ringato3 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Billk5300,
>
> There are a few potential answers to this. Take
> your choice:
>
................
>
> 2. Even if you believe the last TG figure given,
> she was first time 4 year old back to her top.
> You could argue a forward move is logical next
> (although I still think 3-1 is short to bet this
> horse "on the come" if you believe his TG figure.
>
.................................
> Not sure how you handicap, but even though the TG
> figs are something I look at for every race, I
> look at the DRF PPs as well, along with a couple
> other things (bias/pace stuff). When you just
> look at a sheet, you often can't explain to
> yourself why money "appears" for a horse that
> looks slow to you. At a minimum, it helps you
> doing too much "smart money is showing up for the
> horse" and over react to it.
>
> Good luck
>
> Rob

All good points! just to supplement the one point I have quoted -- when you are looking at a horse coming back in its 4yo year and its first race matches its 3yo top, there becomes the issue of yes, the horse is going to move forward, but by how much? It is a real delicate balance to decide how much to move it forward by. There is no science here but the difference between moving her forward two points versus three points could have a huge impact on your analysis of the race and the reality is the move forward doesn't have the precision you need. You need to make sure when you are doing something like that and then you see what you perceive as funny money on a horse, is the situation one where the funny money could be giving a clue into the horse. Maybe here the whole barn knew the filly was not tightened up for the first out and was now ready to blast off. I am not saying you should be handicapping funny money and motives all the time, BUT, when you have a horse that you are not sure what to do with, and you have that other piece of evidence, then you need to look.

I will note that when I attended the seminar, our wise leader pointed out the conundrum of assigning efforts to Jacobson horses at Saratoga. Basically, he said you needed to look at the sheet from the perspective of is the barn on or off and based on that decide whether to assign the horse a on or off figure. The way to know if you are going to get on or off is that you watch recent horses by Jacobson and see how the horses are being bet and how they are running in relation to the betting. Basically, when the horse is on, somebody knows and you get indicia about it and you use that when handicapping the same barn's horses.