspects of the other board.

What do I get - Martha Stewart and Bill Clinton, some asinine remark about that's life in the big city and a critique of Jerry. Then to cap it all you accuse him of diversionary tactics. Only you could totally ignore specific questions and then accuse somebody else of failing to answer the point.

And the reason I thought your criticism (on the other board, of course) of Jerry's Preakness analysis was so underhand was that you had done a similar thing when you had the handicapping contest with HP. Remember that? You lost the contest but tried to justify yourself by saying that you might have lost the contest but you'd made money at the windows.

When Jerry did his Preakness analysis the perceived wisdom was that Funny Cide would be extremely short and a complete underlay. There was also good reason to think Midway Road (a good play on both TG and Ragozin) would also start much shorter thn his ML. But when Jerry saw the odds on the day he revised his betting strategy. I guess you do the same. You make your own line and doubtless identify potential bets by looking at the ML. But if the pre-race odds are different from the ML then presumably you change your strategy. If you don't you're wasting your time making your own line.

Was Jerry right to change his betting strategy? Of course. Was it dumb to tell people he'd hit the race even though he hadn't done so in the analysis. Unquestionably - but then you'd know that as you did exactly the same thing with HP. Pots shouldn't call kettles black.

One question: Do you think it noble to attack somebody and then deny them the right of reply? If it happened to you or somebody you knew would you feel aggrieved about it?

Mandown

P. S.: Second thoughts - if you can lose a handicapping contest to HP you might not be that good a handicapper.