Pairs

[Mathcapper]

Jerry-- LOL

beaz-- If you\'re interested in creating your own probabilities (fair odds line), check out the link in this post for a story about some who have done it with spectacular success: Contingencies.

If you\'re really ambitious, I\'d suggest reading the B.Benter paper in the book in the link in this post as well: Efficiency of Racetrack Betting Markets.

Be forewarned though, Miff is partially right - for every B.Benter and A.Woods that have succeeded in beating the game with a better probability line than the public\'s, there are countless others who have tried to emulate them and failed miserably because they either miscalculated their edge or overbet their bankrolls. Benter and Woods spent 10 man-years and wrote over a million lines of code, and went through their entire $100K initial stake before they finally got their R-squared high enough to produce a consistent profit with their probability lines.

Best,

Rocky R

[bigbeaz]

Thanks for the links

[tommyG]

You could develop a program like this, but the end result would be a fair odds line of YOUR OPINION OF THE RACE.  The odds line that the program spits out is a direct function of the data you input, and the data to input is not always clear cut.  Too often (like on every single horse), you have to make a decision as to what \"top\" to use--recent or lifetime, turf or dirt-- or which probability distribution to use (%top, %pair, %off, %x).  Those decisions reflect your opinion.

I have toyed with this (more like \"obsessed over this\") for about 20 years now.  I speak from experience.  For a short period, a friend and I bet using the same simulation program.  9 times out of 10 we would land on a different set of key horses.  The reason for the differences always boiled down to how we \"read\" the horses in question.  Do you use the Turf top on a Turf race?  Always?  Do you use the 90+ trainer thoro-pattern for a layoff horse?  What if it\'s a late 2yo and you feel the horse is ripe to explode off the layoff but the thoro-pattern for 90+ (which includes ALL AGES) does not really indicate that?

At the end of the day, whoever read the race right (OPINION) ended up cashing.

My point is that even with a magic black box, there will always be a human element to the handicapping game.

Good luck to you.

[belmont3]

Tommy and other respondents,

Based on the content of the responses, I am unsure if they were directed at my post, Beaz or both.

For clarification purposes. I suggested that by mining data one may be able to discover previously undiscovered patterns. After all, many sheet players constantly look for patterns (i.e pair of 2yo top 1st or 2nd out 3yo start) ... and many sheet players apply these patterns in their handicapping.

What if, via analytics and algos, one could identify these yet to be discovered patterns. These patterns might be explosive to the upside or disastrous to the downside (patterns that result in Big X\'s).

Has nothing to do with projecting a morning line etc.

One would apply this information to assist in their handicapping.

Regards


Bob

[tommyG]

Sorry, Bob,

I do not post often.  My response was more directed to the bigbeaz posts.  I will try to take more care in the future.

tommy